THE LADY IN THE GRAY CLOAK
"My dear girls!" the woman in the gray cloak said, with a hand on a
shoulder of each of the younger Corner House girls, "how providential it
was that you saw my danger. I am very much obliged to you. And how brave
you both were!"
"Thank you, ma'am," said Tess, who seldom forgot her manners.
But Dot was greatly excited. "Oh, my!" she gasped, clinging tightly to
the Alice-doll, and quite breathless. "My--my pulse _did_ jump so!"
"Did it? You funny little thing," said the woman, half laughing and half
crying. "What do you know about a pulse?"
"Oh, I know it's a muscle that bumps up and down, and the doctor feels
it to see if you're better next time he comes," blurted out Dot, nothing
loath to show what knowledge she thought she possessed.
"Oh, my dear!" cried the lady, laughing heartily now. And, dropping down
upon the very bench where Tess and Dot had been sitting, she drew the
two children to seats beside her. "Oh, my dear! I shall have to tell
that to Dr. Forsyth."
"Oh!" ejaculated Tess, who was looking at the pink-cheeked lady with
admiring eyes. "Oh! _we_ know Dr. Forsyth. He is our doctor."
"Is he, indeed? And who are you?" responded the lady, the sad look on
her face quite disappearing now that she talked so animatedly with the
little Kenways.
"We are Dot and Tess Kenway," said Tess. "I'm Tess. We live just over
there," and she pointed to the big, old-fashioned mansion across the
Parade Ground.
"Ah, then," said the woman in the gray cloak, "you are the Corner House
girls. I have heard of you."
"We are only two of them," said Dot, quickly. "There's four."
"Ah! then you are only half the quartette."
"I don't believe we are _half_--do you, Tess?" said Dot, seriously. "You
see," she added to the lady, "Ruthie and Aggie are so much bigger than
we are."
The lady in the gray cloak laughed again. "You are all four of equal
importance, I have no doubt. And you must be very happy together--you
sisters." The sad look returned to her face. "It must be lovely to have
three sisters."
"Didn't you ever have any at all?" asked Dot, sympathetically.
"I had a sister once--one very dear sister," said the lady,
thoughtfully, and looking away across the Parade Ground.
Tess and Dot gazed at each other questioningly; then Tess ventured to
ask:
"Did she die?"
"I don't know," was the sad reply. "We were separated when we were very
young. I can just remember my sister, for we were both little girls in
pinafores. I loved my sister very much, and I am sure she loved me, and,
if she is alive, misses me quite as much as I do her."
"Oh, how sad that is!" murmured Tess. "I hope you will find her, ma'am."
"Not to be thought of in this big world--not to be thought of now,"
repeated the lady, more briskly. She picked up the history that Tess had
dropped. "And which of you little tots studies this? Isn't English
history rather far advanced for you?"
"Tess is _nawful_ smart," Dot hastened to say. "Miss Andrews says so,
though she's a nawful strict teacher, too. Isn't she, Tess?"
Her sister nodded soberly. Her mind reverted at once to the sovereigns
of England and Miss Pepperill. "I--I'm afraid I'm not very quick to
learn, after all. Miss Pepperill will think me an awful dunce when I
can't learn the sovereigns."
"The sovereigns?" repeated the woman in gray, with interest. "What
sovereigns?"
So Tess (of course, with Dot's valuable help) explained her difficulty,
and all about the new teacher Tess expected to have.
"And she'll think I'm awfully dull," repeated Tess, sadly. "I just
_can't_ make my mind remember the succession of those kings and queens.
It's the hardest thing I ever tried to learn. Do you s'pose all English
children have to learn it?"
"I know they have an easy way of committing to memory the succession of
their sovereigns, from William the Conqueror, down to the present time,"
said the lady, thoughtfully. "Or, they used to have."
"Oh, dear me!" wailed Tess. "I wish I knew how to remember the old
things. But I don't."
"Suppose I teach you the rhyme I learned when I was a very little girl
at school?"
"Oh, would you?" cried Tess, her pretty face lighting up as she gazed
admiringly again at the woman in the gray cloak.
"Yes. And we will add a couplet or two at the end to bring the list down
to date--for there have been two more sovereigns since the good Queen
Victoria passed away. Now attend! Here is the rhyme. I will recite it
for you, and then I will write it down and you may learn it at your
leisure."
Both Tess and Dot--and of course the Alice-doll--were very attentive as
the lady recited:
"'First William, the Norman,
Then William, his son;
Henry, Stephen, and Henry,
Then Richard and John;
Next Henry the Third;
Edwards one, two, and three,
And again after Richard
Three Henrys we see;
Two Edwards, third Richard,
If rightly I guess,
Two Henrys, sixth Edward,
Queen Mary, Queen Bess,
Then Jamie, the Scotchman,
Then Charles, whom they slew,
Yet received after Cromwell
Another Charles, too;
Next James the Second
Ascended the throne;
Then good William and Mary
Together came on;
Till Anne, Georges four,
And fourth William, all past,
God sent Queen Victoria,
Who long was the last;
Then Edward, the Seventh
But shortly did reign,
With George, the Fifth,
England's present sovereign.'
