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FLIP'S
"ISLANDS
OF
PROVIDENCE"
ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON
COSY CORNER SERIES
* * * * *
FLIP'S "ISLANDS OF
PROVIDENCE"
Works of
Annie Fellows Johnston
=The Little Colonel Series=
(_Trade Mark, Reg. U. S. Pat. Of._)
Each one vol., large 12mo, cloth, illustrated
The Little Colonel Stories $1.50
(Containing in one volume the three stories, "The
Little Colonel," "The Giant Scissors," and
"Two Little Knights of Kentucky.")
The Little Colonel's House Party 1.50
The Little Colonel's Holidays 1.50
The Little Colonel's Hero 1.50
The Little Colonel at Boarding-School 1.50
The Little Colonel in Arizona 1.50
The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation 1.50
The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor 1.50
The above 8 vols., _boxed_ 12.00
Illustrated Holiday Editions
Each one vol., small quarto, cloth, illustrated, and printed
in color
The Little Colonel $1.25
The Giant Scissors 1.25
Two Little Knights of Kentucky 1.25
The above 3 vols., _boxed_ 3.75
Cosy Corner Series
Each one vol., thin 12mo. cloth, illustrated
The Little Colonel $.50
The Giant Scissors .50
Two Little Knights of Kentucky .50
Big Brother .50
Ole Mammy's Torment .50
The Story of Dago .50
Cicely .50
Aunt 'Liza's Hero .50
The Quilt that Jack Built .50
Flip's "Islands of Providence" .50
Mildred's Inheritance .50
Other Books
Joel: A Boy of Galilee $1.50
In the Desert of Waiting .50
The Three Weavers .50
Keeping Tryst .50
Asa Holmes 1.00
Songs Ysame (Poems, with Allison Fellows Bacon) 1.00
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
200 Summer Street Boston, Mass.
[Illustration: "'ALEC,' HE SAID, PAUSING IN THE DOORWAY, 'WHAT'S A
GREEN GOODS MAN?'" (_See page 75_)]
Cosy Corner Series
FLIP'S "ISLANDS
OF PROVIDENCE"
By
Annie Fellows Johnston
Author of "Asa Holmes," "The Little Colonel Stories,"
"Big Brother," etc.
_Illustrated by_
E. F. Bonsall
"_I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;_"
--_Whittier_
_Boston_
_L.C. Page & Company_
_Publishers_
_Copyright, 1902_
BY THE TRUSTEES OF THE PRESBYTERIAN BOARD
OF PUBLICATION AND SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK
_Copyright, 1903_
By L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
_All rights reserved_
Published August, 1903
_Fourth Impression, February, 1907_
_Colonial Press_
Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
Boston, Mass., U. S. A.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
"'ALEC,' HE SAID, PAUSING IN THE DOORWAY,
'WHAT'S A GREEN GOODS MAN?'" (_See page 75_)
_Frontispiece_
"'YOU'RE BOUND TO HEAR IT SOMETIME'" 19
"'THE LORD HAS CERTAINLY SENT YOU,
DICK'" 57
"HE MADE SEVERAL RAPID CALCULATIONS ON
THE BACK OF THE ENVELOPE" 109
"'IT'S THE FIRST MONEY I EVER EARNED IN
MY LIFE,' SHE SAID, GLEEFULLY" 117
"HIS HAND WENT UP INVOLUNTARILY TOWARD
HIS HAT" 145
"HE BLURTED OUT HIS TROUBLE IN BROKEN
SENTENCES" 161
"'IT WAS THAT UNLUCKY GOLD COIN'" 177
* * * * *
FLIP'S "ISLANDS OF
PROVIDENCE"
CHAPTER I.
Carefully locking the door of his little gable bedroom, Alec Stoker
put down the cup of hot water he carried, and peered into the mirror
above his wash-stand. Then, although he had come up-stairs fully
determined to attempt his first shave, he stood irresolute, stroking
the almost imperceptible down on his boyish lip and chin.
