Nancy had a great many ideas, first and last. They were generally unique
and interesting at least, though it is to be feared that few of them
were practical. However, it was Nancy's idea to build Peter a playhouse
in the plot of ground at the back of the Charlestown house, and it was
she who was the architect and head carpenter. That plan had brought much
happiness to Peter and much comfort to the family. It was Nancy's idea
that she, Gilbert, and Kathleen should all be so equally polite to
Cousin Ann Chadwick that there should be no favorite to receive an undue
share of invitations to the Chadwick house. Nancy had made two visits in
succession, both offered in the nature of tributes to her charms and
virtues, and she did not wish a third.
"If you two can't be _more_ attractive, then I'll be _less_, that's
all," was her edict. "'Turn and turn about' has got to be the rule in
this matter. I'm not going to wear the martyr's crown alone; it will
adorn your young brows every now and then or I'll know the reason why!"
It was Nancy's idea to let Joanna go, and divide her work among the
various members of the family. It was also Nancy's idea that, there
being no strictly masculine bit of martyrdom to give to Gilbert, he
should polish the silver for his share. This was an idea that proved so
unpopular with Gilbert that it was speedily relinquished. Gilbert was
wonderful with tools, so wonderful that Mother Carey feared he would be
a carpenter instead of the commander of a great war ship; but there
seemed to be no odd jobs to offer him. There came a day when even Peter
realized that life was real and life was earnest. When the floor was
strewn with playthings his habit had been to stand amid the wreckage and
smile, whereupon Joanna would fly and restore everything to its
accustomed place. After the passing of Joanna, Mother Carey sat placidly
in her chair in the nursery and Peter stood ankle deep among his
toys, smiling.
"Now put everything where it belongs, sweet Pete," said mother.
"You do it," smiled Peter.
"I am very busy darning your stockings, Peter."
"I don't like to pick up, Muddy."
"No, it isn't much fun, but it has to be done."
Peter went over to the window and gazed at the landscape. "I dess I'll
go play with Ellen," he remarked in honeyed tones.
"That would be nice, after you clear away your toys and blocks."
"I dess I'll play with Ellen first," suggested Peter, starting slowly
towards the door.
"No, we always work first and play afterwards!" said mother, going on
darning.
Peter felt caught in a net of irresistible and pitiless logic.
"Come and help me, Muddy?" he coaxed, and as she looked up he suddenly
let fly all his armory of weapons at once,--two dimples, tossing back of
curls, parted lips, tiny white teeth, sweet voice.
Mother Carey's impulse was to cast herself on the floor and request him
simply to smile on her and she would do his lightest bidding, but
controlling her secret desires she answered: "I would help if you needed
me, but you don't. You're a great big boy now!"
"I'm not a great big boy!" cried Peter, "I'm only a great big little
boy!"
"Don't waste time, sweet Pete; go to work!"
"_I want Joanna_!" roared Peter with the voice of an infant bull.
"So we all do. It's because she had to go that I'm darning stockings."
The net tightened round Peter's defenceless body and he hurled himself
against his rocking horse and dragged it brutally to a corner. Having
disposed of most of his strength and temper in this operation, he put
away the rest of his goods and chattels more quietly, but with streaming
eyes and heaving bosom.
"Splendid!" commented Mother Carey. "Joanna couldn't have done it
better, and it won't be half so much work next time." Peter heard the
words "next time" distinctly, and knew the grim face of Duty at last,
though he was less than five.
The second and far more tragic time was when he was requested to make
himself ready for luncheon,--Kathleen to stand near and help "a little"
if really necessary. Now Peter _au fond_ was absolutely clean. French
phrases are detestable where there is any English equivalent, but in
this case there is none, so I will explain to the youngest reader--who
may speak only one language--that the base of Peter was always clean. He
received one full bath and several partial ones in every twenty-four
hours, but su-per-im-posed on this base were evidences of his eternal
activities, and indeed of other people's! They were divided into three
classes,--those contracted in the society of Joanna when she took him
out-of-doors: such as sand, water, mud, grass stains, paint, lime,
putty, or varnish; those derived from visits to his sisters at their
occupations: such as ink, paints, lead pencils, paste, glue, and
mucilage; those amassed in his stays with Ellen in the kitchen: sugar,
molasses, spice, pudding sauce, black currants, raisins, dough, berry
stains (assorted, according to season), chocolate, jelly, jam, and
preserves; these deposits were not deep, but were simply dabs on the
facade of Peter, and through them the eyes and soul of him shone,
delicious and radiant. They could be rubbed off with a moist
handkerchief if water were handy, and otherwise if it were not, and the
person who rubbed always wanted for some mysterious reason to kiss him
immediately afterwards, for Peter had the largest kissing acquaintance
in Charlestown.
