very natural to want to see and to be seen, though it does sound a
little odd to hear you claiming beauty so frankly. But, Prudy, don't
you expect to use your eyes to good purpose, wherever you are, and
is it a little thing that your bonny face will give pleasure to your
loved ones? I am afraid you want an audience, my little cousin, but
remember that anything outside doesn't matter seriously; it is the
close heart things that count, especially to women. I don't mean to
underrate your gift of beauty, Prue, nor to have you underrate it, but
don't overrate it. Wythie is very sweet and pretty, and Rob's charm
exceeds her good looks, which are not insignificant. You have fallen
into the Grey heritage--that's all. The Greys are usually more or less
handsome. But that does not necessitate foolish ambitions. There is
another side to this plan of going to New York for the winter which
does not seem to have occurred to you. You would be cultivating tastes
which you have not the means to gratify. You have a comfortable, dear
little old home, Prudy, as much of this world's goods as you need, but
you could not maintain the habits of the girls whom you would meet in
that fashionable school, not for one month. Can you afford a great
many expensive dresses, carriages, flowers, theatre tickets unlimited,
all the costly nothings that make up tremendous sums in a season?
And if you can not, why should you want to make yourself miserable by
acquiring tastes which you have no reason to suppose that you can ever
gratify? If you are vaguely restless now what would you be after a
winter in that atmosphere, to which, at first, you would take only too
kindly?"
"I could manage," said Prue. "They would not know what I could afford."
"Don't you think, Prue, that is not quite honest?" suggested Cousin
Peace gently. "Don't you think upright, self-respecting honesty demands
that one should take that place in the world which belongs to him? And
common sense will tell you it is the only way to be happy. I don't
mean to preach, my dear, but when you look around you and see how many
people are false to their ideals, and sink to incredible baseness for
the love of display, it seems to me that when one is but slenderly
equipped with money it is an obvious duty to safeguard one's self by
cultivating simple tastes, and by living with perfect integrity on that
basis which is his rightfully, striving of all things for contentment.
I do not approve of your feeding your love of luxury, your desire for
a wider field, even though I can easily forgive you for knowing that
you are a remarkably pretty girl. You should not accept Hester's
invitation, Prue; you should stay in your own place until you are old
enough to carve your way through to what you want, and by that time
I hope very much that you will see how lovely it is to live in the
simple, noble, unworldly atmosphere in which you have been born and
bred. If I were you I wouldn't ask my mother to let me go to Hester
this winter."
"There wouldn't be any use in my asking her if you disapprove," said
Prue, half tempted to resentment, though she liked to be preached to by
Cousin Peace.
"There wouldn't be if I did approve, you rebellious child," smiled her
cousin. "Mary would never expose her baby to the danger of having her
golden head filled with the sort of ambition which leads to bitterness
of soul." Cousin Peace stroked the golden head very kindly as she
spoke, and Prue lifted it with a sigh.
"Worldiness is beautiful to think about," she said, "but I wonder if
worldliness isn't rather splendid to live? I can't help thinking it
would be fine to enter a vast room, magnificently attired, and hear
people catch their breath and whisper: 'There's the beautiful Miss
Grey!'"
Miss Charlotte laughed long and merrily. "Prue, you are just a little
girl after all, and in spite of your great height! You haven't changed
at all since the time that you used to get on that ragged old silk
from the attic and trail about playing you were Mary of Scotland. Do
you remember how you used to add: 'Before she was beheaded,' when we
asked who you were, and you used to say: 'Mary Queen Scots'? I think I
needn't have preached such a long sermon to you, if you have only such
a childish ambition as that!"
"Who's talking of ambitions?" cried Rob in the doorway. "Here is Polly
going to have a birthday next week and be nine years old, and I have
found out that her ambition is to have a lovely doll, all her own, so
that she can feel that her child is not an adopted one, like Hortense."
Rob came in, all fresh and glowing from the out-of-doors. Miss
Charlotte put out her hand and Rob dropped Polly's little hand to clasp
it.
"What are your ambitions, Robin Redbreast?" asked Cousin Peace, using
Rob's childish nickname.
"I believe I haven't one; isn't it disgraceful?" cried Rob. "Only to
be happy, happy, with Mardy and the girls--and you, dearest Cousin
Peaceful--in the little grey house, forever and ever without change or
decay."
"Dear Robin!" murmured her cousin. "If only that might be! But your
ambition may be, it _will_ be realized, for love is eternal."
