The Person without a Fault had been quietly working at her embroidery,
raising her head now and then to look at some extraordinary Carey, when
he or she made some unusually silly or fantastic remark.
"I'm not so old as Gilbert and Nancy, and I'm only a niece," she said
modestly, "so I ought not to have an opinion. But I should get a
maid-of-all-work at once, so that we shouldn't all be drudges as we are
now; then I should not spend a single cent on the house, but just live
here in hiding, as it were, till better times come and till we are old
enough to go into society. You could scrimp and save for Nancy's coming
out, and then for Kathleen's. Father would certainly be well long before
then, and Kathleen and I could debut together!"
"Who wants to 'debut' together or any other way," sniffed Nancy
scornfully. "I'm coming out right here in Beulah; indeed I'm not sure
but I'm out already! Mr. Bill Harmon has asked me to come to the church
sociable and Mr. Popham has invited me to the Red Men's picnic at
Greentown. Beulah's good for something better than a place to hide in!
We'll have to save every penny at first, of course, but in three or four
years Gilly and I ought to be earning something."
"The trouble is, I _can't_ earn anything in college," objected Gilbert,
"though I'd like to."
"That will be the only way a college course can come to you now,
Gilbert," his mother said quietly. "You know nothing of the expenses
involved. They would have taxed our resources to the utmost if father
had lived, and we had had our more than five thousand a year! You and I
together must think out your problem this summer."
Gilbert looked blank and walked to the window with his hands in his
pockets.
"I should lose all my friends, and it's hard for a fellow to make his
way in the world if he has nothing to recommend him but his graduation
from some God-forsaken little hole like Beulah Academy."
Nancy looked as if she could scalp her brother when he alluded to her
beloved village in these terms, but her mother's warning look stopped
any comment.
Julia took up arms for her cousin. "We ought to go without everything
for the sake of sending Gilbert to college," she said. "Gladys Ferguson
doesn't know a single boy who isn't going to Harvard or Yale."
"If a boy of good family and good breeding cannot make friends by his
own personality and his own qualities of mind and character, I should
think he would better go without them," said Gilbert's mother casually.
"Don't you believe in a college education, mother?" inquired Gilbert in
an astonished tone.
"Certainly! Why else should we have made sacrifices to send you? To
begin with, it is much simpler and easier to be educated in college. You
have a thousand helps and encouragements that other fellows have to get
as they may. The paths are all made straight for the students. A stupid
boy, or one with small industry or little originality, must have
_something_ drummed into him in four years, with all the splendid
teaching energy that the colleges employ. It requires a very high grade
of mental and moral power to do without such helps, and it may be that
you are not strong enough to succeed without them;--I do not know your
possibilities yet, Gilbert, and neither do you know them yourself!"
Gilbert looked rather nonplussed. "Pretty stiff, I call it!" he
grumbled, "to say that if you've got brains enough you can do
without college."
"It is true, nevertheless. If you have brains enough, and will enough,
and heart enough, you can stay here in Beulah and make the universe
search you out, and drag you into the open, where men have need of you!"
(Mrs. Carey's eyes shone and her cheeks glowed.) "What we all want as a
family is to keep well and strong and good, in body and mind and soul;
to conquer our weaknesses, to train our gifts, to harness our powers to
some wished-for end, and then _pull_, with all our might. Can't my girls
be fine women, fit for New York or Washington, London or Paris, because
their young days were passed in Beulah? Can't my boys be anything that
their brains and courage fit them for, whether they make their own
associations or have them made for them? Father would never have flung
the burden on your shoulders, Gilbert, but he is no longer here. You
can't have the help of Yale or Harvard or Bowdoin to make a man of you,
my son,--you will have to fight your own battles and win your
own spurs."
"Oh! mother, but you're splendid!" cried Nancy, the quick tears in her
eyes. "Brace up, old Gilly, and show what the Careys can do without
'advantages.' Brace up, Kitty and Julia! We three will make Beulah
Academy ring next year!"
"And I don't want you to look upon Beulah as a place of hiding while
adversity lasts," said Mother Carey. "We must make it home; as beautiful
and complete as we can afford. One real home always makes others, I am
sure of that! We will ask Mr. Harmon to write Mr. Hamilton and see if he
will promise to leave us undisturbed. We cannot be happy, or prosperous,
or useful, or successful, unless we can contrive to make the Yellow
House a home. The river is our river; the village is our village; the
people are our neighbors; Beulah belongs to us and we belong to Beulah,
don't we, Peter?"
Mother Carey always turned to Peter with some nonsensical appeal when
her heart was full and her voice a trifle unsteady. You could bury your
head in Peter's little white sailor jacket just under his chin, at which
he would dimple and gurgle and chuckle and wriggle, and when you
withdrew your flushed face and presented it to the public gaze all the
tears would have been wiped off on Peter.
So on this occasion did Mrs. Carey repeat, as she set Peter down, "Don't
we belong to Beulah, dear?"
"Yes, we does," he lisped, "and I'm going to work myself, pretty soon
bimebye just after a while, when I'm a little more grown up, and then
I'll buy the Yellow House quick."
"So you shall, precious!" cried Kathleen.
"I was measured on Muddy this morning, wasn't I, Muddy, and I was half
way to her belt; and in Charlestown I was only a little farder up than
her knees. All the time I'm growing up she's ungrowing down! She's
smallering and I'm biggering."
"Are you afraid your mother'll be too small, sweet Pete?" asked Mrs.
Carey.
"No!" this very stoutly. "Danny Harmon's mother's more'n up to the
mantelpiece and I'd hate to have my mother so far away!" said Peter as
he embraced Mrs. Carey's knees.
Julia had said little during this long conversation, though her mind was
fairly bristling with objections and negatives and different points of
view, but she was always more or less awed by her Aunt Margaret, and
never dared defy her opinion. She had a real admiration for her aunt's
beauty and dignity and radiant presence, though it is to be feared she
cared less for the qualities of character that made her personality so
luminous with charm for everybody. She saw people look at her, listen to
her, follow her with their eyes, comment on her appearance, her
elegance, and her distinction, and all this impressed her deeply. As to
Cousin Ann's present her most prominent feeling was that it would have
been much better if that lady had followed her original plan of sending
individual thirty-five-dollar checks. In that event she, Julia, was
quite certain that hers never would have gone into a water-pipe or a
door-sill.
"Oh, Kathleen!" sighed Nancy as the two went into the kitchen together.
"Isn't mother the most interesting 'scolder' you ever listened to? I
love to hear her do it, especially when somebody else is getting it.
When it's I, I grow smaller and smaller, curling myself up like a little
worm. Then when she has finished I squirm to the door and wriggle out.
Other mothers say: 'If you don't, I shall tell your father!' 'Do as I
tell you, and ask no questions.' 'I never heard of such behavior in my
life!' 'Haven't you any sense of propriety?' 'If this happens again I
shall have to do something desperate.' 'Leave the room at once,' and so
on; but mother sets you to thinking."
"Mother doesn't really scold," Kathleen objected.
"No, but she shows you how wrong you are, just the same. Did you notice
how Julia _withered_ when mother said we were not to look upon Beulah as
a place of hiding?"
"She didn't stay withered long," Kathleen remarked.
"And she said just the right thing to dear old Gilly, for Fred Bascom is
filling his head with foolish notions. He needs father to set
him right."
"We all need father," sighed Kitty tearfully, "but somehow mother grows
a little more splendid every day. I believe she's trying to fill
father's place and be herself too!"