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diff --git a/11141.txt b/11141.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..33c2ace --- /dev/null +++ b/11141.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7125 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. +by Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. + +Author: Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney + +Release Date: February 18, 2004 [EBook #11141] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SUMMER *** + + + + +Produced by Janet Kegg and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + +A SUMMER IN +LESLIE GOLDTHWAITE'S LIFE + + +By + +Mrs. A. D. T. WHITNEY + + + +1866, 1894 + + + + + To + + THE MEMORY OF MY DEAR FRIEND + + MARIA S. CUMMINS + + AND OF DAYS AMONG THE MOUNTAINS MADE + BEAUTIFUL BY HER COMPANIONSHIP + + I DEDICATE THIS LITTLE STORY + + + + +PREFACE TO REAL FOLKS SERIES. + + +"Leslie Goldthwaite" was the first of a series of four, which grew from +this beginning, and was written in 1866 and the years nearly following; +the first two stories--this and "We Girls"--having been furnished, by +request, for the magazine "Our Young Folks," published at that time with +such success by Messrs. Fields, Osgood & Co., and edited by Mr. Howard +M. Ticknor and Miss Lucy Larcom. The last two volumes--"Real Folks" and +"The Other Girls"--were asked for to complete the set, and were not +delayed by serial publication, but issued at once, in their order of +completion, in book form. + +There is a sequence of purpose, character, and incident in the four +stories, of which it is well to remind new readers, upon their +reappearance in fresh editions. They all deal especially with girl-life +and home-life; endeavoring, even in the narration of experiences outside +the home and seeming to preclude its life, to keep for girlhood and +womanhood the true motive and tendency, through whatever temporary +interruption and necessity, of and toward the best spirit and shaping of +womanly work and surrounding; making the home-life the ideal one, and +home itself the centre and goal of effort and hope. + +The writing of "The Other Girls" was interrupted by the Great Fire of +1872, and the work upon the Women's Relief Committee, which brought +close contact and personal knowledge to reinforce mere sympathy and +theory,--and so, I hope, into this last of the series, a touch of +something that may deepen the influence of them all to stronger help. + + * * * * * + +I wish, without withdrawing or superseding the special dedication of +"Leslie Goldthwaite" to the memory of the dear friend with whom the +weeks were spent in which I gathered material for Leslie's "Summer," to +remember, in this new presentation of the whole series, that other +friend, with whom all the after work in it was associated and made the +first links of a long regard and fellowship, now lifted up and reaching +onward into the hopes and certainties of the "Land o' the Leal." + +I wish to join to my own name in this, the name of Lucy Larcom, which +stands representative of most brave and earnest work, in most gentle, +womanly living. + + +ADELINE D. T. WHITNEY. +Milton, 1893. + + + + + CONTENTS. + + CHAPTER + I. THE GREEN OF THE LEAF + II. WAYSIDE GLIMPSES + III. EYESTONES + IV. MARMADUKE WHARNE + V. HUMMOCKS + VI. DAKIE THAYNE + VII. DOWN AT OUTLEDGE + VIII. SIXTEEN AND SIXTY + IX. "I DON'T SEE WHY" + X. GEODES + XI. IN THE PINES + XII. CROWDED OUT + XIII. A HOWL + XIV. "FRIENDS OF MAMMON" + XV. QUICKSILVER AND GOLD + XVI. "WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL US?" + XVII. LEAF-GLORY + + + + +A SUMMER IN LESLIE GOLDTHWAITE'S LIFE. + + + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +THE GREEN OF THE LEAF. + +"Nothing but leaves--leaves--leaves! The green things don't know enough +to do anything better!" + +Leslie Goldthwaite said this, standing in the bay-window among her +plants, which had been green and flourishing, but persistently +blossomless, all winter, and now the spring days were come. + +Cousin Delight looked up; and her white ruffling, that she was daintily +hemstitching, fell to her lap, as she looked, still with a certain wide +intentness in her eyes, upon the pleasant window, and the bright, fresh +things it framed. Not the least bright and fresh among them was the +human creature in her early girlhood, tender and pleasant in its +beautiful leafage, but waiting, like any other young and growing life, +to prove what sort of flower should come of it. + +"Now you've got one of your 'thoughts,' Cousin Delight! I see it +'biggening,' as Elspie says." Leslie turned round, with her little green +watering-pot suspended in her hand, waiting for the thought. + +To have a thought, and to give it, were nearly simultaneous things with +Cousin Delight; so true, so pure, so unselfish, so made to give,--like +perfume or music, which cannot be, and be withheld,--were thoughts with +her. + +I must say a word, before I go further, of Delight Goldthwaite. I think +of her as of quite a young person; you, youthful readers, would +doubtless have declared that she was old,--very old, at least for a +young lady. She was twenty-eight, at this time of which I write; Leslie, +her young cousin, was just "past the half, and catching up," as she said +herself,--being fifteen. Leslie's mother called Miss Goldthwaite, +playfully, "Ladies' Delight;" and, taking up the idea, half her women +friends knew her by this significant and epigrammatic title. There was +something doubly pertinent in it. She made you think at once of nothing +so much as heart's-ease,--a garden heart's-ease, that flower of many +names; not of the frail, scentless, wild wood-violet,--she had been +cultured to something larger. The violet nature was there, colored and +shaped more richly, and gifted with rare fragrance--for those whose +delicate sense could perceive it. The very face was a pansy face; with +its deep, large, purple-blue eyes, and golden brows and lashes, the +color of her hair,--pale gold, so pale that careless people who had +perception only for such beauty as can flash upon you from a crowd, or +across a drawing-room, said hastily that she had _no_ brows or lashes, +and that this spoiled her. She was not a beauty, therefore; nor was she, +in any sort, a belle. She never drew around her the common attention +that is paid eagerly to very pretty, outwardly bewitching girls; and she +never seemed to care for this. At a party, she was as apt as not to sit +in a corner; but the quiet people,--the mothers, looking on, or the +girls, waiting for partners,--getting into that same corner also, found +the best pleasure of their evening there. There was something about her +dress, too, that women appreciated most fully; the delicate textures, +the finishings--and only those--of rare, exquisite lace, the perfect +harmony of the whole unobtrusive toilet,--women looked at these in +wonder at the unerring instinct of her taste; in wonder, also, that they +only with each other raved about her. Nobody had ever been supposed to +be devoted to her; she had never been reported as "engaged;" there had +never been any of this sort of gossip about her; gentlemen found her, +they said, hard to get acquainted with; she had not much of the small +talk which must usually begin an acquaintance; a few--her relatives, or +her elders, or the husbands of her intimate married friends--understood +and valued her; but it was her girl friends and women friends who knew +her best, and declared that there was nobody like her; and so came her +sobriquet, and the double pertinence of it. + +Especially she was Leslie Goldthwaite's delight. Leslie had no sisters, +and her aunts were old,--far older than her mother; on her father's +side, a broken and scattered family had left few ties for her; next to +her mother, and even closer, in some young sympathies, she clung to +Cousin Delight. + +With this diversion, we will go back now to her, and to her thought. + +"I was thinking," she said, with that intent look in her eyes, "I often +think, of how something else was found, once, having nothing but leaves; +and of what came to it." + +"I know," answered Leslie, with an evasive quickness, and turned round +with her watering-pot to her plants again. + +There was sometimes a bit of waywardness about Leslie Goldthwaite; there +was a fitfulness of frankness and reserve. She was eager for truth; yet +now and then she would thrust it aside. She said that "nobody liked a +nicely pointed moral better than she did; only she would just as lief +it shouldn't be pointed at her." The fact was, she was in that sensitive +state in which many a young girl finds herself, when she begins to ask +and to weigh with herself the great questions of life, and shrinks shyly +from the open mention of the very thing she longs more fully to +apprehend. + +Cousin Delight took no notice; it is perhaps likely that she understood +sufficiently well for that. She turned toward the table by which she +sat, and pulled toward her a heavy Atlas that lay open at the map of +Connecticut. Beside it was Lippincott's Gazetteer,--open, also. + +"Traveling, Leslie?" + +"Yes. I've been a charming journey this morning, before you came. I +wonder if I ever _shall_ travel, in reality. I've done a monstrous deal +of it with maps and gazetteers." + +"This hasn't been one of the stereotyped tours, it seems." + +"Oh, no! What's the use of doing Niagara or the White Mountains, or even +New York and Philadelphia and Washington, on the map? I've been one of +my little by-way trips, round among the villages; stopping wherever I +found one cuddled in between a river and a hill, or in a little seashore +nook. Those are the places, after all, that I would hunt out, if I had +plenty of money to go where I liked with. It's so pleasant to imagine +how the people live there, and what sort of folks they would be likely +to be. It isn't so much traveling as living round,--awhile in one home, +and then in another. How many different little biding-places there are +in the world! And how queer it is only really to know about one or two +of them!" + +"What's this place you're at just now? Winsted?" + +"Yes; there's where I've brought up, at the end of that bit of railroad. +It's a bigger place than I fancied, though. I always steer clear of the +names that end in 'ville.' They're sure to be stupid, money-making +towns, all grown up in a minute, with some common man's name tacked on +to them, that happened to build a saw-mill, or something, first. But +Winsted has such a sweet, little, quiet, English sound. I know it never +_began_ with a mill. They make pins and clocks and tools and machines +there now; and it's 'the largest and most prosperous post-village of +Litchfield County.' But I don't care for the pins and machinery. +It's got a lake alongside of it; and Still River--don't that sound +nice?--runs through; and there are the great hills, big enough to put on +the map, out beyond. I can fancy where the girls take their sunset +walks; and the moonlight parties, boating on the pond, and the way the +woods look, round Still River. Oh, yes! that's one of the places I mean +to go to." + +Leslie Goldthwaite lived in one of the inland cities of Massachusetts. +She had grown up and gone to school there, and had never yet been thirty +miles away. Her father was a busy lawyer, making a handsome living for +his family, and laying aside abundantly for their future provision, but +giving himself no lengthened recreations, and scarcely thinking of them +as needful for the rest. + +It was a pleasant, large, brown, wooden house they lived in, on the +corner of two streets; with a great green door-yard about it on two +sides, where chestnut and cherry trees shaded it from the public way, +and flower-beds brightened under the parlor windows and about the porch. +Just greenness and bloom enough to suggest, always, more; just sweetness +and sunshine and bird-song enough, in the early summer days, to whisper +of broad fields and deep woods where they rioted without stint; and +these days always put Leslie into a certain happy impatience, and set +her dreaming and imagining; and she learned a great deal of her +geography in the fashion that we have hinted at. + +Miss Goldthwaite was singularly discursive and fragmentary in her +conversation this morning, somehow. She dropped the map-traveling +suddenly, and asked a new question. "And how comes on the +linen-drawer?" + +"O Cousin Del! I'm humiliated,--disgusted! I feel as small as +butterflies' pinfeathers! I've been to see the Haddens. Mrs. Linceford +has just got home from Paris, and brought them wardrobes to last to +remotest posterity! And _such_ things! Such rufflings, and stitchings, +and embroiderings! Why, mine look--as if they'd been made by the +blacksmith!" + +The "linen-drawer" was an institution of Mrs. Goldthwaite's; resultant, +partly, from her old-fashioned New England ideas of womanly industry and +thrift,--born and brought up, as she had been, in a family whose +traditions were of house-linen sufficient for a lifetime spun and woven +by girls before their twenty-first year, and whose inheritance, from +mother to daughter, was invariably of heedfully stored personal and +household plenishings, made of pure material that was worth the laying +by, and carefully bleached and looked to year by year; partly, also, +from a certain theory of wisdom which she had adopted, that when girls +were once old enough to care for and pride themselves on a plentiful +outfit, it was best they should have it as a natural prerogative of +young-ladyhood, rather than that the "trousseau" should come to be, as +she believed it so apt to be, one of the inciting temptations to +heedless matrimony. I have heard of a mother whose passion was for +elegant old lace; and who boasted to her female friends that, when her +little daughter was ten years old, she had her "lace-box," with the +beginning of her hoard in costly contributions from the stores of +herself and of the child's maiden aunts. Mrs. Goldthwaite did a better +and more sensible thing than this; when Leslie was fifteen, she +presented her with pieces of beautiful linen and cotton and cambric, and +bade her begin to make garments which should be in dozens, to be laid +by, in reserve, as she completed them, until she had a well-filled +bureau that should defend her from the necessity of what she called a +"wretched living from hand to mouth,--always having underclothing to +make up, in the midst of all else that she would find to do and to +learn." + +Leslie need not have been ashamed, and I don't think in her heart she +was, of the fresh, white, light-lying piles that had already begun to +make promise of filling a drawer, which she drew out as she answered +Cousin Delight's question. + +The fine-lined gathers; the tiny dots of stitches that held them to +their delicate bindings; the hems and tucks, true to a thread, and +dotted with the same fairy needle dimples (no machine-work, but all +real, dainty finger-craft); the bits of ruffling peeping out from the +folds, with their edges in almost invisible whip-hems; and here and +there a finishing of lovely, lace-like crochet, done at odd minutes, and +for "visiting work,"--there was something prettier and more precious, +really, in all this than in the imported fineries which had come, +without labor and without thought, to her friends the Haddens. Besides, +there were the pleasant talks and readings of the winter evenings, all +threaded in and out, and associated indelibly with every seam. There was +the whole of "David Copperfield," and the beginning of "Our Mutual +Friend," ruffled up into the night-dresses; and some of the crochet was +beautiful with the rhymed pathos of "Enoch Arden," and some with the +poetry of the "Wayside Inn;" and there were places where stitches had +had to be picked out and done over, when the eye grew dim and the hand +trembled while the great war news was being read. + +Leslie loved it, and had a pride in it all; it was not, truly and only, +humiliation and disgust at self-comparison with the Haddens, but some +other and unexplained doubt which moved her now, and which was stirred +often by this, or any other of the objects and circumstances of her +life, and which kept her standing there with her hand upon the +bureau-knob, in a sort of absence, while Cousin Delight looked in, +approved, and presently dropped quietly among the rest, like a bit of +money into a contribution-box, the delicate breadths of linen cambric +she had just finished hemstitching and rolled together. + +"Oh, thank you! But, Cousin Delight," said Leslie, shutting the drawer, +and turning short round, suddenly, "I wish you'd just tell me--what you +think--is the sense of that--about the fig-tree! I suppose it's awfully +wicked, but I never could see. Is everything fig-leaves that isn't out +and out fruit, and is it all to be cursed, and why _should_ there be +anything but leaves when 'the time of figs was not yet'?" After her +first hesitation, she spoke quickly, impetuously, and without pause, as +something that _would_ come out. + +"I suppose that has troubled you, as I dare say it has troubled a great +many other people," said Cousin Delight. "It used to be a puzzle and a +trouble to me. But now it seems to me one of the most beautiful things +of all." She paused. + +"I can_not_ see how," said Leslie emphatically. "It always seems to me +so--somehow--unreasonable; and--angry." + +She said this in a lower tone, as afraid of the uttered audacity of her +own thought; and she walked off, as she spoke, towards the window once +more, and stood with her back to Miss Goldthwaite, almost as if she +wished to have done, again, with the topic. It was not easy for Leslie +to speak out upon such things; it almost made her feel cross when she +had done it. + +"People mistake the true cause and effect, I think," said Delight +Goldthwaite, "and so lose all the wonderful enforcement of that acted +parable. It was not, 'Cursed be the fig-tree because I have found +nothing thereon;' but, 'Let _no fruit_ grow on thee, henceforward, +forever.' It seems to me I can hear the tone of tender solemnity in +which Jesus would say such words; knowing, as only he knew, all that +they meant, and what should come, inevitably, of such a sentence. 'And +presently the fig-tree withered away.' The life was nothing, any longer, +from the moment when it might not be, what all life is, a reaching +forward to the perfecting of some fruit. There was nothing to come, ever +again, of all its greenness and beauty, and the greenness and beauty, +which were only a form and a promise, ceased to be. It was the way he +took to show his disciples, in a manner they should never forget, the +inexorable condition upon which all life is given, and that the barren +life, so soon as its barrenness is absolutely hopeless, becomes a +literal death." + +Leslie stood still, with her back to Miss Goldthwaite, and her face to +the window. Her perplexity was changed, but hardly cleared. There were +many things that crowded into her thoughts, and might have been spoken; +but it was quite impossible for her to speak. Impossible on this topic, +and she certainly could not speak, at once, on any other. + +Many seconds of silence counted themselves between the two. Then Cousin +Delight, feeling an intuition of much that held and hindered the young +girl, spoke again. "Does this make life seem hard?" + +"Yes," said Leslie then, with an effort that hoarsened her very voice, +"frightful." And as she spoke, she turned again quickly, as if to be +motionless longer were to invite more talk, and went over to the other +window, where her bird-cage hung, and began to take down the glasses. + +"Like all parables, it is manifold," said Delight gently. "There is a +great hope in it, too." + +Leslie was at her basin, now, turning the water faucet, to rinse and +refill the little drinking-vessel. She handled the things quietly, but +she made no pause. + +"It shows that, while we see the leaf, we may have hope of the fruit, in +ourselves or in others." + +She could not see Leslie's face. If she had, she would have perceived a +quick lifting and lightening upon it; then a questioning that would not +very long be repressed to silence. + +The glasses were put in the cage again, and presently Leslie came back +to a little low seat by Miss Goldthwaite's side, which she had been +occupying before all this talk began. "Other people puzzle me as much as +myself," she said. "I think the whole world is running to leaves, +sometimes." + +"Some things flower almost invisibly, and hide away their fruit under +thick foliage. It is often only when the winds shake their leaves down, +and strip the branches bare, that we find the best that has been +growing." + +"They make a great fuss and flourish with the leaves, though, as long as +they can. And it's who shall grow the broadest and tallest, and flaunt +out, with the most of them. After all, it's natural; and they _are_ +beautiful in themselves. And there's a 'time' for leaves, too, before +the figs." + +"Exactly. We have a right to look for the leaves, and to be glad of +them. That is a part of the parable." + +"Cousin Delight! Let's talk of real things, and let the parable alone a +minute." + +Leslie sprang impulsively to her bureau again, and flung forth the linen +drawer. + +"There are my fig-leaves,--some of them; and here are more." She turned, +with a quick movement, to her wardrobe; pulled out and uncovered a +bonnet-box which held a dainty headgear of the new spring fashion, and +then took down from a hook and tossed upon it a silken garment that +fluttered with fresh ribbons. "How much of this outside business is +right, and how much wrong, I should be glad to know? It all takes time +and thoughts; and those are life. How much life must go into the leaves? +That's what puzzles me. I can't do without the things; and I can't be +let to take 'clear comfort' in them, as grandma says, either." She was +on the floor, now, beside her little fineries; her hands clasped +together about one knee, and her face turned up to Cousin Delight's. She +looked as if she half believed herself to be ill-used. + +"And clothes are but the first want,--the primitive fig-leaves; the +world is full of other outside business,--as much outside as these," +pursued Miss Goldthwaite, thoughtfully. + +"Everything is outside," said Leslie. "Learning, and behaving, and +going, and doing, and seeing, and hearing, and having. 'It's all a +muddle,' as the poor man says in 'Hard Times.'" + +"I don't think I can do without the parable," said Cousin Delight. "The +real inward principle of the tree--that which corresponds to thought and +purpose in the soul--urges always to the finishing of its life in the +fruit. The leaves are only by the way,--an outgrowth of the same +vitality, and a process toward the end; but never, in any living thing, +the end itself." + +"Um," said Leslie, in her nonchalant fashion again; her chin between her +two hands now, and her head making little appreciative nods. "That's +like condensed milk; a great deal in a little of it. I'll put the +fig-leaves away now, and think it over." + +But, as she sprang up, and came round behind Miss Goldthwaite's chair, +she stopped and gave her a little kiss on the top of her head. If Cousin +Delight had seen, there was a bright softness in the eyes, which told of +feeling, and of gladness that welcomed the quick touch of truth. + +Miss Goldthwaite knew one good thing,--when she had driven her nail. +"She never hammered in the head with a punch, like a carpenter," Leslie +said of her. She believed that, in moral tool-craft, that finishing +implement belonged properly to the hand of an after-workman. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +WAYSIDE GLIMPSES + +I have mentioned one little theory, relating solely to domestic thrift, +which guided Mrs. Goldthwaite in her arrangements for her daughter. I +believe that, with this exception, she brought up her family very +nearly without any theory whatever. She did it very much on the +taking-for-granted system. She took for granted that her children were +born with the same natural perceptions as herself; that they could +recognize, little by little, as they grew into it, the principles of the +moral world,--reason, right, propriety,--as they recognized, growing +into them, the conditions of their outward living. She made her own life +a consistent recognition of these, and she lived _openly_ before them. +There was never any course pursued with sole calculation as to its +effect on the children. Family discussion and deliberation was seldom +with closed doors. Questions that came up were considered as they came; +and the young members of the household perceived as soon as their elders +the "reasons why" of most decisions. They were part and parcel of the +whole regime. They learned politeness by being as politely attended to +as company. They learned to be reasonable by seeing how the _reason_ +compelled father and mother, and not by having their vision stopped +short at the arbitrary fact that father and mother compelled them. I +think, on the whole, the Goldthwaite no-method turned out as good a +method as any. Men have found out lately that even horses may be guided +without reins. + +It was characteristic, therefore, that Mrs. Goldthwaite--receiving one +day a confidential note proposing to her a pleasant plan in behalf of +Leslie, and intended to guard against a premature delight and eagerness, +and so perhaps an ultimate disappointment for that young lady--should +instantly, on reading it, lay it open upon the table before her +daughter. "From Mrs. Linceford," she said, "and concerning you." + +Leslie took it up, expecting, possibly, an invitation to tea. When she +saw what it really was, her dark eyes almost blazed with sudden, joyous +excitement. + +"Of course, I should be delighted to say yes for you," said Mrs. +Goldthwaite, "but there are things to be considered. I can't tell how it +will strike your father." + +"School," suggested Leslie, the light in her eyes quieting a little. + +"Yes, and expense; though I don't think he would refuse on that score. +I should have _liked_"--Mrs. Goldthwaite's tone was only half, and very +gently, objecting; there was an inflection of ready self-relinquishment +in it, also--"to have had your _first_ journey with me. But you might +have waited a long time for that." + +If Leslie were disappointed in the end, she would have known that her +mother's heart had been with her from the beginning, and grown people +seldom realize how this helps even the merest child to bear a denial. + +"There is only a month now to vacation," said the young girl. + +"What do you think Mr. Waylie would say?" + +"I really think," answered Leslie, after a pause, "that he would say it +was better than books." + +They sat at their sewing together, after this, without speaking very +much more, at the present time, about it. Mrs. Goldthwaite was thinking +it over in her motherly mind, and in the mind of Leslie thought and hope +and anticipation were dancing a reel with each other. It is time to tell +the reader of the what and why. + +Mrs. Linceford, the elder married daughter of the Hadden family,--many +years the elder of her sisters, Jeannie and Elinor,--was about to take +them, under her care, to the mountains for the summer, and she kindly +proposed joining Leslie Goldthwaite to her charge. "The mountains" in +New England means usually, in common speech, the one royal range of the +White Hills. + +You can think what this opportunity was to a young girl full of fancy, +loving to hunt out, even by map and gazetteer, the by-nooks of travel, +and wondering already if she should ever really journey otherwise. You +can think how she waited, trying to believe she could bear any decision, +for the final determination concerning her. + +"If it had been to Newport or Saratoga, I should have said no at once," +said Mr. Goldthwaite. "Mrs. Linceford is a gay, extravagant woman, and +the Haddens' ideas don't precisely suit mine. But the mountains,--she +can't get into much harm there." + +"I shouldn't have cared for Newport or the Springs, father, truly," said +Leslie, with a little hopeful flutter of eagerness in her voice; "but +the real mountains,--O father!" + +The "O father!" was not without its weight. Also Mr. Waylie, whom Mr. +Goldthwaite called on and consulted, threw his opinion into the favoring +scale, precisely as Leslie had foreseen. He was a teacher who did not +imagine all possible educational advantage to be shut up within the four +walls of his or any other schoolroom. "She is just the girl to whom it +will do great good," he said. Leslie's last week's lessons were not +accomplished the less satisfactorily for this word of his, and the +pleasure it opened to her. + +There came a few busy days of stitching and starching, and crimping and +packing, and then, in the last of June, they would be off. They were to +go on Monday. The Haddens came over on Saturday afternoon, just as +Leslie had nearly put the last things into her trunk,--a new trunk, +quite her own, with her initials in black paint upon the russet leather +at each end. On the bed lay her pretty balmoral suit, made purposely for +mountain wears and just finished. The young girls got together here, in +Leslie's chamber, of course. + +"Oh, how pretty! It's perfectly charming,--the loveliest balmoral I ever +saw in my life!" cried Jeannie Hadden, seizing upon it instantly as she +entered the room. "Why, you'll look like a hamadryad, all in these wood +browns!" + +It was an uncommonly pretty striped petticoat, in two alternating shades +of dark and golden brown, with just a hair-line of black defining their +edges; and the border was one broad, soft, velvety band of black, and a +narrower one following it above and below, easing the contrast and +blending the colors. The jacket, or rather shirt, finished at the waist +with a bit of a polka frill, was a soft flannel, of the bright brown +shade, braided with the darker hue and with black; and two pairs of +bright brown raw-silk stockings, marked transversely with mere +thread-lines of black, completed the mountain outfit. + +"Yes; all I want is"--said Leslie, stopping short as she took up the hat +that lay there also,--last summer's hat, a plain black straw, with a +slight brim, and ornamented only with a round lace veil and two bits of +ostrich feather. "But never mind! It'll do well enough!" + +As she laid it down again and ceased speaking, Cousin Delight came in, +straight from Boston, where she had been doing two days' shopping; and +in her hand she carried a parcel in white paper. I was going to say a +round parcel, which it would have been but for something which ran out +in a sharp tangent from one side, and pushed the wrappings into an odd +angle. This she put into Leslie's hands. + +"A fresh--fig-leaf--for you, my dear." + +"What _does_ she mean?" cried the Haddens, coming close to see. + +"Only a little Paradise fashion of speech between Cousin Del and me," +said Leslie, coloring a little and laughing, while she began, somewhat +hurriedly, to remove the wrappings. + +"What have you done? And how did you come to think?" she exclaimed, as +the thing inclosed appeared: a round brown straw turban,--not a staring +turban, but one of those that slope with a little graceful downward +droop upon the brow,--bound with a pheasant's breast, the wing shooting +out jauntily, in the tangent I mentioned, over the right ear; all in +bright browns, in lovely harmony with the rest of the hamadryad costume. + +"It's no use to begin to thank you, Cousin Del. It's just one of the +things you re always doing, and rejoice in doing." The happy face was +full of loving thanks, plainer than many words. "Only you're a kind of a +_sarpent_ yourself after all, I'm afraid, with your beguilements. I +wonder if you thought of that," whispered Leslie merrily, while the +others oh-oh'd over the gift. "What else do you think I shall be good +for when I get all those on?" + +"I'll venture you," said Cousin Delight; and the trifling words conveyed +a real, earnest confidence, the best possible antidote to the +"beguilement." + +"One thing is funny," said Jeannie Hadden suddenly, with an accent of +demur. "We're all pheasants. _Our_ new hats are pheasants, too. I don't +know what Augusta will think of such a covey of us." + +"Oh, it's no matter," said Elinor. "This is a golden pheasant, on brown +straw, and ours are purple, on black. Besides, we all _look_ different +enough." + +"I suppose it doesn't signify," returned Jeannie; "and if Augusta thinks +it does, she may just give me that black and white plover of hers I +wanted so. I think our complexions _are_ all pretty well suited." + +This was true. The fair hair and deep blue eyes of Elinor were as pretty +under the purple plumage as Jeannie's darker locks and brilliant bloom; +and there was a wonderful bright mingling of color between the golden +pheasant's breast and the gleaming chestnut waves it crowned, as Leslie +took her hat and tried it on. + +This was one of the little touches of perfect taste and adaptation which +could sometimes make Leslie Goldthwaite almost beautiful, and was there +ever a girl of fifteen who would not like to be beautiful if she could? +This wish, and the thought and effort it would induce, were likely to be +her great temptation. Passably pretty girls, who may, with care, make +themselves often more than passable, have far the hardest of it with +their consciences about these things; and Leslie had a conscience, and +was reflective for her age,--and we have seen how questions had begun to +trouble her. + +A Sunday between a packing and a journey is a trying day always. There +are the trunks, and it is impossible not to think of the getting up and +getting off to-morrow; and one hates so to take out fresh sleeves and +collars and pocket-handkerchiefs, and to wear one's nice white skirts. +It is a Sunday put off, too probably, with but odds and ends of thought +as well as apparel. + +Leslie went to church, of course,--the Goldthwaites were always regular +in this; and she wore her quiet straw bonnet. Mrs. Goldthwaite had a +feeling that hats were rather pert and coquettish for the sanctuary. +Nevertheless they met the Haddens in the porch, in the glory of their +purple pheasant plumes, whereof the long tail-feathers made great +circles in the air as the young heads turned this way and that, in the +excitement of a few snatched words before they entered. + +The organ was playing; and the low, deep, tremulous rumble that an organ +gives sometimes, when it seems to creep under and vibrate all things +with a strange, vital thrill, overswept their trivial chat and made +Leslie almost shiver. "Oh, I wish they wouldn't do that," she said, +turning to go in. + +"What?" said Jeannie Hadden, unaware. + +"Touch the nerve. The great nerve--of creation." + +"What queer things Les' Goldthwaite says sometimes," whispered Elinor; +and they passed the inner door. + +The Goldthwaites sat two pews behind the Haddens. Leslie could not help +thinking how elegant Mrs. Linceford was, as she swept in, in her rich +black silk, and real lace shawl, and delicate, costly bonnet; and the +perfectly gloved hand that upheld a bit of extravagance in Valenciennes +lace and cambric made devotion seem--what? The more graceful and +touching in one who had all this world's luxuries, or--almost a mockery? + +The pheasant-plumed hats went decorously down in prayer-time, but the +tail-feathers ran up perker than ever, from the posture; Leslie saw +this, because she had lifted her own head and unclosed her eyes in a +self-indignant honesty, when she found on what her secret thoughts were +running. Were other people so much better than she? And _could_ they do +both things? How much was right in all this that was outwardly so +beguiling, and where did the "serving Mammon" begin? + +Was everything so much intenser and more absorbing with her than with +the Haddens? Why could she not take things as they came, as these girls +did, or seemed to do?