"Oh, yes! I believe I am ambitious to resume my story-telling
successfully, to help Hessie's little cripples," added Rob with a light
pressure of her cheek on Miss Charlotte's hand as her only answer.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ITS AMBITIONS
Prue laid before her mother the proposition from Hester Baldwin which
it seemed to the girl herself one that no one could possibly refuse.
Mrs. Grey did not entertain it for a moment. "The Baldwins are charming
people, dear," she said quietly, as she folded Hester's letter and
returned it to its envelope. "If you had no home I should be thankful
to have you received into theirs. As it is, and considering that the
home to which you would return is such a simple one, I think you would
get more harm than good from the school of which Hester speaks. Your
place is in the little grey house, my Prudy, and in the little Grey
family; it would be too small a family by one if you left us."
Prue did not urge the point; there never was the slightest use in
urging Mrs. Grey to do something upon which she decidedly made up her
mind in the beginning, but the girl's beauty was clouded for some days
by the shadow of her dissatisfaction.
When Hester came out to spend a few days before Christmas Prue hoped
that she might convert her mother to other views, but Hester was so
engrossed with her project of founding a home for crippled little
children that she had forgotten her plan for Prue.
"They tell me that, though he is incurable, the poor little fellow I
have sent out to Jersey really is better!" cried Hester almost the
moment that she arrived. "Only suppose there were twenty of them!"
"Five dollars a week--two hundred and fifty a year, five thousand a
year--Oh, Hester, I'm afraid you will have to get on with less than
twenty little cripples. You can't afford so many!" cried Rob.
"Nonsense, Rob! It wouldn't cost nearly five dollars a week apiece if
we had them all in one house, and weren't paying board for them, but
had a housekeeper, and made a fund for them all together," retorted
Hester.
"I'm afraid it would be a sinking fund," remarked Wythie quietly.
"It can be done; only give me the chance!" cried Hester.
"We will give you a chance!" cried Rob. "I'll announce immediately that
I will resume story-telling to the Fayre children. It won't be much,
but it will enable you to afford one more cripple, anyway."
"I think we might have a costume entertainment; our attic is full of
the loveliest things," said Prue.
"Why, Prue, how did we all happen to forget those venerable costumes
up-stairs!" exclaimed Wythie. "We can give something really worth
while."
"It would be no end of fun," said Frances slowly; she had dropped in at
the little grey house and had been kept for luncheon. She was wondering
if the Grey girls did not remember the frolic they had had in those
antiquated garments on the last night of their father's life. She saw
Rob's lips draw a little at the corners as she smiled, and she knew
that her "Patergrey's" "son Rob" was thinking of that night.
"It would be a frolic for us, but what form could the affair take that
people would come to it? You mean to sell tickets to it?" Rob asked.
"Why, of course; we mean it to earn money to give Hester another
cripple," laughed Prue.
"Make it a dance to which everybody must come in costume, and for
which they must buy tickets for the privilege of coming," said Frances,
whose practical mind always was quick to plan details. "We will lead
the dancing, and do a costume gavotte, or something--Let's see--three
Greys, Hessie and I are five girls, and Battalion B and Hessie's cousin
are four boys. We'll get three more girls and four more boys, and we'll
practise an old-time dance; we can make it lovely. And--why not?--let's
have the dance preceded by a short concert of old-time songs. Mama will
lend our house, I'm sure of that, and we could have the nicest kind of
an affair."
Hester fairly beamed with joyous excitement. "Why, what has made you
girls so perfectly angelic this morning?" she cried. "You have always
been interested, but not so ready charged to go right off at a touch
as you are now. If Rob would tell stories for the Home this winter,
and you would have this entertainment--why, we could take two more
children at once! It seems as though I could not wait to carry out this
beautiful plan, and I can hardly believe it when I see that it really
begins to look like a possibility."
"It's getting to be a probability, Hester," said Rob. "One thing
that has fired our zeal is Dr. Fairbairn's report on it. He has
been talking about it here, and he has found several people deeply
interested, while the dear old man himself is enthusiastic. Then Aunt
Azraella, of all people under the sun, has inspired us with courage.
She said the other day that if we proved to be in earnest, and she
could be shown that this home for incurable little waifs stood a chance
of being an accomplished fact, she might help it. I could hardly gasp
out my answer, but if she can be interested in the scheme it could be
put through, for Aunt Azraella has a good deal of money, we think--we
never knew how much she really had."
