TROUBLES LIGHTEN IN THE TELLING
But a few moments sufficed to show that this would not do. Despite her
own heavy kimono she was already chilled by the air of that late
September night, while the little creature beside her was shivering as
if in ague, although she seemed to be half-asleep.
She reasoned that Ephraim must have waked and closed the library
window and departed to his own quarters. But there must be some way in
which a girl could get into her own house; and then she exclaimed:
"Why, yes! The sun-parlor, right at the end of this very piazza. All
that south side is covered with glass and if I can get a sash up we
can climb through. The place is as nice as a bedroom. Anyway, I'll
try!"
She left the stranger where she lay and ran to make the effort, and
though for a time the heavy sash resisted her strength, it did yield
slightly and her fresh fear that it had been locked vanished. Yet with
her utmost endeavor she could lift it but a few inches and she
wondered if she would be able to get her visitor through that scant
opening.
"I shall have to make her go through flat-wise, like crawling through
fence bars, and I wonder if she will! Anyhow, I must try. I--I don't
like it out here in the night and we'll both be sick of cold, and that
would end our party."
Dorothy never quite realized how that affair was managed.
Though the wanderer appeared to hear well enough she did not speak and
had not from the first. Probably she could not, but she could be as
stubborn and difficult as possible and she was certainly exhausted
from exposure. It was a harder task than lifting the great window,
but, at last, by dint of pushing and coaxing, even shoving, the inert
small woman was forced through the opening and dropped upon the matted
floor, where she remained motionless.
Dolly squeezed herself after and stooped above her guest, anxiously
asking:
"Did that hurt you? I'm sorry, but there was no other way. Please try
to get up and lie down. See? There are two nice lounges here and lots
of 'comfy' chairs. Shawls and couch-covers in plenty--Why! it'll be
like a picnic!"
The guest made no effort to rise but waved the other aside with a
sleepy, impatient gesture, then fell to shaking again as if she were
desperately cold. Dorothy was too frightened to heed these objections
and since it was easier to roll a lounge to the sufferer than to
argue, she did so and promptly had her charge upon it; but she first
stripped off the damp cotton gown from the shaking body and wrapped it
in all the rugs and covers she could find. She did not attempt to
penetrate further into the house then, because she knew that Ephraim
had bolted and barred the door leading thither. She had watched him do
so with some amusement, early in the evening, and had playfully asked
him if he expected any burglars. He had disdained to reply further
than by shaking his wise old head, but had omitted no precaution
because of her raillery.
"Well, this may not be as nice as in my own room but it's a deal
better than out of doors. That poor little thing isn't shivering so
much and--she's asleep! She's tired out, whoever she is and wherever
she came from, and I'm tired, also. I can't do any better till
daylight comes and I'll curl up in this big chair and go to sleep,
too," said Dorothy to herself.
She wakened to find the sunlight streaming through the glass and to
hear a chorus of voices demanding, each in a various key:
"Why, Dorothy C!" "How could you?" "Yo' done gib we-all de wussenes'
sca', you' ca'less chile! What yo' s'posin' my Miss Betty gwine ter
say when she heahs ob dis yeah cuttin's up? Hey, honey? Tell me dat!"
But Dinah's reproofs were cut short as her eye fell upon the
rug-heaped lounge and saw the pile of them begin to move. As yet no
person was visible and she stared at the suddenly agitated covers as
if they were bewitched. Presently, they were flung aside; and revealed
upon a crimson pillow lay a face almost as crimson.
"Fo' de lan' ob lub! How come dat yeah--dis--What's hit mean, li'l gal
Do'thy?"
Dolly had not long been missed nor, when she was, had anybody felt
serious alarm, though the girl guests had both been aggrieved that she
should not have wakened them in time to be prompt for breakfast. They
dressed hurriedly when Norah came a second time to summon them,
explaining:
"Miss Dorothy's room is empty and her clothes on the chairs. I must go
seek her for she shouldn't do this way if she wants to keep cook good
natured for the Party. Delaying breakfast is a bad beginning."
Then Norah departed and went about her business of dusting; and it was
she who had found the missing girl in the sun-parlor, and it had been
her cry of relief that brought the household to that place.
Demanded old Ephraim sternly:
"Why fo' yo'-all done leab yo' baid in de middle ob de night an' go
sky-la'kin' eround dis yere scan'lous way, Missy Dolly Calve't? Tole
me dat!"
"Why do you leave yours, to sleep on the library couch, Ephraim?" she
returned, keenly observing him from the enclosure of her girl friends'
arms, who held her fast that she might not again elude them.