--be glad of her pretty things, her pretty looks +even, her coming pleasures, with no misgivings or self-searchings, and +then turn round and say her prayers properly? + +Wasn't beauty put into the world for the sake of beauty? And wasn't it +right to love it, and make much of it, and multiply it? What were arts +and human ingenuities for, and the things given to work with? All this +grave weighing of a great moral question was in the mind of the young +girl of fifteen again this Sunday morning. Such doubts and balancings +begin far earlier, often, than we are apt to think. + +The minister shook hands cordially and respectfully with Mrs. Linceford +after church. He had no hesitation at her stylishness and fineries. +Everybody took everybody else for granted; and it was all right, Leslie +Goldthwaite supposed, except in her own foolish, unregulated thoughts. +Everybody else had done their Sunday duty, and it was enough; only she +had been all wrong and astray, and in confusion. There was a time for +everything, only her times and thoughts would mix themselves up and +interfere. Perhaps she was very weak-minded, and the only way for her +would be to give it all up, and wear drab, or whatever else might be +most unbecoming, and be fiercely severe, mortifying the flesh. She got +over that--her young nature reacting--as they all walked up the street +together, while the sun shone down smilingly upon the world in Sunday +best, and the flowers were gay in the door-yards, and Miss Milliken's +shop was reverential with the green shutters before the windows that +had been gorgeous yesterday with bright ribbons and fresh fashions; and +there was something thankful in her feeling of the pleasantness that was +about her, and a certainty that she should only grow morose if she took +to resisting it all. She would be as good as she could, and let the +pleasantness and the prettiness come "by the way." Yes, that was just +what Cousin Delight had said. "All these things shall be added,"--was +not that the Gospel word? So her troubling thought was laid for the +hour; but it should come up again. It was in the "seeking first" that +the question lay. By and by she would go back of the other to this, and +see clearer,--in the light, perhaps, of something that had been already +given her, and which, as she lived on toward a fuller readiness for it, +should be "brought to her remembrance." + +Monday brought the perfection of a traveler's morning. There had been a +shower during the night, and the highways lay cool, moist, and dark +brown between the green of the fields and the clean-washed, red-brick +pavements of the town. There would be no dust even on the railroad, and +the air was an impalpable draught of delight. To the three young girls, +standing there under the station portico,--for they chose the smell of +the morning rather than the odors of apples and cakes and +indescribables which go to make up the distinctive atmosphere of a +railway waiting-room,--there was but one thing to be done to-day in the +world; one thing for which the sun rose, and wheeled himself toward that +point in the heavens which would make eight o'clock down below. Of all +the ships that might sail this day out of harbors, or the trains that +might steam out of cities across States, they recked nothing but of this +that was to take them toward the hills. There were unfortunates, +doubtless, bound elsewhere, by peremptory necessity; there were people +who were going nowhere but about their daily work and errands; all these +were simply to be pitied, or wondered at, as to how they could feel +_not_ to be going upon a mountain journey. It is queer to think, on a +last Thursday in November, or on a Fourth of July, of States where there +may not be a Thanksgiving, or of far-off lands that have no Independence +day. It was just as strange, somehow, to imagine how this day, that was +to them the culminating point of so much happy anticipation, the +beginning of so much certain joy, could be otherwise, and yet be +anything to the supernumerary people who filled up around them the life +that centred in just this to them. Yet in truth it was, to most folks, +simply a fair Monday morning, and an excellent "drying day." + +They bounded off along the iron track,--the great steam pulse throbbed +no faster than in time to their bright young eagerness. It had been a +momentous matter to decide upon their seats, of which there had been +opportunity for choice when they entered the car; at last they had been +happily settled, face to face, by the good-natured removal of a couple +of young farmers, who saw that the four ladies wished to be seated +together. Their hand-bags were hung up, their rolls of shawls disposed +beneath their feet, and Mrs. Linceford had taken out her novel. The +Haddens had each a book also in her bag, to be perfectly according to +rule in their equipment; but they were not old travelers enough to care +to begin upon them yet. As to Leslie Goldthwaite, _her_ book lay ready +open before her, for long, contented reading, in two chapters, both +visible at once--the broad, open country, with its shifting pictures and +suggestions of life and pleasantness; and the carriage interior, with +its dissimilar human freight, and its yet more varied hints of history +and character and purpose. + +She made a story in her own mind, half unconsciously, of every one about +her. Of the pretty girl alone, with no elaborate traveling arrangements, +going only, it was evident, from one way-station to another, perhaps to +spend a summer day with a friend. Of the stout old country grandmamma, +with a basket full of doughnuts and early apples, that made a spiciness +and orchard fragrance all about her, and that she surely never meant to +eat herself, seeing, first, that she had not a tooth in her head, and +also that she made repeated anxious requests of the conductor, catching +him by the coat-skirts as he passed, to "let her know in season when +they began to get into Bartley;" who asked, confidentially, of her next +neighbor, a well-dressed elderly gentleman, if "he didn't think it was +about as cheap comin' by the cars as it would ha' ben to hire a passage +any other way?" and innocently endured the smile that her query called +forth on half a dozen faces about her. The gentleman, _without_ a smile, +courteously lowered his newspaper to reply that "he always thought it +better to avail one's self of established conveniences rather than to +waste time in independent contrivances;" and the old lady sat back,--as +far back as she dared, considering her momentary apprehension of +Bartley,--quite happily complacent in the confirmation of her own +wisdom. + +There was a trig, not to say prim, spinster, without a vestige of +comeliness in her face, save the comeliness of a clear, clean, energetic +expression,--such as a new broom or a bright tea-kettle might have, +suggesting capacity for house thrift and hearth comfort,--who wore a +gray straw bonnet, clean and neat as if it had not lasted for six years +at least, which its fashion evidenced, and which, having a bright green +tuft of artificial grass stuck arbitrarily upon its brim by way of +modern adornment, put Leslie mischievously in mind of a roof so old that +blades had sprouted in the eaves. She was glad afterwards that she had +not spoken her mischief. + +What made life beautiful to all these people? These farmers, who put on +at daybreak their coarse homespun, for long hours of rough labor? These +homely, home-bred women, who knew nothing of graceful fashions; who had +always too much to do to think of elegance in doing? Perhaps that was +just it; they had always something to do, something outside of +themselves,--in their honest, earnest lives there was little to tempt +them to a frivolous self-engrossment. Leslie touched close upon the very +help and solution she wanted, as she thought these thoughts. + +Opposite to her there sat a poor man, to whom there had happened a great +misfortune. One eye was lost, and the cheek was drawn and marked by some +great scar of wound or burn. One half his face was a fearful blot. How +did people bear such things as these,--to go through the world knowing +that it could never be pleasant to any human being to look upon them? +that an instinct of pity and courtesy would even turn every casual +glance away? There was a strange, sorrowful pleading in the one +expressive side of the man's countenance, and a singularly untoward +incident presently called it forth, and made it almost ludicrously +pitiful. A bustling fellow entered at a way-station, his arms full of a +great frame that he carried. As he blundered along the passage, looking +for a seat, a jolt of the car, in starting, pitched him suddenly into +the vacant place beside this man; and the open expanse of the large +looking-glass--for it was that which the frame held--was fairly smitten, +like an insult of fate, into the very face of the unfortunate. + +"Beg pardon," the new comer said, in an off-hand way, as he settled +himself, holding the glass full before the other while he righted it; +and then, for the first time, giving a quick glance toward him. The +astonishment, the intuitive repulsion, the consciousness of what he had +done, betokened by the instant look of the one man, and the helpless, +mute "How could you?" that seemed spoken in the strange, uprolled, +one-sided expression of the other,--these involuntarily-met regards made +a brief concurrence at once sad and irresistibly funny, as so many +things in this strange life are. + +The man of the mirror inclined his burden quietly the other way; and now +it reflected the bright faces opposite, under the pheasant plumes. Was +it any delight to Leslie to see her own face so? What was the use of +being--what right had she to wish to be--pretty and pleasant to look at, +when there were such utter lifelong loss and disfigurement in the world +for others? Why should it not as well happen to her? And how did the +world seem to such a person, and where was the _worth while_ of it? This +was the question which lingered last in her mind, and to which all else +reverted. _To be able to bear_--perhaps this was it; and this was +greater, indeed, than any outer grace. + +Such as these were the wayside meanings that came to Leslie Goldthwaite +that morning in the first few hours of her journey. Meanwhile, Jeannie +and Elinor Hadden had begun to be tired; and Mrs. Linceford, not much +entertained with her novel, held it half closed over her finger, drew +her brown veil closely, and sat with her eyes shut, compensating herself +with a doze for her early rising. Had the same things come to these? Not +precisely; something else, perhaps. In all things, one is still taken +and another left. I can only follow, minutely, one. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +EYESTONES. + +The road left the flat farming country now, and turned northward, up the +beautiful river valley. There was plenty to enjoy outside; and it was +growing more and more lovely with almost every mile. They left the great +towns gradually behind; each succeeding one seemed more simply rural. +Young girls were gathered on the platforms at the little stations where +they stopped sometimes; it was the grand excitement of the place,--the +coming of the train,--and to these village lasses was what the piazzas +or the springs are to gay dwellers at Saratoga. + +By dinner-time they steamed up to the stately back staircase of the +"Pemigewasset." In the little parlor where they smoothed their hair and +rested a moment before going to the dining-hall, they met again the lady +of the grass-grown bonnet. She took this off, making herself +comfortable, in her primitive fashion, for dinner; and then Leslie +noticed how little it was from any poverty of nature that the fair and +abundant hair, at least, had not been made use of to take down the +severe primness of her outward style. It did take it down in spite of +all, the moment the gray straw was removed. The great round coil behind +was all real and _solid_, though it was wound about with no thought save +of security, and fastened with a buffalo-horn comb. Hair was a matter of +course; the thing was, to keep it out of the way; that was what the +fashion of this head expressed, and nothing more. Where it was tucked +over the small ears,--and native refinement or the other thing shows +very plainly in the ears,--it lay full, and shaped into a soft curve. +She was only plain, not ugly, after all; and they are very different +things,--there being a beauty of plainness in men and women, as there is +in a rich fabric, sometimes. + +While Leslie was noticing these things, Elinor Hadden stood by a window +with her back to the others. She did not complain at first; one doesn't +like to allow, at once, that the toothache, or a mischance like this +that had happened to her, is an established fact,--one is in for it the +moment one does that. But she had got a cinder in her eye; and though +she had winked, and stared, and rolled her eyelid under, and tried all +the approved and instinctive means, it seemed persistent; and she was +forced at last, just as her party was going in to dinner, to acknowledge +that this traveler's misery had befallen her, and to make up her mind +to the pain and wretchedness and ugliness of it for hours, if not even +for days. Her face was quite disfigured already; the afflicted eye was +bloodshot, and the whole cheek was red with tears and rubbing; she could +only follow blindly along, her handkerchief up, and, half groping into +the seat offered her, begin comfortlessly to help herself to some soup +with her left hand. There was leaning across to inquire and pity; there +were half a dozen things suggested, to which she could only reply, +forlornly and impatiently, "I've tried it." None of them could eat much, +or with any satisfaction; this atom in the wrong place set everything +wrong all at once with four people who, till now, had been so cheery. + +The spinster lady was seated at some little distance down, on the +opposite side. She began to send quick, interested glances over at them; +to make little half-starts toward them, as if she would speak; and at +last, leaving her own dinner unfinished, she suddenly pushed back her +chair, got up, and came round. She touched Elinor Hadden on the +shoulder, without the least ado of ceremony. "Come out here with me," +she said. "I can set you right in half a minute;" and, confident of +being followed, moved off briskly out of the long hall. + +Elinor gave a one-sided, questioning glance at her sisters before she +complied, reminding Leslie comically of the poor, one-eyed man in the +cars; and presently, with a little hesitation, Mrs. Linceford and +Jeannie compromised the matter by rising themselves and accompanying +Elinor from the room. Leslie, of course, went also. + +The lady had her gray bonnet on when they got back to the little parlor; +there is no time to lose in mere waiting for anything at a railway +dining-place; and she had her bag--a veritable, old-fashioned, home-made +carpet thing--open on a chair before her, and in her hand a long, knit +purse with steel beads and rings. Out of this she took a twisted bit of +paper, and from the paper a minute something which she popped between +her lips as she replaced the other things. Then she just beckoned, +hastily, to Elinor. + +"It's only an eyestone; did you ever have one in? Well, you needn't be +afraid of it; I've had 'em in hundreds of times. You wouldn't know 't +was there, and it'll just ease all the worry; and by and by it'll drop +out of itself, cinder and all. They're terribly teasing things, cinders; +and somebody's always sure to get one. I always keep three eyestones in +my purse. You needn't mind my not having it back; I've got a little +glass bottle full at home, and it's wonderful the sight of comfort +they've been to folks." + +Elinor shrunk; Mrs. Linceford showed a little high-bred demur about +accepting the offered aid of their unknown traveling companion; but the +good woman comprehended nothing of this, and went on insisting. + +"You'd better let me put it in right off; it's only just to drop it +under the eyelid, and it'll work round till it finds the speck. But you +can take it and put it in yourself, when you've made up your mind, if +you'd rather." With which she darted her head quickly from side to side, +looking about the room, and, spying a scrap of paper on a table, had the +eyestone twisted in it in an instant, and pressed it into Elinor's hand. +"You'll be glad enough of it, yet," said she, and then took up her bag, +and moved quickly off among the other passengers descending to the +train. + +"What a funny woman, to be always carrying eyestones about, and putting +them in people's eyes!" said Jeannie. + +"It was quite kind of her, I'm sure," said Mrs. Linceford, with a +mingling in her tone of acknowledgment and of polite tolerance for a +great liberty. When elegant people break their necks or their limbs, +common ones may approach and assist; as, when a house takes fire, +persons get in who never did before; and perhaps a suffering eye may +come into the catalogue of misfortunes sufficient to equalize +differences for the time being. But it _is_ queer for a woman to make +free to go without her own dinner to offer help to a stranger in pain. +Not many people, in any sense of the word, go about provided with +eyestones against the chance cinders that may worry others. Something in +this touched Leslie Goldthwaite with a curious sense of a beauty in +living that was not external. + +If it had not been for Elinor's mishap and inability to enjoy, it would +have been pure delight from the very beginning, this afternoon's ride. +They had their seats upon the "mountain side," where the view of the +thronging hills was like an ever-moving panorama; as, winding their way +farther and farther up into the heart of the wild and beautiful region, +the horizon seemed continually to fill with always vaster shapes, that +lifted themselves, or emerged, over and from behind each other, like +mustering clans of giants, bestirred and curious, because of the +invasion among their fastnesses of this sprite of steam. + +"Where you can come down, I can go up," it seemed to fizz, in its +strong, exulting whisper, to the river; passing it always, yet never +getting by; tracking, step by step, the great stream backward toward its +small beginnings. + +"See, there are real blue peaks!" cried Leslie joyously, pointing away +to the north and east where the outlines lay faint and lovely in the far +distance. + +"Oh, I wish I could see! I'm losing it all!" said Elinor, plaintively +and blindfold. + +"Why don't you try the eyestone?" said Jeannie. + +But Elinor shrunk, even yet, from deliberately putting that great thing +in her eye, agonized already by the presence of a mote. + +There came a touch on her shoulder, as before. The good woman of the +gray bonnet had come forward from her seat farther down the car. + +"I'm going to stop presently," she said, "at East Haverhill; and I +_should_ feel more satisfied in my mind if you'd just let me see you +easy before I go. Besides, if you don't do something quick, the cinder +will get so bedded in, and make such an inflammation, that a dozen +eyestones wouldn't draw it out." + +At this terror, poor Elinor yielded, in a negative sort of way. She +ceased to make resistance when her unknown friend, taking the little +twist of paper from the hand still fast closed over it with the +half-conscious grasp of pain, dexterously unrolled it, and produced the +wonderful chalky morsel. + +"Now, 'let's see, says the blind man;'" and she drew down hand and +handkerchief with determined yet gentle touch. "Wet it in your own +mouth,"--and the eyestone was between Elinor's lips before she could +refuse or be aware. Then one thumb and finger was held to take it again, +while the other made a sudden pinch at the lower eyelid, and, drawing it +at the outer corner before it could so much as quiver away again, the +little white stone was slid safely under. + +"Now 'wink as much as you please,' as the man said that took an +awful-looking daguerreotype of me once. Good-by. Here's where I get out. +And there they all are to meet me." And then, the cars stopping, she +made her way, with her carpet-bag and parasol and a great newspaper +bundle, gathered up hurriedly from goodness knows where, along the +passage, and out upon the platform. + +"Why, it's the strangest thing! I don't feel it in the least! Do you +suppose it ever _will_ come out again, Augusta?" cried Elinor, in a tone +greatly altered from any in which she had spoken for two hours. + +"Of course it will," cried "Gray-bonnet" from beneath the window. "Don't +be under the least mite of concern about anything but looking out for it +when it does, to keep it against next time." + +Leslie saw the plain, kindly woman surrounded in a minute by half a +dozen eager young welcomers and claimants, and a whole history came out +in the unreserved exclamations of the few instants for which the train +delayed. + +"Oh, it's _such_ a blessing you've come! I don't know as Emma Jane would +have been married at all if you hadn't!" + +"We warn't sure you'd get the letter." + +"Or as Aunt Nisby would spare you." + +"'Life wanted to come over on his crutches. He's just got his new ones, +and he gets about first-rate. But we wouldn't let him beat himself out +for to-morrow." + +"How is 'Life?" + +"Hearty as would anyway be consistent--with one-leggedness. He'd never +'a' got back, we all know, if you hadn't gone after him." It was a young +man's voice that spoke these last sentences, and it grew tender at the +end. + +"You're to trim the cake," began one of the young girls again, crowding +up. "She says nobody else can. Nobody else _ever_ can. And"--with a +little more mystery--"there's the veil to fix. She says you're used to +wedd'n's and know about veils; and you was down to Lawrence at Lorany's. +And she wants things in _real style_. She's dreadful _pudjicky_, Emma +Jane is; she won't have anything without it's exactly right." + +The plain face was full of beaming sympathy and readiness. The +stiff-looking spinster woman, with the "grass in the eaves of her +bonnet,"--grass grown, also, over many an old hope in her own life, may +be,--was here in the midst of young joy and busy interest, making them +all her own; had come on purpose, looked for and hailed as the one +without whom nothing could ever be done,--more tenderly yet, as one but +for whom some brave life and brother love would have gone down. In the +midst of it all she had had ear and answer, to the very last, for the +stranger she had comforted on her way. What difference did it make +whether she wore an old bonnet with green grass in it, or a round hat +with a gay feather? whether she were fifteen or forty-five, but for the +good she had had time to do? whether Lorany's wedding down at Lawrence +had been really a stylish festival or no? There was a beauty here which +verily shone out through all; and such a life should have no time to be +tempted. + +The engine panted, and the train sped on. She never met her +fellow-traveler again, but these things Leslie Goldthwaite had learned +from her,--these things she laid by silently in her heart. And the woman +in the gray bonnet never knew the half that she had done. + +After taking one through wildernesses of beauty, after whirling one past +nooks where one could gladly linger whole summers, it is strange at what +commonplace and graceless termini these railroads contrive to land one. +Lovely Wells River, where the road makes its sharp angle, and runs back +again until it strikes out eastward through the valley of the +Ammonoosuc; where the waters leap to each other, and the hills bend +round in majestic greeting; where our young party cried out, in an +ignorance at once blessed and pathetic, "Oh, if Littleton should only be +like this, or if we could stop here!"--yet where one cannot stop, +because here there is no regular stage connection, and nothing else to +be found, very probably, that travelers might want, save the outdoor +glory,--Wells River and Woodsville were left behind, lying in the +evening stillness of June,--in the grand and beautiful disregard of +things greater than the world is rushing by to seek,--and for an hour +more they threaded through fair valley sweeps and reaches, past solitary +hillside clearings and detached farms and the most primitive of mountain +hamlets, where the limit and sparseness of neighborhood drew forth from +a gentleman sitting behind them--come, doubtless, from some suburban +home, where numberless household wants kept horse and wagon perpetually +on the way for city or village--the suggestive query, "I wonder what +they do here when they're out of saleratus?" + +They brought them up, as against a dead wall of dreariness and +disappointment, at the Littleton station. It had been managed as it +always is: the train had turned most ingeniously into a corner whence +there was scarcely an outlook upon anything of all the magnificence that +must yet be lying close about them; and here was only a tolerably +well-populated country town, filled up to just the point that excludes +the picturesque and does not attain to the highly civilized. And into +the heart of this they were to be borne, and to be shut up there this +summer night, with the full moon flooding mountain and river, and the +woods whispering up their peace to heaven. + +It was bad enough, but worse came. The hotel coach was waiting, and they +hastened to secure their seats, giving their checks to the driver, who +disappeared with a handful of these and others, leaving his horses with +the reins tied to the dash-board, and a boy ten years old upon the box. + +There were heads out anxiously at either side, between concern for +safety of body and of property. Mrs. Linceford looked uneasily toward +the confused group upon the platform, from among whom luggage began to +be drawn out in a fashion regardless of covers and corners. The large +russet trunk with the black "H,"--the two linen-cased ones with "Hadden" +in full;--the two square bonnet-boxes,--these, one by one, were dragged +and whirled toward the vehicle and jerked upon the rack; but the "ark," +as they called Mrs. Linceford's huge light French box, and the one +precious receptacle that held all Leslie's pretty outfit, where were +these? + +"Those are not all, driver! There is a high black French trunk, and a +russet leather one." + +"Got all you give me checks for,--seb'm pieces;" and he pointed to two +strange articles of luggage waiting their turn to be lifted up,--a long, +old-fashioned gray hair trunk, with letters in brass nails upon the lid, +and as antiquated a carpet-bag, strapped and padlocked across the mouth, +suggestive in size and fashion of the United States mail. + +"Never saw them before in my life! There's some dreadful mistake! What +_can_ have become of ours?" + +"Can't say, ma'am, I'm sure. Don't often happen. But them was your +checks." + +Mrs. Linceford leaned back for an instant in a breathless despair. "I +must get out and see." + +"If you please, ma'am. But 't ain't no use. The things is all cleared +off." Then, stooping to examine the trunk, and turning over the bag, +"Queer, too. These things is chalked all right for Littleton. Must ha' +been a mistake with the checks, and somebody changed their minds on the +way,--Plymouth, most likely,--and stopped with the wrong baggage. +Wouldn't worry, ma'am; it's as bad for one as for t' other, anyhow, and +they'll be along to-morrow, no kind o' doubt. Strays allers turns up on +this here road. No danger about that. I'll see to havin' these 'ere +stowed away in the baggage-room." And shouldering the bag, he seized the +trunk by the handle and hauled it along over the rough embankment and up +the steps, flaying one side as he went. + +"But, dear me! what am I to do?" said Mrs. Linceford piteously. +"Everything in it that I want to-night,--my dressing-box and my wrappers +and my air-cushion; they'll be sure not to have any bolsters on the +beds, and only one feather in each corner of the pillows!" + +But this was only the first surprise of annoyance. She recollected +herself on the instant, and leaned back again, saying nothing more. She +had no idea of amusing her unknown stage companions at any length with +her fine-lady miseries. Only, just before they reached the hotel, she +added low to Jeannie, out of the unbroken train of her own private +lamentation, "And my rose-glycerine! After all this dust and heat! I +feel parched to a mummy, and I shall be an object to behold!" + +Leslie sat upon her right hand. She leaned closer, and said quickly, +glad of the little power to comfort, "I have some rose-glycerine here in +my bag." + +Mrs. Linceford looked round at her; her face was really bright. As if +she had not lost her one trunk also! "You are a phoenix of a traveling +companion, you young thing!" the lady thought, and felt suddenly ashamed +of her own unwonted discomfiture. + +Half an hour afterward Leslie Goldthwaite flitted across the passage +between the two rooms they had secured for their party, with a bottle in +her hand and a pair of pillows over her arm. "Ours is a double-bedded +room, too, Mrs. Linceford, and neither Elinor nor I care for more than +one pillow. And here is the rose-glycerine." + +These essential comforts, and the instinct of good-breeding, brought the +grace and the smile back fully to Mrs. Linceford's face. More than that, +she felt a gratefulness, and the contagion and emulation of cheerful +patience under a common misfortune. She bent over and kissed Leslie as +she took the bottle from her hand. "You're a dear little sunbeam," she +said. "We'll send an imperative message down the line, and have all our +own traps again to-morrow." + +The collar that Elinor Hadden had lent Leslie was not very becoming, +the sleeves had enormous wristbands, and were made for double +sleeve-buttons, while her own were single; moreover, the brown silk net, +which she had supposed thoroughly trustworthy, had given way all at +once into a great hole under the waterfall, and the soft hair would fret +itself through and threaten to stray untidily. + +She had two such pretty nets in reserve in her missing trunk, and she +did hate so to be in any way coming to pieces! Yet there was somehow a +feeling that repaid it all, and even quieted the real anxiety as to +the final "turning up" of their fugitive property,--not a mere +self-complacence, hardly a self-complacence at all, but a half-surprised +gladness, that had something thankful in it. If she might not be all +leaves, perhaps, after all! If she really could, even in some slight +thing, care most for the life and spirit underneath, to keep this sweet +and pleasant, and the fruit of it a daily good, and not a bitterness; if +she could begin by holding herself undisturbed, though obliged to wear a +collar that stood up behind and turned over in front with those lappet +corners she had always thought so ugly,--yes, even though the waterfall +should leak out and ripple over stubbornly,--though these things must go +on for twenty-four hours at least, and these twenty-four hours be spent +unwillingly in a dull country tavern, where the windows looked out from +one side into a village street, and from the other into stable and +clothes yards! There would be something for her to do: to keep bright +and help to keep the others bright. There was a hope in it; the life +was more than raiment; it was better worth while than to have only got +on the nice round collar and dainty cuffs that fitted and suited her, or +even the little bead net that came over in a Marie Stuart point so +prettily between the small crimped puffs of her hair. + +A little matter, nothing to be self-applauding about,--only a straw; +but--if it showed the possible way of the wind, the motive power that +might be courted to set through her life, taking her out of the +trade-currents of vanity? Might she have it in her, after all? Might she +even be able to come, if need be, to the strength of mind for wearing an +old gray straw bonnet, and bearing to be forty years old, and helping to +adorn the young and beautiful for looks that never--just so--should be +bent again on her? + +Leslie Goldthwaite had read of martyr and hero sufferance all her life, +as she had looked upon her poor one-eyed fellow-traveler to-day; the +pang of sympathy had always been: "These things have been borne, are +being borne, in the world; how much of the least of them could I +endure,--I, looking for even the little things of life to be made +smooth?" It depended, she began faintly and afar off to see, upon where +the true life lay; how far behind the mere outer covering vitality +withdrew itself. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +MARMADUKE WHARNE. + +Up--up--up,--from glory to glory! + +This was what it seemed to Leslie Goldthwaite, riding, that golden June +morning, over the road that threaded along, always climbing, the chain +of hills that _could_ be climbed, into the nearer and nearer presence of +those mountain majesties, penetrating farther and father into the grand +solitudes sentineled forever by their inaccessible pride. + +Mrs. Linceford had grown impatient; she had declared it impossible, when +the splendid sunshine of that next day challenged them forth out of +their dull sojourn, to remain there twenty-four hours longer, waiting +for anything. Trunks or none, she would go on, and wait at Jefferson, at +least, where there was something to console one. All possible precaution +was taken; all possible promises were made; the luggage should be sent +on next day,--perhaps that very night; wagons were going and returning +often now; there would be no further trouble, they might rest assured. +The hotel-keeper had a "capital team,"--his very best,--at their +instant service, if they chose to go on this morning; it could be at the +door in twenty minutes. So it was chartered, and ordered round,--an open +mountain wagon, with four horses; their remaining luggage was secured +upon it, and they themselves took their seats gayly. + +"Who cares for trunks or boxes now?" Leslie cried out in joyousness, +catching the first, preparatory glimpse of grandeur, when their road, +that wound for a time through the low, wet valley-lands, began to ascend +a rugged hillside, whence opened vistas that hinted something of the +glory that was to come. All the morning long, there wheeled about them, +and smiled out in the sunshine, or changed to grave, grand reticence +under the cloud-shadows, those shapes of might and beauty that filled up +earth and heaven. + +Leslie grew silent, with the hours of over-full delight. Thoughts +thronged in upon her. All that had been deepest and strongest in the +little of life that she had lived wakened and lifted again in such +transcendent presence. Only the high places of spirit can answer to +these high places of God in his creation. + +Now and then, Jeannie and Elinor fell into their chatter, about their +summer plans, and pleasures, and dress; about New York, and the new +house Mrs. Linceford had taken in West Twenty-ninth Street, where they +were to visit her next winter, and participate for the first time, under +her matronizing, in city gayeties. Leslie wondered how they could; she +only answered when appealed to; she felt as if people were jogging her +elbow, and whispering distractions, in the midst of some noble +eloquence. + +The woods had a word for her; a question, and their own sweet answer of +help. The fair June leafage was out in its young glory of vivid green; +it reminded her of her talk with Cousin Delight. + +"We _do_ love leaves for their own sake; trees, and vines, and the very +green grass, even." So she said to herself, asking still for the perfect +parable that should solve and teach all. + +It came, with the breath of wild grape vines, hidden somewhere in the +wayside thickets. "Under the leaf lies our tiny green blossom," it said; +"and its perfume is out on the air. Folded in the grass-blade is a +feathery bloom, of seed or grain; and by and by the fields will be all +waving with it. Be sure that the blossom is under the leaf." + +Elinor Hadden's sweet child-face, always gentle and good-humored, though +visited little yet with the deep touch of earnest thought,--smiling upon +life as life smiled upon her,--looked lovelier to Leslie as this whisper +made itself heard in her heart; and it was with a sweeter patience and a +more believing kindliness that she answered, and tried to enter into, +her next merry words. + +There was something different about Jeannie. She was older; there was a +kind of hard determination sometimes with her, in turning from +suggestions of graver things; the child-unconsciousness was no longer +there; something restless, now and then defiant, had taken its place; +she had caught a sound of the deeper voices, but her soul would not yet +turn to listen. She felt the blossom of life yearning under the leaf; +but she bent the green beauty heedfully above it, and made believe it +was not there. + +Looking into herself and about her with asking eyes, Leslie had learned +something already by which she apprehended these things of others. +Heretofore, her two friends had seemed to her alike,--able, both of +them, to take life innocently and carelessly as it came; she began now +to feel a difference. + +Her eyes were bent away off toward the Franconia hills, when Mrs. +Linceford leaned round to look in them, and spoke, in the tone her voice +had begun to take toward her. She felt one of her strong likings--her +immense fancies, as she called them, which were really warm sympathies +of the best of her with the best she found in the world--for Leslie +Goldthwaite. + +"It seems to me you are a _stray_ sunbeam this morning," she said, in +her winning way. "What kind of thoughts are going out so far? What is it +all about?" + +A verse of the Psalms was ringing itself in Leslie's mind; had been +there, under all the other vague musings and chance suggestions for many +minutes of her silence. But she would not have spoken it--she _could_ +not--for all the world. She gave the lady one of the chance suggestions +instead. "I have been looking down into that lovely hollow; it seems +like a children's party, with all the grave, grown folks looking on." + +"Childhood and grown-up-hood; not a bad simile." + +It was not, indeed. It was a wild basin, within a group of the lesser +hills close by; full of little feathery birches, that twinkled and +played in the light breeze and gorgeous sunshine slanting in upon them +between the slopes that lay in shadow above,--slopes clothed with ranks +of dark pines and cedars and hemlocks, looking down seriously, yet with +a sort of protecting tenderness, upon the shimmer and frolic they seemed +to have climbed up out of. Those which stood in the half way shadow were +gravest. Hoar old stems upon the very tops were touched with the +self-same glory that lavished itself below. This also was no less a true +similitude. + +"Know ye not this parable?" the Master said. "How then shall ye know +all parables?" Verily, they lie about us by the wayside, and the whole +earth is vocal with the wisdom of the Lord. + +I cannot go with our party step by step; I have a summer to spend with +them. They came to Jefferson at noon, and sat themselves down in the +solemn high court and council of the mountain kings. First, they must +have rooms. In the very face of majesty they must settle their traps. + +"You are lucky in coming in for one vacancy, made to-day," the +proprietor said, throwing open a door that showed them a commodious +second-floor corner-room, looking each way with broad windows upon the +circle of glory, from Adams to Lafayette. A wide balcony ran along the +southern side against the window which gave that aspect. There were two +beds here, and two at least of the party must be content to occupy. Mrs. +Linceford, of course; and it was settled that Jeannie should share it +with her. + +Upstairs, again, was choice of two rooms,--one flight, or two. But the +first looked out westward, where was comparatively little of what they +had come for. Higher up, they could have the same outlook that the +others had; a slanting ceiling opened with dormer window full upon the +grandeur of Washington, and a second faced southward to where beautiful +blue, dreamy Lafayette lay soft against the tender heaven. + +"Oh, let us have this!" said Leslie eagerly. "We don't mind stairs." And +so it was settled. + +"Only two days here?" they began to say, when they gathered in Mrs. +Linceford's room at nearly tea-time, after a rest and freshening of +their toilets. + +"We might stay longer," Mrs. Linceford answered. "But the rooms are +taken for us at Outledge, and one can't settle and unpack, when it's +only a lingering from day to day. All there is here one sees from the +windows. A great deal, to be sure; but it's all there at the first +glance. We'll see how we feel on Friday." + +"The Thoresbys are here, Augusta. I saw Ginevra on the balcony just now. +They seem to have a large party with them. And I'm sure I heard them +talk of a hop to-night. If your trunks would only come!" + +"They could not in time. They can only come in the train that reaches +Littleton at six." + +"But you'll go in, won't you? 'T isn't likely they dress much +here,--though Ginevra Thoresby always dresses. Elinor and I could just +put on our blue grenadines, and you've got plenty of things in your +other boxes. One of your shawls is all you want, and we can lend Leslie +something." + +"I've only my thick traveling boots," said Leslie; "and I shouldn't +feel fit without a thorough dressing. It won't matter the first night, +will it?" + +"Leslie Goldthwaite, you're getting slow! Augusta!" + +"As true as I live, there is old Marmaduke Wharne!" + +"Let Augusta alone for not noticing a question till she chooses to +answer it," said Jeannie Hadden, laughing. "And who, pray, is Marmaduke +Wharne? With a name like that, if you didn't say 'old,' I should make up +my mind to a real hero, right out of a book." + +"He's an original. And--yes--he is a hero,--_out_ of a book, too, in his +way. I met him at Catskill last summer. He stayed there the whole +season, till they shut the house up and drove him down the mountain. +Other people came and went, took a look, and ran away; but he was a +fixture. He says he always does so,--goes off somewhere and 'finds an +Ararat,' and there drifts up and sticks fast. In the winter he's in New +York; but that's a needle in a haystack. I never heard of him till I +found him at Catskill. He's an English-man, and they say had more to his +name once. It was Wharne_cliffe_, or Wharne_leigh_, or something, and +there's a baronetcy in the family. I don't doubt, myself, that it's his, +and that a part of his oddity has been to drop it. He was a poor +preacher, years ago; and then, of a sudden, he went out to England, and +came back with plenty of money, and since then he's been an apostle and +missionary among the poor. That's his winter work; the summers, as I +said, he spends in the hills. Most people are half afraid of him; for +he's one you'll get the blunt truth from, if you never got it before. +But come, there's the gong,--ugh! how they batter it! and we must get +through tea and out upon the balcony, to see the sunset and the 'purple +light.' There's no time now, girls, for blue grenadines; and it's always +vulgar to come out in a hurry with dress in a strange place." And Mrs. +Linceford gave a last touch to her hair, straightened the things on her +dressing-table, shut down the lid of a box, and led the way from the +room. + +Out upon the balcony they watched the long, golden going down of the +sun, and the creeping shadows, and the purple half-light, and the +after-smile upon the crests. And then the heaven gathered itself in its +night stillness, and the mountains were grand in the soft gloom, until +the full moon came up over Washington. + +There had been a few words of recognition with the Thoresby party, and +then our little group had betaken itself to the eastern end of the +piazza. After a while, one by one, the others strayed away, and they +were left almost alone. There was a gathering and a sound of voices +about the drawing-room, and presently came the tones of the piano, +struck merrily. They jarred, somehow, too; for the ringing, thrilling +notes of a horn, blown below, had just gone down the diminishing echoes +from cliff to cliff, and died into a listening silence, away over, one +could not tell where, beyond the mysterious ramparts. + +"It's getting cold," said Jeannie impatiently. "I think we've stayed +here long enough. Augusta, _don't_ you mean to get a proper shawl, and +put some sort of lace thing on your head, and come in with us for a +look, at least, at the hop? Come, Nell; come, Leslie; you might as well +be at home as in a place like this, if you're only going to mope." + +"It seems to me," said Leslie, more to herself than to Jeannie, looking +over upon the curves and ridges and ravines of Mount Washington, showing +vast and solemn under the climbing moon, "as if we had got into a +cathedral!" + +"And the 'great nerve' was being touched! Well,--that don't make _me_ +shiver. Besides, I didn't come here to shiver. I've come to have a right +good time; and to look at the mountains--as much as is reasonable." + +It was a pretty good definition of what Jeannie Hadden thought she had +come into the world for. There was subtle indication in it, also, that +the shadow of some doubt had not failed to touch her either, and that +this with her was less a careless instinct than a resolved conclusion. + +Elinor, in her happy good-humor, was ready for either thing: to stay in +the night splendor longer, or to go in. It ended in their going in. +Outside, the moon wheeled on in her long southerly circuit, the stars +trembled in their infinite depths, and the mountains abided in awful +might. Within was a piano tinkle of gay music, and demi-toilette, and +demi-festival,--the poor, abridged reproduction of city revelry in the +inadequate parlor of an unpretending mountain-house, on a three-ply +carpet. + +Marmaduke Wharne came and looked in at the doorway. Mrs. Linceford rose +from her seat upon the sofa close by, and gave him courteous greeting. +"The season has begun early, and you seem likely to have a pleasant +summer here," she said, with the half-considered meaning of a common +fashion of speech. + +"No, madam!" answered Marmaduke Wharne, out of his real thought, with a +blunt emphasis. + +"You think not?" said Mrs. Linceford suavely, in a quiet amusement. "It +looks rather like it to-night." + +"_This?_--It's no use for people to bring their bodies to the +mountains, if they can't bring souls in them!" And Marmaduke Wharne +turned on his heel, and, without further courtesy, strode away. + +"What an old Grimgriffinhoof!" cried Jeannie under her breath; and +Elinor laughed her little musical laugh of fun. + +Mrs. Linceford drew up her shawl, and sat down again, the remnant of a +well-bred smile upon her face. Leslie Goldthwaite rather wished old +Marmaduke Wharne would come back again and say more. But this first +glimpse of him was all they got to-night. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +HUMMOCKS. + + "Blown crystal clear by Freedom's northern wind." + +Leslie said the last line of Whittier's glorious mountain sonnet, low, +to herself, standing on the balcony again that next morning, in the +cold, clear breeze; the magnificent lines of the great earth-masses +rearing themselves before her sharply against a cloudless morning sky, +defining and revealing themselves anew. + +"Freedom's northern wind will take all the wave out of your hair, and +give you a red nose!" said Jeannie, coming round from her room, and upon +Leslie unaware. + +Well, Jeannie _was_ a pretty thing to look at, in her delicate blue +cambric morning dress, gracefully braided with white, with the fresh +rose of recent sleep in her young cheeks, and the gladness of young life +in her dark eyes. One might look away from the mountains to look at her; +for, after all, the human beauty is the highest. Only, it must express +high things, or at last one turns aside. + +"And there comes Marmaduke; he's worse than the north wind. I can't +stay to be 'blown clear' by him." And Jeannie, in high, merry +good-humor, flitted off. It is easy to be merry and good-humored when +one's new dress fits exquisitely, and one's hair hasn't been fractious +in the doing up. + +Leslie had never, apparently to herself, cared less, somehow, for self +and little vanities; it seemed as if it were going to be quite easy for +her, now and henceforth, to care most for the nobler things of life. The +great mountain enthusiasm had seized her for the first time and swept +away before it all meaner thought; and, besides, her trunk had been left +behind, and she had nothing to put herself into but her plain brown +traveling dress. + +She let the wind play with the puffs of her hair, and send some little +light locks astray about her forehead. She wrapped her shawl around her, +and went and sat where she had sat the night before, at the eastern end +of the balcony, her face toward the morning hills, as it had been toward +the evening radiance and purple shade. Marmaduke Wharne was moving up +and down, stopping a little short of her when he turned, keeping his own +solitude as she kept hers. Faces and figures glanced out at the +hall-door for an instant each, and the keen salute of the north wind +sent them invariably in again. Nobody wanted to go with a red nose or +tossed hair to the breakfast-table; and breakfast was almost ready. But +presently Mrs. Linceford came, and, seeing Mr. Wharne, who always +interested and amused her, she ventured forth, bidding him good-morning. + +"Good-morning, madam. It _is_ a good morning." + +"A little sharp, isn't it?" she said, shrugging her shoulders together, +irresolute about further lingering. "Ah, Leslie? Let me introduce you to +the Reverend Mr. Wharne. My young friend and traveling companion, Miss +Leslie Goldthwaite, Mr. Wharne. Have you two driven everybody else off, +or is it the nipping air?" + +"I think it is either that they have not said their prayers this +morning, or that they don't know their daily bread when they see it. +They think it is only saleratus cakes and maple molasses." + +"As cross this morning as last night?" the lady questioned playfully. + +"Not cross at all, Mrs. Linceford. Only jarred upon continually by these +people we have here just now. It was different two years ago. But +Jefferson is getting to be too well known. The mountain places are being +spoiled, one after another." + +"People will come. You can't help that." + +"Yes, they will come, and frivel about the gates, without ever once +entering in. 'Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? And who shall +stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart; who +hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity.'" + +Leslie Goldthwaite's face quickened and glowed; they were the psalm +lines that had haunted her thought yesterday, among the opening visions +of the hill-country. Marmaduke Wharne bent his keen eyes upon her, from +under their gray brows, noting her narrowly. She wist not that she was +noted, or that her face shone. + +"One soul here, at least!" was what the stern old man said to himself in +that moment. + +He was cynical and intolerant here among the mountains, where he felt +the holy places desecrated, and the gift of God unheeded. In the haunts +of city misery and vice,--misery and vice shut in upon itself, with no +broad outlook to the heavens,--he was tender, with the love of Christ +himself. + +"'My house shall be called the house of prayer, but these have made it a +den of thieves.' It is true not alone of the temples built with hands." + +"Is that fair? How do you _know_, Mr. Wharne?" The sudden, impetuous +questions come from Leslie Goldthwaite. + +"I see--what I see." + +"The whole?" said Leslie, more restrainedly. She remembered her respect +for age and office. Yet she felt sorely tempted, shy, proud girl as she +was, to take up cudgels for her friends, at least. Mr. Wharne liked her +the better for that. + +"They turn away from this, with five words,--the toll of custom,--or +half a look, when the wind is north; and they go in to what you saw last +night." + +"After all, isn't it just _enjoyment_, either way? Mayn't one be as +selfish as the other? People were kind, and bright, and pleasant with +each other last night. Is that a bad thing?" + +"No, little girl, it is not." And Marmaduke Wharne came nearer to +Leslie, and looked at her with a gentle look that was wonderfully +beautiful upon his stern gray face. "Only, I would have a kindness that +should go deep,--coming from a depth. There are two things for live men +and women to do: to receive, from God; and to give out, to their +fellows. One cannot be done without the other. No fruit, without the +drinking of the sunshine. No true tasting of the sunshine that is not +gathering itself toward the ripening of fruit." + +Here it was again; more teaching to the self-same point,--as we always +do get it, with a seeming strangeness, whether it be for mind only, or +for soul. You never heard of a new name, or fact in history, that did +not come out again presently in some fresh or further mention or +allusion. It is the tender training of Him before whom our life is of +so great value. + +At this moment, the gong sounded again; saleratus cakes and maple +molasses were ready, and they all went in. + +Leslie saw Imogen Thoresby change seats with her mother, because the +draught from the door was less in her place; and take the pale top cake +from the plate, leaving a brown one for the mother. Everybody likes +brown cakes best; and it was very unbecoming to sit opposite a great, +unshaded window, to say nothing of the draught. Surely a little blossom +peeped out here from under the leaf. Leslie thought Imogen Thoresby +might be forgiven for having done her curls so elaborately, and put on +such an elegant wrapper; even for having ventured only a half-look out +at the balcony door, when she found the wind was north. The parable was +already teaching her both ways. + +I do not mean to preach upon every page. I have begun by trying to tell +you how a great influencing thought was given into Leslie Goldthwaite's +life, and began to unravel for her perplexing questions that had +troubled her,--questions that come, I think, to many a young girl just +entering upon the world, as they came to her; how, in the simple history +of her summer among the mountains, a great deal solved itself and grew +clear. I would like to succeed in making you divine this, as you follow +out the simple history itself. + +"Just in time!" cried Jeannie Hadden, running up into Leslie's room at +mid-afternoon that day. "There's a stage over from Littleton, and your +trunk is being brought up this minute." + +"And the hair-trunk and the mail-bag came on, too, after all, and the +queerest people with them!" added Elinor, entering behind her. + +They both stood back and were silent, as a man came heavily along the +passage with the trunk upon his shoulder. He set it down and unfastened +the straps, and in a minute more was gone, and Leslie had the lid open. +All there, just as it had been in her own room at home three days ago. +Her face brightened, seeing her little treasures again. She had borne it +well; she had been able to enjoy without them; but she was very glad +that they were come. + +"It's nice that dinner is at lunch-time here, and that nobody dresses +until now. Make haste, and get on something pretty. Augusta won't let us +get out organdies, but we're determined on the blue grenadines. It's +awfully hot,--hot enough for anything. Do your hair over the high rats, +just for once." + +"I always get into such a fuss with them, and I can't bear to waste the +time. How will this do?" Leslie unpinned from its cambric cover a gray +iron barege, with a narrow puffing round the hem of the full skirt and +the little pointed bertha cape. With it lay bright cherry ribbons for +the neck and hair. + +"Lovely! Make haste and come down to our room." And having to dress +herself, Jeannie ran off again, and Elinor shut the door. + +It was nice to have on everything fresh; to have got her feet into +rosetted slippers instead of heavy balmoral boots; to feel the lightness +and grace of her own movement as she went downstairs and along the halls +in floating folds of delicate barege, after wearing the close, +uncomfortable traveling-dress, with the sense of dust and fatigue that +clung about it; to have a little flutter of bright ribbon in her hair, +that she knew was, as Elinor said, "the prettiest part of her." It was +pleasant to see Mrs. Linceford looked pleased, as she opened her door to +her, and to have her say, "You always do get on exactly the right +thing!" There was a fresh feeling of pleasure even in looking over at +Washington, sun-lighted and shadowed in his miles of heights and depths, +as she sat by the cool east window, feeling quite her dainty self again. +Dress is but the outside thing, as beauty is but "skin deep;" but there +is a deal of inevitable skin-sensation, pleasurable or uncomfortable, +and Leslie had a good right to be thoroughly comfortable now. + +The blinds to the balcony window were closed; that led to a funny little +episode presently,--an odd commentary on the soul-and-body question, as +it had come up to them in graver fashion. + +Outside, to two chairs just under the window, came a couple newly +arrived,--the identical proprietors of the exchanged luggage. It was an +elderly countryman, and his home-bred, matter-of-fact wife. They, too, +had had their privations and anxieties, and the outset of their +evidently unusual travels had been marred in its pleasure. In plain +truth, the good woman was manifestly soured by her experience. + +Right square before the blinds she turned her back, unconscious of the +audience within, lifted her elbows, like clothes-poles, to raise her +draperies, and settled herself with a dissatisfied flounce, that +expressed beforehand what she was about to put in words. "For _my_ +part," she announced deliberately, "I think the White Mountains is a +clear--_hummux!_" + +"Good large hummocks, anyway," returned her companion. + +"You know what I mean. 'T ain't worth comin' for. Losin' baggage, an' +everything. We'd enough sight better ha' stayed at Plymouth. An' if it +hadn't 'a' ben for your dunderheadedness, givin' up the checks an' never +stoppin' to see what was comin' of 'em, trunks or hencoops, we might. +There's somethin' to see, there. That little bridge leadin' over to the +swings and seats across the river was real pretty and pleasant. And the +cars comin' in an' startin' off, right at the back door, made it lively. +I alwers _did_ like to see passin.'" + +The attitudes inside the blinds were something, at this moment. Mrs. +Linceford, in a spasm of suppressed laughter herself, held her +handkerchief to her lips with one hand, and motioned peremptory silence +to the girls with the other. Jeannie was noiselessly clapping her hands, +and dancing from one toe to the other with delight. Leslie and Elinor +squeezed each other's fingers lightly, and leaned forward together, +their faces brimming over with fun; and the former whispered with +emphatic pantomime to Mrs. Linceford, "_If_ Mr. Wharne were only here!" + +"You've ben worried," said the man. "And you've ben comin' up to 'em +gradooal. You don't take 'em in. If one of these 'ere hills was set out +in our fields to home, you'd think it was something more than a hummock, +I guess." + +"Well, why ain't they, then? It's the best way to put things where you +can see 'em to an advantage. They're all in the way of each other here, +and don't show for nothing to speak of. Worried! I guess I hev ben! I +shan't git over it till I've got home an' ben settled down a week. It's +a mercy I've ever laid eyes agin on that bran'-new black alpacky!" + +"Well, p'r'aps the folks felt wuss that lost them stylish-lookin' +trunks. I'll bet they had something more in 'em than black alpackys." + +"That don't comfort me none. I've had _my_ tribulation." + +"Well, come, don't be grouty, Hannah. We've got through the wust of it, +and if you ain't satisfied, why, we'll go back to Plymouth again. I can +stand it awhile, I guess, if 't _is_ four dollars a day." + +He had evidently sat still a good while for him, honest man; and he got +up with this, and began to pace up and down, looking at the "hummocks," +which signified greater meanings to him than to his wife. + +Mrs. Linceford came over and put the window down. It was absolutely +necessary to laugh now, however much of further entertainment might be +cut off. + +Hannah jumped up, electrified, as the sash went down behind her. + +"John! John! There's folks in there!" + +"S'pose likely," said John, with quiet relish of amends. "What's good +for me 'ill do for them!" + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + +DAKIE THAYNE. + +"Grimgriffinhoof won't speak to you to-night," said Jeannie Hadden, +after tea, upon the balcony. + +She was mistaken. There was something different, still, in Leslie +Goldthwaite's look, as she came out under the sunset light, from the +looks that prevailed in the Thoresby group when they, too, made their +appearance. The one moved self-forgetfully,--her consciousness and +thought sent forth, not fluttering in her robes and ribbons; with the +others there was a little air and bustle, as of people coming into an +opera-box in presence of a full house. They said "lovely!" and +"splendid!" of course,--their little word of applause for the scenic +grandeur of mountain and heaven, and then the half of them turned their +backs upon it, and commenced talking together about whether waterfalls +were really to be given up or not, and of how people were going to look +in high-crowned bonnets. + +Mrs. Linceford told the "hummux" story to Marmaduke Wharne. The old man +laughed till the Thoresby party turned to see. + +"But I like one thing," he said. "The woman was honest. Her 'black +alpacky' was most to her, and she owned up to it." + +The regular thing being done, outside, the company drifted back, as the +shadows fell, to the parlor again. Mrs. Linceford's party moved also, +and drifted with the rest. Marmaduke Wharne, quite graciously, walked +after. The Lancers was just forming. + +"The bear is playing tame and amiable," whispered Jeannie. "But he'll +eat you up, for all that. I wouldn't trust him. He's going to watch, to +see how wicked you'll be." + +"I shall let him see," replied Leslie quietly. + +"Miss Goldthwaite, you're for the dance to-night? For the 'bright and +kind and pleasant,' eh?" the "bear" said, coming to her side within the +room. + +"If anybody asks me," answered Leslie, with brave simplicity. "I like +dancing--_very_ much." + +"I'll find you a partner, then," said Mr. Wharne. + +She looked up, surprised; but he was quite in earnest. He walked across +the room, and brought back with him a lad of thirteen or so,--well grown +for his age, and bright and manly-looking; but only a boy, and a little +shy and stiff at first, as boys have to be for a while. Leslie had seen +him before, in the afternoon, rolling the balls through a solitary game +of croquet; and afterward taking his tea by himself at the lower end of +the table. He had seemed to belong to nobody, and as yet hardly to have +got the "run" of the place. + +"This is Master Thayne, Miss Leslie Goldthwaite, and I think he would +like to dance, if you please." + +Master Thayne made a proper bow, and glanced up at the young girl with a +smile lurking behind the diffidence in his face. Leslie smiled outright, +and held out her hand. + +It was not a brilliant debut, perhaps. The Haddens had been appropriated +by a couple of youths in frock coats and orthodox kids, with a suspicion +of mustaches; and one of the Thoresbys had a young captain of cavalry, +with gold bars on his shoulders. Elinor Hadden raised her pretty +eyebrows, and put as much of a mock-miserable look into her happy little +face as it could hold, when she found her friend, so paired, at her +right hand. + +"It's very good of you to stand up with me," said the boy simply. "It's +awful slow, not knowing anybody." + +"Are you here alone?" asked Leslie. + +"Yes; there was nobody to come with me. Oliver--my brother--will come +by and by, and perhaps my uncle and the rest of them, to meet me where +I'm to be, down among the mountains. We're all broken up this summer, +and I'm to take care of myself." + +"Then you don't stay here?" + +"No; I only came this way to see what it was like. I've got a jolly +place engaged for me, at Outledge." + +"Outledge? Why, we are going there!" + +"Are you? That's--jolly!" repeated the boy, pausing a second for a +fresher or politer word, but unable to supply a synonym. + +"I'm glad you think so," answered Leslie, with her genuine smile again. + +The two had already made up their minds to be friends. In fact, Master +Thayne would hardly have acquiesced in being led up for introduction to +any other young girl in the room. There had been something in Leslie +Goldthwaite's face that had looked kind and sisterly to him. He had no +fear of a snub with her; and these things Mr. Wharne had read, in his +behalf, as well. + +"He's a queer old fellow, that Mr. Wharne, isn't he?" pursued Master +Thayne, after forward and back, as he turned his partner to place. "But +he's the only one that's had anything to say to me, and I like him. +I've been down to the old mill with him to-day. Those people"--motioning +slightly toward the other set, where the Thoresbys were dancing--"were +down there, too. You'd ought to have seen them look! Don't they hate +him, though?" + +"Hate him? Why should they do that?" + +"Oh, I don't know. People feel each other out, I suppose. And a word of +his is as much as a whole preach of anybody's else. He says a word now +and then, and it hits." + +"Yes," responded Leslie, laughing. + +"What _did_ you do it for?" whispered Elinor, in hands across. + +"I like him; he's got something to say," returned Leslie. + +"Augusta's looking at you, like a hen after a stray chicken. She's all +but clucking now." + +"Mr. Wharne will tell her." + +But Mr. Wharne was not in the room. He came back just as Leslie was +making her way again, after the dance, to Mrs. Linceford. + +"Will you do a galop with me presently?