"Come here, my beloved Feather-bed!" cried Wythie as Kiku-san swung
into the room, so big, and white, and fluffy that Hester laughed aloud
at the appropriate name.
Before the golden eyed cat had risen from the toilet which he
immediately sat down to prepare when Wythie called him, a clear,
delicate sound of singing floated in through the door, a high, sweet,
childish treble, fine as a gossamer thread of sound, but beautifully
true. It sang "Annie Laurie," by no means an easy task for a childish
singer, without a false note or a break, and when the song was ended
the same voice took up "Oft in the Stilly Night," which it sang with
the same charm.
The five girls listened, breathless, Rob with uplifted finger of
warning.
"That's little Polly Flinders," she said when the lovely little voice
died away into silence. "She is in the lean-to room, singing to
Cousin Peace. It is the prettiest companionship imaginable. Little,
old-fashioned, quiet Polly, and lovely, blind Cousin Peace. Polly
steals away to her at every opportunity. I wish I could paint the
picture: that sober, pale faced child on her stool, with her new,
birthday dolly, at the feet of the blind woman, with the saintly face,
and the lean-to room, with its old furniture for the setting of the
picture! Polly worships at her feet, figuratively and literally. The
child sings exquisitely. Mardy, Wythie and I--and Prue, I suppose, only
she hasn't discussed it with us--want her educated in music. She has
decided talent, and she sings quaint, unchildlike old songs which she
has learned from her mother, so she says, but I'm sure Mrs. Flinders'
tired, hard voice never sung them as Polly does. We love to hear
her----"
"Rob," interrupted Wythie, "fancy Polly in an old-time gown, singing
her songs at our entertainment!"
"The very thing!" cried Rob and Frances together, while Hester choked
Wythie in a rapture of gratitude.
"Well, you have had an idea worth having, Oswyth!" cried Rob. "And it
might be of use, later, to Polly. There are so many things to be done,
I begin to wish we were rich. I want to help Polly--to tell the truth,
'way down in the bottom of my heart, I care more for giving talented
girls a chance than I do for cripples--forgive me, Hessie! And I wish
I could found a home in Fayre for the homeless animals in the New York
streets, and I'd like to brighten up the lives of girls who have no
fun, with an occasional concert or theatre ticket. Oh, dear; I believe
a million would not go far!"
Prue looked disconsolate. "And I want fine things and a million just
for myself!" she said. "What shall I do if you are all going to turn
saints or philanthropists?"
Wythie laughed. "Poor Prudy, it would be trying to live with a family
given over to good works exclusively," she said. "But we are not quite
saints, nor even philanthropists. What's the difference?"
"The philanthropist does good from purely humanitarian motives, natural
pity, while the saint works from supernatural motives," said Prue
promptly and triumphantly. "You can't catch me, Miss Oswyth; didn't we
have all that in a lecture lately?"
Saints or philanthropists--or a little of both, which these girls
were--the five young creatures worked with a will for the object in
view, and the plan that they had hit upon that morning. Hester even
cut short her visit to go back to New York to work for it at that
end, and wrote what she described as "a chortle and not a letter," to
tell the Fayre girls that she had sold a hundred and eight tickets in
four days, tickets that brought two dollars each--"So there's another
cripple for us already!" wrote Hester at the end of her letter; wrote
in such a hasty, tremulous way that a big blot, representing her joyous
excitement, crowned the H of her signature, like a black king in
checkers.
Rob's audience for her story-telling was secured without any
difficulty, for most of the children who had heard her first series
wanted to hear these new tales, and their little brothers and sisters
had grown up in the meantime to a size that added them to her hearers.
She sold forty-five course tickets, at five dollars apiece, and was
to begin the story-telling after New Year's. So that while the
preparations for the concert and dance were going on, Rob's mind was
additionally burdened by the preparations for the storytelling.
Her first set of twenty stories was to be from Grecian history and
Grecian mythology; she tried to concoct them in her mind while she
made ready the room in which they were to be told. When she had first
told stories to the children of Fayre, Mrs. Silsby had lent her big
parlour for the enterprise, but now that the master of the little grey
house had gone away from it forever it had a room to offer its bravest
daughter, a room upon which she had a special claim.
On what Mrs. Grey called "the morning side of the house," opposite
the dining-room, was the quaint old room, originally intended for the
kitchen of the little grey house in the days when a kitchen was also
the dining and living-room.
