DEAR MADAM,—Mr. Briggs received your letter yesterday, and
wishes me to thank you for your kind words. He especially
appreciates your commendation of his philanthropic efforts, and
wishes all success to your young friend in her pursuit of art.
He regrets his inability to accept your kind invitation to call
on you at Whitfield, and assures you that he received your
proposition quite in the spirit in which it was written.
Mr. Briggs and myself have just returned from our wedding trip,
and unite in sending you hearty good wishes for the future
success of your own philanthropic plans. I am, my dear Miss
Adams,
Very sincerely yours,
EMMELINE FISHER BRIGGS,
(MRS. HIRAM BRIGGS.)
“Just returned from their wedding journey!” exclaimed Miss Esther. “I
should have written Mr. Briggs at least two months ago. Well,” she went
on, cheerfully, “I must get somebody else for Lillian. And it’s just as
well, too, for ‘Lillian Briggs’ wasn’t a very pretty name; but I did
want her to sail in August. I shall have to hurry. Let me see what I can
do—”
“Hullo, Aunt Esther,” called Jack from the driveway, “I’ve got Mr.
Brewster to come to see the ship.”
Miss Esther rose to greet the big blond man who accompanied Jack, and
shook his hand cordially.
“I am assured,” began Mr. Brewster, “by my young friend, Mr. Remington,
that any friend of his is welcome at the Adams house.”
“Not only that,” said Miss Esther, graciously, “but I have reason to
think that your family and mine are connected, and that I may welcome
you as a sort of relative. You are a Winthrop?”
“My mother was a Winthrop,” said Mr. Brewster, “of the Gideon Winthrop
branch.”
“And my mother,” said Miss Esther, “was a Winthrop of the Wingate
Winthrops. But of course, a few generations back they were identical,
and I claim you as a relative.”
“I am very glad to be claimed,” responded Mr. Brewster, with a touch of
foreign-mannered courtesy which Miss Esther afterward discovered was
characteristic of the man.
“Providential,” thought Miss Esther. “Here is Mr. Briggs’s substitute
ready-made to my hand.”
“Then, Aunt Esther,” interrupted Jack, “that makes Mr. Brewster my
uncle, don’t it? And now can he go see our ship?”
Miss Esther acquiesced, and Mr. Brewster and Jack went at once to the
large room on the second floor which had been given over to the young
ship-builder.
Then Nora brought the tea-table, and Miss Esther supervised the
arrangement of her beloved cups and saucers, and when the two
enthusiasts returned from the inspection of the ship, they found the
hostess surrounded by three chattering girls.
“Hullo, Jean!” cried Jack, “come on up and see my ship.”
“Is the rudder working properly yet?” the young lady inquired, but
before he could answer, Miss Esther presented Mr. Brewster to Helen,
Lillian, and Jean.
“I’m so glad to meet you, Mr. Brewster,” exclaimed Jean. “I’ve been
longing to meet you all day—ever since I saw you at the post-office
this morning with Dr. Bushnell; but I didn’t know you knew Miss Adams.”
“I didn’t until half an hour ago, but she, too, has been kind enough to
say that she was glad to meet me; though she didn’t say she had been
longing for it all day.”
“But she didn’t see you at the post-office,” said Jean.
“No,” said Miss Esther, “but if I had I shouldn’t have waited for an
introduction until now, for he is one of our own Winthrops.”
“I bet that’s Cousin Putnam coming now,” exclaimed Jack, watching a
carriage turning in at the gate.
“Who’s Cousin Putnam?” asked Jean, as Miss Esther hurried down the
steps.
“Oh,” explained Jack, ecstatically, “he’s Aunt Esther’s cousin and he’s
a lieutenant in the army with a uniform and a sword and he knows all
about war and navies and ships and he was in Cuba with General Kent and
he was in Manila after Dewey was there, and he saw Dewey once, ’cause he
wrote Aunt Esther so, and he’s had fights with natives and things and
he’s going to tell me all about the ships, ’cause Aunt Esther said she’d
make him, and he fell on a fort where he lives down South somewheres and
he bust his leg and he’s come here to get well—and everything.” Jack
paused for want of further breath as the carriage drove up, when he flew
down the steps exclaiming, “Hello, Cousin Putnam! Why didn’t you wear
your uniform?”
Seeing Lieutenant Adams’s crutches, Mr. Brewster followed Jack and
offered his assistance.