--if you don't get a better +partner, I mean," said Master Thayne. + +"That wouldn't be much of a promise," answered Leslie, smiling. "I will, +at any rate; that is, if--after I've spoken to Mrs. Linceford." + +Mr. Wharne came up and said something to young Thayne, just then; and +the latter turned eagerly to Leslie. "The telescope's fixed, out on the +balcony; and you can see Jupiter and three of his moons! We must make +haste, before _our_ moon's up." + +"Will you go and look, Mrs. Linceford?" asked Mr. Wharne of the lady, as +Leslie reached her side. + +They went with him, and Master Thayne followed. Jeannie and Elinor and +the Miss Thoresbys were doing the inevitable promenade after the +dance,--under difficulties. + +"Who is your young friend?" inquired Mrs. Linceford, with a shade of +doubt in her whisper, as they came out on the balcony. + +"Master"--Leslie began to introduce, but stopped. The name, which she +had not been quite certain of, escaped her. + +"My name is Dakie Thayne," said the boy, with a bow to the matron. + +"Now, Mrs. Linceford, if you'll just sit here," said Mr. Wharne, placing +a chair. "I suppose I ought to have come to you first; but it's all +right," he added, in a low tone, over her shoulder. "He's a nice boy." + +And Mrs. Linceford put her eye to the telescope. "Dakie Thayne! It's a +queer name; and yet it seems as if I had heard it before," she said, +looking away through the mystic tube into space, and seeing Jupiter with +his moons, in a fair round picture framed expressly to her eye; yet +sending a thought, at the same time, up and down the lists of a mental +directory, trying to place Dakie Thayne among people she had heard of. + +"I'll be responsible for the name," answered Marmaduke Wharne. + +"'Dakie' is a nickname, of course; but they always call me so, and I +like it best," the boy was explaining to Leslie, while they waited in +the doorway. + +Then her turn came. Leslie had never looked through a telescope upon the +stars before. She forgot the galop, and the piano tinkled out its gayest +notes unheard. "It seems like coming all the way back," she said, when +she moved away for Dakie Thayne. + +Then they wheeled the telescope upon its pivot eastward, and met our own +moon coming up, as if in a grand jealousy, to assert herself within her +small domain, and put out faint, far satellites of lordlier planets. +They looked upon her mystic, glistening hill-tops, and down her awful +craters; and from these they seemed to drop a little, as a bird might, +and alight on the earth-mountains looming close at hand, with their +huge, rough crests and sides, and sheer escarpments white with +nakedness; and so--got home again. Leslie, with her maps and gazetteer, +had done no traveling like this. + +She would not have cared, if she had known, that Imogen Thoresby was +looking for her within, to present, at his own request, the cavalry +captain. She did not know in the least, absorbed in her pure enjoyment, +that Marmaduke Wharne was deliberately trying her, and confirming his +estimate of her, in these very things. + +She danced her galop with Dakie Thayne, after she went back. The cavalry +captain was introduced, and asked for it. "That was something," as Hans +Andersen would say; but "What a goose not to have managed better!" was +what Imogen Thoresby thought concerning it, as the gold bars turned +themselves away. + +Leslie Goldthwaite had taken what came to her, and she had had an +innocent, merry time; she had been glad to be dressed nicely, and to +look her best: but somehow she had not thought of that much, after all; +the old uncomfortableness had not troubled her to-night. + +"_Just to be in better business_. That's the whole of it," she thought +to herself, with her head upon the pillow. She put it in words, +mentally, in the same off-hand fashion in which she would have spoken +it to Cousin Delight. "One must look out for that, and keep at it. +_That's_ the eye-stone-woman's way; and it's what has kept me from +worrying and despising myself to-night. It only happened so, this time; +it was Mr. Wharne, not I. But I suppose one can always find something, +by trying. And the trying"--The rest wandered off into a happy musing; +and the musing merged into a dream. + +Object and motive,--the "seeking first;" she had touched upon that, at +last, with a little comprehension of its working. + +She liked Dakie Thayne. The next day they saw a good deal of him; he +joined himself gradually, but not obtrusively, to their party; they +included him in their morning game of croquet. This was at her instance; +he was standing aside, not expecting to be counted in, though he had +broken off his game of solitaire, and driven the balls up to the +starting-stake, as they came out upon the ground. The Thoresby set had +ignored him, always, being too many already among themselves,--and he +was only a boy. + +This morning there were only Imogen, and Etty, the youngest; a +walking-party had gone off up the Cherry Mountain road, and Ginevra was +upstairs, packing; for the Thoresbys had also suddenly decided to leave +for Outledge on the morrow. Mrs. Thoresby declared, in confidence, to +Mrs. Linceford, that "old Wharne would make any house intolerable; and +that Jefferson, at any rate, was no place for more than a week's stay." +She "wouldn't have it mentioned in the house, however, that she was +going, till the time came,--it made such an ado; and everybody's plans +were at loose ends among the mountains, ready to fix themselves to +anything at a day's notice; they might have tomorrow's stage loaded to +crushing, if they did not take care." + +"But I thought Mrs. Devreaux and the Klines were with you," remarked +Mrs. Linceford. + +"Of our party? Oh, no indeed; we only fell in with them here." + +"Fell in" with them; became inseparable for a week; and now were +stealing a march,--_dodging_ them,--lest there might be an overcrowding +of the stage, and an impossibility of getting outside seats! Mrs. +Thoresby was a woman of an imposing elegance and dignity, with her large +curls of resplendent gray hair high up on her temples, her +severely-handsome dark eyebrows, and her own perfect, white teeth; yet +she could do a shabby thing, you see,--a thing made shabby by its +motive. The Devreaux and Klines were only "floating people," boarding +about,--not permanently valuable as acquaintances; well enough to know +when one met them,--that was all. Mrs. Thoresby had daughters; she was +obliged to calculate as to what was worth while. Mrs. Linceford had an +elegant establishment in New York; she had young sisters to bring out; +there was suitability here; and the girls would naturally find +themselves happy together. + +Dakie Thayne developed brilliantly at croquet. He and Leslie, with Etty +Thoresby, against Imogen and the Haddens, swept triumphantly around the +course, and came in to the stake, before there had been even a "rover" +upon the other side. Except, indeed, as they were _sent_ roving, away +off over the bank and down the road, from the sloping, uneven +ground,--the most extraordinary field, in truth, on which croquet was +ever attempted. But then you cannot expect a level, velvet lawn on the +side of a mountain. + +"Children always get the best of it at croquet,--when they know anything +at all," said Imogen Thoresby discontentedly, throwing down her mallet. +"You 'poked' awfully, Etty." + +Etty began an indignant denial; unable to endure the double accusation +of being a child,--she, a girl in her fourteenth year,--and of "poking." +But Imogen walked away quite unconcernedly, and Jeannie Hadden followed +her. These two, as nearest in age, were growing intimate. Ginevra was +almost too old,--she was twenty. + +They played a four-ball game then; Leslie and Etty against Elinor and +Dakie Thayne. But Elinor declared--laughing, all the same, in her +imperturbably good-natured way--that not only Etty's pokes were against +her, but that Dakie would _not_ croquet Leslie's ball downhill. Nothing +ever really put Elinor Hadden out, the girls said of her, except when +her hair wouldn't go up; and then it was funny to see her. It was a +sunbeam in a snarl, or a snow flurry out of a blue sky. This in +parenthesis, however; it was quite true, as she alleged, that Dakie +Thayne had taken up already that chivalrous attitude toward Leslie +Goldthwaite which would not let him act otherwise than as her loyal +knight, even though opposed to her at croquet. + +"You'll have enough of that boy," said Mrs. Linceford, when Leslie came +in, and found her at her window that overlooked the wickets. "There's +nothing like a masculine creature of that age for adoring and +monopolizing a girl two or three years older. He'll make you mend his +gloves, and he'll beg your hair-ribbons for hat-strings; and when you're +not dancing or playing croquet with him, he'll be after you with some +boy-hobby or other, wanting you to sympathize and help. 'I know their +tricks and their manners.'" But she looked amused and kind while she +threatened, and Leslie only smiled back and said nothing. + +Presently fresh fun gathered in Mrs. Linceford's eyes. "You're making +queer friends, child, do you know, at the beginning of your travels? We +shall have Cocky-locky, and Turkey-lurky, and Goosie-poosie, and all the +rest of them, before we get much farther. Don't breathe a word, girls," +she went on, turning toward them all, and brimming over with merriment +and mischief;--"but there's the best joke brewing. It's just like a +farce. Is the door shut, Elinor? And are the Thoresbys gone upstairs? +They're going with us, you know? And there's nothing to be said about +it? And it's partly to get away from Marmaduke Wharne? Well, _he_'s +going, too. And it's greatly because they're spoiling the place for him +here. He thinks he'll try Outledge; and there's nothing to be said about +that, either! And I'm the unhappy depositary of all their complaints and +secrets. And if nobody's stopped, they'll all be off in the stage with +us to-morrow morning! I couldn't help telling you, for it was too good +to keep." + +The secrets were secrets through the day; and Mrs. Linceford had her +quiet fun, and opportunity for her demure teasing. + +"How long since Outledge was discovered and settled?--by the moderns, I +mean," said Mr. Wharne. "What chance will one really have of quiet +there?" + +"Well, really, to be honest, Mr. Wharne, I'm afraid Outledge will be +just at the rampant stage this summer. It's the second year of anything +like general accommodation, and everybody has just heard of it, and it's +the knowing and stylish thing to go there. For a week or two it may be +quiet; but then there'll be a jam. There'll be hops, and tableaux, and +theatricals, of course; interspersed with 'picnicking at the tomb of +Jehoshaphat,' or whatever mountain solemnity stands for that. It'll be +human nature right over again, be assured, Mr. Wharne." + +Yet, somehow, Mr. Wharne would not be frightened from his +determination,--until the evening; when plans came out, and good-bys and +wonders and lamentations began. + +"Yes, we have decided quite suddenly; the girls want to see Outledge, +and there's a pleasant party of friends, you know,--one can't always +have that. We shall probably fill a stage: so they will take us through, +instead of dropping us at the Crawford House." In this manner Mrs. +Thoresby explained to her dear friend, Mrs. Devreaux. + +"We shall be quite sorry to lose you all. But it would only have been a +day or so longer, at any rate. Our rooms are engaged for the fifteenth, +at Saratoga; we've very little time left for the mountains, and it +wouldn't be worth while to go off the regular track. We shall probably +go down to the Profile on Saturday." + +And then--_da capo_--"Jefferson was no place really to _stay_ at; you +got the whole in the first minute," etc., etc. + +"Good-night, Mrs. Linceford. I'm going up to unpack my valise and make +myself comfortable again. All things come round, or go by, I find, if +one only keeps one's self quiet. But I shall look in upon you at +Outledge yet." These were the stairway words of Marmaduke Wharne +to-night. + +"'One gets the whole in the first minute'! How can they keep saying +that? Look, Elinor, and see if you can tell me where we are?" was +Leslie's cry, as, early next morning, she drew up her window-shade, to +look forth--on what? + +Last night had lain there, underneath them, the great basin between +Starr King, behind, and the roots of that lesser range, far down, above +which the blue Lafayette uprears itself: an enormous valley, filled with +evergreen forest, over whose tall pines and cedars one looked, as if +they were but juniper and blueberry bushes; far up above whose heads the +real average of the vast mountain-country heaped itself in swelling +masses,--miles and miles of beetling height and solid breadth. This +morning it was gone; only the great peaks showed themselves, as a +far-off, cliff-bound shore, or here and there a green island in a vast, +vaporous lake. The night-chill had come down among the heights, +condensing the warm exhalations of the valley-bosom that had been shone +into all day yesterday by the long summer sun; till, when he lifted +himself once more out of the east, sending his leaping light from crest +to crest, white fallen clouds were tumbling and wreathing themselves +about the knees and against the mighty bosoms of the giants, and at +their feet the forest was a sea. + +"We must dress, and we must look!" exclaimed Leslie, as the early +summons came for them. "Oh dear! oh dear! if we were only like the +birds! or if all this would wait till we get down!" + +"Please drop the shade just a minute, Les. This glass is in such a +horrid light! I don't seem to have but half a face, and I can't tell +which is the up-side of that! And--oh dear! I've no _time_ to get into a +fuss!" Elinor had not disdained the beauty and wonder without; but it +was, after all, necessary to be dressed, and in a given time; and a bad +light for a looking-glass is such a disastrous thing! + +"I've brushed out half my crimps," she said, again; "and my ruffle is +basted in wrong side out, and altogether I'm got up _a la furieuse_!" +But she laughed before she had done scolding, catching sight of her own +exaggerated little frown in the distorting glass, that was unable, with +all its malice, to spoil the bright young face when it came to smiles +and dimples. + +And then Jeannie came knocking at the door. They had spare minutes, +after all, and the mists were yet tossing in the valley when they went +down. They were growing filmy, and floating away in shining fragments up +over the shoulders of the hills, and the lake was lower and less, and +the emerging green was like the "Thousand Islands." + +They waited a little there, in the wide, open door together, and looked +out upon it; and then the Haddens went round into their sister's room, +and Leslie was left alone in the rare, sweet, early air. The secret joy +came whispering at her heart again: that there was all this in the +world, and that one need not be utterly dull and mean, and dead to it; +that something in her answered to the greatness overshadowing her; that +it was possible, sometimes, and that people did reach out into a larger +life than that of self and every-day. How else did the great mountains +draw them to themselves so? But then she would not always be among the +mountains. + +And so she stood, drinking in at her eyes all the shifting and melting +splendors of the marvelous scene, with her thought busy, once more, in +its own questioning. She remembered what she had said to Cousin +Delight: "It is all outside. Going, and doing, and seeing, and hearing, +and having. In myself, am I good for any more, after all? Or only--a +green fig-tree in the sunshine?" + +Why, with that word, did it all flash together for her, as a connected +thing? Her talk that morning, many weeks ago, that had seemed to ramble +so from one irrelevant matter to another,--from the parable to her +fancy-traveling, the scenes and pleasures she had made for herself, +wondering if the real would ever come; to the linen-drawer, representing +her little feminine absorptions and interests; and back to the fig-tree +again, ending with that word,--"the real living is the urging toward the +fruit"? Her day's journey, and the hints of life--narrowed, suffering, +working--that had come to her, each with its problem? Marmaduke Wharne's +indignant protest against people who "did not know their daily bread," +and his insistence upon the _two_ things for human creatures to do: the +_receiving_ and the giving; the taking from God, in the sunshine, to +grow; the ripening into generous uses for others,--was it all one, and +did it define the whole, and was it identical, in the broadest and +highest, with that sublime double command whereon "hang the law and the +prophets"? + +Something like this passed into her mind and soul, brightening there, +like the morning. It seemed, in that glimpse, so clear and +gracious,--the truth that had been puzzling her. + +Easy, beautiful summer work: only to be shone upon; to lift up one's +branching life, and be--reverently--glad; to grow sweet and helpful and +good-giving, in one's turn,--could she not begin to do that? Perhaps--by +ever so little; the fruit might be but a berry, yet it might be fair and +full, after its kind; and at least some little bird might be the better +for it. All around her, too, the life of the world that had so troubled +her,--who could tell, in the tangle of green, where the good and the +gift might ripen and fall? Every little fern-frond has its seed. + +Jeannie came behind her again, and called her back to the contradictory +phase of self that, with us all, is almost ready, like Peter, to deny +the true. "What are you deep in now, Les?" + +"Nothing. Only--we go _down_ from here, don't we, Jeannie?" + +"Yes. And a very good thing for you, too. You've been in the clouds long +enough. I shall be glad to get you to the common level again." + +"You've no need to be anxious. I can come down as fast as anybody. +_That_ isn't the hard thing to do. Let's go in, and get salt-fish and +cream for our breakfast." + +The Haddens were new to mountain travel; the Thoresbys, literally, were +"old stagers;" they were up in the stable-yard before Mrs. Linceford's +party came out from the breakfast-room. Dakie Thayne was there, too; but +that was quite natural for a boy. + +They got their outside seats by it, scrambling up before the horses were +put to, and sitting there while the hostlers smiled at each other over +their work. There was room for two more, and Dakie Thayne took a place; +but the young ladies looked askance, for Ginevra had been detained by +her mother, and Imogen had hoped to keep a seat for Jeannie, without +drawing the whole party after her, and running aground upon politeness. +So they drove round to the door. + +"First come, first served," cried Imogen, beckoning Jeannie, who +happened to be there, looking for her friend. "I've saved a place for +you,"--and Jeannie Hadden, nothing loath, as a man placed the mounting +board, sprang up and took it. + +Then the others came out. Mrs. Thoresby and Mrs. Linceford got inside +the vehicle at once, securing comfortable back corner-seats. Ginevra, +with Leslie and Elinor, and one or two others too late for their own +interest, but quite comprehending the thing to be preferred, lingered +while the last trunks went on, hoping for room to be made somehow. + +"It's so gay on the top, going down into the villages. There's no fun +inside," said Imogen complacently, settling herself upon her perch. + +"Won't there be another stage?" + +"Only half way. This one goes through." + +"I'll go half way on the other, then," said Ginevra. + +"This is the best team, and goes on ahead," was the reply. + +"You'll be left behind," cried Mrs. Thoresby. "Don't think of it, +Ginevra!" + +"Can't that boy sit back, on the roof?" asked the young lady. + +"That boy" quite ignored the allusion; but presently, as Ginevra moved +toward the coach-window to speak with her mother, he leaned down to +Leslie Goldthwaite. "I'll make room for _you_," he said. + +But Leslie had decided. She could not, with effrontery of selfishness, +take the last possible place,--a place already asked for by another. She +thanked Dakie Thayne, and, with just one little secret sigh, got into +the interior, placing herself by the farther door. + +At that moment she missed something. "I've left my brown veil in your +room, Mrs. Linceford,"--and she was about to alight again to go for it. + +"I'll fetch it," cried Dakie Thayne from overhead, and, as he spoke, +came down on her side by the wheel, and, springing around to the house +entrance, disappeared up the stairs. + +"Ginevra!" Then there came a laugh and a shout and some crinoline +against the forward open corner of the coach, and Ginevra Thoresby was +by the driver's side. A little ashamed, in spite of herself, though it +was done under cover of a joke; but "All's fair among the mountains," +somebody said, and "Possession's nine points," said another, and the +laugh was with her, seemingly. + +Dakie Thayne flushed up, hot, without a word, when he came out, an +instant after. + +"I'm _so_ sorry!" said Leslie, with real regret, accented with honest +indignation. + +"It's your place," called out a rough man, who made the third upon the +coach-box. "Why don't you stick up for it?" + +The color went down slowly in the boy's face, and a pride came up in his +eye. He put his hand to his cap, with a little irony of deference, and +lifted it off with the grace of a grown man. "I know it's my place. But +the young lady may keep it--now. _I'd_ rather be a gentleman!" said +Dakie Thayne. + +"You've got the best of it!" This came from Marmaduke Wharne, as the +door closed upon the boy, and the stage rolled down the road toward +Cherry Mountain. + +There is a "best" to be got out of everything; but it is neither the +best of place or possession, nor the chuckle of the last word. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + + +DOWN AT OUTLEDGE. + +Among the mountains, somewhere between the Androscoggin and the Saco,--I +don't feel bound to tell you precisely where, and I have only a +story-teller's word to give you for it at all,--lies the little +neighborhood of Outledge. An odd corner of a great township such as they +measure off in these wilds; where they take in, with some eligible +"locations" of intervale land, miles also of pathless forest where the +bear and the moose are wandering still, a pond, perhaps, filling up a +basin of acres and acres in extent, and a good-sized mountain or two, +thrown in to keep off the north wind; a corner cut off, as its name +indicates, by the outrunning of a precipitous ridge of granite, round +which a handful of population had crept and built itself a group of +dwellings,--this was the spot discovered and seized to themselves some +four or five years since by certain migratory pioneers of fashion. + +An old two-story farmhouse, with four plain rooms of generous dimensions +on each floor, in which the first delighted summer party had divided +itself, glad and grateful to occupy them double and even treble bedded, +had become the "hotel," with a name up across the gable of the new +wing,--"Giant's Cairn House,"--and the eight original rooms made into +fourteen. The wing was clapped on by its middle; rushing out at the +front toward the road to meet the summer tide of travel as it should +surge by, and hold up to it, arrestively, its titular sign-board; the +other half as expressively making its bee-line toward the river and the +mountain view at back,--just as each fresh arrival, seeking out the +preferable rooms, inevitably did. Behind, upon the other side, an L +provided new kitchens; and over these, within a year, had been carried +up a second story, with a hall for dancing, tableaux, theatricals, and +traveling jugglers. + +Up to this hostelry whirled daily, from the southward, the great +six-horse stage; and from the northward came thrice a week wagons or +coaches "through the hills," besides such "extras" as might drive down +at any hour of day or night. + +Round the smooth curve of broad, level road that skirted the ledges from +the upper village pranced four splendid bays; and after them rollicked +and swayed, with a perfect delirium of wheels and springs, the great +black and yellow bodied vehicle, like a huge bumble-bee buzzing back +with its spoil of a June day to the hive. The June sunset was golden and +rosy upon the hills and cliffs, and Giant's Cairn stood burnished +against the eastern blue. Gay companies, scattered about piazzas and +greenswards, stopped in their talk, or their promenades, or their +croquet, to watch the arrivals. + +"It's stopping at the Green Cottage." + +"It's the Haddens. Their rooms have been waiting since the twenty-third, +and all the rest are full." And two or three young girls dropped mallets +and ran over. + +"Maud Walcott!" "Mattie Shannon!" + +"Jeannie!" "Nell!" + +"How came _you_ here?" + +"We've been here these ten days,--looking for you the last three." + +"Why, I can't take it in! I'm so surprised!" + +"Isn't it jolly, though?" + +"Miss Goldthwaite--Miss Walcott; Miss Shannon--Miss Goldthwaite;--my +sister, Mrs. Linceford." + +"_Me voici_!" And a third came up suddenly, laying a hand upon each of +the Haddens from behind. + +"You, Sin Saxon! How many more?" + +"We're coming, Father Abraham! All of us, nearly, three hundred thousand +more--or less; half the Routh girls, with Madam to the fore!" + +"And we've got all the farther end of the wing downstairs,--the garden +bedrooms; you've no idea how scrumptious it is! You must come over after +tea, and see." + +"Not all, Mattie; you forget the solitary spinster." + +"No, I don't; who ever does? But can't you ignore her for once?" + +"Or let a fellow speak in the spirit of prophecy?" said Sin Saxon. +"We're sure to get the better of Graywacke, and why not anticipate?" + +"Graywacke?" said Jeannie Hadden. "Is that a name? It sounds like the +side of a mountain." + +"And acts like one," rejoined Sin Saxon. "Won't budge. But it isn't her +name, exactly, only Saxon for Craydocke; suggestive of obstinacy and the +Old Silurian,--an ancient maiden who infests our half the wing. We've +got all the rooms but hers, and we're bound to get her out. She's been +there three years, in the same spot,--went in with the lath and +plaster,--and it's _time_ she started. Besides, haven't I got manifest +destiny on my side? Ain't I a Saxon?" Sin Saxon tossed up a merry, +bewitching, saucy glance out of her blue, starlike eyes, that shone +under a fair, low brow touched and crowned lightly with the soft haze +of gold-brown locks frizzed into a delicate mistiness after the ruling +fashion of the hour. + +"What a pretty thing she is!" said Mrs. Linceford, when, seeing her busy +with her boxes, and the master of the house approaching to show the new +arrivals to their rooms, Sin Saxon and her companions flitted away as +they had come, with a few more sentences of bright girl-nonsense flung +back at parting. "And a witty little minx as well. Where did you know +her, Jeannie? And what sort of a satanic name is that you call her by?" + +"Just suits such a mischief, doesn't it? Short for Asenath,--it was +always her school-name. She's just finished her last year at Madam +Routh's; she came there soon after we did. It's a party of the +graduates, and some younger ones left with Madam for the long holidays, +that she's traveling with. I wonder if she isn't sick of her life, +though, by this time! Fancy those girls, Nell, with a whole half-wing of +the hotel to themselves, and Sin Saxon in the midst!" + +"Poor 'Graywacke' in the midst, you mean," said Nell. + +"Like a respectable old grimalkin at the mercy of a crowd of boys and a +tin kettle," added Jeannie, laughing. + +"I've no doubt she's a very nice person, too. I only hope, if I come +across her, I mayn't call her Graywacke to her face," said Mrs. +Linceford. + +"Just what you'll be morally sure to do, Augusta!" + +With this, they had come up the staircase and along a narrow passage +leading down between a dozen or so of small bedrooms on either +side,--for the Green Cottage also had run out its addition of two +stories since summer guests had become many and importunate,--and stood +now where three open doors, one at the right and two at the left, +invited their entrance upon what was to be their own especial territory +for the next two months. From one side they looked up the river along +the face of the great ledges, and caught the grandeur of far-off +Washington, Adams, and Madison, filling up the northward end of the long +valley. The aspect of the other was toward the frowning glooms of +Giant's Cairn close by, and broadened then down over the pleasant +subsidence of the southern country to where the hills grew less, and +fair, small, modest peaks lifted themselves just into blue height and +nothing more, smiling back with a contented deference toward the +mightier majesties, as those who might say: "We do our gentle best; it +is not yours; yet we, too, are mountains, though but little ones." From +underneath spread the foreground of green, brilliant intervale, with +the river flashing down between margins of sand and pebbles in the +midst. + +Here they put Leslie Goldthwaite; and here, somehow, her first +sensation, as she threw back her blinds to let in all the twilight for +her dressing, was a feeling of half relief from the strained awe and +wonder of the last few days. Life would not seem so petty here as in the +face of all that other solemn stateliness. There was a reaction of +respite and repose. And why not? The great emotions are not meant to +come to us daily in their unqualified strength. God knows how to dilute +his elixirs for the soul. His fine, impalpable air, spread round the +earth, is not more cunningly mixed from pungent gases for our hourly +breath, than life itself is thinned and toned that we may receive and +bear it. + +Leslie wondered if it were wrong that the high mountain fervor let +itself go from her so soon and easily; that the sweet pleasantness of +this new resting-place should come to her as a rest; that the laughter +and frolic of the schoolgirls made her glad with such sudden sympathy +and foresight of enjoyment; that she should have "come down" all the way +from Jefferson in Jeannie's sense, and that she almost felt it a +comfortable thing herself not to be kept always "up in the clouds." + +Sin Saxon, as they called her, was so bright and odd and fascinating; +was there any harm--because no special, obvious good--in that? There was +a little twinge of doubt, remembering poor Miss Craydocke; but that had +seemed pure fun, not malice, after all, and it was, hearing Sin Saxon +tell it, very funny. She could imagine the life they led the quiet lady; +yet, if it were quite intolerable, why did she remain? Perhaps, after +all, she saw through the fun of it. And I think, myself, perhaps she +did. + +The Marie Stuart net went on to-night; and then such a pretty muslin, +white, with narrow, mode-brown stripes, and small, bright leaves dropped +over them, as if its wearer had stood out under a maple-tree in October +and all the tiniest and most radiant bits had fallen and fastened +themselves about her. And, last of all, with her little hooded cape of +scarlet cashmere over her arm, she went down to eat cream biscuit and +wood strawberries for tea. Her summer life began with a charming +freshness and dainty delight. + +There were pleasant voices of happy people about them in hall and open +parlor, as they sat at their late repast. Everything seemed indicative +of abundant coming enjoyment; and the girls chatted gayly of all they +had already discovered or conjectured, and began to talk of the ways of +the place and the sojourners in it, quite like old _habituees_. + +It was even more delightful yet, strolling out when tea was over, and +meeting the Routh party again half way between the cottage and the +hotel, and sauntering on with them, insensibly, till they found +themselves on the wide wing-piazza, upon which opened the garden +bedrooms, and being persuaded after all to sit down, since they had got +there, though Mrs. Linceford had demurred at a too hasty rushing over, +as new comers, to begin visits. + +"Oh, nobody knows when they _are_ called upon here, or who comes first," +said Mattie Shannon. "We generally receive half way across the green, +and it's a chance which turns back, or whether we get near either house +again or not. Houses don't signify, except when it rains." + +"But it just signifies that you should see how magnificently we have +settled ourselves for nights, and dressing, and when it _does_ rain," +said Sin Saxon, throwing back a door behind her, that stood a little +ajar. It opened directly into a small apartment, half parlor and half +dressing-room, from which doors showed others, on either side, furnished +as sleeping-rooms. + +"It was Maud Walcott's, between the Arnalls' and mine; but, what with +our trunks, and our beds, and our crinolines, and our towel-stands, we +wanted a Bowditch's Navigator to steer clear of the reefs, and +something was always getting knocked over; so, one night, we were seized +simultaneously with an idea. We'd make a boudoir of this for the general +good, and forthwith we fell upon the bed, and amongst us got it down. It +was the greatest fun! We carried the pieces and the mattresses all off +ourselves up to the attic, after ten o'clock, and we gave the +chambermaid a dollar next morning, and nobody's been the wiser since. +And then we walked to the upper village and bought that extraordinary +chintz, and frilled and cushioned our trunks into ottomans, and +curtained the dress-hooks; and Lucinda got us a rocking-chair, and Maud +came in with me to sleep, and we kept our extra pillows, and we should +be comfortable as queens if it wasn't for Graywacke." + +"Now, Sin Saxon, you know Graywacke is just the life of the house. What +would such a parcel of us do, if we hadn't something to run upon?" + +"Only I'm afraid I shall get tired of it at last. She bears it so. It +isn't exactly saintliness, nor Graywackeiness, but it seems sometimes as +if she took a quiet kind of fun out of it herself,--as if she were +somehow laughing at us, after all, in her sleeve; and if she is, she's +got the biggest end. _She_'s bright enough." + +"Don't we tree-toad her within an inch of her life, though, when we come +home in the wagons at night? I shouldn't think she could stand that +long. I guess she wants all her beauty-sleep. And Kate Arnall can +tu-whit, tu-whoo! equal to Tennyson himself, or any great white +_American_ owl." + +"Yes, but what do you think? As true as I live, I heard her answer back +the other night with such a sly little 'Katy-did! she did! she did!' I +thought at first it actually came from the great elm-trees. Oh, she's +been a girl once, you may depend; and hasn't more than half got over it +either. But wait till we have our 'howl'!" + +What a "howl" was, superlative to "tree-toading," "owl-hooting," and +other divertisements, did not appear at this time; for a young man did, +approaching from the front of the hotel, and came up to the group on the +piazza with the question, "At what time do we set off for Feather-Cap +to-morrow?" + +"Oh, early, Mr. Scherman; by nine o'clock." + +"Earlier than you'll be ready," said Frank Scherman's sister, one of the +"Routh" girls also. + +"I shan't have any crimps to take down, that's one thing," Frank +answered. And Sin Saxon, glancing at his handsome waving hair, whispered +saucily to Jeannie Hadden, "I don't more than half believe that, +either;"--then, aloud, "You must join the party too, girls, by the way. +It's one of the nicest excursions here. We've got two wagons, and +they'll be full; but there's Holden's 'little red' will take six, and I +don't believe anybody has spoken for it. Mr. Scherman! wouldn't it make +you happy to go and see?" + +"Most intensely!" and Frank Scherman bowed a low graceful bow, settling +back into his first attitude, however, as one who could quite willingly +resign himself to his present comparative unhappiness awhile longer. + +"Where is Feather-Cap?" asked Leslie Goldthwaite. + +"It's the mountain you see there, peeping round the shoulder of Giant's +Cairn; a comfortable little rudiment of a mountain, just enough for a +primer-lesson in climbing. Don't you see how the crest drops over on one +side, and that scrap of pine--which is really a huge gaunt thing a +hundred years old--slants out from it with just a tuft of green at the +very tip, like an old feather stuck in jauntily?" + +"And the pine woods round the foot of the Cairn are lovely," said Maud. + +"Oh!" cried Leslie, drawing a long breath, as if their spicy smell were +already about her, "there is nothing I delight in so as pines!" + +"You'll have your fill to-morrow, then; for it's ten miles through +nothing else, and the road is like a carpet with the soft brown +needles." + +"I hope Augusta won't be too tired to feel like going," said Elinor. + +"We had better ask her soon, then; she is looking this way now. We ought +to go, Sin; we've got all our settling to do for the night." + +"We'll walk over with you," said Sin Saxon. "Then we shall