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KEINETH
BY
JANE D. ABBOTT
TO ALL THE LITTLE GIRLS I KNOW THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. KEINETH'S WORLD CHANGES
II. KEINETH DECIDES
III. OVERLOOK
IV. KEINETH WRITES TO HER FATHER
V. PILOT COMES TO OVERLOOK
VI. THE MUSIC THE FAIRIES PUT IN HER FINGERS
VII. ALICE RUNS AWAY
VIII. A PAGE FROM HISTORY
IX. THE CAPTIVE MAIDEN
X. PILOT IN DISGRACE
XI. PILOT WINS A HOME
XII. A LETTER FROM DADDY
XIII. CAMPING
XIV. THE TENNIS TOURNAMENT
XV. NOT ON THE PROGRAM
XVI. AUNT JOSEPHINE
XVII. SCHOOL DAYS
XVIII. CHRISTMAS
XIX. WHEN THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT WORKED OVERTIME.
XX. SHADOWS
XXI. PILOT GOES AWAY
XXII. KEINETH'S GIFT
XXIII. SURPRISES
XXIV. MR. PRESIDENT
XXV. THE CASTLE OF DREAMS
CHAPTER I
KEINETH'S WORLD CHANGES
Keineth Randolph's world seemed suddenly to be turning upside down!
For the past three days there had been no lessons. Keineth had lessons
instead of going to school. She had them sometimes with Madame Henri,
or "Tante" as she called her, and sometimes with her father. If the sun
was very inviting in the morning, lessons would wait until afternoon;
or, if, sitting straight and still in the big room her father called
his study, Keineth found it impossible to think of the book before her,
Tante would say in her prim voice:
"Dreaming, cherie?" and add, "the books will wait!"
Or, if father was hearing the lessons, he would toss aside the book and
beckon to Keineth to sit on his knee. Then he would tell a story. It
would be, perhaps, something about India or they would travel together
through Norway; or it would be Custer's fight with the Indians or the
wanderings of the Acadians through the English Colonies in America, as
portrayed in Longfellow's Evangeline.
But for three days Keineth had had neither lessons nor stories--she had
not even wanted to go out into the park to walk. For her dear Tante,
with a very sad face, was packing her trunks and boxes, and Daddy had
gone out of town.
To-morrow the little woman was going to sail on a Norwegian boat for
Europe. The trip seemed to Keineth to be particularly unusual because
Tante and Daddy had talked so much about it and Tante had waited until
Daddy had gotten her some papers which would take her safely into
Europe. So much talk and the important papers made it seem as though
she was going very far away. Perhaps she did not expect to come back to
America--she stopped so often in her work to kiss Keineth!
Keineth could not remember her own mother, she had died when Keineth
was three years old; and as far back as she could remember Tante had
always taken care of her. These three, the golden-haired delicate
child, the serious-faced Belgian gentlewoman, who had given up a
position in one of New York's schools to go into John Randolph's
household, and the father himself, living for his work and his
daughter, led what might seem to others a very strange life. The man
had kept his home in the old brick house on Washington Square in lower
New York even after the other houses in the square around it gradually
changed from pleasant, neat homes to shabby boarding-houses or rooming
houses with broken windows and railless steps; to dusty lofts; to
cellars where Jews kept and sorted over their filthy rags; to dingy
attic spaces where artists made their studios, turning queer,
dilapidated corners into what they called their homes. The third story
of the Randolph house had been let for "light housekeeping apartments";
Keineth herself had helped tack the little black and gilt sign at the
door. The tenants used the side door that let into the brick-paved
alley. Keineth had always felt a great pride in their home--it was
always neatly painted, their steps shone, and there were no papers
collected behind their iron gratings. Even across the park she could
see the bright geraniums blooming in the windows under Madame Henri's
loving care.
Keineth and Tante had two big sleeping rooms facing the square and
Daddy had a smaller room in the back. Dora, the colored maid who kept
the house in order and cooked breakfast and lunch, went away at night.
The rooms were very large, with high ceilings. The windows were long
and narrow and hung with heavy, dusty curtains. The furniture was very
old and very dull and dark, but Keineth loved the great chairs into
which she could curl herself and read for hours at a time.
There were few children in the square for her to play with. Next door
was an Italian family with eight girls and boys, and Keineth sometimes
joined them in the park. Their father kept a fruit stall in the
basement on one of the streets running off from the square. Francesca,
one of the girls, sang very sweetly, often standing on the corner of
the square and singing Italian folk-songs until she had gathered quite
a crowd around her and had collected considerable money. Keineth loved
to listen to her. But Daddy had asked Keineth never to go alone outside
of the square nor out of sight of the windows of their own home, and
Keineth, all her life, had always wanted to do exactly as her father
asked her.
