THE REST OF THE PEPPERS ARE OFF.
“I ought not to say anything,” cried Alexia, twisting around a very
damp handkerchief in her nervous fingers.
“No,” said Mrs. Fargo; “I don’t think you had, Alexia.”
“But what shall we do when this great place is empty of Peppers?”
Alexia rolled her eyes up to the vaulted ceiling. They were in the
music-room waiting for Polly, who had gone up-stairs for a list of
people to whom notes must be written announcing her sudden departure.
“I don’t want to think of it,” said Mrs. Fargo helplessly; “but we
ought not to say one word to let Polly see how sorry we are they must
go.”
“Dear me, I haven’t said a word!” cried Alexia in a very injured way.
“Here I’ve been just killing myself to keep it all in, Mrs. Fargo. I
should think you’d compliment me. But no one ever does. And to think
that Grace is going too. Dear me, I shall just rattle around in my old
pumpkin-shell too lonely for anything.”
“You must come over here, and cheer me up,” said Mrs. Fargo, who was to
move from the farmer’s house over to “The Oaks,” with Johnny, to stay
till Polly and Jasper’s return with the children. “Well, I’m glad for
my part that Grace’s mother had sense enough to telegraph back ‘yes,’
and that she is going; she’ll see her cousin, Roslyn May, besides being
with the Peppers. It will be a good thing for Grace.”
“King said he wasn’t going without Grace,” said Alexia; “he’s awfully
fond of her--and I don’t wonder. Oh, dear me! just think of all those
children going away just as my blessed baby had got so he could talk
and play with them!”
“Why, they won’t be gone more than a month or six weeks probably,” said
Mrs. Fargo. “They can’t be, for it’s as much as Mr. Marlowe could do to
get Jasper to go anyway.”
“Well, oh, dear me!” said Alexia, beginning again on her handkerchief.
“I can’t do without Polly Pepper a week. We--goodness, here she comes!”
Polly came hurrying in, a long list in her hand.
“Come into the library, please,” she said. “Oh, you are both so good to
do this!”
Alexia sniffed softly as she followed her, making Mrs. Fargo go
between; then she gave a final dab to her eyes, and resolutely stuffed
her handkerchief in her pocket. “Gracious me, Polly!” she said,
hurrying into a chair, and bending her head so that Polly should not
see her red eyes, “that’s nothing; we’ll do it all--now hunt us up
something else to fly at when this is done.”
“There’s only one thing,” said Polly, “that troubles me.”
“What is it, Polly?” asked Mrs. Fargo.
And Alexia forgot all about her red eyes, and raced out of her chair,
to run around the big table and peer into Polly’s brown ones.
“It’s Grandma Bascom,” said Polly. “I hate to leave her. Mrs. Higby
will look after her splendidly; it isn’t that; but she wants somebody
to go in just as we have every day, and talk to her, and read to her,
and cheer her up.”
“Oh, dear me!” cried Alexia gustily, and falling back. “I can’t take
all your old women, Polly Pepper--and they wouldn’t like me, either.
They’d tell me to go out of the house.”
“Oh, no, they wouldn’t, Alexia!” said Polly with troubled eyes.
“Yes, they would,” contradicted Alexia before she could stop herself;
“they’d want to fling things at me. I don’t know how to talk to
horrible old women, Polly; you know I don’t.”
“And I’m not much better,” said Mrs. Fargo, wrinkling her forehead in
perplexity.
Polly stood quite still, her hand on the top of the oaken chair.
“Well, don’t look like that,” exclaimed Alexia, taking one glance at
the troubled face, “and I’ll go there every day; I’ll sit on the front
door-step from morning to night. I’ll do anything, Polly Pepper--Polly,
did you hear?” running up to shake her arm.
“You might take Baby in with you,” said Polly, turning a brightening
face.
“So I could,” cried Alexia radiantly. “I never thought of that. Oh!
I’ll go in every single day. Don’t you worry about that, Polly.
Promise, now.”
She put her two hands on Polly’s shoulders, and kissed her till Polly’s
cheeks were as red as two roses; then she spun her around till they
both were quite out of breath.
