before him, read the list again, counted up the total expenditure and
admitted that his ward had got remarkably good value for her money.
"But what are all these 'tickets,' my dear?" he asked her.
"Eden Musee," answered Cecelia Anne. And the very thought of it drew her
to her mother's knee. "Jimmie and the boys used to take me there
Saturday afternoons in the winter to try to get my nerve up. They say,"
she admitted dolefully, "that I haven't got much. So they used to take
me to the Chamber of Horrors so's I'd get accustomed to life. That's
what Jimmie thought I needed. They used to like it, and I expect I'd
have liked it, too, if I could have kept my eyes open, but I never
could. I couldn't even _get_ them open when the boys stood me right
close to that gentleman having death throes on the ground after he'd
been hung on a tree. You can hear him breathing!"
"I know him well," said Mr. Debrett. "He is rather awful I must admit.
And now we'll talk about the books. Don't you care at all about 'Little
Men' and 'Little Women' or the 'Elsie Books?'"
"Jimmie says," Cecelia Anne made reply, "that 'Darkest Africa' is better
for me. It tells me just where to hit an elephant to give him the death
throes. He says the 'Elsie Books' wouldn't be any help to us even with a
buffalo. We're going to buy 'The Wild Huntress, or Love in the
Wilderness' next month. Jimmie thinks that's sure to get my nerve
up--being about a girl, you see--"
"And 'Treasure Island' now;" said her guardian, "did you enjoy that? It
came rather late in my life, but I remember thinking it a great book."
"It's great for nerve. Jimmie often reads me parts of it after I go to
bed at night. There's a poem in it--he taught me that by heart--and if
I think to say it the last thing before I go to sleep he says I'll get
so's _nothing_ can scare me."
"Recite it for Mr. Debrett," urged Mrs. Hawtry. And Cecelia Anne
obediently began, with a jerk of a curtsey and a shake of her delicate
embroideries and blue sash.
"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"
Mr. Debrett's astonishment at this lullaby held him silent for some
seconds.
"You see, sir," Cecelia Anne explained, "if you _can_ go to sleep
thinking about that it shows your nerve. I can't. Not yet. But it never
makes me cry any more and Jimmie says that's something."
"I should say it was!" he congratulated her. "It's wonderful. And now in
the matter of dolls," he went on referring to the list, "no rag babies,
eh?"
"Oh, but she has beautiful dolls, Mr. Debrett," interposed her mother.
"She'll show them to you to-morrow morning, won't you honey-child? But
she did not buy them. They were given to her at Christmas and other
times. But really, since we came out here for the summer they've been
rather neglected. Their mother has been so busy."
"And Jimmie made me a house for them!" Cecelia Anne broke in. "And
furniture! And a front yard stuck right on to the piazza! But I don't
know, mother, whether I'd have time to show them to Mr. Debrett in the
morning. I'm pretty busy now. It's getting so near the race. And I pace
Jimmie _every_ morning."
"Ah! that reminds me," said her father, "Jimmie told me to send you to
bed at eight o'clock--one of the rules of 'training', you know--so say
good night to us all and put your little book back in the drawer.
You've kept it very nicely. I am sure Mr. Debrett agrees with me."
When the elders were alone, Mrs. Hawtry crossed over into the light and
addressed her guest.
"I can't have you thinking badly of Jimmie," she began, "or of us, for
allowing him to practically spend the baby's income. Every one of the
things on that list mark a stage in Cecelia Anne's progress away from
priggishness and toward health. I don't know just how much she realizes
her own power of veto in these purchases but I am sure she would never
exercise it against Jimmie. She's absolutely wrapped up in him and he's
wonderfully good and patient with her. Of course, you know, they're
twins although no one ever guesses it. They've shared everything from
the very first."
"In this combination," laughed Debrett, "the boy is 'father to the
girl' and the girl is 'mother to the boy.'"
"Precisely so," Mr. Hawtry replied, "and the mother part comes out
strong in this race and training affair. An old chap down at the
hotel--one of those old white-whiskered 'Foxey Grandpas' that no summer
resort should be without--has arranged a great race for his friends, the
children, on Fourth of July morning. The prize is to be the privilege of
setting off the fireworks in the evening."
"They'll run themselves to death," commented Debrett, who knew his young
America, "and is Jimmie to be one of the contestants?"