Ephraim fairly jumped; though he looked not at her but in a timid way
toward Dinah, still bending in anxious curiosity over the stranger on
the couch; and she was not so engrossed but that her turbaned head
rose with a snap and she fixed her fellow servant with a fiercely
glaring eye. Between these two equally devoted members of "Miss
Betty's" family had always existed a bitter jealousy as to which was
the most loyal to their mistress's interests. Let either presume upon
that loyalty, to indulge in a forbidden privilege, and the wrath of
the other waxed furious. Both knew that for Ephraim to have lain where
Dorothy had discovered him, during that past night, was "intol'able"
presumption, and at Dinah's care would be duly reported upon and
reprimanded.
Alas! The old man's start and down-dropped gaze was proof in Dorothy's
opinion of a graver guilt than Dinah imputed to him, and when he made
no answer save a hasty exit from the room her heart sank.
"Oh! how could he do it, how could he!" and then honesty suggested.
"But I haven't asked him yet if he did take the bills!" and she
smiled again at her own thoughts.
Attention was now diverted to Dinah's picking up the stranger from the
couch and also departing, muttering:
"I 'low dis yeah's a mighty sick li'l creatur'! Whoebah she be she's
done fotched a high fevah wid her, an' I'se gwine put her to baid
right now!"
Illness was always enough to enlist the old nurse's deepest interest
and she had no further reproof for the delayed breakfasts or Ephraim's
behavior.
There followed a morning full of business for all. Jim Barlow and old
Hans, with some grumbling assistance from the "roomatical" Ephraim,
whose "misery" Dinah assured him had been aggravated by sleeping on a
cold leather lounge instead of in his own feather-bed--these three
spent the morning in clearing away the fallen tree, while a carpenter
from the town repaired the injured doorway.
When Dorothy approached Jim, intending to speak freely of her
suspicions about the lost money, he cut her short by remarking:
"What silliness! Course, it isn't really lost. You've just mislaid it,
that's all, an' forgot. I do that, time an' again. Put something away
so careful 't I can't find it for ever so long. You'll remember after
a spell, and say, Dolly! I won't be able to write that telegram to
Mabel Bruce. I've got no time to bother with a parcel o' girls. If I
don't keep a nudgin' them two old men they won't do a decent axe's
stroke. They spend all their time complainin' of their j'ints!"
"Well, why don't you get a regular woodman to chop it up, then?"
"An' waste Mrs. Calvert's good money, whilst there's a lot of idlers
on her premises, eatin' her out of house and home? I guess not. I'd
save for her quicker'n I would for myself, an' that's saying
considerable. I'm no eye-servant, I'm not."
"Huh! You're one mighty stubborn boy! And I don't think my darling
Aunt Betty would hesitate to pay one extra day's help. I've heard her
say that she disliked amateur labor. She likes professional skill,"
returned the girl, with decision.
James Barlow laughed.
"I reckon, Dolly C., that you've forgot the days when you and I were
on Miranda Stott's truck-farm; when I cut firewood by the cord and you
sat on the logs an' taught me how to spell. 'Twouldn't do for me to
claim I can't split up one tree; and this one'll be as neat a job as
you ever see, time I've done with it. Trot along and write your own
telegrams; or get that Starky to do it for you. Ha, ha! He thought he
could saw wood, himself. Said he learned it campin' out; but the first
blow he struck he hit his own toes and blamed it on the axe being too
heavy. Trot along with him, girlie, and don't hender me talkin'."
The "Little Lady of the Manor," as President Ryall had called her,
walked away with her nose in the air. Preferred to chop wood, did he?
And it wasn't nice of him--it certainly wasn't nice--to set her
thinking of that miserable old truck-farm and the days of her direst
poverty. She was Dorothy Calvert now; a girl with a name and heiress
of Deerhurst. She'd show him, horrid boy that he was!
But just then his cheerful whistling reached her, and her indignation
vanished. By no effort could she stay long angry with Jim. He was
annoyingly "common-sensible," as he claimed, but he was also so
straight and dependable that she admired him almost as much as she
loved him. Yes, she had other friends now, and would doubtless gain
many more, but none could ever be a truer one than this homely,
plain-spoken lad.
She spied the girls and Monty in the arbor and joined them; promptly
announcing:
"If our House Party is to be a success you three must help. Jim won't.
He's going to chop wood. Monty, will you ride to the village and send
that telegram to Mabel Bruce?"
The lad looked up from the foot he had been contemplating and over
which Molly and Alfy had been bending in sympathy, to answer by
another question:
"See that shoe, Dolly Calvert? Close shave that. Might have been my
very flesh itself, and I'd have blood poisoning and an amputation, and
then there'd have been telegrams sent--galore! Imagine my mother--if
they had been!"
