The morning they all started back to the city was a memorable one.
Graham had insisted that Shirley ask for a holiday until Tuesday
morning so that she might go up with them in the car, and have the
whole day to be at home and help her mother get settled. She had
consented, and found to her surprise that Mr. Barnard was most kind
about it. He had even added that he intended to raise her salary, and
she might consider that hereafter she was to have ten dollars more per
month for her services, which they valued very highly.
George had sent his resignation to the store and was not to go back at
all. Graham had arranged that, for school began the day after his
return and he would need to be free at once.
Elizabeth, to her great delight, was to go with the Hollisters and
remain a few days until her parents returned. Mrs. Graham had written
from the West making a proposition to Mrs. Hollister that Carol be
allowed to go to school with Elizabeth the next winter, because Mrs.
Graham felt it would be so good for Elizabeth to have a friend like
that. Mrs. Hollister, however, answered that she felt it better for
her little girl to remain with her mother a little longer; and that she
did not feel it would be a good thing for her child, who would be
likely to have a simple life before her with very few luxuries, to go
to a fashionable finishing-school where the standards must all
necessarily be so different from those of her own station in life, and,
kind as the offer had been, she must decline it. She did not say that
Carol had fairly bristled at the idea of leaving her beloved high
school now when she was a senior and only one year before her
graduation. That bit of horror and hysterics on Carol's part had been
carefully suppressed within the four walls of her mother's room; but
Elizabeth, deeply disappointed, had wept her heart out over the matter,
and finally been comforted by the promise that Mrs. Hollister would
write and ask Mrs. Graham to allow Elizabeth to go to school with Carol
the coming winter. That proposition was now on its way West, together
with an announcement of Sidney's engagement to Shirley. Sidney was
confidently expecting congratulatory telegrams that morning when he
reached the city. He had written his father in detail all about their
plans for returning, and how the work at the old barn was progressing,
and Mr. Graham, Senior, was too good a manager not to plan to greet the
occasion properly. Therefore Graham stopped at his office for a few
minutes before taking the family out to Glenside, and, sure enough,
came down with his hands full of letters and telegrams, and one long
white envelope which he put carefully in his breast pocket. They had a
great time reading the telegrams and letters.
The way out to Glenside seemed very short now, watching as they did for
each landmark. The children were as eager to get back as they had been
to leave, and Star snuggled in between Harley's feet, held his head
high, and smiled benevolently on everybody, as if he knew he was going
home and was glad. They began to wonder about the chickens, and if the
garden was all dried up, and whether the doves were all right. There
was an undertone of sadness and suppressed excitement, for it was in
the minds of all the Hollisters that the time in the old barn must of
necessity be growing brief. The fall would soon be upon them, and a
need for warmth. They must go hunting for a house at once. And yet
they all wanted this one day of delight before they faced that question.
At last they reached the final curve and could see the tall old tree in
the distance, and the clump of willows knee-deep in the brook. By
common consent they all grew silent, watching for the first glimpse of
the dear old barn.
Then they came around the curve, and there it was! But what was the
matter?
Nobody spoke. It seemed as if they could not get their breath.
Shirley rubbed her eyes, and looked again. Mrs. Hollister gave a
startled look from her daughter to Graham and back to the barn again.
Elizabeth and Carol were utterly silent, grasping each other's hands in
violent ecstasy. The boys murmured inarticulately, of which the only
audible words were: "Good night! Some class!" Doris looked for a long
second, puckered her lips as if she were going to cry, and inquired
pitifully: "I yant my dear barn house home! I yant to doh home!" and
Star uttered a sharp, bewildered bark and bounded from the car as if
this were something he ought to attend to.
But before anybody could say anything more, Graham brought out the long
white envelope and handed it to Shirley.
"Before you get out and go in I just want to say a word," he began.
"Father and I both want Shirley to have the old barn for her very own,
to do with as she pleases. This envelope contains the deed for the
property made out in her name. We have tried to put it in thorough
repair before handing it over to her, and if there is anything more she
can think of that it needs we'll do that too. And now, welcome home to
the old barn! Mother, may I help you out?"
"But there isn't any barn any more," burst forth the irrepressible
Elizabeth. "The barn's gone! It's just a house!"