There you have it--with an original four lines at the end to complete
the list," laughed the lady.
Dot's eyes were big; she had lost the sense of the rhyme long before;
but Tess was very earnest. "I--I believe I _could_ learn 'em that way,"
she confessed. "I can remember poetry quite well. Can't I, Dot?"
"You recite 'Little Drops of Water, Little Grains of Sand' beautifully,"
said the smallest Corner House girl, loyally.
"Of course you can learn it," said the lady, confidently. "Now,
Tess--is that your name--Theresa?"
"Yes, ma'am--only almost nobody ever calls me by it _all_. Miss Andrews
used to when she was very, very angry. But I hope my new teacher, Miss
Pepperill, won't be angry with me at all--if I can only learn these
sovereigns."
"You shall," declared the lady in gray. "I have a pencil here in my bag.
And here is a piece of paper. I will write it all out for you and you
can study it from now until the day school opens. Then, when this Miss
Pepperill demands it, you will have it pat--right on the end of your
tongue."
"I hope so," said Tess, with dawning cheerfulness.
"'First William, the Norman,
Then William, his son;'
I believe I _can_ learn to recite it all if you are kind enough to write
it down."
The lady did so, writing the lines in a beautiful, round hand, and so
plain that even Dot, who was a trifle "weak" in reading anything but
print, could quite easily spell out the words.
"Weren't there any more names for kings when those lived?" the youngest
Kenway asked seriously.
"Why, what makes you ask that?" asked the smiling lady.
"Maybe there weren't enough to go 'round," continued the puzzled Dot.
"There are so many of 'em of one name----Williams, and Georges, and
Edwardses. Don't English people have any more names to give to their
sov-runs?"
"Sov-er-eigns," whispered Tess, sharply.
"That's what I mean," said the placid Dot. "The lady knows what I mean."
"Of course I do, dear," agreed the woman in the gray cloak. "But I
expect the mothers of kings, like the mothers of other little boys, like
to name their sons after their fathers.
"Now, children, I must go," she added briskly, getting up off the bench
and handing Tess the written paper. "Good-bye. I hope I shall meet you
both again very soon. Let me kiss you, Tess--and you, Dorothy Kenway. It
has done me good to know you."
She kissed both children quickly, and then set off along the Parade
Ground walk. Tess and Dot bade her good-bye shrilly, turning themselves
toward the old Corner House.
"Oh, Dot!" exclaimed Tess, suddenly.
"What's the matter now?" asked Dot.
"We never asked the lady her name--or who she was."
"We-ell----would that be perlite?" asked Dot, doubtfully.
"Yes. She asked our names. We don't know anything about her--and I _do_
think she is so nice!"
"So do I," agreed Dot. "And that gray cloak----"
"With the pretty little bonnet and ruche," added Tess.
"She isn't the Salvation Army," said Dot, remembering that that order
was uniformed from seeing them on the streets of Bloomingsburg, where
the Kenways had lived before they had fallen heir to Uncle Peter
Stower's estate.
"Of course not!" Tess cried. "And she don't look like one o' those
deaconesses that came to see Ethel Mumford's mother when she was
sick--do you remember?"
"Of course I remember--everything!" said the positive Dot. "Wasn't I a
great, big girl when we came to Milton to live?"
"Why--why," stammered her sister, not wishing to displease Dot, but
bound to be honest. "You aren't a very big girl, even now, Dot Kenway."
"Humph!" exclaimed Dot, quite vexed. "I wear bigger shoes and stockings,
and Ruth is having Miss Ann Titus let down the hems of all my old
dresses a full inch--so now!"
"I expect you _have_ grown some, Dot," admitted Tess, reflectively. "But
you aren't big enough even now to brag about."
The youngest Kenway might have been deeply offended by this--and shown
that she had taken offence, too--had something new not taken her
attention at the very moment she and Tess were entering the side gate of
the old Corner House premises.
The house was a three story and attic mansion which was set well back
from Main Street, but the side of which was separated from Willow Street
by only a narrow strip of sward. The kitchen was in the wing nearest
this last-named street, and there was a big, half-enclosed side porch,
to which the woodshed was attached, and beyond which was the long grape
arbor.
The length of the old Corner House yard, running parallel with Willow
Street, was much greater than its width. The garden, summer house,
henhouses, and other outbuildings were at the back. The lawn in front
was well shaded, and there were plenty of fruit trees around the house.
Not many dwellings in Milton had as much yard-room as the Stower
homestead.
"Oh my, Tess!" gasped Dot, with deep interest, staring at the porch
stoop. "Who is that--and what's he doing?"
"Dear me!" returned Tess, hesitating at the gate. "That's Seneca
Sprague--the man who wears a linen duster and straw hat all the year
round, and 'most always goes barefooted. He--he isn't just right, they
say, Dot."
"Just right about what?" asked Dot.
"Mercy me, Dot!" exclaimed Tess, exasperated.
"Well, what _is_ he?" asked Dot, with vigor.
"Well--I guess," said Tess, "that he thinks he is a minister. And, I do
declare, I believe he's preaching to Sandyface and her kittens! Listen,
Dot!"