"He is," replied Hawtry, "it's a 'free for all' event and even Cecelia
Anne _may_ start if Jimmie allows it. She's not thinking much about that
though. You see, Jimmie has gone into training and she's his trainer. I
went out with them last Saturday morning to see how they manage. They
marched me down to an untenanted little farm, back from the road. Jimmie
carried the 'riffle' referred to in Cecelia Anne's text and a handful of
blank cartridges. Cecelia Anne carried Jimmie's sweater, a bath towel, a
large sponge, a small tin bucket and a long green bottle. I carried
nothing. I was observing, not interfering."
"Oh, that dear baby!" broke in Mrs. Hawtry, "such a heavy load!"
"She's thriving under it, my dear." Well, presently we arrived at our
destination, and I saw that those kids had worn a little path, not very
deep of course, all round what used to be rather a spacious 'door yard.'
The winning-post was the pump. By its side Cecelia Anne disposed her
burden like a theatrical 'dresser' getting things ready for his
principal. She hung her tin pail on the pump's snout and pumped it full
of water, laid it beside the bath towel, threw the sponge into it,
gave a final testing jerk to her tight little braids and divested
herself of her jumpers and the dress she wore under them. Then she
resumed the jumpers, took the rifle and crossed the 'track.' Jimmie,
meanwhile, had stripped to trousers and the upper part of his
bathing-suit, had donned his running shoes, set his feet in holes kicked
in the ground for that purpose and bent forward, his back professionally
hunched and in his hands the essential pieces of cork. Cecelia Anne
gabbled the words of starting, shut her eyes tightly, fired the rifle
into the air, threw it on the ground and set off after the swiftly
moving Jimmie. Early in his first lap she was up to him. As they passed
the pump, she was ahead. In the succeeding laps she kept a comfortable
distance in the lead, until the end of the third when she sprinted for
'home,' grabbed the towel and, as Jimmie came bounding up, wrapped him
in it, rubbed him down, fanned him with it, moistened his brow with
vinegar from the long bottle, tied the sweater around his neck by its
red sleeves and held the dripping sponge to his lips. Then she found
time for me.
[Illustration: CELIA ANNE SHUT HER EYES TIGHTLY AND FIRED THE RIFLE INTO
THE AIR.]
"Oh, father," she cried, "did you _ever_ see _any_body who could run as
fast as Jimmie? Don't you just know he'll win that race?"
"There's but one chance against it," said I. "And really, Mr. Debrett,
that boy can run. He's a little bit heavy maybe, but he holds himself
well together and keeps up a pretty good pace. I timed him and measured
up the distance roughly afterward. It was pretty good going for a little
chap. Cecelia Anne is so much smaller that we often forget what a little
fellow he is after all. But that baby--whew--I wish you'd seen her fly.
It wasn't running. She just blew over the ground and arrived at the pump
as cool as a cucumber although Jimmie was puffing like an automobile of
the vintage of 1890."
"You see," said Jimmie to me as he lay magnificently on the grass
waiting to grow cool while Cecelia still fanned him with the towel, "you
see it don't hurt her to pace me round the track."
"Apparently not," said I, and although he's my own boy and I know him
pretty well, I couldn't for the life of me decide whether he, as well as
Cecelia Anne, had really failed to grasp the fact that she beats him to
a standstill every morning. I suppose we'll know on the Fourth. If she
runs, then he does not know. But if he refuses to let her run; it will
be because he does know."
"I'm not so sure of that," said Mrs. Hawtry.
* * * * *
Cecelia Anne _was_ allowed to run. First, in a girl's race among the
giggling, amateurish, self-conscious girls whom she outdistanced by a
lap or two and, later, in the race for all winners, where she had to
compete with Charlie Anderson, the beau of the hotel, Len Fogarty, the
milkman's son, and her own incomparable Jimmie.
The master of ceremonies gave the signal and the event of the day was
on. First to collapse was Charlie Anderson. Jimmie was then in the lead
with Len Fogarty a close second, and Cecelia Anne beside him. So they
went for a lap. Then Jimmie, missing perhaps the blue little figure of
his pacemaker, wavered a little, only a little, but enough to allow Len
Fogarty to forge past him. Len Fogarty! The blatant, hated Len Fogarty,
always shouting defiance from his father's milk-wagon! Then forward
sprang Cecelia Anne. Not for all the riches of the earth would she have
beaten Jimmie, but not for all the glory of heaven would she allow any
one else to beat him. And so by an easy spectacular ten seconds, she
outran Len Fogarty.