"It does make me look older, that's a fact," he muttered to his
reflection in the glass. "Maybe I'd better not cut it off until I've
had my interview with the agent. The older I look, the more likely
he'll be to trust me with a responsible position. Still," he
continued, surveying himself critically, "I might make a more
favourable impression if I had that 'well-groomed' look the papers
lay so much stress on nowadays, and I could mention in a careless,
offhand way something about having just shaved."
It was not yet dark out-of-doors, but after a few minutes of further
deliberation, Alec pulled down the blind over his window and lighted
the lamp. Then, opening a box that he took from his bureau, he drew
out his Grandfather Macklin's razor and ivory-handled shaving-brush.
"I'm sure the old gentleman never dreamed, when they made me his
namesake, that this was all of his property I would fall heir to," he
thought, bitterly.
The moody expression that settled on his face at the thought had
become almost habitual in the last four weeks. The happy-go-lucky boy
of seventeen seemed to have changed in that time to a morose man.
June had left him the jolliest boy in the high school graduating
class. September found him a morbid cynic.
It had been nine years since his mother, just before her death, had
brought him back to the old home for her sister Eunice to take care
of--Alec and the little five-year-old Philippa and the baby Macklin.
Their Aunt Eunice had made a happy home for them, and although she
rarely laughed herself, and her hair had whitened long before its
time, she had allowed no part of her burdens to touch their
thoughtless young lives. It was only lately that Alec had been
aroused to the fact that she had any burdens. He was rehearsing them
all now, as he rubbed the lather over his chin, so busily that he did
not hear Philippa's light step on the back stairs. Philippa could
step very lightly when she chose, despite the fact that she was long
and awkward, with that temporary awkwardness of a growing girl who
finds it hard to adjust herself and her skirts to her constantly
increasing height.
Alec almost dropped his brush as she suddenly banged on his door. "Is
that you, Flip?" he called, although he knew no one but Philippa ever
beat such thundering tattoos on his door.
"Yes! Let me in! I want to ask you something."
He knew just how her sharp gray eyes would scan him, and he hesitated
an instant, divided between a desire to let her see him in the manly
act of shaving himself and the certain knowledge that she would tease
him if he did.
Finally he threw open the door and turned to the glass in his most
indifferent manner, as if it were an every-day occurrence with him.
"Come in," he said; "I'm only shaving. I'm going out this evening."
If he had thought she would be impressed by his lordly air, he was
mistaken, for, after one prolonged stare, she threw herself on the
bed, shrieking with laughter. Long practice in bandying words with
her brother had made her an expert tease. Usually they both enjoyed
such combats, but now, to her surprise, he seemed indifferent to her
most provoking comments, and scraped away at his chin in dignified
silence.
"I believe you said you had something to say to me, Philippa," he
said presently, in a stern tone that made her stare. Never, except
when he was very angry, did he call her anything but Flip.
Suddenly sobered, she took her face out of the pillows and peered at
him curiously, twisting one of the long plaits of hair that hung over
her shoulder.
"I have," she said. "I want to know what's the matter with you. What
has come over you lately? You've been as sullen as a brown bear for
days and days. I asked Aunt Eunice just now, while we were washing
the supper dishes, what had changed you so. You used to be whistling
and joking whenever you came near the house. Now you never open your
lips except to make some sarcastic speech.
"She said that it was probably because you were so disappointed
about not getting that position in the bank that you had set your
heart on, and she was afraid that you were growing discouraged
about ever finding any position worth while in this sleepy little
village. She didn't know that I saw it, but while she was talking
a tear splashed right down in the dish-water, and I made up my mind
that it must be something lots worse than just plain disappointment
or discouragement, and that I was going to ask you. Now, you needn't
snap your mouth shut that way, like a clam. You've got to tell me!"