It was a large room, consequently; the only one on that side of the
house, and it had been Sylvester Grey's special sanctum. In it he had
laboured long on the invention which, with the house, had been his sole
but sufficient legacy to his family, the invention upon which Roberta,
his "son Rob" had helped him for many long hours between her thirteenth
and her seventeenth year.
The dear old room, with its high wainscotting, narrow cupboards, and
immense fireplace, had been left as its master had quitted it, except
that the models of the machine and his books had been set in order and
no longer lay piled over the rush-bottomed chairs as they had been when
they were daily used by the thin, nervous hands which for a year and a
half had been folded in rest.
Now Rob was to take this room for her auditorium, and she had assumed
the task of preparing it. After all there was not much to be done;
when it came to the point neither Rob nor her mother could bear to
make more than absolutely necessary changes. The tall book-cases still
stood there with their contents, the books which Sylvester Grey had
most used; dignified scientific books in one, the well-worn Thackeray
and a few other novels and a few shabby looking poets in its mate. They
would not be in the way of seats for forty-five children; Rob was sure
that her little hearers could easily squeeze into the chairs in which,
judging by her first experience, they would not stay. She knew that
they would crowd around her knees, and hang upon her arms, drinking in
the story as if it were a syrup which might flow past them if they were
not close enough to catch it at its source.
"There isn't much to be done, Mardy," said Rob looking up to her mother
from her knees as she straightened a file of magazines in the bottom
part of one of the cases.
Mrs. Grey aroused herself by an effort from the thoughts into which she
had fallen.
"I was thinking how much had been done, Rob, and how much was done with
forever," said her mother.
"It is all right, Mardy," said Rob quickly. "I feel more and more
sure that it is all right. Much as we miss him it was so beautiful to
slip away in the moment of assured triumph that we would not have it
otherwise, would we?"
"No, dear; very likely we wouldn't if we had time to remember to be
unselfish if the chance came to get him back--but, oh Rob 'son Rob,'
the first impulse would not be unselfish!" Mrs. Grey's voice quavered
over her words, though she bravely smiled.
Rob scrambled to her feet, and went over to put her arm around her
mother.
"I can't help remembering how the first money I earned story-telling
went to introduce the bricquette machine to the world, and now,
thanks to the machine, I am going to be able to tell stories for a
charity," said Rob "let us call this room yours and mine, Mardy, as
it used to be Patergrey's and mine, and let us creep away from the
others sometimes, and come here for little cosey talks. I feel more
like little Rob here than anywhere else. This room makes me forget my
eighteen years and five feet six."
"Do you want to forget them, Rob? Your life seems to me so ideally
simple, so lightheartedly happy, that I thought you were glad you were
no longer that little Robin that used to perch on my knee." Mrs. Grey
looked at Rob sharply as she spoke, and Rob looked her squarely in the
eyes, with her changeable face flashing into smiles. "She was a nice,
dreaming, sunny little Robin, Mardy, but I am as blithe as a blackbird
now, so don't imagine the hand of time lies heavy on me yet. Only you
know I never did want to be a woman," said Rob. "I think it is so very
lovely to be vastly young. Coming events cast their _shadows_ before,
you know; they don't cast rays of light. The present is nice." Rob
laughed as she spoke, but her eyes were wistful.
"Your future will be 'nice' too, Rob dearest," said her mother.
"Somehow, I don't fear for you."
"There doesn't seem to be much plot in our lives, Mardy. Just a little
income, just a little house, just a little work, considerable play--
and so the Grey days drift along, only they're not grey days in any but
a cognominal sense. Now, Mardy, wasn't that a lovely word to have made
up just as it was needed, with no malice, nor aforethought?"
"Very lovely, Rob--Listen! Why here are the boys already!" cried Mrs.
Grey interrupting herself.
"Goodness! Can it be late enough for them?" cried Rob darting out to
give the Rutherfords welcome though the front of her waist was all
dust from the books which she had been hugging, and her hair was more
rebellious than usual from the stooping and climbing which she had been
doing, loosening hairpins that were only too ready at all times to
escape.
"How's the fancy-dress ball progressing?" cried Bartlemy the instant
the door was opened. He had unexpectedly developed more interest in the
plan than either of the other boys, a fact which he himself explained
by saying that it appealed to his artistic sense.
"It's going to be the loveliest thing!" cried Prue enthusiastically.