Then wild was the enthusiasm of the audience and black was the brow of
Len Fogarty. A chorus of: "Let a girl lick you," "Call yourself a
runner," "Come up to the house an' race me baby brother," has not a
soothing effect when added to the disappointment of being forever shut
off from the business end of rockets and Roman candles. These things
Cecelia Anne knew and so accepted, sadly and resignedly, the glare with
which Len turned away from her little attempts at explanations.
But she was not prepared, nothing in her short life could ever have
prepared her, to find the same expression on Jimmie's face when she
broke through a shower of congratulations and followed him up the road;
to expect praise and to meet _such_ a rebuff would have been sufficient
to make even stiffer laurels than Cecelia Anne's trail in the dust.
"Why Jimmie," she whimpered contrary to his most stringent rule. "Why
Jimmie what's the matter?"
"You're a sneak," said Jimmie darkly and vouchsafed no more. There was
indeed no more to say. It was the last word of opprobrium.
They pattered on in silence for a short but dusty distance, Cecelia Anne
struggling with the temptation to lie down and die; Jimmie upborne by
furious temper.
"Who taught you how to run?" he at last broke out. "Wasn't it me? Didn't
I give you lessons every morning in the old lot? And then didn't you go
and beat me when Len Fogarty, Charlie Anderson, Billy Van Derwater, and
all the other fellows were there?"
Cecelia Anne returned his angry gaze with her blue and loyal eyes.
"I didn't beat you 't all," she answered. "I didn't beat anybody but Len
Fogarty."
Her mentor studied her for a while and then a grin overspread his once
more placid features.
"I guess it'll be all right," he condescended. "Maybe you didn't mean it
the way it looked. But say, Cecelia Anne, if you're afraid of
fire-crackers what are you going to do about the rockets and the Roman
candles? You know sparks fly out of them like rain. And if the smell of
old cartridge shells makes you sick, I don't know just how you'll get
along to-night."
The victor stopped short under the weight of this overwhelming spoil.
"I forgot all about it," she whispered. "Oh, Jimmie, I guess I ought to
have let Len Fogarty win that race. He could set off rockets and Roman
candles and Catherine wheels. I guess it'll kill me when the sparks and
the smoke come out. Maybe I'd better go and see Mr. Anstell and ask to
be excused."
"Aw, I wouldn't do that," Jimmie advised her, "you don't want everyone
to know about your nerve. You just tell him your dress is too light and
that you want me to attend to the fireworks for you."
In the transports of gratitude to which this knightly offer reduced her,
Cecelia Anne fared on by Jimmie's side until they reached the house and
their enquiring parents. Mrs. Hawtry was on the steps as they came up
and she gathered Cecelia Anne into her arms. For a moment no one spoke.
Then Jimmie made his declaration.
"Cecelia Anne beat Len Fogarty all to nothing. You ought to have been
there to see her."
"Was there any one else in the race?" queried Mr. Hawtry in what his son
considered most questionable taste.
"Oh, yes," he was constrained to answer. "Charlie Anderson was in it.
She beat him, too. And I _started_ with them but I thought it would do
those boys more good to be licked by a little girl than to have me 'tend
to them myself." And Jimmie proceeded leisurely into the house.
"But I don't have to set off the fireworks," Cecelia Anne explained
happily. "Jimmie says I don't have to if I don't want to. He's going to
do it for me."
"Kind brother," ejaculated Mr. Hawtry. And across the bright gold braids
of her little Atalanta, Mrs. Hawtry looked at her husband.
"_Did_ he know?" she questioned, "or did he not? You thought we could be
sure if he let her start."
"Well," was Mr. Hawtry's cryptic utterance, "he knows now."
THEODORA, GIFT OF GOD
"And then," cried Mary breathlessly, "what did they do then?"
"And then," her father obediently continued, "the two doughty knights
smote lustily with their swords. And each smote the other on the helmet
and clove him to the middle. It was a fair battle and sightly."
But Mary's interest was unabated. "And then," she urged, "what did they
do then?"
"Not much, I think. Even a knight of the Table Round stops fighting for
a while when that happens to him."