“There, I feel better now!” said Alexia, releasing her and panting;
“we haven’t had such a spin since we were girls together. And to think
of us two old things. Oh, dear, I’ve lost all my hairpins!” She put up
one hand to her head, while she sank to the floor, and groped with the
other under the chairs and the table.
“I think we sha’n’t get this list done very quickly,” observed Mrs.
Fargo, writing away.
“Oh, misery me! Well, what can I do?” wailed Alexia, sitting on the
floor, her bright eyes searching the carpet; “here’s one--that’s good,
and that’s another,” pouncing on them; “there, I’ll let the others be,
and pick ’em up afterward. Here goes;” and pinning up her hair as best
she could, she rushed into her seat, to send her pen scratching wildly
over Polly’s notes.
“Anybody would know who wrote that,” she said, viewing the first one
with great disfavor. “Dear me, I wish I could write like you, Mrs.
Fargo.”
“I write plainly,” said Mrs. Fargo, well pleased at the compliment;
“and that’s all I can say, Alexia.”
“Dear, dear! do talk,” presently cried Alexia, “or I shall begin again
on the old subject. Oh, good! here’s Ben,” as he came in.
“Writing Polly’s notes?” he asked, his eyes lighting up in a pleased
way.
“Yes,” said Alexia, as usual answering first; “and there are such a lot
of them--Mrs. Coyle Campbell’s luncheon next week to get out of. I’m
just finishing that, and a hundred other engagements, and all sorts of
things. Go on and talk, Ben, do, about something. I’m in a bad temper
enough, and I want to be amused, or I shall spoil half of these.”
“What is the matter?” asked Ben leisurely, and sitting down to laugh at
her. “Well, I only wish there was anything I could do to help. But I’ve
been wandering the house over, and there isn’t a thing I’m fit for.”
“How’s Charlotte Chatterton?” asked Alexia suddenly; “seems to me we
don’t hear much from her lately. I suppose you’ll all find her abroad.”
Not receiving any answer, she looked up, her sharp eyes resting on
Ben’s face in surprise.
“She’s well, I suppose,” he began. Alexia laid down her pen in
astonishment, and stared at him. The color was in his cheeks like a
girl’s, and he began to fumble the little envelopes.
“Well, if I can’t help, I won’t at least hinder you,” he said at last
with a short laugh, and getting up, he went out.
Alexia deserted her chair, and ran around to Mrs. Fargo’s.
“Did you see? O Mrs. Fargo! did you see?” she cried, shaking that
lady’s arm.
“Oh, dear me! now I’ve gone and put a ‘g’ on Mrs. Crowninshield’s
name,” exclaimed Mrs. Fargo in vexation. “You shook me just then, my
dear.”
“Never mind your ‘g’s’,” said Alexia coolly; “what’s a ‘g’ in such
bliss as this? O Mrs. Fargo, did you see Ben Pepper?” She hung over her
now in great excitement.
“No; I’m sure I didn’t notice him,” said Mrs. Fargo, trying to erase
the “g”; and making it worse, she gave up the note entirely. “And I
wish you’d go back to your own seat, Alexia,” she added decidedly.
“Oh, I must tell you this!” cried Alexia; “it’s my duty to, if you
didn’t see it for yourself, Mrs. Fargo; Ben Pepper,--don’t you see? Oh,
how perfectly splendid!” She jumped up, and clapped her hands in glee.
“Alexia Dodge,” began Mrs. Fargo. But as well talk to the north wind.
“Don’t you see, Ben Pepper is in love with Charlotte--O Mrs. Fargo!
we’ve been blind and stupid as owls not to see it before; but then,
she’s been gone so long.”
“I can’t call you a goose, Alexia,” observed Mrs. Fargo, laying down
her pen in despair; “for you never were a goose, whatever else you are.
But this time you’ve made a mistake, my dear, a very great mistake.”
“We’ll see!” cried Alexia triumphantly; “I shall just tell Polly to
watch Ben as a cat would a mouse.”