"It wasn't your flesh, was it?"
"That's as Yankee as I am. Always answer your own questions when you
ask them and save a lot of trouble to the other fellow. No, I _wasn't_
hurt but I _might_ have been! Since I'm not, I'm at your service, Lady
D. Providing you word your own message and give me a decent horse to
ride."
"There are none but 'decent' horses in our stable, Master Stark. I
shall need Portia myself, or we girls will. You can go ask a groom to
saddle one--that he thinks best. I see through you. You've just been
getting these girls to waste sympathy on you and you shall be punished
by our leaving you alone till lunch time. I'll write the message, of
course. I'd be afraid you wouldn't put enough in. Only--let me think.
How much do telegrams cost?"
"Twenty-five cents for ten words," came the prompt reply.
"But ten would hardly begin to talk! Is telephoning cheaper? You ought
to know, being a boy."
"Long distance telephoning is about as expensive a luxury as one can
buy, young lady. But, why hesitate? It won't take all of that hundred
dollars," he answered, swaggering a trifle over his superior
knowledge.
Out it came without pause or pretense, the dark suspicion that had
risen in Dorothy's innocent mind:
"But I haven't that hundred dollars! It's gone. It's--_stolen_!"
"Dorothy Calvert! How dare you say such a thing?"
It was Molly's horrified question that broke the long silence which
had fallen on the group; and hearing her ask it gave to poor Dorothy
the first realization of what an evil thing it was she had voiced.
"I don't know! Oh! I don't know! I wish I hadn't. I didn't mean to
tell, not yet; and I wish, I wish I had kept it to myself!" she cried
in keen regret.
For instantly she read in the young faces before her a reflection of
her own hard suspicion and loss of faith in others; and something that
her beloved Seth Winters had once said came to her mind:
"Evil thoughts are more catching than the measles."
Seth, that grand old "Learned Blacksmith!" To him she would go, at
once, and he would help her in every way. Turning again to her mates
she begged:
"Forget that I fancied anybody might have taken it to keep. Of course,
nobody would. Let's hurry in and get Mabel's invitation off. I think
I've enough money to pay for a message long enough to explain what I
want; and her fare here--well she'll have to pay that herself or her
father will. I've asked to have Portia put to the pony cart and we
girls will drive around and ask all the others. So glad they live on
the mountain where we can get to them quick."
"Dolly, shall you go to The Towers, to see that Montaigne girl?" asked
Alfaretta, rather anxiously.
"Yes, but you needn't go in if you don't want to, Alfy dear. I shall
stay only just long enough to bid her welcome home and invite her for
Saturday."
"Oh! I shouldn't mind. I'd just as lief. Fact, I'd _admire_, only if I
put on my best dress to go callin' in the morning what'll I have left
to wear to the Party? And Ma Babcock says them Montaignes won't have
folks around that ain't dressed up;" said the girl, so frankly that
Molly laughed and Dorothy hastened to assure her:
"That's a mistake, Alfy, dear, I think. They don't care about a
person's clothes. It's what's inside the clothes that counts with
sensible people, such as I believe they are. But, I'll tell you. It's
not far from The Towers' gate to the old smithy and I must see Mr.
Seth. I must. I'm so thankful that he didn't leave the mountain, too,
with all the other grown-ups. So you can drop me at Helena's; and then
you and Molly can drive around to all the other people we've decided
to ask and invite them in my stead. You know where all of them live
and Molly will go with you."
"Can Alfy drive--safe?" asked Molly, rather anxiously.
Dolly laughed. "Anybody can drive gentle Portia and Alfy is a mountain
girl. But what a funny question for such a fearless rider as you,
Molly Breckenridge!"
"Not so funny as you think. It's one thing to be on the back of a
horse you know and quite another to be behind the heels of another
that its driver doesn't know! Never mind, Alfy. I'll trust you."
"You can," Alfaretta complacently assured her; and the morning's drive
proved her right. A happier girl had never lived than she as she thus
acted deputy for the new little mistress of Deerhurst; whose story had
lost none of its interest for the mountain folk because of its latest
development.
But it was not at all as a proud young heiress that Dorothy came at
last to the shop under the Great Balm Tree and threw herself
impetuously upon the breast of the farrier quietly reading beside his
silent forge.
"O, Mr. Seth! My darling Mr. Seth! I'm in terrible trouble and only
you can help me!"