"Didn't they do anything 'tall?" the audience insisted. "You aren't
leaving it out, are you? Didn't they bleed nor nothing?"
"Oh, yes, they bled."
"Then tell me that part."
"Well, they bled. They never stinteth bleeding for three days and three
nights until they were pale as the very earth for bleeding. And they
made a great dole."
"And then, when they couldn't bleed any more nor make any more dole,
what did they do?"
"They died."
"And then--"
"That's the end of the story," said the narrator definitely.
"Then tell me another," she pleaded, "and don't let them die so soon."
"There wouldn't be time for another long one," he pointed out as he
encouraged his horse into an ambling trot. "We are nearly there now."
"After supper will you tell me one?"
"Yes," he promised.
"One about Lancelot and Elaine?"
"Yes," he repeated. "Anything you choose."
"I choose Lancelot," she declared.
"A great many ladies did," commented her father as the horse sedately
stopped before the office of the Arcady _Herald-Journal_, of which he
was day and night editor, sporting editor, proprietor, society editor,
chief of the advertising department, and occasionally type-setter and
printer and printer's devil.
Mary held the horse, which stood in need of no such restraint, while
this composite of newspaper secured his mail, and then they jogged off
through the spring sunshine, side by side, in the ramshackle old buggy
on a leisurely canvass of outlying districts in search of news or
advertisements, or suggestions for the forthcoming issue.
In the wide-set, round, opened eyes of his small daughter, Herbert
Buckley was the most wonderful person in the world. No stories were so
enthralling as his. No songs so tuneful, no invention so fertile, no
temper so sweet, no companionship so precious. And her nine happy years
of life had shown her no better way of spending summer days or winter
evenings than in journeying, led by his hand and guided by his voice,
through the pleasant ways of Camelot and the shining times of chivalry.
Upon a morning later in this ninth summer of her life Mary was perched
high up in an apple tree enjoying the day, the green apples, and
herself. The day was a glorious one in mid July, the apples were of a
wondrous greenness and hardness, and Mary, for the first time in many
weeks, was free to enjoy her own society. A month ago a grandmother and
a maiden aunt had descended out of the land which had until then given
forth only letters, birthday presents, and Christmas cards. And they had
proved to be not at all the idyllic creatures which these manifestations
had seemed to prophesy, but a pair of very interfering old ladies with a
manner of over-ruling Mary's gentle mother, brow-beating her genial
father and cloistering herself.
This morning had contributed another female assuming airs of instant
intimacy. She had gone up to the last remaining spare chamber, donned a
costume all of crackling white linen, and had introduced herself,
entirely uninvited, into the dim privacy of Mary's mother's room, whence
Mary had been sternly banished.
"Another aunt!" was the outcast's instant inference, as in a moment of
accountable preoccupation on the part of the elders she had escaped to
her own happy and familiar country--the world of out-of-doors--where
female relatives seldom intruded, and where the lovely things of life
were waiting.
When she had consumed all the green apples her constitution would
accept, and they seemed pitifully few to her more robust mind, she
descended from the source of her refreshment and set out upon a
comprehensive tour of her domain. She liked living upon the road to
Camelot. It made life interesting to be within measurable distance of
the knights and ladies who lived and played and loved in the
many-towered city of which one could gain so clear a view from the
topmost branches of the hickory tree in the upper pasture. She liked to
crouch in the elder bushes where a lane, winding and green-arched,
crossed a corner of the cornfield, and to wait, through the long, still
summer mornings for Lancelot or Galahad or Tristram or some other of her
friends to come pricking his way through the sunshine. She could hear
the clinking of his golden armor, the whinnying of his steed, the soft
brushing of the branches as they parted before his helmet or his spear;
the rustling of the daisies against his great white charger's feet. And
then there was the river "where the aspens dusk and quiver," and where
barges laden with sweet ladies passed and left ripples of foam on the
water and ripples of light laughter in the air as, brilliant and fair
bedight, they went winding down to Camelot.
This morning she revisited all these hallowed spots. She thrilled on the
very verge of the river and quivered amid the waving corn. She scaled
the sentinel hickory and turned her eyes upon the Southern city. It was
nearly a week since she had been allowed to wander so far afield, and
Camelot seemed more than ever wonderful as it lay in the shimmering
distance gleaming and glistening beyond the hills. Trails of smoke waved
above all the towers, showing where Sir Beaumanis still served his
kitchen apprenticeship for his knighthood and his place at the Table
Round. Thousands of windows flashed back the light.