The evenings to Keineth were the happiest, for, after his work was
finished, Daddy always took her out somewhere for dinner. Sometimes
they would go into queer, small places; rooms lighted by gas-jets,
where they ate on bare tables from off thick white plates. She would
sit very quietly listening while her father talked to the people he
met. It seemed to her that her father knew everybody. Other times they
would go up town on the bus, Keineth clinging tightly to her father's
hand all the way, and they would find a corner in a brightly lighted
hotel dining-room, where the silver and glass sparkled before Keineth's
eyes, where an orchestra, hidden behind big palms, played wonderful
music as they ate, where the air was sweet with the fragrance of
flowers like Joe Massey's stall on the square, and where all the women
were pretty and wore soft furs over shimmering dresses of lovely
colors. Sometimes Tante went with them, looking very prim in her
tailor-made suit of gray woolen cloth and her small gray hat. On these
picnic dinners, as Daddy called them, Daddy was always in rollicking
spirits, keeping up such a torrent of nonsense that Keineth was often
quite exhausted from laughing. Then, when they were back in the old
house, Daddy would pull his big chair close to the lamp, Tante would
take her knitting from the basket in which it was always neatly laid,
and Keineth would sit down at the piano to play for her father "what
the fairies put in her fingers." This had been a little game between
them for a long time--ever since her music lessons with Madame Henri
had begun.
Now--as the child sat balanced on the edge of an old rocker watching
Tante tenderly and carefully placing her books into a heavy box--she
felt that this beloved order of things was changing before her eyes.
For, with Tante gone, who was to take care of her? And heavy on the
child's heart lay the fear that it might be Aunt Josephine.
Aunt Josephine was her very own aunt, her father's sister, and lived in
a very pretentious home at the other end of the city, overlooking the
Hudson River. At a very early age Keineth had guessed that Aunt
Josephine did not approve of the way her Daddy lived; of the tenants on
the third floor; of the sign at the door; of Tante and the
happy-go-lucky lessons; and most of all, her intimacy with the Italian
children. Twice a year Keineth and her Daddy spent a Sunday with Aunt
Josephine, and Keineth could always tell by the way Daddy clasped her
hand and ran down the steps that he was very glad when the day was over
and they could go home. However, Aunt Josephine was pretty and wore
lovely clothes like the women in the big hotels uptown and was really
fond of Daddy, so that Keineth loved her--but she did not want to live
with her!
"Why do you go away from us?" Keineth asked Madame Henri for the
hundredth time.
The little woman dropped a book to kiss the child--also for the
hundredth time.
"I have an old mother, and a sister, and six nephews and nieces over
there--they need me now, more than you do, cherie!"
Keineth knew that she was very unhappy and refrained from asking her
more questions. Daddy had read to her of the suffering in Europe as a
result of the great war, but it seemed hard to picture prim Tante in
the midst of it--perhaps working in the fields and factories, as Daddy
said some of the women and children were doing. Tante had read them
parts of a letter telling of the wounding of her sister's husband at
the battle front and of his death in an English 'hospital, but that had
seemed so very far away that Keineth had not thought much about it. Now
it seemed nearer as she pictured the six little nephews and nieces, the
poor old grandmother--perhaps all hungry and homeless! Keineth suddenly
thought how good it was of Tante to leave their comfortable home and
their jolly dinners and Dora's steaming pancakes to go back to Belgium
to help!
Then--as if the whole day was not queer and different enough, Keineth
suddenly heard her father's quick step on the stairway. He had said he
would not be home until that night! She sprang to the door in time to
rush into his arms as he came down the hallway. He kissed her, on her
nose and eyes, as was his way, but when he lifted his face Keineth saw
that it was very serious, which was not at all like Daddy.
"Run out in the park for a little while, dear. I must talk to Madame
Henri!"
The sun was shining very brightly on the pavements of the streets. The
little leaves on the trees were quivering with new life and the birds
were chirping loudly and busily in the branches, fussing over their
housekeeping. But Keineth's heart was too heavy to respond! She walked
around and around the square, staring miserably at the people who
passed her and always keeping in sight of the long windows where the
pink geraniums shone in the spring sunlight.
Suddenly her heart dropped to her very toes and she had a great deal of
trouble keeping the tears back from her eyes, for a very bright yellow
motor car had stopped at their door, and Keineth knew that it was Aunt
Josephine!