have done up +all the preliminaries nicely. We called on you--before you were off the +stage-coach; you've returned it; and now we'll pay up and leave you +owing us one. Come, Mr. Scherman; you'll be so far on your way to +Holden's, and perhaps inertia will carry you through." + +But a little girl presently appeared, running from the hotel portico at +the front, as they came round to view from thence. Madam Routh was +sitting in the open hall with some newly arrived friends, and sent one +of her lambs, as Sin called them, to say to the older girls that she +preferred they should not go away again to-night. + +"'Ruin seize thee, Routh--less king!'" quoted Sin Saxon, with an absurd +air of declamation. "'Twas ever thus from childhood's hour;' and now, +just as we thought childhood's hour was comfortably over,--that the +clock had struck one, and down we might run, hickory, dickory, +dock,--behold the lengthened sweetness long drawn out of school rule in +vacation, even before the very face and eyes of Freedom on her mountain +heights! Well, we must go, I suppose. Mr. Scherman, you'll have to +represent us to Mrs. Linceford, and persuade her to join us to +Feather-Cap. And be sure you get the 'little red'!" + +"It'll be all the worse for Graywacke, if we're kept in and sent off +early," she continued, _sotto voce_, to her companions, as they turned +away. "My! what _has_ that boy got?" + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + +SIXTEEN AND SIXTY. + +After all this, I wonder if you wouldn't just like to look in at Miss +Craydocke's room with me, who can give you a pass anywhere within the +geography of my story? + +She came in here "with the lath and plaster," as Sin Saxon had said. She +had gathered little comforts and embellishments about her from summer to +summer, until the room had a home-cheeriness, and even a look of luxury, +contrasted with the bare dormitories around it. Over the straw matting, +that soon grows shabby in a hotel, she had laid a large, nicely-bound +square of soft, green carpet, in a little mossy pattern, that covered +the middle of the floor, and was held tidily in place by a foot of the +bedstead and two forward ones each of the table and washstand. On this +little green stood her Shaker rocking-chair and a round white-pine +light-stand with her work-basket and a few books. Against the wall hung +some white-pine shelves with more books,--quite a little circulating +library they were for invalids and read-out people, who came to the +mountains, like foolish virgins, with scant supply of the oil of +literature for the feeding of their brain-lamps. Besides these, there +were engravings and photographs in _passe-partout_ frames, that +journeyed with her safely in the bottoms of her trunks. Also, the wall +itself had been papered, at her own cost and providing, with a pretty +pale-green hanging; and there were striped muslin curtains to the +window, over which were caught the sprays of some light, wandering vine +that sprung from a low-suspended terra-cotta vase between. + +She had everything pretty about her, this old Miss Craydocke. How many +people do, that have not a bit of outward prettiness themselves! Not one +cubit to the stature, not one hair white or black, can they add or +change; and around them grow the lilies in the glory of Solomon, and a +frosted leaf or a mossy twig, that they can pick up from under their +feet and bring home from the commonest walk, comes in with them, bearing +a brightness and a grace that seems sometimes almost like a satire! But +in the midst grows silently the century-plant of the soul, absorbing to +itself hourly that which feeds the beauty of the lily and the radiance +of the leaf,--waiting only for the hundred years of its shrouding to be +over! + +Miss Craydocke never came in from the woods and rocks without her +trophies. Rare, lovely mosses and bits of most delicate ferns, +maidenhair and lady-bracken, tiny trails of wintergreen and arbutus, +filled a great shallow Indian china dish upon her bureau top, and grew, +in their fairy fashion, in the clear, soft water she kept them freshened +with. + +Shining scraps of mountain minerals--garnets and bright-tinted quartz +and beryls, heaped artistically, rather than scientifically, on a base +of jasper and malachite and dark basalt and glistening spar and curious +fossils; these not gathered by any means in a single summer or in +ordinary ramblings, but treasured long, and standing, some of them, for +friendly memories--balanced on the one side a like grouping of shells +and corals and sea-mosses on the other, upon a broad bracket-mantel put +up over a little corner fireplace; for Miss Craydocke's room, joining +the main house, took the benefit of one of its old chimneys. + +Above or about the pictures lay mossy, gnarled, and twisted branches, +gray and green, framing them in a forest arabesque; and great pine +cones, pendent from their boughs, crowned and canopied the mirror. + +"What _do_ you keep your kindling wood up there for?" Sin Saxon had +asked, with a grave, puzzled face, coming in, for pure mischief, on one +of her frequent and ingenious errands. + +"Why, where should I put a pile of wood or a basket? There's no room +for things to lie round here; you have to hang everything up!" was Miss +Craydocke's answer, quick as a flash, her eyes twinkling comically with +appreciation of the fun. + +And Sin Saxon had gone away and told the girls that the old lady knew +how to feather her nest better than any of them, and was sharp enough at +a peck, too, upon occasion. + +She found her again, one morning, sitting in the midst of a pile of +homespun, which she was cutting up with great shears into boys' blouses. + +"There! that's the noise that has disturbed me so!" cried the girl. "I +thought it was a hay-cutter or a planing-machine, or that you had got +the asthma awfully. I couldn't write my letter for listening to it, and +came round to ask what _was_ the matter!--Miss Craydocke, I don't see +why you keep the door bolted on your side. It isn't any more fair for +you than for me; and I'm sure I do all the visiting. Besides, it's +dangerous. What if anything should happen in the night? I couldn't get +in to help you. Or there might be a fire in our room,--I'm sure I expect +nothing else. We boiled eggs in the Etna the other night, and got too +much alcohol in the saucer; and then, in the midst of the blaze and +excitement, what should Madam Routh do but come knocking at the door! +Of course we had to put it in the closet, and there were all our muslin +dresses,--that weren't hanging on the hooks in Maud's room! I assure you +I felt like the man sitting on the safety-valve, standing with my back +against the door, and my clothes spread out for fear she would see the +flash under the crack. For we'd nothing else but moonlight in the +room.--But now tell me, please, what are all these things? Meal-bags?" + +"Do you really want to know?" + +"Of course I do. Now that I've got over my fright about your strangling +with the asthma--those shears did wheeze so!--my curiosity is all alive +again." + +"I've a cousin down in North Carolina teaching the little freedmen." + +"And she's to have all these sacks to tie the naughty ones up in? What a +bright idea! And then to whip them with rods as the Giant did his +crockery, I suppose? Or perhaps--they can't be petticoats! Won't she be +warm, though?" + +"May be, if you were to take one and sew up the seams, you would be able +to satisfy yourself." + +"I? Why, I never _could_ put anything together! I tried once, with a +pair of hospital drawers, and they were like Sam Hyde's dog, that got +cut in two, and clapped together again in a hurry, two legs up and two +legs down. Miss Craydocke, why don't _you_ go down among the freedmen? +You haven't half a sphere up here. Nothing but Hobbs's Location, and the +little Hoskinses." + +"I can't organize and execute. Letitia can. It's her gift. I can't do +great things. I can only just carry round my little cup of cold water." + +"But it gets so dreadfully joggled in such a place as this! Don't we +girls disturb you, Miss Craydocke? I should think you'd be quieter in +the other wing, or upstairs." + +"Young folks are apt to think that old folks ought to go a story higher. +But we're content, and they must put up with us, until the proprietor +orders a move." + +"Well, good-by. But if ever you do smell smoke in the night, you'll draw +your bolt the first thing, won't you?" + +This evening,--upon which we have offered you your pass, reader,--Miss +Craydocke is sitting with her mosquito bar up, and her candle alight, +finishing some pretty thing that daylight has not been long enough for. +A flag basket at her feet holds strips and rolls of delicate birch-bark, +carefully split into filmy thinness, and heaps of star-mosses, +cup-mosses, and those thick and crisp with clustering brown spires, as +well as sheets of lichen silvery and pale green; and on the lap-board +across her knees lies her work,--a graceful cross in perspective, put +on card-board in birch shaded from faint buff to bistre, dashed with the +detached lines that seem to have quilted the tree-teguments together. +Around the foot of the cross rises a mound of lovely moss-work in +relief, with feathery filaments creeping up and wreathing about the +shaft and thwart-beam. Miss Craydocke is just dotting in some bits of +slender coral-headed stems among little brown mushrooms and chalices, as +there comes a sudden, imperative knocking at the door of communication, +or defense, between her and Sin Saxon. + +"You must just open this time, if you please! I've got my arms full, and +I couldn't come round." + +Miss Craydocke slipped her lap-board--work and all--under her bureau, +upon the floor, for safety; and then with her quaint, queer expression, +in which curiosity, pluckiness, and a foretaste of amusement mingled so +as to drive out annoyance, pushed back her bolt, and presented herself +to the demand of her visitor, much as an undaunted man might fling open +his door at the call of a mob. + +Sin Saxon stood there, in the light of the good lady's candle, making a +pretty picture against the dim background of the unlighted room beyond. +Her fair hair was tossed, and her cheeks flushed; her blue eyes bright +with sauciness and fun. In her hands, or across her arms, rather, she +held some huge, uncouth thing, that was not to the last degree +dainty-smelling, either; something conglomerated rudely upon a great +crooked log or branch, which, glanced at closer, proved to be a fragment +of gray old pine. Sticks and roots and bark, straw and grass and locks +of dirty sheep's-wool, made up its bulk and its untidiness; and this +thing Sin held out with glee, declaring she had brought a real treasure +to add to Miss Craydocke's collection. + +"Such a chance!" she said, coming in. "One mightn't have another in a +dozen years. I have just given Jimmy Wigley a quarter for it, and he'd +just all but broken his neck to get it. It's a real crow's nest. +Corvinus something-else-us, I suppose. Where will you have it? I'm going +to nail it up for you myself. Won't it make a nice contrast to the +humming-bird's? Over the bed, shall I? But then, if it _should_ drop +down on your nose, you know! I think the corner over the fireplace will +be best. Yes, we'll have it right up perpendicular, in the angle. The +branch twists a little, you see, and the nest will run out with its odds +and ends like an old banner. Might I push up the washstand to get on +to?" + +"Suppose you lay it _in_ the fireplace? It will just rest nicely across +those evergreen boughs, and--be in the current of ventilation outward." + +"Well, that's an idea, to be sure.--Miss Craydocke!"--Sin Saxon says +this in a sudden interjectional way, as if it were with some quite fresh +idea,--"I'm certain you play chess!" + +"You're mistaken. I don't." + +"You would, then, by intuition. Your counter-moves are--so--triumphant. +Why, it's really an ornament!" With a little stress and strain that made +her words interjectional, she had got it into place, thrusting one end +up the throat of the chimney, and lodging the crotch that held the nest +upon the stems of fresh pine that lay across the andirons; and the "odds +and ends," in safe position, and suggesting neither harm nor +unsuitableness, looked unique and curious, and not so ugly. + +"It's really an ornament!" repeated Sin, shaking the dust off her dress. + +"As you expected, of course," replied Miss Craydocke. + +"Well, I wasn't--not to say--confident. I was afraid it mightn't be much +but scientific. But now--if you don't forget and light a fire under it +some day, Miss Craydocke!" + +"I shan't forget; and I'm very much obliged, really. Perhaps by and by I +shall put it in a rough box and send it to a nephew of mine, with some +other things, for his collection." + +"Goodness, Miss Craydocke! They won't express it. They'll think it's an +infernal machine, or a murder. But it's disposed of for the present, +anyway. The truth was, you know, twenty-five cents is a kind of cup of +cold water to Jimmy Wigley, and then there was the fun of bringing it +in, and I didn't know anybody but you to offer it to; I'm so glad you +like it; the girls thought you wouldn't. Perhaps I can get you another, +or something else as curious, some day,--a moose's horns, or a +bear-skin; there's no knowing. But now, apropos of the nest, I've a crow +to _pick_ with you. You gave me horrible dreams all night, the last time +I came to see you. I don't know whether it was your little freedmen's +meal-bags, or Miss Letitia's organizing and executive genius, or the cup +of cold water you spoke of, or--it's just occurred to me--the fuss I had +over my waterfall that day, trying to make it into a melon; but I had +the most extraordinary time endeavoring to pay you a visit. Down South +it was, and there you were, organizing and executing, after all, on the +most tremendous scale, some kind of freedmen's institution. You were +explaining to me and showing me all sorts of things, in such enormous +bulk and extent and number! First I was to see your stables, where the +cows were kept. A trillion of cows!--that was what you told me. And on +the way we went down among such wood-piles!--whole forests cut up into +kindlings and built into solid walls that reached up till the sky looked +like a thread of blue sewing-silk between. And presently we came to a +kind of opening and turned off to see the laundry (Mrs. Lisphin had just +brought home my things at bedtime); and _there_ was a place to do the +world's washing in, or bleach out all the Ethiopians! Tubs like the hold +of the Great Eastern, and spouts coming into them like the Staubbach! +Clothes-lines like a parade-ground of telegraphs, fields like prairies, +snow-patched, as far as you could see, with things laid out to whiten! +And suddenly we came to what was like a pond of milk, with crowds of +negro women stirring it with long poles; and all at once something came +roaring behind and you called to me to jump aside,--that the hot water +was let on to make the starch; and down it rushed, a cataract like +Niagara, in clouds of steam! And then--well, it changed to something +else, I suppose; but it was after that fashion all night long, and the +last I remember, I was trying to climb up the Cairn with a cup of cold +water set on atilt at the crown of my head, which I was to get to the +sky parlor without spilling a drop!" + +"Nobody's brain but yours would have put it together like that," +said Miss Craydocke, laughing till she had to feel for her +pocket-handkerchief to wipe away the tears. + +"Don't cry, Miss Craydocke," said Sin Saxon, changing suddenly to the +most touching tone and expression of regretful concern. "I didn't mean +to distress you. I don't think anything is really the matter with my +brain!" + +"But I'll tell you what it is," she went on presently, in her old +manner, "I _am_ in a dreadful way with that waterfall, and I wish you'd +lend me one of your caps, or advise me what to do. It's an awful thing +when the fashion alters, just as you've got used to the last one. You +can't go back, and you don't dare to go forward. I wish hair was like +noses, born in a shape, without giving you any responsibility. But we do +have to finish ourselves, and that's just what makes us restless." + +"You haven't come to the worst yet," said Miss Craydocke significantly. + +"What do you mean? What is the worst? Will it come all at once, or will +it be broken to me?" + +"It will be broken, and _that_'s the worst. One of these years you'll +find a little thin spot coming, may be, and spreading, over your +forehead or on the top of your head; and it'll be the fashion to comb +the hair just so as to show it off and make it worse; and for a while +that'll be your thorn in the flesh. And then you'll begin to wonder why +the color isn't so bright as it used to be, but looks dingy, all you can +do to it; and again, after a while, some day, in a strong light, you'll +see there are white threads in it, and the rest is fading; and so by +degrees, and the degrees all separate pains, you'll have to come to it +and give up the crown of your youth, and take to scraps of lace and +muslin, or a front, as I did a dozen years ago." + +Sin Saxon had no sauciness to give back for that; it made her feel all +at once that this old Miss Craydocke had really been a girl too, with +golden hair like her own, perhaps,--and not so very far in the past, +either, but that a like space in her own future could picture itself to +her mind; and something, quite different in her mood from ordinary, made +her say, with even an unconscious touch of reverence in her voice: "I +wonder if I shall bear it, when it comes, as well as you!" + +"There's a recompense," said Miss Craydocke. "You'll have got it all +then. You'll know there's never a fifty or a sixty years that doesn't +hold the tens and the twenties." + +"I've found out something," said Sin Saxon, as she came back to the +girls again. "A picked-up dinner argues a fresh one some time. You can't +have cold roast mutton unless it has once been hot!" And never a word +more would she say to explain herself. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + + +"I DON'T SEE WHY." + +The "little red" was at the door of the Green Cottage. Frank Scherman +had got the refusal of it the night before, and early in the morning +Madam Routh's compliments had come to Mrs. Linceford, with the request, +in all the form that mountain usage demanded, that she and the young +ladies would make part of the expedition for the day. + +Captain Jotham Green, host and proprietor, himself stood at the horses' +heads. The Green Cottage, you perceive, had double right to its +appellation. It was both baptismal and hereditary, surname and given +name,--given with a coat of fresh, pale, pea-green paint that had been +laid on it within the year, and had communicated a certain tender, +newly-sprouted, May-morning expression to the old centre and its +outshoots. + +Mrs. Green, within, was generously busy with biscuits, cold chicken, +doughnuts fried since sunrise, and coffee richly compounded with cream +and sugar, which a great tin can stood waiting to receive and convey, +and which was at length to serve as cooking utensil in reheating upon +the fire of coals the picnickers would make up under the very tassel of +Feather-Cap. + +The great wagons were drawn up also before the piazza of the hotel; and +between the two houses flitted the excursionists, full of the bright +enthusiasm of the setting off, which is the best part of a jaunt, +invariably. + +Leslie Goldthwaite, in the hamadryad costume, just aware--which it was +impossible for her to help--of its exceeding prettiness, and of glances +that recognized it, pleased with a mixture of pleasures, was on the +surface of things once more, taking the delight of the moment with a +young girl's innocent abandonment. It was nice to be received so among +all these new companions; to be evidently, though tacitly, _voted_ nice, +in the way girls have of doing it; to be launched at once into the +beginning of apparently exhaustless delights,--all this was superadded +to the first and underlying joy of merely being alive and breathing, +this superb summer morning, among these forests and hills. + +Sin Saxon, whatever new feeling of half sympathy and respect had been +touched in her toward Miss Craydocke the night before, in her morning +mood was all alive again to mischief. The small, spare figure of the +lady appeared at the side-door, coming out briskly toward them along +the passage, just as the second wagon filled up and was ready to move. + +I did not describe Miss Craydocke herself when I gave you the glimpse +into her room. There was not much to describe; and I forgot it in +dwelling upon her surroundings and occupations. In fact, she extended +herself into these, and made you take them involuntarily and largely +into the account in your apprehension of her. Some people seem to have +given them at the outset a mere germ of personality like this, which +must needs widen itself out in like fashion to be felt at all. Her +mosses and minerals, her pressed leaves and flowers, her odds and ends +of art and science and prettiness which she gathered about her, her +industries and benevolences,--these were herself. Out of these she was +only a little elderly thread-paper of a woman, of no apparent account +among crowds of other people, and with scarcely enough of bodily bulk or +presence to take any positive foothold anywhere. + +What she might have seemed, in the days when her hair was golden, and +her little figure plump, and the very unclassical features rounded and +rosy with the bloom and grace of youth, was perhaps another thing; but +now, with her undeniable "front," and cheeks straightened into lines +that gave you the idea of her having slept all night upon both of them, +and got them into longitudinal wrinkles that all day was never able to +wear out; above all, with her curious little nose (that was the exact +expression of it), sharply and suddenly thrusting itself among things in +general from the middle plane of her face with slight preparatory hint +of its intention,--you would scarcely charge her, upon suspicion, with +any embezzlement or making away of charms intrusted to her keeping in +the time gone by. + +This morning, moreover, she had somehow given herself a scratch upon +the tip of this odd, investigating member; and it blushed for its +inquisitiveness under a scrap of thin pink adhesive plaster. + +Sin Saxon caught sight of her as she came. "Little Miss Netticoat!" she +cried, just under her breath, "_with_ a fresh petticoat, _and_ a red +nose!" Then, changing her tone with her quotation,-- + + "'Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower, + Thou'st met me in a luckless hour!' + +Thou always dost! What _hast_ thou gone and got thyself up so for, just +as I was almost persuaded to be good? Now--_can_ I help that?" And she +dropped her folded hands in her lap, exhaled a little sigh of vanquished +goodness, and looked round appealingly to her companions. + +"It's only," said Miss Craydocke, reaching them a trifle out of breath, +"this little parcel,--something I promised to Prissy Hoskins,--and +_would_ you just go round by the Cliff and leave it for me?" + +"Oh, I'm afraid of the Cliff!" cried Florrie Arnall. "Creggin's horses +backed there the other day. It's horribly dangerous." + +"It's three quarters of a mile round," suggested the driver. + +"The 'little red' might take it. They'll go faster than we, or can, if +they try," said Mattie Shannon. + +"The 'little red' 's just ready," said Sin Saxon. "You needn't laugh. +That wasn't a pun. But oh, Miss Craydocke!"--and her tone suggested the +mischievous apropos--"what _can_ you have been doing to your nose?" + +"Oh, yes!"--Miss Craydocke had a way of saying "Oh, yes!"--"It was my +knife slipped as I was cutting a bit of cord, in a silly fashion, up +toward my face. It's a mercy my nose served, to save my eyes." + +"I suppose that's partly what noses are for," said Sin Saxon gravely. +"Especially when you follow them, and 'go it blind.'" + +"It was a piece of good luck, too, after all," said Miss Craydocke, in +her simple way, never knowing, or choosing to know, that she was snubbed +or quizzed. "Looking for a bit of plaster, I found my little parcel of +tragacanth that I wanted so the other day. It's queer how things turn +up." + +"Excessively queer," said Sin solemnly, still looking at the injured +feature. "But, as you say, it's all for the best, after all. 'There _is_ +a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.' Hiram, we +might as well drive on. I'll take the parcel, Miss Craydocke. We'll get +it there somehow, going or coming." + +The wagon rolled off, veils and feathers taking the wind bravely, and +making a gay moving picture against the dark pines and gray ledges as it +glanced along. Sin Saxon tossed Miss Craydocke's parcel into the "little +red" as they passed it by, taking the road in advance, giving a saucy +word of command to Jim Holden, which transferred the charge of its +delivery to him, and calling out a hurried explanation to the ladies +over her shoulder that "it would take them round the Cliff,--the most +wonderful point in all Outledge; up and down the whole length of New +Hampshire they could see from there, if their eyes were good enough!" +And so they were away. + +Miss Craydocke turned back into the house, not a whit discomfited, and +with not so much as a contrasting sigh in her bosom or a rankle in her +heart. On the contrary, a droll twinkle played among the crow's-feet at +the corners of her eyes. They could not hurt her, these merry girls, +meaning nothing but the moment's fun, nor cheat her of her quiet share +of the fun either. + +Up above, out of a window over the piazza roof, looked two +others,--young girls, one of them at least,--also, upon the scene of +the setting-off. + +I cannot help it that a good many different people will get into my +short story. They get into a short time, in such a summer holiday, and +so why not? At any rate, I must tell you about these Josselyns. + +These two had never in all their lives been away pleasuring before. They +had nobody but each other to come with now. Susan had been away a good +deal in the last two years, but it had not been pleasuring. Martha was +some five or six years the younger. She had a pretty face, yet marked, +as it is so sad to see the faces of the young, with lines and +loss--lines that tell of cares too early felt, and loss of the first +fresh, redundant bloom that such lines bring. + +They sat a great deal at this window of theirs. It was a sort of +instinct and habit with them, and it made them happier than almost +anything else,--sitting at a window together. It was home to them +because at home they lived so: life and duty were so framed in for +them,--in one dear old window-recess. Sometimes they thought that it +would he heaven to them by and by: that such a seat, and such a quiet, +happy outlook, they should find kept for them together, in the Father's +mansion, up above. + +At home, it was up three flights of stairs, in a tall, narrow city +house, of which the lower floors overflowed with young, boisterous half +brothers and sisters,--the tide not seldom rising and inundating their +own retreat,--whose delicate mother, not more than eight years older +than her eldest step-daughter, was tied hand and foot to her nursery, +with a baby on her lap, and the two or three next above with hands +always to be washed, disputes and amusements always to be settled, small +morals to be enforced, and clean calico tiers to be incessantly put on. + +And Susan and Martha sat upstairs and made the tiers. + +Mr. Josselyn was a book-keeper, with a salary of eighteen hundred +dollars, and these seven children. And Susan and Martha were girls of +fair culture, and womanly tastes, and social longings. How does this +seem to you, young ladies, and what do you think of their upstairs life +together, you who calculate, if you calculate at all, whether five +hundred dollars may carry you respectably through your half-dozen city +assemblies, where you shine in silk and gossamer, of which there will +not be "a dress in the room that cost less than seventy-five dollars," +and come home, after the dance, "a perfect rag"? + +Two years ago, when you were perhaps performing in tableaux for the +"benefit of the Sanitary," these two girls had felt the great enthusiasm +of the time lay hold of them in a larger way. Susan had a friend--a dear +old intimate of school-days, now a staid woman of eight-and-twenty--who +was to go out in yet maturer companionship into the hospitals. And +Susan's heart burned to go. But there were all the little tiers, and the +ABC's, and the faces and fingers. + +"I can do it for a while," said Martha, "without you." Those two words +held the sacrifice. "Mamma is so nicely this summer, and by and by Aunt +Lucy may come, perhaps. I can do _quite_ well." + +So Martha sat, for months and months, in the upstairs window alone. +There were martial marchings in the streets beneath; great guns +thundered out rejoicings; flags filled the air with crimson and blue, +like an aurora; she only sat and made little frocks and tiers for the +brothers and sisters. God knew how every patient needle thrust was +really also a woman's blow for her country. + +And now, pale and thin with close, lonely work, the time had come to +her at last when it was right to take a respite; when everybody said it +must be; when Uncle David, just home from Japan, had put his hand in his +pocket and pulled out three new fifty-dollar bills, and said to them in +his rough way, "There, girls! Take that, and go your lengths." The war +was over, and among all the rest here were these two women-soldiers +honorably discharged, and resting after the fight. But nobody at +Outledge knew anything of the story. + +There is almost always at every summer sojourn some party of persons who +are to the rest what the mid-current is to the stream; who gather to +themselves and bear along in their course--in their plans and pleasures +and daily doings--the force of all the life of the place. If any +expedition of consequence is afoot, _they_ are the expedition; others +may join in, or hold aloof, or be passed by; in which last cases, it is +only in a feeble, rippling fashion that they go their ways and seek some +separate pleasure in by-nooks and eddies, while the gay hum of the main +channel goes whirling on. At Outledge this party was the large and merry +schoolgirl company with Madam Routh. + +"I don't see why," said Martha Josselyn, still looking out, as the +"little red" left the door of the Green Cottage,--"I don't see why those +new girls who came last night should have got into everything in a +minute, and we've been here a week and don't seem to catch to anything +at all. Some people are like burrs, I think, or drops of quicksilver, +that always bunch or run together. We don't _stick_, Susie. What's the +reason?" + +"Some of these young ladies have been at Madam Routh's; they were over +here last evening. Sin Saxon knows them very well." + +"You knew Effie Saxon at school, too." + +"Eight years ago. And this is the little one. That's nothing." + +"You petted her, and she came to the house. You've told her stories +hundreds of times. And she sees we're all by ourselves." + +"She don't see. She doesn't think. That's just the whole of it." + +"People ought to see, then. You would, Sue, and you know it." + +"I've been used to seeing--and thinking." + +"Used! Yes, indeed! And she's been _used_ to the other. Well, it's queer +how the parts are given out. Shall we go to the pines?" + + + + +CHAPTER X. + + +GEODES. + +A great cliff-side rearing itself up, rough with inaccessible crags, +bristling with old, ragged pines, and dark with glooms of close cedars +and hemlocks, above a jutting table of rock that reaches out and makes a +huge semicircular base for the mountain, and is in itself a +precipice-pedestal eighty feet sheer up from the river-bank; close in +against the hill front, on this platform of stone, that holds its foot +or two of soil, a little, poor unshingled house, with a tumbledown +picket-fence about it, attempting the indispensable dooryard of all +better country-dwellings here where the great natural dooryard or +esplanade makes it such an utter nonsense,--this is the place at which +the "little red" drew up, ten minutes later, to leave Prissy Hoskins's +parcel. + +Dakie Thayne jumped down off the front seat, and held up his arms to +help Leslie out over the wheel, upon her declaring that she must go and +do the errand herself, to get a nearer look at Hoskins life. + +Dakie Thayne had been asked, at Leslie's suggestion, to fill the vacant +sixth seat beside the driver, the Thoresbys one and all declining. Mrs. +Thoresby was politic: she would not fall into the wake of this +schoolgirl party at once. By and by she should be making up her own +excursions, and asking whom she would. + +"There's nothing like a boy of that age for use upon a picnic, Mrs. +Linceford," Leslie had pleaded, with playful parody, in his behalf, when +the lady had hinted something of her former sentiment concerning the +encroachments and monopolies of "boys of that age." And so he came. + +The Haddens got Jim Holden to lift them down on the opposite side, for a +run to the verge of the projecting half-circle of rock that, like a +gigantic bay-window or balcony in the mighty architecture of the hills, +looked up and down the whole perspective of the valley. Jim Holden would +readily have driven them round its very edge upon the flat, mossy sward, +but for Mrs. Linceford's nerves, and the vague idea of almost an +accident having occurred there lately which pervaded the little party. +"Creggin's horses had backed," as Florrie Arnall said; and already the +new comers had picked up, they scarcely knew how, the incipient +tradition, hereafter to grow into an established horror of the "Cliff." + +"It was nothing," Jim Holden said; "only the nigh hoss was a res'less +crittur, an' contrived to git his leg over the pole; no danger with +_his_ cattle." But Mrs. Linceford cried out in utter remonstrance, and +only begged Leslie to be quick, that they might get away from the place +altogether. + +All this bustle of arrival and discussion and alighting had failed, +curiously, to turn the head of an odd, unkempt-looking child,--a girl of +nine or ten, with an old calico sun-bonnet flung back upon her +shoulders, tangled, sunburnt hair tossing above it; gown, innocent of +crinoline, clinging to lank, growing limbs, and bare feet, whose heels +were energetically planted at a quite safe distance from each other, to +insure a fair base for the centre of gravity,--who, at the moment of +their coming, was wrathfully "shoo-ing" off from a bit of rude +toy-garden, fenced with ends of twigs stuck up-right, a tall Shanghai +hen and her one chicken, who had evidently