"I could get there," pondered Mary, "if God would send me that goat and
wagon. I guess there's quite a demand for goats and wagons. I could
dress my goat all up in skirts like the ladies dressed their palfreys,
an' I'd wear my hair loose on my shoulders--it's real goldy when it's
loose--an' my best hat. I guess Queen Guinevere would be real glad to
see me. Oh, dear," she fretted as these visions came thronging back to
her, "I wish Heaven would hurry up."
Between the pasture and the distant city she could distinguish the roofs
of another of the havens of her dear desire--the house where the old
ladies lived. Four old ladies there were, in the sweet autumn of their
lives, and Mary's admiration of them was as passionate as were all her
psychic states. She never could be quite sure as to which of the four
she most adored. There was the gentle Miss Ann, who taught her to recite
verses of piercing and wilting sensibility; the brisk Miss Jane, who
explained and demonstrated the construction of many an old-time cake or
pastry; the silent Miss Agnes, who silently accepted assistance in her
never-ending process of skeletonizing leaves and arranging them in prim
designs upon cardboard, and the garrulous Miss Sabina, who, with a
crochet needle, a hair-pin, a spool with four pins driven into it,
knitting needles and other shining implements, could fashion, and teach
Mary to fashion, weavings and spinnings which might shame the most
accomplished spider. Aided by her and by the re-enforced spool above
mentioned, Mary had already achieved five dirty inches of red woollen
reins for the expected goat. But the house was distant just three
fields, a barb-wire fence, a low stone wall, and a cross bull, and Mary
knew that her unaccustomed leisure could not be expected to endure long
enough for so perilous a pilgrimage.
Her dissatisfied gaze wandered back to her quiet home surrounded by its
neatly laid out meadows, cornfield, orchard, barns, and garden. And a
shadow fell upon her wistful little face.
"That old aunt," she grumbled, "she makes me awful tired. She's always
pokin' round an' callin' me."
Such, indeed, seemed the present habit and intent of the prim lady who
was approaching, alternately clanging a dinner-bell and calling in a
tone of resolute sweetness:
"Mary, O Mary, dear."
Mary parted the branches of her tree and watched, but made no sound.
"Mary," repeated the oncoming relative, "Mary, I want to tell you
something," and added as she spied her niece's abandoned sunbonnet on
the grass, "I know you're here and I shall wait until you come to me."
"I _ain't_ coming," announced the Dryad, and thereby disclosed her
position, both actual and mental. "I suppose it's something I've done
and I don't want to hear it, so there!" Then, her temper having been
worn thin by much admonishing, she anticipated: "I _ain't_ sorry I've
been bad. I _ain't_ ashamed to behave so when my mamma is sick in bed.
And I don't care if you _do_ tell my papa when he comes home to-night."
The intruding relative, discerning her, stopped and smiled. And the
smile was as a banderilla to her niece's goaded spirit.
"Jiminy!" gasped that young person, "she's got a smile just like a
teacher."
"Mary, dear," the intruder gushed, "God has sent you something."
The hickory flashed forth black and white and red. Mary stood upon the
ground.
"Where are they?" she demanded.
"They?" repeated the lady. "There is only one."
"Why, I prayed for two. Which did he send?"
"Which do you think?" parried the lady. "Which do you hope it is?"
Even Mary's scorn was unprepared for this weak-mindedness. "The goat, of
course," she responded curtly. "Is it the goat?"
"Goat!" gasped the scandalized aunt. "Goat! Why, God has sent you a baby
sister, dear."
"A sister! a baby!" gasped Mary in her turn. "I don't _need_ no sister.
I prayed for a goat just as plain as plain. 'Dear God,' I says, 'please
bless everybody, and make me a good girl, an' send me a goat an' wagon.'
And they went an' changed it to a baby sister! Why, I never s'posed they
made mistakes like that."
Crestfallen and puzzled she allowed herself to be led back to the
darkened house where her grandmother met her with the heavenly
substitute wrapped in flannel. And as she held it against the square and
unresponsive bosom of her apron she realized how the "Bible gentleman"
must have felt when he asked for bread and was given a stone.