“You better watch these notes,” cried Mrs. Fargo irately, “for they
won’t be done by the time Polly comes back;” which had the effect of
sending Alexia into her chair again, where her pen fairly flew to the
tune of the new thought she had gotten into her head.
Ben kept out of her way so successfully, that although she dodged
after him at all sorts of times, he always slipped around some angle,
or out of a door, leaving Alexia to stare at the bare walls. At last,
particularly as there were many little things she found to her great
delight that she could do for Polly, she gave it up in despair. And
finding David alone for a moment after dinner, she besieged him with
questions.
“Tell me, Davie, now like a good boy; isn’t Ben going to marry
Charlotte Chatterton?”
David drew a long breath; but he wasn’t to be caught this way, so he
said coolly, “I hope so, Alexia; can’t you fix matters up?”
“Oh, you incorrigible boy!” cried Alexia; “you know the secret, I do
believe, and you won’t tell. I think you might tell _me_,” she added
wheedlingly.
“Ask Ben.”
“I know he is. No need to ask him. Now, David, do you know?”
David assumed a very wise look; then he said, “You can guess at such
questions if you like, but I never do. Ask me something easier,
Alexia.”
“Well, I think you are just dreadful!” cried Alexia in despair. “Oh,
dear me, and to-morrow night you’ll all be miles and miles away, and me
left here without Polly!”
* * * * *
The next morning she turned from the small station after the cars had
borne away the little group bound for the steamer. “For I can’t ever
bid her good-by again on the boat,” she had said to Pickering. “I tried
that once in the old days you know, and it made me feel a great deal
worse. Come, Mrs. Fargo,” she said, holding out her hand.
“Where are you going?” asked that lady, pausing with her foot on the
step of the King carriage.
“Down to that old Mrs. Bascom’s,” said Alexia, trying to look pleasant,
and hoping no one would look at her, for she was dreadfully afraid she
should cry. “I must begin at once, or I never shall get there.”
“You go to-day, and I will try it to-morrow,” said Mrs. Fargo.
So Alexia jumped desperately into her little dog-cart, and drove
furiously down to the cottage just around Primrose Lane, feeling with
each revolution of the wheels how those other wheels were bearing Polly
on and on, away from her.
[Illustration: “‘She’s gone; and I don’t never ’xpect to live to see
her again, nor him, nor those pretty creeters,’ went on Grandma.”]
“Come in,” said Grandma Bascom, to the rap which she gave with her
whip-handle on the little old door.
“How do you do to-day?” asked Alexia. Then she saw that the old lady
had been crying.
“I’m so sorry for you,” she cried, laying her hand in its neat
driving-glove on the poor withered one; while,--“She’s gone, and I
don’t never ’xpect to live to see her again, nor him, nor those pretty
creeters,” went on Grandma.
“Oh, yes, you will!” said Alexia, gulping down something in her throat.
“Well, now, Grandma, I’m coming in to see you every day.”
“Hey?” cried Grandma.
So Alexia had to bend her tall figure so that she could scream it all
over into Grandma’s ear; and this pleased the old lady so much, to
think she was going to have company besides Mrs. Higby, that Alexia
in great satisfaction pulled up a chair to the bedside, and began to
tell all about the getting off, and what Polly said, and how she came
running back the last thing after she had bidden her good-by to say
over again, “Now, Alexia, remember dear Grandma Bascom.”
“Oh, the pretty creeter!” cried the old lady, quite overcome. And then
Alexia rattled off what everybody else said, and how the children had
each sent a kiss apiece to her, and what Ben and David did, and all
about Jasper, till she was quite spent with her efforts.
“Though I don’t suppose she heard more than one word in ten,” Alexia
told Pickering in relating the events of the day at dinner; “but her
cap bobbed all the while, and she kept saying, ‘Yes, deary.’ And then,
when I got through, she wanted to know what Joel did, and everything
that people said about him, and the whole thing from beginning to end.”
“You better be prepared to tell that story every day; for depend upon
it, Alexia, she’ll ask you for it,” said Pickering.