"Aunt Eunice doesn't want you to know," he said, turning away from
the glass, razor in hand, to look at her intently. "But you're a big
girl, Flip--nearly as tall as she is, if you are only fifteen. You're
bound to hear it sometime, and in my opinion it would be better for
you to hear it from me than to have it knock you flat coming
unexpectedly from a stranger, as I heard it."
[Illustration: "'YOU'RE BOUND TO HEAR IT SOMETIME.'"]
"Tell me," she urged, her curiosity aroused.
"Can you stand a pretty tough knock?"
"As well as you," she answered, meeting his gaze steadily, yet with a
queer kind of chill creeping over her at his mysterious manner.
"Well, what do you suppose you and Mack and I have been living on all
these years that we have been living with Aunt Eunice?"
"Why--I--I don't know! Mother's share of Grandfather Macklin's
property, I suppose. He divided it equally between her and Aunt
Eunice."
"Well, we just haven't!" Alec exclaimed. "That was spent before we
came here, and nearly all of Aunt Eunice's share, too. She's been
drawing right out of the principal the last two years so that she
could keep us in school, and there's hardly anything left but this
old house and the ground it stands on. She never told me until this
summer. That's why I took the first job that offered, and drove
Murray's delivery wagon till the regular driver was well. It wasn't
particularly good pay, but it paid for my board and kept me from
feeling that I was a burden on Aunt Eunice.
"I was sure of getting that position in the bank. One of the
directors had as good as promised it to me. While it wouldn't have
paid much at first, it would have been an entering wedge, and have
put me in the direct line of promotion. And you know that from the
time I was Macklin's age it has been my ambition to be a banker like
grandfather. Since I failed to get that, nobody, not even Aunt
Eunice, knows how hard I've tried to get into some steady,
good-paying job. I've been to every business man in the village, and
done everything a fellow could do, seems to me, but in a little place
like this there's absolutely no opening unless somebody dies. The
good places are already filled by reliable, middle-aged men who have
grown up in them. There's no use trying any longer. Every time I get
my hopes up it's only to have them dashed to pieces--shipwrecked, you
might say."
He paused a minute, ostensibly to give his chin a fresh coating of
lather, but in reality to gather courage for the words he found so
difficult to say. In the silence, Macklin's voice came floating up to
them from the porch below. Sitting on the steps in the twilight, with
his bare feet doubled under him, he was reciting something to his
Aunt Eunice in a high, sturdy voice. It came in shrilly through the
open window of Alec's room, where the brown shade and overhanging
muslin curtains flapped back and forth in the evening breeze.
Philippa smiled as she listened. He was reciting a poem that Aunt
Eunice had taught each of them in turn, after the Creed and the
Commandments and the Catechism. It was Whittier's hymn--"The Eternal
Goodness." She had paid them a penny a stanza for learning it, and as
there are twenty-two stanzas in all, Philippa remembered how rich she
felt the day she dropped the last copper down the chimney of her
little red savings-bank.
It had been seven years since Alec learned it, but the words were as
familiar still as the letters of the alphabet. As Macklin's
high-pitched voice reached them, Philippa joined in in a singsong
undertone, and even Alec found himself unconsciously following the
well-remembered lines in his thought:
"I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care."
"There!" said Philippa, stopping abruptly, "you were talking about
shipwrecks. According to that hymn, there's always some island ready
for you to be washed up on. How do you know but that you're going to
land some place where you'll be lots better off than if you'd stayed
here in Ridgeville?"
There was a contemptuous sneer on Alec's face, not pleasant to see,
as he answered, roughly: "Bosh! That's all right for people who can
believe in such things, but I'm past such Robinson Crusoe fables."
"Why, Alec Stoker!" she cried, in amazement, "do you mean to say that
you don't believe in Providence any more?" There was a look of horror
on her face.
He shrugged his shoulders. "I've come to think it's a case of every
fellow for himself; sink or swim--and if you're not strong enough to
push to shore, it's drown and leave more room for the rest."