made nothing, morally or +physically, of the feeble inclosure. + +"I wish you were dead and in your gravies!" cried the child, achieving, +between her righteous indignation and her relenting toward her uncouth +pets at the last breath, a sufficiently queer play upon her own word. +And with this, the enemy being routed, she turned face to face with +Dakie Thayne and Leslie Goldthwaite, coming in at the dilapidated gate. + +"They've scratched up all my four-o'clocks!" she said. And then her +rustic shyness overcame suddenly all else, and she dragged her great toe +back and forth in the soft mould, and put her forefinger in her mouth, +and looked askance at them from the corners of her eyes. + +"Prissy? Prissy Hoskins?" Leslie addressed her in sweet, inquiring +tones. But the child stood still with finger in mouth, and toe working +in the ground, not a bit harder nor faster, nor changing in the least, +for more or less, the shy look in her face. + +"That's your name, isn't it? I've got something for you. Won't you come +and get it?'" Leslie paused, waiting; fearing lest a further advance on +her own part might put Prissy altogether to flight. Nothing answered in +the girl's eyes to her words; there was no lighting up of desire or +curiosity, however restrained; she stood like one indifferent or +uncomprehending. + +"She's awful deef!" cried a new voice from the doorway. "She ain't that +scared. She's sarcy enough, sometimes." + +A woman, middle-aged or more, stood on the rough, slanting door-stone. +She had bare feet, in coarse calf-skin slippers, stringy petticoats +differing only from the child's in length, sleeves rolled up to the +shoulders, no neck garniture,--not a bit of anything white about her. +Over all looked forth a face sharp and hard, that might have once been +good-looking, in a raw, country fashion, and that had undoubtedly always +been, what it now was, emphatically Yankee-smart. An inch-wide stripe of +black hair was combed each way over her forehead, and rolled up on her +temples in what, years and years ago, used to be called most +appropriately "flat curls,"--these fastened with long horn side-combs. +Beyond was a strip of desert,--no hair at all for an inch and a half +more toward the crown; the rest dragged back and tied behind with the +relentless tightness that gradually and regularly, by the persistence of +years, had accomplished this peculiar belt of clearing. It completed her +expression; it was as a very halo of Yankee saintship crowning the woman +who in despite of poverty and every discouragement had always hated, to +the very roots of her hair, anything like what she called a "sozzle;" +who had always been screwed up and sharp set to hard work. She couldn't +help the tumbledown fence; she had no "men-folks" round; and she +couldn't have paid for a hundred pickets and a day's carpentering, to +have saved her life. She couldn't help Prissy's hair even; for it would +kink and curl, and the minute the wind took it "there it was again;" and +it was not time yet, thank goodness! to harrow it back and begin in her +behalf the remarkable engineering which had laid out for herself that +broad highway across all the thrifty and energetic bumps up to +Veneration (who knows how much it had had to do with mixing them in one +common tingle of mutual and unceasing activity?) and down again from ear +to ear. Inside the poor little house you would find all spick and span, +the old floor white and sanded, the few tins and the pewter spoons +shining upon the shelf, the brick hearth and jambs aglow with fresh +"redding," table and chairs set back in rectangular tidiness. Only one +thing made a litter, or tried to; a yellow canary that hung in the +window and sang "like a house afire," as Aunt Hoskins said, however that +is, and flung his seeds about like the old "Wash at Edmonton," "on both +sides of the way." Prissy was turned out of doors in all pleasant +weather, so otherwise the keeping-room stayed trim, and her curly hair +grew sunburnt. + +"She's ben deef ever sence she hed the scarlet-fever. Walk in," said the +woman, by no means satisfied to let strangers get only the outside +impression of her premises, and turning round to lead the way without +waiting for a reply. "Come in, Prissy!" she bawled, illustrating her +summons with what might be called a beckoning in broad capitals, done +with the whole arm from finger-tips to shoulder, twice or thrice. + +Leslie followed over the threshold, and Prissy ran by like a squirrel, +and perched herself on a stool just under the bird-cage. + +"I wouldn't keep it if 't warn't for her," said Aunt Hoskins +apologetically. She was Prissy's aunt, holding no other close domestic +relation to living thing, and so had come to be "Aunt Hoskins" in the +whole region round about, so far as she was known at all. "It's the only +bird she can hear sing of a morning. It's as good as all outdoors to +her, and I hain't the heart to make her do without it. _I_'ve done +without most things, but it don't appear to me as if I _could_ do +without them. Take a seat, do." + +"I thank you, but my friends are waiting. I've brought something for +Prissy, from Miss Craydocke at the hotel." And Leslie held out the +package which Dakie Thayne, waiting at the door, had put into her hand +as she came in. + +"Lawful suz, Prissy! if 't ain't another book!" cried the good woman, as +Prissy, quick to divine the meaning of the parcel, the like of which she +had been made accustomed to before, sprang to her aunt's side within +hearing of her exclamation. "If she ain't jest the feelingest and +thoughtfullest--Well! open it yourself, child; there's no good of a +bundle if you don't." + +Poor Prissy was thus far happy that she had not been left in the +providence of her little life to utter ignorance of this greatest +possible delight--a common one to more outwardly favored children--of a +real parcel all one's own. The book, without the brown paper and string, +would have been as nothing, comparatively. + +Leslie could not but linger to see it untied. There came out a book,--a +wonderful big book,--Grimm's Tales; and some little papers fell to the +floor. These were flower seeds,--bags labeled "Petunia," "Candytuft," +"Double Balsam," "Portulaca." + +"Why, Prissy!" shouted Miss Hoskins in her ear as she picked them up, +and read the names; "them's elegant things! They'll beat your +four-o'clocks all to nothin'. It's lucky the old Shank-high did make a +clearin' of 'em. Tell Miss Craydocke," she continued, turning again to +Leslie, "that I'm comin' down myself, to--no, I _can't_ thank her! She's +made a _life_ for that 'ere child, out o' nothin', a'most!" + +Leslie stood hushed and penetrated in the presence of this good deed, +and the joy and gratitude born of it. + +"This ain't all, you see; nor't ain't nothin' new. She's ben at it these +two year; learnin' the child to read, an' tellin' her things, an' +settin' her to hunt 'em out, and to do for herself. She was crazy about +flowers, allers, an' stories; but, lor, I couldn't stop to tell 'em to +her, an' I never knew but one or two; an' now she can read 'em off to +me, like a minister. She's told her a lot o' stuff about the rocks,--_I_ +can't make head nor tail on't; but it'd please you to see her fetchin' +'em in by the apern-full, an' goin' on about 'em, that is, if there was +reely any place to put 'em afterwards. That's the wust on't. I tell you, +it _is_ jest _makin_' a life out o' pieces that come to hand. Here's the +girl, an' there's the woods an' rocks; there's all there was to do with, +or likely to be; but she found the gumption an' the willingness, an' +she's done it!" + +Prissy came close over to Leslie with her book in her hand. "Wait a +minute," she said, with the effort in her tone peculiar to the deaf. +"I've got something to send back." + +"_If_ it's convenient, you mean," put in Aunt Hoskins sharply. "She's as +blunt as a broomstick, that child is." + +But Prissy had sprung away in her squirrel-like fashion, and now came +back, bringing with her something really to make one's eyes water, if +one happened, at least, to be ever so little of a geologist,--a mass of +quartz rock as large as she could grasp with her two hands, shot through +at three different angles with three long, superb, columnar crystals of +clear, pale-green beryl. If Professor Dana had known this exact +locality, and a more definite name for the "Cliff," wouldn't he have had +it down in his Supplement with half a dozen exclamation points after the +"beryl"! + +"I found it a-purpose!" said Prissy, with the utmost simplicity, putting +the heavy specimen out of her own hands into Leslie's. "She's been +a-wantin' it this great while, and we've looked for it everywheres!" + +"A-purpose" it did seem as if the magnificent fragment had been laid in +the way of the child's zealous and grateful search. "There were only the +rocks," as Aunt Hoskins said; in no other way could she so joyously have +acknowledged the kindness that had brightened now three summers of her +life. + +"It'll bother you, I'm afeard," said the woman. + +"No, indeed! I shall _like_ to take it for you," continued Leslie, with +a warm earnestness, stooping down to the little girl, and speaking in +her clear, glad tone close to her cheek. "I only wish _I_ could find +something to take her myself." And with that, close to the little +red-brown cheek as she was, she put the period of a quick kiss to her +words. + +"Come again, and we'll hunt for some together," said the child, with +instant response of cordiality. + +"I will come--if I possibly can," was Leslie's last word, and then she +and Dakie Thayne hurried back to the wagon. + +The Haddens had just got in again upon their side. They were full of +exclamations about the wonderful view up and down the long +valley-reaches. + +"You needn't tell _me_!" cried Elinor, in high enthusiasm. "I don't care +a bit for the geography of it. That great aisle goes straight from Lake +Umbagog to the Sound!" + +"It is a glorious picture," said Mrs. Linceford. "But I've had a little +one, that you've lost. You've no idea, Leslie, what a lovely tableau you +have been making,--you and Dakie, with that old woman and the blowzy +child!" + +Leslie blushed. + +"You'll never look prettier, if you try ever so hard." + +"Don't, Mrs. Linceford!" + +"Why not?" said Jeannie. "It's only a pity, I think, that you couldn't +have known it at the time. They say we don't know when we're happiest; +and we _can't_ know when we're prettiest; so where's the satisfaction?" + +"That's part of your mistake, Jeannie, perhaps," returned her sister. +"If you had been there you'd have spoiled the picture." + +"Look at that!" exclaimed Leslie, showing her beryl. "That's for Miss +Craydocke." And then, when the first utterances of amazement and +admiration were over, she told them the story of the child and her +misfortune, and of what Miss Craydocke had done. "_That_'s beautiful, I +think," said she. "And it's the sort of beauty, may be, that one might +feel as one went along. I wish I could find--a diamond--for that woman!" + +"Thir garnits on Feather-Cap," put in Jim the driver. + +"Oh, _will_ you show us where?" + +"Well, 't ain't nowhers in partickler," replied Jim. "It's jest as you +light on 'em. And you wouldn't know the best ones when you did. I've +seen 'em,--dead, dull-lookin' round stones that'll crack open, +chock--full o' red garnits as an egg is o' meat." + +"Geodes!" cried Dakie Thayne. + +Jim Holden turned round and looked at him as if he thought he had got +hold of some new-fashioned expletive,--possibly a pretty hard one. + +They came down, now, on the other side of the Cliff, and struck the +ford. This diverted and absorbed their thoughts, for none of the ladies +had ever forded a river before. + +"Are you sure it's safe?" asked Mrs. Linceford. + +"Safe as meetin'," returned Jim. "I'd drive across with my eyes shot." + +"Oh, don't!" cried Elinor. + +"I ain't agoin' ter; but I could,--an' the hosses, too, for that +matter." + +It was exciting, nevertheless, when the water in mid-channel came up +nearly to the body of the wagon, and the swift ripples deluded the eye +into almost conviction that horses, vehicle, and all were not gaining an +inch in forward progress, but drifting surely down. They came up out of +the depths, however, with a tug, and a swash, and a drip all over, and a +scrambling of hoofs on the pebbles, at the very point aimed at in such +apparently sidelong fashion,--the wheel-track that led them up the bank +and into the ten-mile pine woods through which they were to skirt the +base of the Cairn and reach Feather-Cap on his accessible side. It was +one long fragrance and stillness and shadow. + +They overtook the Routh party at the beginning of the mountain-path. The +pine woods stretched on over the gradual slope, as far as they would +climb before dinner. Otherwise the midday heats would have been too much +for them. This was the easy part of the way, and there was breath for +chat and merriment. + +Just within the upper edge of the woods, in a comparatively smooth +opening, they halted. Here they spread their picnic, while up above, on +the bare, open rock, the young men kindled their fire and heated the +coffee; and here they ate and drank, and rested through the noontide. + +Light clouds flitted between the mountains and the heavens, later in the +day, and flung bewildering, dreamy shadows on the far-off steeps, and +dropped a gracious veil over the bald forehead and sun-bleak shoulders +of Feather-Cap. It was "weather just made for them," as fortunate +excursionists are wont to say. + +Sin Saxon was all life, and spring, and fun. She climbed at least three +Feather-Caps, dancing from stone to stone with tireless feet, and +bounding back and forth with every gay word that it occurred to her to +say to anybody. Pictures? She made them incessantly. She was a living +dissolving view. You no sooner got one bright look or graceful attitude +than it was straightway shifted into another. She kept Frank Scherman at +her side for the first half-hour, and then, perhaps, his admiration or +his muscles tired, for he fell back a little to help Madam Routh up a +sudden ridge, and afterwards, somehow, merged himself in the quieter +group of strangers. + +By and by one of the Arnalls whispered to Mattie Shannon,--"He's sidled +off with her, at last. Did you ever know such a fellow for a new face? +But it's partly the petticoat. He's such an artist's eye for color. He +was raving about her all the while she stood hanging those shawls among +the pines to keep the wind from Mrs. Linceford. She isn't downright +pretty either. But she's got up exquisitely!" + +Leslie Goldthwaite, in her lovely mountain dress, her bright bloom from +enjoyment and exercise, with the stray light through the pines +burnishing the bronze of her hair, had innocently made a second picture, +it would seem. One such effects deeper impression, sometimes, than the +confusing splendor of incessant changes. + +"Are you looking for something? Can I help you?" Frank Scherman had +said, coming up to her, as she and her friend Dakie, a little apart from +the others, were poising among some loose pebbles. + +"Nothing that I have lost," Leslie answered, smiling. "Something I have +a very presumptuous wish to find. A splendid garnet geode, if you +please!" + +"That's not at all impossible," returned the young man. "We'll have it +before we go down,--see if we don't!" + +Frank Scherman knew a good deal about Feather-Cap, and something of +geologizing. So he and Leslie--Dakie Thayne, in his unswerving devotion, +still accompanying--"sidled off" together, took a long turn round under +the crest, talking very pleasantly--and restfully, after Sin Saxon's +continuous brilliancy--all the way. How they searched among loose drift +under the cliff, how Mr. Scherman improvised a hammer from a slice of +rock; and how, after many imperfect specimens, they did at last "find +a-purpose" an irregular oval of dull, dusky stone, which burst with a +stroke into two chalices of incrusted crimson crystals,--I ought to be +too near the end of a long chapter to tell. But this search and this +finding, and the motive of it, were the soul and the crown of Leslie's +pleasure for the day. She did not even stop to think how long she had +had Frank Scherman's attention all to herself, or the triumph that it +was in the eyes of the older girls, among whom he was excessively +admired, and not very disguisedly competed for. She did not know how +fast she was growing to be a sort of admiration herself among them, in +their girls' fashion, or what she might do, if she chose, in the way of +small, early belleship here at Outledge with such beginning,--how she +was "getting on," in short, as girls express it. And so, as Jeannie +Hadden asked, "Where was the satisfaction?" + +"You never knew anything like it," said Jeannie to her friend Ginevra, +talking it all over with her that evening in a bit of a visit to Mrs. +Thoresby's room. "I never saw anybody take so among strangers. Madam +Routh was delighted with her; and so, I should think, was Mr. Scherman. +They say he hates trouble; but he took her all round the top of the +mountain, hammering stones for her to find a geode." + +"That's the newest dodge," said Mrs. Thoresby, with a little sarcastic +laugh. "Girls of that sort are always looking for geodes." After this, +Mrs. Thoresby had always a little well-bred venom for Leslie +Goldthwaite. + +At the same time Leslie herself, coming out on the piazza for a moment +after tea, met Miss Craydocke approaching over the lawn. She had only +her errand to introduce her, but she would not lose the opportunity. She +went straight up to the little woman, in a frank, sweet way. But a bit +of embarrassment underneath, the real respect that made her +timid,--perhaps a little nervous fatigue after the excitement and +exertion of the day,--did what nerves and embarrassment, and reverence +itself will do sometimes,--played a trick with her perfectly clear +thought on its way to her tongue. + +"Miss Graywacke, I believe?" she said, and instantly knew the dreadful +thing that she had done. + +"Exactly," said the lady, with an amused little smile. + +"Oh, I _do_ beg your pardon," began Leslie, blushing all over. + +"No need,--no need. Do you think I don't know what name I go by, behind +my back? They suppose because I'm old and plain and single, and wear a +front, and don't understand rats and the German, that I'm deaf and blind +and stupid. But I believe I get as much as they do out of their jokes, +after all." The dear old soul took Leslie by both her hands as she +spoke, and looked a whole world of gentle benignity at her out of two +soft gray eyes, and then she laughed again. This woman had no _self_ to +be hurt. + +"We stopped at the Cliff this morning," Leslie took heart to say; "and +they were so glad of your parcel,--the little girl and her aunt. And +Prissy gave me something to bring back to you; a splendid specimen of +beryl that she has found." + +"Then my mind's at rest!" said Miss Craydocke, cheerier than ever. "I +was sure she'd break her neck, or pull the mountain down on her head +some day looking for it." + +"Would you like--I've found--I should like you to have that, too,--a +garnet geode from Feather--Cap?" Leslie thought she had done it very +clumsily, and in a hurry, after all. + +"Will you come over to my little room, dear,--number fifteen, in the +west wing,--to-morrow sometime, with your stones? I want to see more of +you." + +There was a deliberate, gentle emphasis upon her words. If the grandest +person of whom she had ever known had said to Leslie Goldthwaite, "I +want to see more of you," she would not have heard it with a warmer +thrill than she felt that moment at her heart. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + + +IN THE PINES. + +It was a glorious July morning, and there was nothing particular on +foot. In the afternoon, there would be drives and walks, perhaps; for +some hours, now, there would be intensifying heat. The sun had burned +away every cloud that had hung rosy about his rising, and the great gray +flanks of Washington glared in a pale scorch close up under the sky, +whose blue fainted in the flooding presence of the full white light of +such unblunted day. Here and there, adown his sides, something flashed +out in a clear, intense dazzle, like an enormous crystal cropping from +the granite, and blazing with reflected splendor. These were the leaps +of water from out dark rifts into the sun. + +"Everybody will be in the pines to-day," said Martha Josselyn. "I think +it is better when they all go off and leave us." + +"We can go up under our rock," said Sue, putting stockings and mending +cotton into a large, light basket. "Have you got the chess-board? What +_should_ we do without our mending-day?" + +These two girls had bought new stockings for all the little feet at +home, that the weekly darning might be less for the mother while they +were away; and had come with their own patiently cared for old hose, +"which they should have nothing else to do but to embroider." + +They had made a sort of holiday, in their fashion, of mending-day at +home, till it had come to seem like a positive treat and rest; and the +habit was so strong upon them that they hailed it even here. They always +got out their little chess-board, when they sat down to the big basket +together. They could darn, and consider, and move, and darn again; and +so could keep it up all day long, as else even they would have found it +nearly intolerable to do. So, though they seemed slower at it, they +really in the end saved time. Thursday night saw the tedious work all +done, and the basket piled with neatly folded pairs, like a heap of fine +white rolls. This was a great thing, and "enough for one day," as Mrs. +Josselyn said. It was disastrous if they once began to lie over. If they +could be disposed of between sun and sun, the girls were welcome to any +play they could get out of it. + +"There they go, those two together. Always to the pines, and always with +a work-basket," said Leslie Goldthwaite, sitting on the piazza step at +the Green Cottage, by Mrs. Linceford's feet, the latter lady occupying +a Shaker rocking-chair behind. "What nice girls they seem to be,--and +nobody appears to know them much, beyond a 'good-morning'!" + +"Henny-penny, Goosie-poosie, Turkey-lurky, Ducky-daddles, _and_ Chicken +Little!" said Mrs. Linceford, counting up from thumb to little finger. +"Dakie Thayne and Miss Craydocke, Marmaduke Wharne and these two,--they +just make it out," she continued, counting back again. "Whatever you do, +Les, don't make up to Fox Lox at last, for all our sakes!" + +Out came Dakie Thayne, at this point, upon them, with his hands full. +"Miss Leslie, _could_ you head these needles for me with black wax? I +want them for my butterflies, and I've made _such_ a daub and scald of +it! I've blistered three fingers, and put lop-sided heads to two +miserable pins, and left no end of wax splutters on my table. I haven't +but two sticks more, and the deacon don't keep any; I must try to get a +dozen pins out of it, at least." He had his sealing-wax and a lighted +"homespun candle," as Leslie called the dips of Mrs. Green's +manufacture, in one hand, and a pincushion stuck full of needles waiting +for tops, in the other. + +"I told you so," said Mrs. Linceford to Leslie. "That's it, then?" she +asked of Dakie Thayne. + +"What, ma'am?" + +"Butterflies. I knew you'd some hobby or other,--I said so. I'm glad +it's no worse," she answered, in her pleasant, smiling way. Dakie Thayne +had a great liking for Mrs. Linceford, but he adored Leslie Goldthwaite. + +"I'd like to show them to you, if you'd care," he said. "I've got some +splendid ones. One great Turnus, that I brought with me in the +chrysalis, that hatched out while I was at Jefferson. I rolled it up in +a paper for the journey, and fastened it in the crown of my hat. I've +had it ever since last fall. The asterias worms are spinning now,--the +early ones. They're out on the carrot-tops in shoals. I'm feeding up a +dozen of 'em in a box. They're very handsome,--bright green with black +and yellow spots,--and it's the queerest thing to see them stiffen out +and change." + +"_Can_ you? Do they do it all at once?" asked Etty Thoresby, slipping +into the rocking-chair, as Mrs. Linceford, by whom she had come and +placed herself within the last minute, rose and went in to follow her +laundress, just then going up the stairs with her basket. + +"Pretty much; it seems so. The first thing you know they stick +themselves up by their tails, and spin a noose to hang back their heads +in, and there they are, like a papoose in a basket. Then their skin +turns a queer, dead, ashy color, and grows somehow straight and tight, +and they only squirm a little in a feeble way now and then, and grow +stiffer and stiffer till they can't squirm at all, and then they're +mummies, and that's the end of it till the butterflies are born. It's a +strange thing to see a live creature go into its own shroud, and hang +itself up to turn into a corpse. Sometimes a live one, crawling round to +find a place for itself, will touch a mummy accidentally; and then, when +they're not quite gone, I've seen 'em give an odd little quiver, under +the shell, as if they were almost at peace, and didn't want to be +intruded on, or called back to earthly things, and the new comer takes +the hint, and respects privacy, and moves himself off to find quarters +somewhere else. Miss Leslie, how splendidly you're doing those! What's +the difference, I wonder, between girls' fingers and boys'? I couldn't +make those atoms of balls so round and perfect, 'if I died and +suffered,' as Miss Hoskins says." + +"It's only centrifugal force," said Leslie, spinning round between her +finger and thumb a needle to whose head she had just touched a globule +of the bright black wax. "The world and a pin-head--both made on the +same principle." + +The Haddens and Imogen Thoresby strolled along together, and added +themselves to the group. + +"Let's go over to the hotel, Leslie. We've seen nothing of the girls +since just after breakfast. They must be up in the hall, arranging about +the tableaux." + +"I'll come by and by, if you want me; don't wait. I'm going to finish +these--properly;" and she dipped and twirled another needle with dainty +precision, in the pause between her words. + +"Have you got a lot of brothers at home, Miss Leslie?" asked Dakie +Thayne. + +"Two," replied Leslie; "not at home, though, now; one at Exeter, and the +other at Cambridge. Why?" + +"I was thinking it would be bad--what do you call it--political economy +or something, if you hadn't any, that's all." + +"Mamma wants you," said Ginevra Thoresby, looking out at the door to +call her sisters. "She's in the Haughtleys' room. They're talking about +the wagon for Minster Rock to-night. What _do_ you take up your time +with that boy for?" she added, not inaudibly, as she and Imogen turned +away together. + +"Oh dear!" cried blunt Etty, lingering, "I wonder if she meant me. I +want to hear about the caterpillars. Mamma thinks the Haughtleys are +such nice people, because they came in their own carriage, and they've +got such big trunks, and a saddle-horse, and elegant dressing-cases, and +ivory-backed brushes! I wish she didn't care so much about such things." + +Mrs. Thoresby would have been shocked to hear her little daughter's +arrangement and version of her ideas. She had simply been kind to these +strangers on their arrival, in their own comfortable carriage, a few +days since; had stepped forward,--as somehow it seemed to devolve upon +her, with her dignified air and handsome gray curls, when she chose, to +do,--representing by a kind of tacit consent the household in general, +as somebody in every such sojourn usually will; had interested herself +about their rooms, which were near her own, and had reported of them, +privately, among other things noted in these first glimpses, that "they +had everything about them in the most _per_fect style; ivory-backed +brushes, and lovely inlaid dressing-cases, Ginevra; the best all +_through_, and no sham!" Yes, indeed, if that could but be said truly, +and need not stop at brushes and boxes! + +Imogen came back presently, and called to Etty from the stairs, and she +was obliged to go. Jeannie Hadden waited till they were fairly off the +landing, and then walked away herself, saying nothing, but wearing a +slightly displeased air. + +Mrs. Thoresby and her elder daughter had taken a sort of dislike to +Dakie Thayne. They seemed to think he wanted putting down. Nobody knew +anything about him; he was well enough in his place, perhaps; but why +should he join himself to their party? The Routh girls had Frank +Scherman, and two or three other older attendants; among them he was +simply not thought of, often, at all. If it had not been for Leslie and +Mrs. Linceford, he would have found himself in Outledge, what boys of +his age are apt to find themselves in the world at large,--a sort of odd +or stray, not provided for anywhere in the general scheme of society. +For this very reason, discerning it quickly, Leslie had been loyal to +him; and he, with all his boy-vehemence of admiration and devotion, was +loyal to her. She had the feeling, motherly and sisterly in its mingled +instinct, by which all true and fine feminine natures are moved, in +behalf of the man-nature in its dawn, that so needs sympathy and gentle +consideration and provision, and that certain respect which calls forth +and fosters self-respect; to be allowed and acknowledged to be somebody, +lest for the want of this it should fail, unhappily, ever to be anybody. +She was not aware of it; she only followed her kindly instinct. So she +was doing, unconsciously, one of the best early bits of her woman-work +in the world. + +Once in a while it occurred to Leslie Goldthwaite to wonder why it was +that she was able to forget--that she found she had forgotten, in a +measure--those little self-absorptions that she had been afraid of, and +that had puzzled her in her thoughtful moments. She was glad to be +"taken up" with something that could please Dakie Thayne; or to go over +to the Cliff and see Prissy Hoskins, and tell her a story; or help Dakie +to fence in safely her beds of flower-seedlings (she had not let her +first visit be her last, in these weeks since her introduction there), +or to sit an hour with dear old Miss Craydocke and help her in a bit of +charity work, and hear her sweet, simple, genial talk. She had taken up +her little opportunities as they came. Was it by instinct only, or +through a tender Spirit-leading, that she winnowed them and chose the +best, and had so been kept a little out of the drift and hurry that +might else have frothed away the hours? "Give us our daily bread," "Lead +us not into temptation,"--they have to do with each other, if we "know +the daily bread when we see it." But that also is of the grace of God. + +There was the beginning of fruit under the leaf with Leslie Goldthwaite; +and the fine life-current was setting itself that way with its best +impulse and its rarest particles. + +The pincushion was well filled with the delicate, bristling, +tiny-headed needles, when Miss Craydocke appeared, walking across, under +her great brown sun-umbrella, from the hotel. + +"If you've nothing else to do, my dears, suppose we go over to the pines +together? Where's Miss Jeannie? Wouldn't she like it? All the breeze +there is haunts them always." + +"I'm always ready for the pines," said Leslie. "Here, Dakie, I hope +you'll catch a butterfly for every pin. Oh, now I think of it, have you +found your _elephant_?" + +"Yes, half way up the garret-stairs. I can't feed him comfortably, Miss +Leslie. He wants to eat incessantly, and the elm-leaves wilt so quickly, +if I bring them in, that the first thing I know, he's out of proper +provender and off on a raid. He needs to be on the tree; but then I +should lose him." + +Leslie thought a minute. "You might tie up a branch with +mosquito-netting," she said. + +"Isn't that bright? I'll go right and do it,--only I haven't any +netting," said he. + +"Mrs. Linceford has. I'll go and beg a piece for you. And then, if +you'll just sit here a minute, I'll come, Miss Craydocke." + +When she came back, she brought Jeannie with her. To use a vulgar +proverb, Jeannie's nose was rather out of joint since the Haughtleys had +arrived. Ginevra Thoresby was quite engrossed with them, and this often +involved Imogen. There was only room for six in Captain Green's wagon, +and nothing had been said to Jeannie about the drive to Minster Rock. + +Leslie had hanging upon her finger, also, the finest and whitest and +most graceful of all possible little splint baskets, only just big +enough to carry a bit of such work as was in it now,--a strip of sheer, +delicate grass-linen, which needle and thread, with her deft guidance, +were turning into a cobweb border, by a weaving of lace-lines, strong, +yet light, where the woof of the original material had been drawn out. +It was "done for odd-minute work, and was better than anything she could +buy." Prettier it certainly was, when, with a finishing of the merest +edge of lace, it came to encircle her round, fair arms and shoulders, or +to peep out with its dainty revelation among the gathering treasures of +the linen-drawer I told you of. She had accomplished yards of it already +for her holiday work. + +She had brought the netting, as she promised, for Dakie Thayne, who +received it with thanks, and straightway hastened off to get his +"elephant" and a piece of string, and to find a convenient elm-branch +which he could convert into a cage-pasture. + +"I'll come round to the pines, afterward," he said. + +And just then,--Sin Saxon's bright face and pretty figure showing +themselves on the hotel piazza, with a seeking look and +gesture,--Jeannie and Elinor were drawn off also to ask about the +tableaux, and see if they were wanted, with the like promise that "they +would come presently." So Miss Craydocke and Leslie walked slowly round, +under the sun-umbrella, to the head of the ledge, by themselves. + +Up this rocky promontory it was very pretty little climbing, over the +irregular turf-covered crags that made the ascent; and once up, it was +charming. A natural grove of stately old pine-trees, with their glory of +tasseled foliage and their breath of perfume, crowned and sheltered it; +and here had been placed at cosy angles, under the deepest shade, long, +broad, elastic benches of boards, sprung from rock to rock, and made +secure to stakes, or held in place by convenient irregularities of the +rock itself. Pine-trunks and granite offered rough support to backs that +could so fit themselves; and visitors found out their favorite seats, +and spent hours there, with books or work, or looking forth in a +luxurious listlessness from out the cool upon the warm, bright +valley-picture, and the shining water wandering down from far heights +and unknown solitudes to see the world. + +"It's better so," said Miss Craydocke, when the others left them. "I +had a word I wanted to say to you. What do you suppose those two came up +here to the mountains for?" And Miss Craydocke nodded up, indicatively, +toward the two girl-figures just visible by their draperies in a nook of +rock beyond and above the benches. + +"To get the good of them, as we did, I suppose," Leslie answered, +wondering a little what Miss Craydocke might exactly mean. + +"I suppose so, too," was the reply. "And I suppose--the Lord's love came +with them! I suppose He cares whether they get the full of the good. And +yet I think He leaves it, like everything else, a little to us." + +Leslie's heart beat quicker, hearing these words. It beat quicker always +when such thoughts were touched. She was shy of seeking them; she almost +tried, in an involuntary way, to escape them at first, when they were +openly broached; yet she longed always, at the same time, for a deeper +understanding of them. "I should like to know the Miss Josselyns +better," she said presently, when Miss Craydocke made no haste to speak +again. "I have been thinking so this morning. I have thought so very +often. But they seem so quiet, always. One doesn't like to intrude." + +"They ought to be more with young people," Miss Craydocke went on. "And +they ought to do less ripping and sewing and darning, if it could be +managed. They brought three trunks with them. And what do you think the +third is full of?" + +Leslie had no idea, of course. + +"Old winter dresses. To be made over. For the children at home. So that +their mother may be coaxed to take her turn and go away upon a visit +when they get back, seeing that the fall sewing will be half done! +That's a pretty coming to the mountains for two tired-out young things, +I think!" + +"Oh dear!" cried Leslie pitifully; and then a secret compunction seized +her, thinking of her own little elegant, odd-minute work, which was all +she had to interfere with mountain pleasure. + +"And isn't it some of our business, if we could get at it?" asked Miss +Craydocke, concluding. + +"Dear Miss Craydocke!" said Leslie, with a warm brightness in her face, +as she looked up, "the world is full of business; but so few people find +out any but their own! Nobody but you dreamt of this, or of Prissy +Hoskins, till you showed us,--or of all the little Wigleys. How do you +come to know, when other people go on in their own way, and see +nothing,--like the priests and Levites?" This last she added by a sudden +occurrence and application, that half answered, beforehand, her own +question. + +"When we think of people's needs as the _Master's!