And, sure enough, there stood a stately stone mansion on a wide green
terrace, where shrubs and small trees were grouped fittingly about,
erasing all signs of the old pasture-land; and the old grassy incline
to the door now rolled away in velvety lawn on either side of a smooth
cement walk bordered with vivid scarlet geraniums. Trailing vines and
autumn flowers were blossoming in jars on the wide stone railing. The
old barn door had been replaced by glass which gave a glimpse of
strange new rooms beyond, and the roof had broken forth in charming
colonial dormer windows like a new French hat on a head that had worn
the same old poke bonnet for years. No wonder Doris didn't recognize
the dear old barn. It did seem as though a wizard had worked magic
upon it. How was one to know that only a brief half-hour before the
old gardener from the Graham estate set the last geranium in the row
along the walk, and trailed the last vine over the stone wall; or that
even now the corps of men who had been hastily laying and patting the
turf in place over the terrace were in hiding down in the basement,
with their wheelbarrows and picks and spades, having beat a hasty
retreat at the sound of the car coming, and were only waiting till they
could get away unobserved? For orders were orders, and the orders were
that the work was to be _done_ and every man out of sight by the time
they arrived. A bonus to every man if the orders were obeyed. That is
what money and influence can do in a month!
In due time they got themselves out of that car in a sort of bewildered
daze and walked up the new cement path, feeling strangely like
intruders as they met the bright stare of the geraniums.
They walked the length of the new piazza in delight. They exclaimed
and started and smiled and almost wept in one another's arms. Graham
stood and watched Shirley's happy face and was satisfied.
The first thing Doris did when she got inside the lovely glass door was
to start to run for her own little willow chair and her own little old
rag doll that had been left behind, and down she went on the slippery
floor. And there, behold, the old barn floors too had disappeared
under a coating of simple matched hardwood flooring, oiled and polished
smoothly, and Doris was not expecting it.
She got up quickly, half ashamed, and looked around laughing.
"I vas skating!" she declared with a ringing laugh. "I skated yite
down on mine nose."
Then she hurried more cautiously to the haven of her own chair, and
with her old doll hugged to her breast she reiterated over and over as
if to reassure herself: "Mine! Doris! Mine! Doris!"
Words would fail to describe all they said about the wonderful rooms,
the walls all shining in a soft rough-finish plaster, tinted creamy on
the upper half and gray below, and finished in dark chestnut trimmings;
of the beautiful staircase and the wide bay window opening from the
first landing like a little half-way room, with seats to rest upon. It
was standing in this bay window that Graham first called Mrs.
Hollister's attention to something strange and new outside behind the
house. It was a long, low glass building with green things gleaming
through its shining roof.
"There, mother," he said, coming up softly behind her. "There is your
plaything. You said you had always wanted a hot-house, so we made you
one. It is heated from a coil in the furnace, and you can try all the
experiments with flowers you want to. We put in a few things to start
with, and you can get more at your leisure."
Mrs. Hollister gave one look, and then turned and put her arms around
the tall young man, reaching up on her tip-toes to do so, brought his
handsome face down to hers, and kissed him.
"My dear son!" she said. That was all, but he knew that she had
accepted him and given him a loving place with her own children in her
heart.
There were shoutings and runnings up stairs and down by first one and
then another. The bathrooms were discovered one by one, and then they
had to all rush down into the basement by the new stairs to see the new
laundry and the new furnace, and the entrance to the hot-house; and the
hot-house itself, with its wealth of bloom transplanted from the Graham
greenhouses.
They almost forgot the chickens and the doves, and the garden was a
past Eden not to be remembered till long hours afterward.
The sunset was dying away in the sky, and the stars were large and few
and piercing in the twilight night when Shirley and Sidney came walking
up the terrace arm in arm, and found Doris sitting in the doorway
cuddling her old rag doll and a new little gray kitten the farmer next
door had brought her, and singing an evening song to herself.
Shirley and Sidney turned and looked off at the sky where a rosy stain
was blending softly into the gray of evening.
"Do you remember the first night we stood here together?" Sidney said
in a low tone, as he drew her fingers within his own. "I loved you
then, Shirley, that first night----"
And then Doris's little shrill voice chimed above their murmurings:
"Oh, mine nice dear home! Mine kitty an' mine dolly! and mine piazza!
and mine bafwoom wif a place to swim boats! an' mine fowers an' pitty
house! No more barn! Barn _all dawn_! Never turn bat any moh! Oh,
mine nice, pitty dear home!"