"Alec Mack--lin Sto--ker!" was all that Philippa could find breath to
say at first. Presently she exclaimed, "I should think you'd be
ashamed to talk so! Any boy that had such a grand old grandfather as
you! He didn't have any better chance than you in the beginning, and
had to struggle along for years. Look what a place he made for
himself in the world!"
"That's all you know about it!" cried Alec, his hand trembling with
an emotion he was trying hard to control. In that instant the razor
slipped, slightly cutting his chin.
"Now!" he muttered, hastily tearing a bit of paper from the margin of
a newspaper to stop the blood, and then rummaging in the wash-stand
drawer for a piece of court-plaster. He was a long time adjusting it
to his satisfaction, for the words he wanted to say would not take
shape. He knew what he had to tell her would wound deeply, and he
hesitated to begin. When he faced her again, his voice trembled with
suppressed excitement. He spoke rapidly:
"I may as well out with it. You want to know why I didn't get that
position in the bank? It is because my father, J. Stillwell Stoker,
died behind the bars of a penitentiary! I'm the son of a jailbird--a
defaulter and a forger! That's why the bank didn't want me. They'd
had their fingers burned with him, and didn't want to risk another of
that name. Thought there might be something in the blood, I suppose.
That's where all grandfather's property went, to pay it back; all but
this house and the little Aunt Eunice kept for our support. And
that's why mother came back here with us and died of a broken heart!
Now do you wonder that I can't believe in the eternal goodness when
it starts me out in life handicapped like that? Do you blame me when
I say I am going to get out of this town and go away to some place
where I'll not have my father's disgrace thrown in my teeth every
time I try to do anything worth while? No wonder I'm moody! No wonder
I'm a pessimist when I think of the legacy he's saddled us with! Aunt
Eunice thought she could always shield us from the knowledge of it,
but she could no more do it than she could hide fire!"
Philippa sat on the bed as if stunned by the words flowing in such a
vehement rush from her brother's lips. She was white and trembled. "O
Alec," she gasped, with a shudder, "it can't be true!" Then, after a
distressing silence, she sobbed, "Does everybody know it?"
"Everybody in the village now, but little Mack, and he'll have to be
knocked flat with the fact some day, I suppose, just as we have
been."
Philippa shivered and drew herself up into a disconsolate bunch
against the foot-board. "To think of the way I've prided myself on
our family!" she said, in a husky voice. "I've actually bragged of
the Macklins and paraded the virtues of my ancestors."
Alec made no answer. Down-stairs the big kitchen clock slowly struck
seven.
"I'll have to hurry," he remarked. Catching up his blacking-brush, he
began polishing his shoes in nervous haste. "It's later than I
thought. I'm due at the hotel in thirty minutes."
"At the hotel!" repeated Philippa, wondering dully how he could take
any interest in anything more in life, knowing all that had blighted
their young lives.
"Yes; but don't you tell Aunt Eunice until it's all settled. I
promised to meet a man there, who's been talking to me about a
position a thousand miles from here. He's interested in a
manufacturing business. His firm has a scheme for making money hand
over fist. He didn't tell me what it is, but he wants some young
fellow about my age to go into it. 'Somebody who can keep his mouth
shut,' he said, 'write a good letter, and make a favourable
impression on strangers in introducing the goods.' Stumpy Fisher
introduced me to him last night, and he gave me a hint of what he
might do if I suited. Seemed to think I was just the man for the
place. There's another fellow after it, but he thought I'd make a
better impression on strangers, and that is a great consideration in
their business. We're to settle it this evening, as he has to leave
on the nine o'clock train. If we come to terms, he'll want me to
follow next week."
"Stumpy Fisher introduced you?" repeated Philippa; "why, he--he's the
man that runs the Golconda, isn't he?"
"Yes," admitted Alec, inwardly resenting the disapproval in her tone.