_" said Miss +Craydocke, evading herself, and never minding her syntax. "When we think +what every separate soul is to Him, that He came into the world to care +for as God cares for the sparrows! It's my faith that He's never gone +away from his work, dear; that his love lies alongside every life, and +in all its experience; and that his life is in his love; and that if we +want to find Him--_there_ we may! Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the +least of these, ye have done it unto me.'" She grew eloquent--the plain, +simple-speaking woman--when something that was great and living to her +would find utterance. + +"How do you mean that?" said Leslie, with a sort of abruptness, as of +one who must have definiteness, but who hurried with her asking, lest +after a minute she might not dare. "That He really knows, and thinks, of +every special thing and person,--and cares? Or only _would?_" + +"I take it as He said it," said Miss Craydocke. "'All power is given me +in heaven and in earth.' 'And lo! I am with you alway, even unto the end +of the world!' He put the two together himself, dear!" + +A great, warm, instant glow seemed to rush over Leslie inwardly. In the +light and quickening of it, other words shone out and declared +themselves. "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit +of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can ye, except ye abide +in me." And this was the abiding! The sympathy, the interest, that found +itself side by side with his! The faith that felt his uniting presence +with all! + +To this child of sixteen came a moment's glimpse of what might be, +truly, that life which is "hid with Christ in God," and which has its +blessed work with the Lord in the world,--came, with the word of a +plain, old, unconsidered woman, whom heedless girls made daily sport +of,--came, bringing with it "old and new," like a householder of the +kingdom of heaven; showing how the life and the fruit are inextricably +one,--how the growth and the withering are inevitably determined! + +They reached the benches now; they saw the Josselyns busy up beyond, +with their chess-board between them, and their mending basket at their +feet; they would not go now and interrupt their game. + +The seat which the sisters had chosen, because it was just a quiet +little corner for two, was a nook scooped out, as it were, in a jut of +granite; hollowed in behind and perpendicularly to a height above their +heads, and embracing a mossy little flat below, so that it seemed like a +great solid armchair into which two could get together, and a third +could not possibly intrude. + +Miss Craydocke and Leslie settled themselves, and both were silent. +Presently Leslie spoke again, giving out a fragmentary link of the train +of thought that had been going on in her. "If it weren't for just one +thing!" she said, and there she stopped. + +"What?" asked Miss Craydocke, as not a bit at a loss to made out the +unseen connection. + +"The old puzzle. We _have_ to think and work a good deal of the time for +ourselves. And then we lose sight"-- + +"Of Him? Why?" + +Leslie said no more, but waited. Miss Craydocke's tone was clear, +untroubled. The young girl looked, therefore, for this clear confidence +to be spoken out. + +"Why, since He is close to _our_ life also, and cares tenderly for +that?--since, if we let him possess himself of it, it is one of his own +channels, by which He still gives himself unto the world? He didn't do +it all in one single history of three years, my child, or thirty-three, +out there in Judaea. He keeps on,--so I believe,--through every possible +way and circumstance of human living now, if only the life is grafted on +his. The Vine and the branches, and God tending all. And the fruit is +the kingdom of heaven." + +It is never too late, and never impossible, for a human face to look +beautiful. In the soft light and shadow of the stirring pines, with the +moving from within of that which at once illumined and veiled, with an +exultation and an awe, there came a glory over the homely and faded +features which they could neither bar nor dim. And the thought took +possession of the word and tone, and made them simply grand and heavenly +musical. + +After that they sat still again,--it matters not how many minutes. The +crisp green spines rustled dreamily over their heads; the wild birds +called to each other, far back in the closer lying woods; the water +glanced on, millions of new drops every instant making the self-same +circles and gushes and falls, and the wealth of summer sunshine holding +and vivifying all. Leslie had word and scene stamped together on her +spirit and memory in those moments. There was a Presence in the hush and +beauty. Two souls were here met together in the name of the living +Christ. And for that there is the promise. + +Martha Josselyn and her sister sat and played and mended on. + +By and by Dakie Thayne came; said a bright word or two; glanced round, +in restless boy-fashion, as if taking in the elements of the situation, +and considering what was to be made out of it; perceived the pair at +chess; and presently, with his mountain stick, went springing away from +point to point, up and around the piles and masses of rock and mound +that made up the broadening ascent of the ledge. + +"Check to your queen," said Sue. + +Martha put her elbow upon her knee, and held her needle suspended by its +thread. Sue darned away, and got a great hole laid lengthwise with +smooth lines, before her threatening move had been provided for. Then a +red knight came with gallant leap, right down in the midst of the white +forces, menacing in his turn right and left; and Martha drew a long +sigh, and sat back, and poised her needle-lance again, and went to work; +and it was Sue's turn to lean over the board with knit brows and holden +breath. + +Something peered over the rock above them at this moment. A boy's head, +from which the cap had been removed. + +"If only they'll play now, and not chatter!" thought Dakie Thayne, lying +prone along the cliff above, and putting up his elbows to rest his head +between his hands. "This'll be jolly, if it don't turn to eavesdropping. +Poor old Noll! I haven't had a game since I played with him!" + +Sue would not withdraw her attack. She planted a bishop so that, if the +knight should move, it would open a course straight down toward a weak +point beside the red king. + +"She means to 'fight it out on that line, if it takes all summer,'" +Dakie went on within himself, having grasped, during the long pause +before Sue's move, the whole position. "They're no fools at it, to have +got it into a shape like that! I'd just like Noll to see it!" + +Martha looked, and drew a thread or two into her stocking, and looked +again. Then she stabbed her cotton-ball with her needle, and put up both +hands--one with the white stocking-foot still drawn over it--beside her +temples. At last she castled. + +Sue was as calm as the morning. She always grew calm and strong as the +game drew near the end. She had even let her thoughts go off to other +things while Martha pondered and she wove in the cross-threads of her +darn. + +"I wonder, Martha," she said now, suddenly, before attending to the new +aspect of the board, "if I couldn't do without that muslin skirt I made +to wear under my _pina_, and turn it into a couple of white waists to +carry home to mother? If she goes away, you know"-- + +"Aigh!" + +It was a short, sharp, unspellable sound that came from above. Sue +started, and a red piece rolled from the board. Then there was a +rustling and a crashing and a leaping, and by a much shorter and more +hazardous way than he had climbed, Dakie Thayne came down and stood +before them. "I had to let you know! I couldn't listen. I was in hopes +you wouldn't talk. Don't move, please! I'll find the man. I do beg your +pardon,--I had no business,--but I so like chess,--when it's any sort of +a game!" + +While he spoke, he was looking about the base of the rock, and by good +fortune spied and pounced upon the bit of bright-colored ivory, which +had rolled and rested itself against a hummock of sod. + +"May I see it out?" he begged, approaching, and putting the piece upon +the board. "You must have played a good deal," looking at Sue. + +"We play often at home, my sister and I; and I had some good practice +in"--There she stopped. + +"In the hospital," said Martha, with the sharp little way she took up +sometimes. "Why shouldn't you tell of it?" + +"Has Miss Josselyn been in the hospitals?" asked Dakie Thayne, with a +certain quick change in his tone. + +"For the best of two years," Martha answered. + +At this moment, seeing how Dakie was breaking the ice for them, up came +Miss Craydocke and Leslie Goldthwaite. + +"Miss Leslie! Miss Craydocke! This lady has been away among our +soldiers, in the hospitals, half through the war! Perhaps--did you +ever"--But with that he broke off. There was a great flush on his face, +and his eyes glowed with boy-enthusiasm lit at the thought of the war, +and of brave men, and of noble, ministering women, of whom he suddenly +found himself face to face with one. + +The game of chess got swept together. "It was as good as over," Martha +Josselyn said. And these five sat down together among the rocks, and in +half an hour, after weeks of mere "good-mornings," they had grown to be +old friends. But Dakie Thayne--he best knew why--left his fragment of a +question unfinished. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + + +CROWDED OUT. + +The "by and by" people came at last: Jeannie and Elinor, and Sin Saxon, +and the Arnalls, and Josie Scherman. They wanted Leslie,--to tell and +ask her half a hundred things about the projected tableaux. If it had +only been Miss Craydocke and the Josselyns sitting together, with Dakie +Thayne, how would that have concerned them,--the later comers? It would +only have been a bit of "the pines" preoccupied: they would have found a +place for themselves, and gone on with their own chatter. But Leslie's +presence made all the difference. The little group became the nucleus of +the enlarging circle. Miss Craydocke had known very well how this would +be. + +They asked this and that of Leslie which they had come to ask; and she +would keep turning to the Josselyns and appealing to them; so they were +drawn in. There was a curtain to be made, first of all. Miss Craydocke +would undertake that, drafting Leslie and the Miss Josselyns to help +her; they should all come to her room early to-morrow, and they would +have it ready by ten o'clock. Leslie wondered a little that she found +_work_ for them to do: a part of the play she thought would have been +better; but Miss Craydocke knew how that must come about. Besides, she +had more than one little line to lay and to pull, this serpent-wise old +maiden, in behalf of her ultimate designs concerning them. + +I can't stay here under the pines and tell you all their talk this +summer morning,--how Sin Saxon grew social and saucy with the quiet Miss +Josselyns; how she fell upon the mending-basket and their notability, +and declared that the most foolish and pernicious proverb in the world +was that old thing about a stitch in time saving nine; it might save +certain special stitches; but how about the _time_ itself, and _other_ +stitches? She didn't believe in it,--running round after a +darning-needle and forty other things, the minute a thread broke, and +dropping whatever else one had in hand, to let it ravel itself all out +again; "she believed in a good big basket, in a dark closet, and laying +up there for a rainy day, and being at peace in the pleasant weather. +Then, too, there was another thing; she didn't believe in notability +itself, at all: the more one was fool enough to know, the more one had +to do, all one's life long. Providence always took care of the lame and +the lazy; and, besides, those capable people never had contented minds. +They couldn't keep servants: their own fingers were always itching to do +things better. Her sister Effie was a lamentable instance. She'd married +a man,--well, not _very_ rich,--and she had set out to learn and direct +everything. The consequence was, she was like Eve after the apple,--she +knew good and evil; and wasn't the garden just a wilderness after that? +She never thought of it before, but she believed that was exactly what +that old poem in Genesis was written for!" + +How Miss Craydocke answered, with her gentle, tolerant common-sense, and +right thought, and wide-awake brightness; how the Josselyns grew cordial +and confident enough to confess that, with five little children in the +house, there wasn't a great necessity for laying up against a rainy day, +and with stockings at a dollar and a half a pair, one was apt to get the +nine stitches, or a pretty comfortable multiple of them, every Wednesday +when the wash came in; and how these different kinds of lives, coming +together with a friendly friction, found themselves not so uncongenial, +or so incomprehensible to each other, after all,--all this, in its +detail of bright words, I cannot stop to tell you; it would take a good +many summers to go through one like this so fully; but when the big +bell rang for dinner, they all came down the ledge together, and Sue +and Martha Josselyn, for the first time in four weeks, felt themselves +fairly one with the current interest and life of the gay house in which +they had been dwellers and yet only lookers-on. + +Mrs. Thoresby, coming down to dinner, a few minutes late, with her +daughters, and pausing--as people always did at the Green Cottage, +without knowing why--to step from the foot of the stairway to the open +piazza-door, and glance out before turning toward the dining-room, saw +the ledge party just dividing itself into its two little streams, that +were to head, respectively, for cottage and hotel. + +"It is a wonder to me that Mrs. Linceford allows it!" was her comment. +"Just the odds and ends of all the company here. And those girls, who +might take whatever stand they pleased." + +"Miss Leslie always finds out the nicest people, and the best times, _I_ +think," said Etty, who had dragged through but a dull morning behind the +blinds of her mother's window, puzzling over crochet,--which she hated, +because she said it was like everlastingly poking one's finger after a +sliver,--and had caught now and then, over the still air, the laughter +and bird-notes that came together from among the pines. One of the Miss +Haughtleys had sat with them; but that only "stiffened out the +dullness," as Etty had declared, the instant the young lady left them. + +"Don't be pert, Etty. You don't know what you want, or what is for your +interest. The Haddens were well enough, by themselves; but when it comes +to Tom, Dick, and Harry!" + +"I don't believe that's elegant, mamma," said Etty demurely; "and there +isn't Tom, Dick, nor Harry; only Dakie Thayne, and that nice, _nice_ +Miss Craydocke! And--I _hate_ the Haughtleys!" This with a sudden +explosiveness at the last, after the demureness. + +"Etty!"--and Mrs. Thoresby intoned an indescribable astonishment of +displeasure in her utterance of her daughter's name,--"remember +yourself. You are neither to be impertinent to me, nor to speak rudely +of persons whom I choose for your acquaintance. When you are older, you +will come to understand how these chance meetings may lead to the most +valuable friendships, or, on the contrary, to the most mortifying +embarrassments. In the mean time, you are to be guided." After which +little sententious homily out of the Book of the World, Mrs. Thoresby +ruffled herself with dignity, and led her brood away with her. + +Next day, Tom, Dick, and Harry--that is to say, Miss Craydocke, Susan +and Martha Josselyn, and Leslie Goldthwaite--were gathered in the +first-named lady's room, to make the great green curtain. And there Sin +Saxon came in upon them,--ostensibly to bring the curtain-rings, and +explain how she wanted them put on; but after that she lingered. + +"It's like the Tower of Babel upstairs," she said, "and just about as +likely ever to get built. I can't bear to stay where I can't hear myself +talk. You're nice and cosy here, Miss Craydocke." And with that, she +settled herself down on the floor, with all her little ruffles and +flounces and billows of muslin heaping and curling themselves about her, +till her pretty head and shoulders were like a new and charming sort of +floating-island in the midst. + +And it came to pass that presently the talk drifted round to vanities +and vexations,--on this wise. + +"Everybody wants to be everything," said Sin Saxon. "They don't say so, +of course. But they keep objecting, and unsettling. Nothing hushes +anybody up but proposing them for some especially magnificent part. And +you can't hush them all at once in that way. If they'd only _say_ what +they want, and be done with it! But they're so dreadfully polite! Only +finding out continual reasons why nobody will do for this and that, or +have time to dress, or something, and waiting modestly to be suggested +and shut up! When I came down they were in full tilt about 'The Lady of +Shalott.' It's to be one of the crack scenes, you know,--river of blue +cambric, and a real, regular, lovely property-boat. Frank Scherman sent +for it, and it came up on the stage yesterday,--drivers swearing all the +way. Now they'll go on for half an hour, at least; and at the end of +that time I shall walk in, upon the plain of Shinar, with my hair all +let down,--it's real, every _bit of it_, not a tail tied on +anywhere,--and tell them I--myself--am to be the Lady of Shalott! I +think I shall relish flinging in that little bit of honesty, like a dash +of cold water into the middle of a fry. Won't it sizzle?" + +She sat twirling the cord upon which the dozens of great brass rings +were strung, watching the shining ellipse they made as they +revolved,--like a child set down upon the carpet with a +plaything,--expecting no answer, only waiting for the next vagrant +whimsicality that should come across her brain,--not altogether without +method, either,--to give it utterance. + +"I don't suppose I could convince you of it," she resumed; "but I do +actually have serious thoughts sometimes. I think that very likely some +of us--most of us--are going to the dogs. And I wonder what it will be +when we get there. Why don't you contradict, or confirm, what I say, +Miss Craydocke?" + +"You haven't said out, yet, have you?" + +Sin Saxon opened wide her great, wondering, saucy blue eyes, and turned +them full upon Miss Craydocke's face. "Well, you _are_ a oner! as +somebody in Dickens says. There's no such thing as a leading question +for you. It's like the rope the dog slipped his head out of, and left +the man holding fast at the other end, in touching confidence that he +was coming on. I saw that once on Broadway. Now I experience it. I +suppose I've got to say more. Well, then, in a general way, do you think +living amounts to anything, Miss Craydocke?" + +"Whose living?" + +"Sharp--as a knife that's just cut through a lemon! _Ours_, then, if you +please; us girls', for instance." + +"You haven't done much of your living yet, my dear." The tone was +gentle, as of one who looked down from such a height of years that she +felt tenderly the climbing that had been, for those who had it yet to +do. + +"We're as busy at it, too, as we can be. But sometimes I've mistrusted +something like what I discovered very indignantly one day when I was +four years old, and fancied I was making a petticoat, sewing through +and through a bit of flannel. The thread hadn't any knot in it!" + +"That was very well, too, until you knew just where to put the stitches +that should stay." + +"Which brings us to our subject of the morning, as the sermons say +sometimes, when they're half through, or ought to be. There are all +kinds of stitches,--embroidery, and plain over-and-over, and whippings, +and darns! When are we to make our knot and begin? and which kind are we +to do?" + +"Most lives find occasion, more or less, for each. Practiced fingers +will know how to manage all." + +"But--it's--the--pro_por_tion!" cried Sin, in a crescendo that ended +with an emphasis that was nearly a little scream. + +"I think that, when one looks to what is really needed most and first, +will arrange itself," said Miss Craydocke. "Something gets crowded out, +with us all. It depends upon what, and how, and with what willingness we +let it go." + +"_Now_ we come to the superlative sort of people,--the extra good ones, +who let everything go that isn't solid duty; all the ornament of +life,--good looks,--tidiness even,--and everything that's the least bit +jolly, and that don't keep your high-mindedness on the strain. I want to +be _low_-minded--_weak_-minded at least--now and then. I can't bear +ferociously elevated people, who won't say a word that don't count; +people that talk about their time being interrupted (as if their time +wasn't everybody else's time, too), because somebody comes in once in a +while for a friendly call; and who go about the streets as if they were +so intent upon some tremendous good work, or big thinking, that it would +be dangerous even to bow to a common sinner, for fear of being waylaid +and hindered. I know people like that; and all I've to say is that, if +they're to make up the heavenly circles, I'd full as lief go down lower, +where they're kind of social!" + +There can scarcely be a subject touched, in ever so light a +way,--especially a moral or a spiritual subject,--in however small a +company of persons, that shall not set in motion varied and intense +currents of thought; bear diverse and searching application to +consciousness and experience. The Josselyns sat silent with the long +breadths of green cambric over their laps, listening with an amusement +that freshened into their habitual work-day mood like a willful little +summer breeze born out of blue morning skies, unconscious of clouds, to +the oddities of Sin Saxon; but the drift of her sayings, the meaning she +actually had under them, bore down upon their different knowledge +with a significance whose sharpness she had no dream of. "Plain +over-and-over,"--how well it illustrated what their young days and the +disposal of them had been. Miss Craydocke thought of the darns; her +story cannot be told here; but she knew what it meant to have the darns +of life fall to one's share,--to have the filling up to do, with +dexterousness and pains and sacrifice, of holes that other people make! + +For Leslie Goldthwaite, she got the next word of the lesson she was +learning,--"_It depends on what one is willing to let get crowded out_." + +Sin Saxon went on again. + +"I've had a special disgust given me to superiority. I wouldn't be +superior for all the world. We had a superior specimen come among us at +Highslope last year. She's there yet, it's commonly believed; but nobody +takes the trouble to be positive of it. Reason why, she took up +immediately such a position of mental and moral altitude above our +heads, and became so sublimely unconscious of all beneath, that all +beneath wasn't going to strain its neck to look after her, much less +provide itself with telescopes. We're pretty nice people, we think, but +we're not particularly curious in astronomy. We heard great things of +her, beforehand; and we were all ready to make much of her. We asked her +to our parties. She came, with a look upon her as if some unpleasant +duty had forced her temporarily into purgatory. She shied round like a +cat in a strange garret, as if all she wanted was to get out. She +wouldn't dance; she wouldn't talk; she went home early,--to her studies, +I suppose, and her plans for next day's unmitigated usefulness. She took +it for granted we had nothing in us _but_ dance, and so, as Artemus Ward +says, 'If the American Eagle could solace itself in that way, we let it +went!' She might have done some good to us,--we needed to be done to, I +don't doubt,--but it's all over now. That light is under a bushel, and +that city's hid, so far as Highslope is concerned. And we've pretty much +made up our minds, among us, to be bad and jolly. Only sometimes I get +thinking,--that's all." + +She got up, giving the string of rings a final whirl, and tossing them +into Leslie Goldthwaite's lap. "Good-by," she said, shaking down her +flounces. "It's time for me to go and assert myself at Shinar. +'_L'empire, c'est moi!_' Napoleon was great when he said that. A great +deal greater than if he'd pretended to be meek, and want nothing but the +public good!" + +"What gets crowded out?" Day by day that is the great test of our life. + +Just now, everything seemed likely to get crowded out with the young +folks at Outledge but dresses, characters, and rehearsals. The swivel +the earth turned on at this moment was the coming Tuesday evening and +its performance. And the central axis of that, to nearly every +individual interest, was what such particular individual was to "be." + +They had asked Leslie to take the part of Zorayda in the "Three Moorish +Princesses of the Alhambra." Jeannie and Elinor were to be Zayda and +Zorahayda. As for Leslie, she liked well enough, as we know, to look +pretty; it was, or had been, till other thoughts of late had begun to +"crowd it out," something like a besetting weakness; she had only +lately--to tell the whole truth as it seldom is told--begun to be +ashamed, before her higher self, to turn, the first thing in the +morning, with a certain half-mechanical anxiety toward her glass, to see +how she was looking. Without studying into separate causes of complexion +and so forth, as older women given to these things come to do, she knew +that somehow there was often a difference; and beside the standing +question in her mind as to whether there were a chance of her growing up +to anything like positive beauty or not, there was apt often to be a +reason why she would like _to-day_, if possible, to be in particular +good looks. When she got an invitation, or an excursion was planned, the +first thing that came into her head was naturally what she should wear; +and a good deal of the pleasure would depend on that. A party without an +especially pretty dress didn't amount to much; she couldn't help that; +it did count with everybody, and it made a difference. She would like, +undoubtedly, a "pretty part" in these tableaux; but there was more in +Leslie Goldthwaite, even without touching upon the deep things, than all +this. _Only_ a pretty part did not quite satisfy: she had capacity for +something more. In spite of the lovely Moorish costume to be contrived +out of blue silk and white muslin, and to contrast so picturesquely with +Jeannie's crimson, and the soft, snowy drapery of Elinor, she would have +been half willing to be the "discreet Kadiga" instead; for the old woman +had really to look _something_ as well as _somehow_, and there was a +spirit and a fun in that. + +The pros and cons and possibilities were working themselves gradually +clear to her thoughts, as she sat and listened, with external attention +in the beginning, to Sin Saxon's chatter. Ideas about the adaptation of +her dress-material, and the character she could bring out of, or get +into, her part, mingled themselves together; and Irving's delicious old +legend that she had read hundreds of times, entranced, as a child, +repeated itself in snatches to her recollection. Jeannie must be +stately; that would quite suit her. Elinor--must just be Elinor. Then +the airs and graces remained for herself. She thought she could +illustrate with some spirit the latent coquetry of the imprisoned +beauty; she believed, notwithstanding the fashion in which the story +measured out their speech in rations,--always an appropriate bit, and +just so much of it to each,--that the gay Zorayda must have had the +principal hand in their affairs; must have put the others up to +mischief, and coaxed most winningly the discreet Kadiga. She could make +something out of it: it shouldn't be mere flat prettiness. She began to +congratulate herself upon the character. And then her ingenious fancy +flew off to something else that had occurred to her, and that she had +only secretly proposed to Sin Saxon; an illustration of a certain +ancient nursery ballad, to vary by contrast the pathetic representations +of "Auld Robin Gray" and "The Lady of Shalott." It was a bright plan, +and she was nearly sure she could carry it out; but it was not a "pretty +part," and Sin Saxon had thought it fair she should have one; therefore +Zorayda. All this was reason why Leslie's brain was busy, like her +fingers, as she sat and sewed on the green curtain, and let Sin Saxon +talk. Till Miss Craydocke said that "something always gets crowded out," +and so those words came to her in the midst of all. + +The Josselyns went away to their own room when the last rings had been +sewn on; and the curtain was ready, as had been promised, at ten +o'clock. Leslie stayed, waiting for Dakie Thayne to come and fetch it. +While she sat there, silent, by the window, Miss Craydocke brought out a +new armful of something from a drawer, and came and placed her Shaker +rocking-chair beside her. Leslie looked around, and saw her lap full of +two little bright plaid dresses. + +"It's only the buttonholes," said Miss Craydocke. "I'm going to make +them now, before they find me out." + +Leslie looked very uncomprehending. + +"You didn't suppose I let those girls come in here and spend their +morning on that nonsense for nothing, did you? This is some of _their_ +work, the work that's crowding all the frolic out of their lives. I've +found out where they keep it, and I've stolen some. I'm Scotch, you +know, and I believe in brownies. They're good to believe in. Old fables +are generally _all but_ true. You've only to 'put in one to make it so,' +as children say in 'odd and even.'" And Miss Craydocke overcasted her +first buttonhole energetically. + +Leslie Goldthwaite saw through the whole now, in a minute. "You did it +on purpose, for an excuse!" she said; and there was a ring of +applauding delight in her voice which a note of admiration poorly +marks. + +"Well, you must begin somehow," said Miss Craydocke. "And after you've +once begun, you can keep on." Which, as a generality, was not so +glittering, perhaps, as might be; but Leslie could imagine, with a warm +heart-throb, what, in this case, Miss Craydocke's "keeping on" would be. + +"I found them out by degrees," said Miss Craydocke. "They've been +overhead here, this month nearly, and if you _don't_ listen nor look +more than is lady-like, you can't help scraps enough to piece something +out of by that time. They sit by their window, and I sit by mine. I +cough, and sneeze, and sing, as much as I find comfortable, and they +can't help knowing where their neighbors are; and after that, it's their +lookout, of course. I lent them some books one Sunday, and so we got on +a sort of visiting terms, and lately I've gone in, sometimes, and sat +down awhile when I've had an errand, and they've been here; the amount +of it is, they're two young things that'll grow old before they know +they've ever been young, if somebody don't take hold. They've only got +just so much time to stay; and if we don't contrive a holiday for them +before it's over, why,--there's the 'Inasmuch,'--that's all." + +Dakie Thayne came to the door to fetch Leslie and the curtain. + +"It's all ready, Dakie,--here; but I can't go just now,--not unless +they want me _very_ much, and then you'll come, please, won't you, and +let me know again?" said Leslie, bundling up the mass of cambric, and +piling it upon Dakie's arms. + +Dakie looked disappointed, but promised, and departed. They were finding +him useful upstairs, and Leslie had begged him to help. + +"Now give me that other dress," she said, turning to Miss Craydocke. +"And you,--couldn't you go and steal something else?" She spoke +impetuously, and her eyes shone with eagerness, and more. + +"I've had to lay a plan," resumed Miss Craydocke, as Leslie took the +measure of a buttonhole and began. "Change of work is as good as a rest. +So I've had them down here on the curtain among the girls. Next, I'm +going to have a bee. I've got some things to finish up for Prissy +Hoskins, and they're likely to be wanted in something of a hurry. She's +got another aunt in Portsmouth, and if she can only be provided with +proper things to wear, she can go down there, Aunt Hoskins says, and +stay all winter, get some schooling, and see a city doctor. The man here +tells them that something might be done for her hearing by a person +skilled in such things, and Miss Hoskins says 'there's a little money of +the child's own, from the vandoo when her father died,' that would pay +for traveling and advice, and 'ef the right sort ain't to be had in +Portsmouth, when she once gets started, she shall go whuzzever't is, if +she has to have a vandoo herself!' It's a whole human life of comfort +and usefulness, Leslie Goldthwaite, may be, that depends!