"And the date is fixed for Twelfth Night," added Wythie. "There is
something in the ring of that name that seems to set off the costumes."
"The very night!" cried Basil.
"How are the burns, Bruce?" asked Rob.
"Nearly burned out. How many listeners to the stories have you secured?
Did they pay in advance?" asked Bruce, kissing Mrs. Grey's cheek, as
all three boys always did when they came home, and stroking the hand
which Miss Charlotte had given him.
"Forty-five, actually!" announced Rob, with exclamation marks in her
voice. "Two hundred and twenty-five dollars down! And Hester must have
nearly as much more, by this time, for the tickets she has sold to the
entertainment. We are going to sell lots here in Fayre when we begin,
and we have hardly any expenses. I gasp at the thought of the wealth
we are amassing for the crippled children with very little effort and
hardly any planning."
"It's a good beginning; enough to make some one ready to help you with
an endowment fund, or the like, for, of course, you will have to have
such help," said Basil, the careful one.
"'Little drops of water, little grains of sand,'" chanted Prue.
"Just so. You must let me look at your costume, Prue, and see if it is
all right," said Bartlemy. "When can you have a rehearsal?"
"We shall rehearse to-morrow night, but not in costume," said Wythie.
"We waited for you, Battalion B, to be here. Hester is coming out, and
her cousin."
"To stay over Sunday?" asked Bruce.
"Hester will; Lester Baldwin goes back on the last train--unless he
misses it, then we shall have to send him up to you boys," said Rob.
"You don't look hospitable."
"Yes, we are," remonstrated Basil. "Send him to us in any case, girls;
it is ridiculous to let him go back on that crawling train when he
might as well have a pleasant Sunday with the crowd. You approve of
him, don't you?"
"Oh, he's very nice, Basil; you will like him," said Wythie in her
kindly way that explained Basil's confidence in her indifference to the
new friend. While Rob, on the contrary, smiled provokingly and said: "I
haven't met so nice a youth in many a day."
"Not since we met our nicest of all boys," said Wythie quietly, for she
had no liking for that sort of teasing.
"What a blessing you are, Wythie!" ejaculated Bruce fervently.
"Hester told me that Lester Baldwin admired Frances very much," said
Prue. Her attempts at casual remarks were usually transparent and not
very successful.
"Shows his sense!" commented Bruce.
"Frances deserves admiration," said Rob.
"She is very nice, of course," said Prue with her most grown-up air,
which always made her seem decidedly less than sixteen. "But I don't
think Frances is striking at all; she is only just a little pretty."
Basil and Bruce laughed and tweaked tall Prue's ear in the elder
brotherly way of theirs which always tried her; it really was trying to
have a B at each ear simultaneously. "Pretty Prudy!" they said together.
The two older Rutherfords made it their business to check Prue's
vanity, which they considered the only defect in any Grey girl.
But Bartlemy stoutly defended her. "Don't you mind those two moles,"
he said, seeing Prue's cheeks reddening and her eyes dangerously near
tears. "They don't know how artists feel about beauty. I can't imagine
giving Frances more than a kindly thought when there's a tearing beauty
in sight."
"Bart, have some caramels; I made them to-day," interposed Rob,
offering the boys the result of her labours. "Taffy's bad for the
digestion, so I never have any."
For in her turn Rob believed in checking Bartlemy's manifest desire to
offer incense to Prue's handsome face; at least till she was long past
sixteen, and somewhat less appreciative of that face herself.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ITS BLENDED ROMANCE
The rehearsal for the Twelfth Night entertainment went off so well that
the double quartette most interested in it were greatly elated.
Eleanor Dinsmore, Edith Hooper, Helen Lacey three pretty girls--as well
as Fayre girls--had been asked to complete the number for the gavotte,
and their brothers and cousins and friends, four in all, had gladly
added themselves to the Rutherfords and Lester Baldwin to make up eight
men. Rob had had an inspiration, and had written words to be sung
by the dancers to a beautiful old French gavotte air, as they moved
through the stately figures of the charming dance. Even in ordinary
modern dress the effect was so exquisite that the few privileged
people who looked on were enthusiastic. The young people began to
plume themselves on accomplishing something really artistic, while
the fear that the ticket purchasers would feel that their purchase
was equivalent to an outright donation, with no return to themselves,
vanished like mists in the sunshine of the dancers' perception of
unhoped-for success.