When Peter had scrubbed the parts of him that showed most, and had
performed what he considered his whole duty to his hair, he appeared for
the first time at the family table in such a guise that if the children
had not been warned they would have gone into hysterics, but he
gradually grew to be proud of his toilets and careful that they should
not occur too often in the same day, since it appeared to be the family
opinion that he should make them himself.
There was a tacit feeling, not always expressed, that Nancy, after
mother, held the reins of authority, and also that she was a person of
infinite resource. The Gloom-Dispeller had been her father's name for
her, but he had never thought of her as a Path-Finder, a gallant
adventurer into unknown and untried regions, because there had been
small opportunity to test her courage or her ingenuity.
Mrs. Carey often found herself leaning on Nancy nowadays; not as a dead
weight, but with just the hint of need, just the suggestion of
confidence, that youth and strength and buoyancy respond to so gladly.
It had been decided that the house should be vacated as soon as a tenant
could be found, but the "what next" had not been settled. Julia had
confirmed Nancy's worst fears by accepting her aunt's offer of a home,
but had requested time to make Gladys Ferguson a short visit at Palm
Beach, all expenses being borne by the Parents of Gladys. This estimable
lady and gentleman had no other names or titles and were never spoken of
as if they had any separate existence. They had lived and loved and
married and accumulated vast wealth, and borne Gladys. After that they
had sunk into the background and Gladys had taken the stage.
"I'm sure I'm glad she is going to the Fergusons," exclaimed Kathleen.
"One month less of her!"
"Yes," Nancy replied, "but she'll be much worse, more spoiled, more
vain, more luxurious than before. She'll want a gold chicken breast now.
We've just packed away the finger bowls; but out they'll have to
come again."
"Let her wash her own finger bowl a few days and she'll clamor for the
simple life," said Kathleen shrewdly. "Oh, what a relief if the
Fergusons would adopt Julia, just to keep Gladys company!"
"Nobody would ever adopt Julia," returned Nancy. "If she was yours you
couldn't help it; you'd just take her 'to the Lord in prayer,' as the
Sunday-school hymn says, but you'd never go out and adopt her."
Matters were in this uncertain and unsettled state when Nancy came into
her mother's room one evening when the rest of the house was asleep.
"I saw your light, so I knew you were reading, Muddy. I've had such a
bright idea I couldn't rest."
"Muddy" is not an attractive name unless you happen to know its true
derivation and significance. First there was "mother dear," and as
persons under fifteen are always pressed for time and uniformly
breathless, this appellation was shortened to "Motherdy," and Peter
being unable to struggle with that term, had abbreviated it into
"Muddy." "Muddy" in itself is undistinguished and even unpleasant, but
when accompanied by a close strangling hug, pats on the cheek, and
ardent if somewhat sticky kisses, grows by degrees to possess delightful
associations. Mother Carey enjoyed it so much from Peter that she even
permitted it to be taken up by the elder children.
"You mustn't have ideas after nine P.M., Nancy!" chided her mother.
"Wrap the blue blanket around you and sit down with me near the fire."
"You're not to say I'm romantic or unpractical," insisted Nancy, leaning
against her mother's knees and looking up into her face,--"indeed,
you're not to say anything of any importance till I'm all finished. I'm
going to tell it in a long story, too, so as to work on your feelings
and make you say yes."
"Very well, I'm all ears!"
"Now put on your thinking cap! Do you remember once, years and years
ago, before Peter it was, that father took us on a driving trip through
some dear little villages in Maine?"
(The Careys never dated their happenings eighteen hundred and anything.