"They do gamble in there, I know, and sometimes have a pretty tough
row, but Stumpy is as kind-hearted a man as there is in the village."
Throwing the blacking-brush hastily back into its box, Alec
straightened himself up and faced his sister, "There, skip along now,
Flip, like a good girl. I have to dress. And don't say a word to Aunt
Eunice. I'll tell her myself."
Philippa rose slowly from the bed and started toward the door. "I
feel as if I were in a horrible nightmare," she said. "What you have
just told me about our--him, you know, and then your going away to
live. It's all so sudden and so dreadful. O Alec, I can't stand it to
have you go!"
To his great surprise and confusion, for Philippa had never been
demonstrative in her affection, she threw her arms round his neck,
and, dropping her head on his shoulder, began sobbing violently.
"Oh, come now, Flip," he protested, awkwardly patting the heavy
braids of hair swung over her shoulder; "I wouldn't have told you if
I'd thought you'd take it so. I thought you had so much grit that
you'd stand by me and back me up if Aunt Eunice objected. We're not
going to be separated for ever. From what the man told me of the
business, I'm sure that I can make enough in a year or so to send for
you. Then you can come and keep house for me, and we'll pay back
every cent we've cost Aunt Eunice, so she'll have something in her
old age. Oh, stop crying, like a good girl, Flip! Don't make it any
harder for me than it already is. You don't want me to be late, do
you, and miss the best chance of my life? Punctuality counts for
everything when a man's looking for a reliable employee."
Without a word, but still sobbing, Philippa rushed from the room. He
heard her going down the back stairs and across the kitchen. When the
outer door closed behind her, he knew as well as if he had seen her
that she was running down the orchard path to her old refuge in the
June-apple-tree.
"The stars ought to be out now," thought Alec, a few minutes later,
as he slipped into his best coat. Pulling up the shade, he peered out
through the open window. "There'll not be any to-night," he added;
"looks as if it would rain."
The wind was rising. It blew the muslin curtains softly across his
face. It had driven Miss Eunice and Macklin from the porch. Alec
could hear their voices in the sitting-room. Suddenly another puff of
wind blew the hall door shut, and the cheerful sound was lost.
"It's certainly going to storm!" he exclaimed, aloud. Raising his
lamp for one more scrutiny of himself in the little mirror, he set it
on his desk, while he hunted in the closet for an umbrella.
When he reached the hotel, it was in the deepest voice that he could
summon that he asked to be shown to Mr. Humphrey Long's room. Then he
blushed, startled by its unfamiliar sound; it was so deep.
Mr. Long was busy, he was told. He had been closeted in his room for
an hour with a stranger who had taken supper with him, and had left
orders that Alec, if he came, was not to be shown up till the other
man had gone.
Alec wandered from the office into the parlour, walking round
nervously while he waited. Half an hour went by. He watched the clock
anxiously, than desperately. The minutes were slipping by so fast
that he was afraid there would be no time for his turn before the bus
started to the train. What if the other man should be taken in his
stead after all Mr. Long's fair speeches! The thought made him break
into a cold perspiration. He drummed nervously on the table beside
him with impatient fingers.
Presently, through his absorption, came the consciousness that the
bell in the town hall was clanging the fire alarm. It was an unusual
sound in the quiet little village. Noisy shouts in the next street
proclaimed that the volunteer fire brigade was dragging out the
hand-power engine and hose reel. From all directions came the sound
of hurrying feet and the cry of "Fire! fire!"
He rushed to the door and looked out. Half a mile toward the north,
he judged the distance to be, an angry glow was spreading upward. It
was in the direction of his home.
"Where's the fire, Bob?" called a voice across the street.
"The old Macklin house," was the answer, tossed back over a man's
shoulder as he ran. Instantly there flashed into Alec's mind the
remembrance of the muslin curtains flapping across his face, and the
lamp left near them on his desk. Had he blown it out or not? He could
not remember. He tried to think as he dashed up the street after the
running crowds.