Notwithstanding Lieutenant Adams’s ability to manage his crutches, he
was glad of Brewster’s support. Miss Esther had scarcely more than
spoken to her cousin when she was surprised by seeing another carriage
closely following the first.
“More company!” cried Jack. “Who is it, Aunt Esther?”
As the second carriage stopped, two young men jumped out, exclaiming,
“Here we are. Mother sent us. She said you wanted us. You’re our Cousin
Esther, aren’t you?”
“Goodness! are you Emily’s boys? and what are the two of you doing
here?”
“Why you sent for us, didn’t you? Mother telegraphed us to stop here on
our way home. Didn’t you get our telegram saying we’d be here to-day?”
“No, I didn’t; but I’m just as glad to see you. Come right in. Which of
you is Kenneth?”
“I am. I am Kenneth Adams Westcott, and he is Mark Adams Westcott. He’s
a little older than I am, but I’m a whole lot nicer than he is.”
“You look like the Adamses,” said Miss Esther, as she led the way up the
steps and straight to the group around the tea-table.
When Brewster reached the veranda with Lieutenant Adams, he suddenly
realized that the responsibility of the hospitality of the house of
Adams devolved upon him. He presented the newcomer to the young ladies
and Jean promptly shared the honors with Mr. Brewster. She appropriated
the bronzed invalid, and impressing Brewster into her service, she
ordered from him successive relays of tea and muffins with which to
regale her newly acquired subject, when she saw Miss Esther approaching
with what seemed like two new worlds to conquer.
Miss Esther introduced the Westcott boys to Lillian and Helen, and then
bringing them over to Jean, begged her to make tea for them.
This effervescent young woman was in her element. With four newly made
and evidently admiring acquaintances, she fairly bubbled with
excitement, and wondered how Helen and Lillian could take it all so
calmly.
“It’s a funny thing,” said Miss Esther, looking proudly at the four
young men, “to think that for years not a single one of my cousins has
visited me, and now they come not single spies, but in battalions.”
“I think battalions are very nice things,” said Jean.
“So do I,” replied Miss Esther; “I only wish all my cousins were here.”
“There are something like two hundred of them, I believe,” said
Lieutenant Adams.
“Well, I don’t care; I would put up tents on the lawn.”
“Won’t you have to put up tents for us as it is?” inquired Kenneth
Westcott. “You seem to have had an unexpected avalanche of relatives
to-day.”
“Oh, no, indeed,” replied Miss Esther. “The Adams house has plenty of
room, and, too, Mr. Brewster is not staying here. He’s a guest of Dr.
Bushnell.”
“Is this a surprise party to you as well as to us, Miss Esther?” asked
Helen.
“_I_ was expected,” said Lieutenant Adams; “these other scions of the
house of Adams are base interlopers, but Cousin Esther wrote me that she
specially wanted me to come, and I wrote her that I was coming to-day.”
“And mother telegraphed us that Cousin Esther specially wanted us to
come,” said Mark, “and we telegraphed that we were coming to-day.”
“Here comes the telegram now,” said Lillian, as the boy from the
telegraph-office rode slowly up the driveway on a bicycle.
“Hello, Mercury!” said Jean, as he dismounted from his wheel.
“Ah, gwan!” said the boy, gallantly, as he remounted and rode away.
Miss Esther read the message. “I learn from this,” she said, “that my
two Westcott cousins are coming to-day to make me a visit.”
“Then we’re not interlopers any more?” asked Kenneth.
“Not at all. You are honored and expected guests, and I hope you will
stay all summer.”
“I hope so, too,” said Jean.
When Brewster and the three girls went away, Lieutenant Adams said, “Do
you often have such tea-parties as this, Cousin Esther?”
“Nearly every afternoon,” replied Miss Adams.
“Then we’ll all stay all summer,” exclaimed the Lieutenant.
“I want you to, anyway, Putnam; and at least one of you other boys,”
said Miss Esther.
“Why can’t my little brother stay, too?” asked Mark.
“Oh, let’s all stay,” said the Lieutenant, “and I have a friend who’s
awfully anxious to come to Whitfield for the summer with me, and he’s an
all-round good fellow, too; besides, he has barrels of money, and he can
sing and paint and everything.”
“Send for him,” said Miss Esther, in a sudden enthusiastic burst of
hospitality.