It was always: Just before Peter, Immediately after Peter, or A Long
Time after Peter, which answered all purposes.)
"I remember."
"It was one of Gilbert's thirsty days, and we stopped at nearly every
convenient pump to give him drinks of water, and at noon we came to the
loveliest wayside well with a real moss-covered bucket; do you
remember?"
"I remember."
"And we all clambered out, and father said it was time for luncheon, and
we unpacked the baskets on the greensward near a beautiful tree, and
father said, 'Don't spread the table too near the house, dears, or
they'll cry when they see our doughnuts!' and Kitty, who had been
running about, came up and cried, 'It's an empty house; come and look!'"
"I remember."
"And we all went in the gate and loved every bit of it: the stone steps,
the hollyhocks growing under the windows, the yellow paint and the green
blinds; and father looked in the windows, and the rooms were large and
sunny, and we wanted to drive the horse into the barn and stay
there forever!"
"I remember."
"And Gilbert tore his trousers climbing on the gate, and father laid him
upside down on your lap and I ran and got your work-bag and you mended
the seat of his little trousers. And father looked and looked at the
house and said, 'Bless its heart!' and said if he were rich he would buy
the dear thing that afternoon and sleep in it that night; and asked you
if you didn't wish you'd married the other man, and you said there never
was another man, and you asked father if he thought on the whole that he
was the poorest man in the world, and father said no, the very richest,
and he kissed us all round, do you remember?"
"Do I remember? O Nancy, Nancy! What do you think I am made of that I
could ever forget?"
"Don't cry, Muddy darling, don't! It was so beautiful, and we have so
many things like that to remember."
"Yes," said Mrs. Carey, "I know it. Part of my tears are grateful ones
that none of you can ever recall an unloving word between your father
and mother!"
"The idea," said Nancy suddenly and briefly, "is to go and live in that
darling house!"
"Nancy! What for?"
"We've got to leave this place, and where could we live on less than in
that tiny village? It had a beautiful white-painted academy, don't you
remember, so we could go to school there,--Kathleen and I anyway, if
you could get enough money to keep Gilly at Eastover."
"Of course I've thought of the country, but that far-away spot never
occurred to me. What was its quaint little name,--Mizpah or Shiloh or
Deborah or something like that?"
"It was Beulah," said Nancy; "and father thought it exactly matched the
place!"
"We even named the house," recalled Mother Carey with a tearful smile.
"There were vegetables growing behind it, and flowers in front, and your
father suggested Garden Fore-and-Aft and I chose Happy Half-Acre, but
father thought the fields that stretched back of the vegetable garden
might belong to the place, and if so there would be far more than a
half-acre of land."
"And do you remember father said he wished we could do something to
thank the house for our happy hour, and I thought of the little box of
plants we had bought at a wayside nursery?"
"Oh! I do indeed! I hadn't thought of it for years! Father and you
planted a tiny crimson rambler at the corner of the piazza at the side."
"Do you suppose it ever 'rambled,' Muddy? Because it would be ever so
high now, and full of roses in summer."
"I wonder!" mused Mother Carey. "Oh! it was a sweet, tranquil, restful
place! I wonder how we could find out about it? It seems impossible that
it should not have been rented or sold before this. Let me see, that was
five years ago."
"There was a nice old gentleman farther down the street, quite in the
village, somebody who had known father when he was a boy."
"So there was; he had a quaint little law office not much larger than
Peter's playhouse. Perhaps we could find him. He was very, very old. He
may not be alive, and I cannot remember his name."
"Father called him 'Colonel,' I know that. Oh, how I wish dear Addy was
here to help us!"
"If he were he would want to help us too much! We must learn to bear our
own burdens. They won't seem so strange and heavy when we are more used
to them. Now go to bed, dear. We'll think of Beulah, you and I; and
perhaps, as we have been all adrift, waiting for a wind to stir our
sails, 'Nancy's idea' will be the thing to start us on our new voyage.
Beulah means land of promise;--that's a good omen!"
"And father found Beulah; and father found the house, and father blessed
it and loved it and named it; that makes ever so many more good omens,
more than enough to start housekeeping on," Nancy answered, kissing her
mother goodnight.