His book went one way, his spectacles another, dashed from his hands
by her heedless onrush; but he let them lie where they had fallen and
putting his arm around her, assured her:
"So am I. Therefore, let us condole with one another. You first."
"I've lost Aunt Betty's hundred dollars!"
Her friend fairly gasped, and held her from him to search her troubled
face.
"Whe-ew! That is serious. Yet lost articles are sometimes found. Out
with the whole story, 'body and bones'--as my man Owen would say."
Already relieved by the chance of telling her worries, Dorothy related
the incidents of the night, and she met the sympathy she expected. But
it was like the nature-loving Mr. Winters that he was more disturbed
by the loss of the great chestnut tree than by that of the money.
Also, the story of the stranger she had found wandering by the
lily-pond moved him deeply. All suffering or afflicted creatures were
precious in the sight of this noble old man and he commented now with
pity on the distress of the friends from whom the unknown one had
strayed.
"How grieved they'll be! For it must have been from some private
household she came, or escaped. There is no public asylum or retreat
within many miles of our mountain, so far as I know. I wonder if we
ought to advertise her in the local newspaper? Or, do you think it
would be kinder to wait and let her people hunt her up? Tell me,
Dolly, dear. The opinion of a child often goes straight to the point."
"Oh! Don't advertise, please, Mr. Seth! Think. If she belonged to you
or me we wouldn't want it put in the paper that--about--you know, the
lost one being not quite right, someway. If anybody's loved her well
enough to keep her out of an asylum they've loved her well enough to
come and find her, quiet like, without anybody but kind hearted people
having to know. If they don't love her--well, she's all right for now.
Dinah's put her to bed and told me, just before I came away, that it
was only the exposure which had made her ill. She had roused all
right, after a nap, and had taken a real hearty breakfast. She's about
as big as I am and Dinah's going to put some of my clothes on her
while her own are done up. Everybody in the house was so interested
and kind about her, I was surprised."
"You needn't have been. People who have lived with such a mistress as
Madam Betty Calvert must have learned kindness, even if they learned
nothing else."
Dorothy laughed. "Dear Mr. Seth, you love my darling Aunt Betty, too,
don't you, like everybody does?"
"Of course, and loyally. That doesn't prevent my thinking that she
does unwise things."
"O--oh!!"
"Like giving a little girl one hundred dollars at a time to spend in
foolishness."
Dorothy protested: "It wasn't to be foolishness. It was to make people
happy. You yourself say that to 'spread happiness' is the only thing
worth while!"
"Surely, but it doesn't take Uncle Sam's greenbacks to do that. Not
many of them. When you've lived as long as I have you'll have learned
that the things which dollars do _not_ buy are the things that count.
Hello! 'By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way
comes.'"
The blacksmith rose as he finished his quotation and went to the wide
doorway, across which a shadow had fallen, and from whence the sound
of an irritable: "Whoa-oa, there!" had come.
It was a rare patron of that old smithy and Seth concealed his
surprise by addressing not the driver but the horse:
"Well, George Fox! Good-morning to you!"
George Fox was the property of miller Oliver Sands, and the Quaker and
his steed were well known in all that locality. He was a fair-spoken
man whom few loved and many feared, and between him and the "Learned
Blacksmith" there was "no love lost." Why he had come to the smithy
now Seth couldn't guess; nor why, as he stepped down from his buggy
and observed, "I'd like to have thee look at George's off hind foot,
farrier. He uses it----" he should do what he did.
How it was "used" was not explained; for, leaving the animal where it
stood, the miller sauntered into the building, hands in pockets, and
over it in every part, even to its owner's private bedroom, as if he
had a curiosity to see how his neighbor lived. Seth would have
resented this, had it been worth while and if the miller's odd
curiosity had not aroused the same feeling in himself. It was odd, he
thought; but Seth Winters had nothing to hide and he didn't care. It
was equally odd that George Fox's off hind foot was in perfect
condition and had been newly shod at the other smithy, over the
mountain, where all the miller's work was done.
"It seems to be all right, Friend Oliver."
"Forget that I troubled thee," answered the gray-clad Friend, as he
climbed back to his seat and shook the reins over his horse's back, to
instantly disappear down the road, but to leave a thoughtful neighbor,
staring after him.
"Hmm. That man's in trouble. I wonder what!" murmured Seth, more to
himself than to Dorothy, who had drawn near to slip her hand in his.
"Dear me! Everybody seems to be, this morning, Mr. Seth; and you
haven't told me yours yet!"
"Haven't I? Well, here it is!"
He stooped his gray head to her brown one and whispered it in her ear;
with the result that he had completely banished all her own anxieties
and sent her laughing down the road toward home.