--Well, I'll +have a bee, and get Prissy fixed out. Her Portsmouth aunt is coming up, +and will take her back. She'll give her a welcome, but she's poor +herself, and can't afford much more. And then the Josselyns are to have +a bee. Not everybody; but you and me, and we'll see by that time who +else. It's to begin as if we meant to have them all round, for the +frolic and the sociability; and besides that, we'll steal all we can. +For your part, you must get intimate. Nobody can do anything, except as +a friend. And the last week they're here is the very week I'm going +everywhere in! I'm going to charter the little red, and have parties of +my own. We'll have a picnic at the Cliff, and Prissy will wait on us +with raspberries and cream. We'll walk up Feather-Cap, and ride up +Giant's Cairn, and we'll have a sunset at Minster Rock. And it's going +to be pleasant weather every day!" + +They stitched away, then, dropping their talk. Miss Craydocke was out of +breath; and Leslie measured her even loops with eyes that glittered more +and more. + +The half-dozen buttonholes apiece were completed; and then Miss +Craydocke trotted off with the two little frocks upon her arm. She came +back, bringing some two or three pairs of cotton-flannel drawers. + +"I took them up, just as they lay, cut out and ready, on the bed. I +wouldn't have a word. I told them I'd nothing to do, and so I haven't. +My hurry is coming on all of a sudden when I have my bee. Now I've done +it once, I can do it again. They'll find out it's my way, and when +you've once set up a way, people always turn out for it." + +Miss Craydocke was in high glee. + +Leslie stitched up three little legs before Dakie came again, and said +they must have her upstairs. + +One thing occurred to her, as they ran along the winding passages, up +and down, and up again, to the new hall in the far-off L. + +The Moorish dress would take so long to arrange. Wouldn't Imogen +Thoresby like the part? She was only in the "Three Fishers." Imogen and +Jeannie met her as she came in. + +"It is just you I wanted to find," cried Leslie, sealing her warm +impulse with immediate act. "Will you be Zorayda, Imogen,--with Jeannie +and Elinor, you know? I've got so much to do without. Sin Saxon +understands; it's a bit of a secret as yet. I shall be _so_ obliged!" + +Imogen's blue eyes sparkled and widened. It was just what she had been +secretly longing for. But why in the world should Leslie Goldthwaite +want to give it up? + +It had got crowded out, that was all. + +Another thing kept coming into Leslie's head that day,--the yards of +delicate grass-linen that she had hemstitched, and knotted into bands +that summer,--just for idle work, when plain bindings and simple +ruffling would have done as well,--and all for her accumulating treasure +of reserved robings, while here were these two girls darning stockings, +and sewing over heavy woollen stuffs, that actual, inevitable work might +be dispatched in these bright, warm hours that had been meant for +holiday. It troubled her to think of it, seeing that the time was gone, +and nothing now but these threads and holes remained of it to her share. + +Martha Josselyn had asked her yesterday about the stitch,--some little +baby-daintiness she had thought of for the mother who couldn't afford +embroideries and thread-laces for her youngest and least of so many. +Leslie would go and show her, and, as Miss Craydocke said, get intimate. +It was true there were certain little things one could not do, except as +a friend. + +Meanwhile, Martha Josselyn must be the Sister of Charity in that lovely +tableau of Consolation. + +It does not take long for two young girls to grow intimate over tableau +plans and fancy stitches. Two days after this, Leslie Goldthwaite was as +cosily established in the Josselyns' room as if she had been there every +day all summer. Some people _are_ like drops of quicksilver, as Martha +Josselyn had declared, only one can't tell how that is till one gets out +of the bottle. + +"Thank you," she said to Leslie, as she mastered the little intricacy of +the work upon the experimental scrap of cambric she had drawn. "I +understand it now, I think, and I shall find time, somehow, after I get +home, for what I want to do." With that, she laid it in a corner of her +basket, and took up cotton-flannel again. + +Leslie put something, twisted lightly in soft paper, beside it. "I want +you to keep that, please, for a pattern, and to remember me," she said. +"I've made yards more than I really want. It's nothing," she added, +hastily interrupting the surprised and remonstrating thanks of the +other. "And now we must see about that scapulary thing, or whatever it +is, for your nun's dress." + +And there was no more about it, only an unusual feeling in Martha +Josselyn's heart, that came up warm long after, and by and by a little +difference among Leslie Goldthwaite's pretty garnishings, where +something had got crowded out. + +This is the way, from small to great, things sort themselves. + +"No man can serve two masters," is as full and true and strong upon the +side of encouragement as of rebuke. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + + +A HOWL. + +The tableaux had to be put off. Frank Scherman was obliged to go down to +Boston, unexpectedly, to attend to business, and nothing could be done +without him. The young girls felt all the reaction that comes with the +sudden interruption of eager plans. A stagnation seemed to succeed to +their excitement and energy. They were thrown back into a vacuum. + +"There is nothing on earth to do, or to think about," said Florrie +Arnall dolefully. + +"Just as much as there was last week," replied Josie Scherman, +common-sense-ically. Frank was only her brother, and that made a +difference. "There's Giant's Cairn as big as ever, and Feather-Cap, and +Minster Rock, and the Spires. And there's plenty to do. Tableaux aren't +everything. There's your 'howl,' Sin Saxon. That hasn't come off yet." + +"'It isn't the fall that hurts,--it's the fetch-up,' as the Irishman +observed," said Sin Saxon, with a yawn. "It wasn't that I doted +particularly on the tableaux, but 'the waters wild went o'er my child, +and I was left lamenting.' It was what I happened to be after at the +moment. When I get ready for a go, I do hate to take off my bonnet and +sit down at home." + +"But the 'howl,' Sin! What's to become of that?" + +"Ain't I howling all I can?" + +And this was all Sin Saxon would say about it. The girls meant to keep +her in mind, and to have their frolic,--the half of them in the most +imaginative ignorance as to what it might prove to be; but somehow their +leader herself seemed to have lost her enthusiasm or her intention. + +Leslie Goldthwaite felt neither disappointment nor impatience. She had +got a permanent interest. It is good always to have something to fall +back upon. The tableaux would come by and by; meanwhile, there was +plenty of time for their "bees," and for the Cliff. + +They had long mornings in the pines, and cool, quiet afternoons in Miss +Craydocke's pretty room. It was wonderful the cleverness the Josselyns +had come to with little frocks. One a skirt, and the other a body,--they +made nothing of finishing the whole at a sitting. "It's only seeing +the end from the beginning," Martha said, when Leslie uttered her +astonishment. "We know the way, right through; and no way seems +long when you've traveled it often." To be sure, Prissy Hoskins's +delaines and calicoes didn't need to be contrived after Demorest's +fashion-plates. + +Then they had their holiday, taking the things over to the Cliff, and +trying them all on Prissy, very much as if they had been a party of +children, and she a paper doll. Her rosy little face and willful curls +came out of each prettier than the last, precisely as a paper dolly's +does, and when at the end of all they got her into a bright violet print +and a white bib-apron, it was well they were the last, for they couldn't +have had the heart to take her out of them. Leslie had made for her a +small hoop from the upper half of one of her own, and laced a little +cover upon it, of striped seersucker, of which there was a petticoat +also to wear above. These, clear, clean, and stiffened, came from Miss +Craydocke's stores. She never traveled without her charity-trunk, +wherein, put at once in perfect readiness for different use the moment +they passed beyond her own, she kept all spare material that waited for +such call. Breadths of old dresses, ripped and sponged and pressed, or +starched, ironed, and folded; flannel petticoats shrunken short; +stockings "cut down" in the old, thrifty, grandmother fashion; +underclothing strongly patched (as she said, "the Lord's mark put upon +it, since it had pleased Him to give her the means to do without +patches"); odds and ends of bonnet-ribbons, dipped in spirits and rolled +tightly upon blocks, from which they unrolled nearly as good as +new,--all these things, and more, religiously made the most of for +whomsoever they might first benefit, went about with her in this, the +biggest of her boxes, which, give out from it as she might, she never +seemed, she said, to get quite to the bottom of. + +Under the rounded skirts, below the short, plain trousers, Prissy's +ankles and feet were made shapely with white stockings and new, stout +boots. (Aunt Hoskins believed in "white stockin's, or go athout. Bilin' +an' bleachin' an' comin' out new; none o' yer aggravations 'v +everlastin' dirt-color.") And one thing more, the prettiest of all. A +great net of golden-brown silk that Leslie had begged Mrs. Linceford, +who liked netting, to make, gathered into strong, large meshes the +unruly wealth of hair brushed back in rippling lines from Prissy's +temples, and showing so its brighter, natural color from underneath, +where the outside had grown sun-faded. + +"I'm just like Cinderella,--with four godmothers!" cried the child; and +she danced up and down, as Leslie let her go from under her hands. + +"You're just like--a little heathen!" screamed Aunt Hoskins. "Where's +yer thanks?" Her own thanks spoke themselves, partly in an hysterical +sort of chuckle and sniffle, that stopped each other short, and the +rebuke with them. "But there! she don't know no better! 'T ain't fer +every day, you needn't think. It's for company to-day, an' fer Sundays, +an' to go to Portsmouth." + +"Don't spoil it for her, Miss Hoskins. Children hate to think it isn't +for every day," said Leslie Goldthwaite. + +But the child-antidote to that was also ready. + +"I don't care," cried Prissy. "To-day's a great, long day, and Sunday's +for ever and ever, and Portsmouth'll be always." + +"_Can't_ yer stop ter kerchy, and say--Lud-o'-light 'n' massy, I donno +what to _tell_ ye ter say!" And Miss Hoskins sniffled and gurgled again, +and gave it up. + +"She has thanked us, I think," said Miss Craydocke, in her simple way, +"when she called us Godmothers!" The word came home to her good heart. +God had given her, the lonely woman, the larger motherhood. "Brothers, +and sisters, and mothers!" She thought how Christ traced out the +relationships, and claimed them even to himself! + +"Now, for once, _you_'re to be done up. That's general order number +two," Miss Craydocke said to the Josselyn girls, as they all first met +together again after the Cliff party. "We've worked together till we're +friends. And so there's not a word to be said. We owe you time that +we've taken, and more that we mean to take before you go. I'll tell you +what for, when it's necessary." + +It was a nicer matter to get the Josselyns to be helped than to help. It +was not easy for them to bring forth their breadths and their linings, +and their braids that were to be pieced, and their trimmings that +were to be turned, and to lay bare to other eyes all their little +economies of contrivance; but Miss Craydocke managed it by simple +straightforwardness,--by not behaving as if there were anything to be +glossed over or ignored. Instead of hushing up about economies, she +brought them forward, and gave them a most cheery and comfortable, not +to say dignified air. It was all ordinary matter of course,--the way +everybody did, or ought to do. This was the freshest end of this +breadth, and should go down; this other had a darn that might be cut +across, and a straight piecing made, for which the slope of the skirt +would allow,--_she_ should do it so; that hem might be taken off +altogether and a new one turned; this was a very nice trimming, and +plenty of it, and the wrong side was brighter than the right; she knew a +way of joining worsted braid that never showed,--you might have a dozen +pieces in the binding of a skirt and not be noticed. This little blue +frock had no trimming; they would finish that at home. No, the prettiest +thing in the world for it would be pipings of black silk, and Miss +Craydocke had some bits just right for covering cord, thick as a board, +big enough for nothing else; and out they came, as did many another +thing, without remark, from her bags and baskets. She had hooks and +eyes, and button-fasteners, when these gave out; she used from her own +cotton-spools and skeins of silk; she had tailors' twist for +buttonholes, and large black cord for the pipings; and these were but +working implements, like scissors and thimble,--taken for granted, +without count. There was nothing on the surface for the most shrinking +delicacy to rub against; but there was a kindness that went down into +the hearts of the two young girls continually. + +For an hour or two at least each day they sat together so, for the being +together. The work was "taken up." Dakie Thayne read stories to them +sometimes: Miss Craydocke had something always to produce and to summon +them to sit and hear; some sketch of strange adventure, or a ghost +marvel, or a bright, spicy magazine essay; or, knowing where to find +sympathizers and helpers, Dakie would rush in upon them uncalled, with +some discovery, or want, or beautiful thing to show of his own. They +were quite a little coterie by themselves. It shaped itself to this more +and more. + +Leslie did not neglect her own party. She drove and walked with Mrs. +Linceford, and was ready for anything the Haddens really wanted of her; +but Mrs. Linceford napped and lounged a good deal, and could spare her +then; and Jeannie and Elinor seemed somehow to feel the want of her less +than they had done,--Elinor unconsciously drawn away by new attraction, +Jeannie rather of a purpose. + +I am afraid I cannot call it anything else but a little loss of caste +which seemed coming to Leslie Goldthwaite just now, through these new +intimacies of hers. "Something always gets crowded out." This, too,--her +popularity among the first,--might have to be, perhaps, one of the +somethings. + +Now and then she felt it so,--perceived the shade of difference toward +her in the tone and manner of these young girls. I cannot say that it +did not hurt her a little. She had self-love, of course; yet, for all, +she was loyal to the more generous love,--to the truer self-respect. If +she could not have both, she would keep the best. There came to be a +little pride in her own demeanor,--a waiting to be sought again. + +"I can't think what has come over Les'," said Jeannie Hadden, one +night, on the piazza, to a knot of girls. She spoke in a tone at once +apologetic and annoyed. "She was always up to anything at home. I +thought she meant to lead us all off here. She might have done almost +what she pleased." + +"Everybody likes Leslie," said Elinor. + +"Why, yes, we all do," put in Mattie Shannon. "Only she will take up +queer people, you see. And--well, they're nice enough, I suppose; only +there's never room enough for everybody." + +"I thought we were all to be nowhere when she first came. There was +something about her,--I don't know what,--not wonderful, but taking. +'Put her where you pleased, she was the central point of the picture,' +Frank said." This came from Josie Scherman. + +"And she's just dropped all, to run after goodness knows what and whom! +I can't see through her!" rejoined Jeannie, with a sort of finality in +her accent that seemed to imply, "_I_ wash my hands of her, and won't be +supposed accountable." + +"Knew ye not," broke in a gentle voice, "that she must be about her +Master's business?" It was scarcely addressed to them. Miss Craydocke +just breathed audibly the thought she could not help. + +There came a downfall of silence upon the group. + +When they took breath again,--"Oh, if she's _religious_!" Mattie +Shannon just said, as of a thing yet farther off and more finally done +with. And then their talk waited under a restraint again. + +"I supposed we were all religious,--Sundays, at least," broke forth Sin +Saxon suddenly, who, strangely, had not spoken before. "I don't know, +though. Last Saturday night we danced the German till half past twelve, +and we talked charades instead of going to church, till I felt--as if +I'd sat all the morning with my feet over a register, reading a novel, +when I'd ought to have been doing a German exercise or something. If +she's religious every day, she's seven times better than we are, that's +all. _I_ think--she's got a knot to her thread!" + +Nobody dared send Leslie Goldthwaite quite to Coventry after this. + +Sin Saxon found herself in the position of many another leader,--obliged +to make some demonstration to satisfy the aroused expectations of her +followers. Her heart was no longer thoroughly in it; but she had +promised them a "howl," and a howl they were determined upon, either +with or against her. + +Opportunity arose just now also. Madam Routh went off on a party to the +Notch, with some New York friends, taking with her one or two of the +younger pupils, for whom she felt most constant responsibility. The +elder girls were domesticated and acquainted now at Outledge; there were +several matronly ladies with whom the whole party was sufficiently +associated in daily intercourse for all the air of chaperonage that +might be needed; and one assistant pupil, whom, to be sure, the young +ladies themselves counted as a most convenient nonentity, was left in +nominal charge. + +Now or never, the girls declared with one voice it must be. All they +knew about it--the most of them--was that it was some sort of an +out-of-hours frolic, such as boarding-school ne'er-do-weels delight in; +and it was to plague Miss Craydocke, against whom, by this time, they +had none of them really any manner of spite; neither had they any longer +the idea of forcing her to evacuate; but they had got wound up on that +key at the beginning, and nobody thought of changing it. Nobody but Sin +Saxon. She had begun, perhaps, to have a little feeling that she would +change it, if she could. + +Nevertheless, with such show of heartiness as she found possible, she +assented to their demand, and the time was fixed. Her merry, mischievous +temperament asserted itself as she went on, until she really grew into +the mood for it once more, from the pure fun of the thing. + +It took two days to get ready. After the German on Thursday night, the +howl was announced to come off in Number Thirteen, West Wing. This, of +course, was the boudoir; but nobody but the initiated knew that. It was +supposed to be Maud Walcott's room. The assistant pupil made faint +remonstrances against she knew not what, and was politely told so; +moreover, she was pressingly invited to render herself with the other +guests at the little piazza door, precisely at eleven. The matronly +ladies, always amused, sometimes a little annoyed and scandalized, at +Sin Saxon's escapades, asked her, one and another, at different times, +what it was all to be, and if she really thought she had better, and +among themselves expressed tolerably grave doubts about proprieties, and +wished Madam Routh would return. The vague mystery and excitement of the +howl kept all the house gently agog for this Tuesday and Wednesday +intervening. Sin Saxon gave out odd hints here and there in confidence. + +It was to be a "spread;" and the "grub" (Sin was a boarding-school girl, +you know, and had brothers in college) was all to be stolen. There was +an uncommon clearance of cakes and doughnuts, and pie and cheese, from +each meal, at this time. Cup-custards, even, disappeared,--cups and all. +A cold supper, laid at nine on Wednesday evening, for some expected +travelers, turned out a more meagre provision on the arrival of the +guests than the good host of the Giant's Cairn had ever been known to +make. At bedtime Sin Saxon presented herself in Miss Craydocke's room. + +"There's something heavy on my conscience," she said, with a disquiet +air. "I'm really worried; and it's too late to help it now." + +Miss Craydocke looked at her with a kind anxiety. + +"It's never too late to _try_ to help a mistake. And _you_, Miss +Saxon,--you can always do what you choose." + +She was afraid for her,--the good lady,--that her heedlessness might +compromise herself and others in some untoward scrape. She didn't like +these rumors of the howl,--the last thing she thought of being her own +rest and comfort, which were to be purposely invaded. + +"I've let the chance go by," said Sin Saxon desperately. "It's of no use +now." And she rocked herself back and forth in the Shaker chair of which +she had taken possession. + +"My dear," said Miss Craydocke, "if you would only explain to +me,--perhaps"-- + +"You _might_!" cried Sin, jumping up, and making a rush at the good +woman, seizing her by both hands. "They'd never suspect you. It's that +cold roast chicken in the pantry. I _can't_ get over it, that I didn't +take that!" + +Sin was incorrigible. Miss Craydocke shook her head, taking care to +turn it aside at the same moment; for she felt her lips twitch and her +eyes twinkle, in spite of herself. + +"I won't take this till the time comes," said Sin, laying her hand on +the back of the Shaker chair. "But it's confiscated for to-morrow night, +and I shall come for it. And, Miss Craydocke, if you _do_ manage about +the chicken,--I hate to trouble you to go downstairs, but I dare say you +want matches, or a drink of water, or something, and another time I'll +wait upon you with pleasure,--here's the door, made for the emergency, +and I on the other side of it dissolved in tears of gratitude!" + +And so, for the time, Sin Saxon disappeared. + +The next afternoon, Jimmy Wigley brought a big basket of raspberries to +the little piazza door. A pitcher of cream vanished from the tea-table +just before the gong was struck. Nobody supposed the cat had got it. The +people of the house understood pretty well what was going on, and who +was at the bottom of it all; but Madam Routh's party was large, and the +life of the place; they would wink hard and long before complaining at +anything that might be done in the west wing. + +Sin Saxon opened her door upon Miss Craydocke when she was dressed for +the German, and about to go downstairs. "I'll trust you," she said, +"about the rocking-chair. You'll want it, perhaps, till bedtime, and +then you'll just put it in here. I shouldn't like to disturb you by +coming for it late. And please step in a minute now, won't you?" + +She took her through the boudoir. There lay the "spread" upon a long +table, contrived by the contribution of one ordinary little one from +each sleeping-chamber, and covered by a pair of clean sheets, which +swept the floor along the sides. About it were ranged chairs. Two +pyramids of candles, built up ingeniously by the grouping of bedroom +tins upon hidden supports, vine-sprays and mosses serving gracefully for +concealment and decoration, stood, one on each side, half way between +the ends and centre. Cake-plates were garnished with wreathed +oak-leaves, and in the midst a great white Indian basket held the red, +piled-up berries, fresh and fragrant. + +"That's the little bit of righteousness to save the city. That's paid +for," said Sin Saxon. "Jimmy Wigley's gone home with more scrip than he +ever got at once before; and if your chicken-heartedness hadn't taken +the wrong direction, Miss Craydocke, I should be perfectly at ease in my +mind." + +"It's very pretty," said Miss Craydocke; "but do you think Madam Routh +would quite approve? And why couldn't you have had it openly in the +dining-room? And what do you call it a 'howl' for?" Miss Craydocke's +questions came softly and hesitatingly, as her doubts came. The little +festival was charming--but for the way and place. + +"Oh, Miss Craydocke! Well, you're not wicked, and you can't be supposed +to know; but you must take my word for it, that, if it was tamed down, +the game wouldn't be worth the candle. And the howl? You just wait and +see!" + +The invited guests were told to come to the little piazza door. The +girls asked all their partners in the German, and the matronly ladies +were asked, as a good many respectable people are civilly invited where +their declining is counted upon. Leslie Goldthwaite, and the Haddens, +and Mrs. Linceford, and the Thoresbys were all asked, and might come if +they chose. Their stay would be another matter. And so the evening and +the German went on. + +Till eleven, when they broke up; and the entertainers in a body rushed +merrily and noisily along the passages to Number Thirteen, West Wing, +rousing from their first naps many quietly disposed, delicate people, +who kept early hours, and a few babies whose nurses and mammas would +bear them anything but gratefully in mind through the midnight hours to +come. + +They gained two minutes, perhaps, upon their guests, who had, some of +them, to look up wraps, and to come round by the front hall and piazzas. +In these two minutes, by Sin Saxon's order, they seated themselves +comfortably at table. They had plenty of room; but they spread their +robes gracefully,--they had all dressed in their very prettiest +to-night,--and they quite filled up the space. Bright colors, and soft, +rich textures floating and mingling together, were like a rainbow +encircling the feast. The candles had been touched with kerosene, and +matches lay ready. The lighting-up had been done in an instant. And then +Sin Saxon went to the door, and drew back the chintz curtains from +across the upper half, which was of glass. A group of the guests, young +men, were already there, beneath the elms outside. But how should she +see them, looking from the bright light into the tree-shadows? She went +quietly back, and took her place at the head, leaving the door fast +bolted. + +There came a knock. Sin Saxon took no heed, but smilingly addressed +herself to offering dainties right and left. Some of the girls stared, +and one or two half rose to go and give admittance. + +"Keep your seats," said Sin, in her most lady-like way and tone, with +the unchanged smile upon her face. "_That_'s the _howl_!" + +They began to perceive the joke outside. They began to knock +vociferously. They took up their cue with a readiness, and made plenty +of noise, not doubting, as yet, that they should be admitted at last. +Some of the ladies came round, gave a glance, saw how things were going, +and retreated,--except a few, parties from other houses who had escorts +among the gentlemen, and who waited a little to see how the frolic would +end, or at least to reclaim their attendants. + +Well, it was very unpardonable,--outrageous, the scandalized neighbors +were beginning already to say in their rooms. Even Sin Saxon had a +little excitement in her eye beyond the fun, as she still maintained the +most graceful order within, and the exchange of courtesies went on +around the board, and the tumult increased without. They tree-toaded, +they cat-called, they shouted, they cheered, they howled, they even +hissed. Sin Saxon sat motionless an instant when it came to that, and +gave a glance toward the lights. A word from her would put them out, and +end the whole. She held her _coup_ in reserve, however, knowing her +resource, and sat, as it were, with her finger on the spring, determined +to carry through coolly what she had begun. + +Dakie Thayne had gone away with the Linceford party when they crossed to +the Green Cottage. Afterward, he came out again and stood in the open +road. Some ladies, boarders at Blashford's, up above, came slowly away +from the uproar, homeward. One or two young men detached themselves from +the group on the piazza, and followed to see them safe, as it belonged +to them to do. The rest sat themselves down, at this moment, upon the +steps and platform, and struck up, with one accord, "We won't go home +till morning." In the midst of this, a part broke off and took up, +discordantly, the refrain, "Polly, put the kettle on, we'll all have +tea;" others complicated the confusion further with, "Cruel, cruel Polly +Hopkins, treat me so,--oh, treat me so!" till they fell, at last, +into an indistinguishable jumble and clamor, from which extricated +themselves now and again and prevailed, the choruses of "Upidee," and +"Bum-bum-bye," with an occasional drum-beat of emphasis given upon the +door. + +"Don't go back there, James," Dakie Thayne heard a voice from the +retiring party say as they passed him; "it's disgraceful!" + +"The house won't hold Sin Saxon after this," said another. "They were +out in the upper hall, half a dozen of them, just now, ringing their +bells and calling for Mr. Biscombe." + +"The poor man don't know who to side with. He don't want to lose the +whole west wing. After all, there must be young people in the house, +and if it weren't one thing it would be another. It's only a few fidgets +that complain. They'll hush up and go off presently, and the whole thing +will be a joke over the breakfast-table to-morrow morning, after +everybody's had a little sleep." + +The singing died partially away just then, and some growling, less +noisy, but more in earnest, began. + +"They don't _mean_ to let us in! I say, this is getting rather rough!" + +"It's only to smash a pane of glass above the bolt and let ourselves in. +Why shouldn't we? We're invited." The latent mob-element was very near +developing itself in these young gentlemen, high-bred, but irate. + +At this moment, a wagon came whirling down the road around the ledges. +Dakie Thayne caught sight of the two white leaders, recognized them, and +flew across to the hotel. "Stop!" cried he. At the same instant a figure +moved hastily away from behind Miss Craydocke's blinds. It was a mercy +that the wagon had driven around to the front hall door. + +A mercy in one way; but the misfortune was that the supper-party within +knew nothing of it. A musical, lady-like laugh, quite in contrast to the +demonstrative utterances outside, had just broken forth, in response to +one of Sin Saxon's brightest speeches, when through the adjoining +apartment came suddenly upon them the unlooked-for apparition of "the +spinster." Miss Craydocke went straight across to the beleaguered door, +drew the bolt, and threw it back. "Gently, young gentlemen! Draw up the +piazza chairs, if you please, and sit down," said she. "Mr. Lowe, Mr. +Brookhouse, here are plates; will you be kind enough to serve your +friends?" + +In three minutes she had filled and passed outward half a dozen saucers +of fruit, and sent a basket of cake among them. Then she drew a seat for +herself, and began to eat raspberries. It was all done so quickly--they +were so either taken by surprise--that nobody, inside or out, gain-said +or delayed her by a word. + +It was hardly done when a knock sounded at the door upon the passage. +"Young ladies!" a voice called,--Madam Routh's. + +She and her friends had driven down from the Notch by sunset and +moonlight. Nobody had said anything to her of the disturbance when she +came in: her arrival had rather stopped the complaints that had begun; +for people are not malignant, after all, as a general thing, and there +is a curious propensity in human nature which cools off indignation even +at the greatest crimes, just as the culprit is likely to suffer. We are +apt to check the foot just as we might have planted it upon the noxious +creature, and to let off great state criminals on parole. Madam Routh +had seen the bright light and the gathering about the west wing. She had +caught some sounds of the commotion. She made her way at once to look +after her charge. + +Sin Saxon was not a pupil now, and there was no condign punishment +actually to fear; but her heart stood still a second, for all that, and +she realized that she had been on the verge of an "awful scrape." It was +bad enough now, as Madam Routh stood there gravely silent. She could not +approve. She was amazed to see Miss Craydocke present, countenancing and +matronizing. But Miss Craydocke _was_ present, and it altered the whole +face of affairs. Her eye took in, too, the modification of the +room,--quite an elegant little private parlor as it had been made. The +young men were gathered decorously about the doorway and upon the +platform, one or two only politely assisting within. They had taken this +cue as readily as the other; indeed, they were by no means aware that +this was not the issue intended from the beginning, long as the joke had +been allowed to go on, and their good-humor and courtesy had been +instantly restored. Miss Craydocke, by one master-stroke of generous +presence of mind, had achieved an instantaneous change in the position, +and given an absolutely new complexion to the performance. + +"It is late, young ladies," was all Madam Routh's remark at length. + +"They gave up their German early on purpose; it was a little surprise +they planned," Miss Craydocke said, as she moved to meet her. + +And then Madam Routh, with wise, considerate dignity, took _her_ cue. +She even came forward to the table and accepted a little fruit; stayed +five minutes perhaps, and then, without a spoken word, her movement to +go broke up, with unmistakable intent, the party. Fifteen minutes after, +all was quiet in the west wing. + +But Sin Saxon, when the doors closed at either hand, and the girls alone +were left around the fragments of their feast, rushed impetuously across +toward Miss Craydocke, and went down beside her on her knees. + +"Oh, you dear, magnificent old Christian!" she cried out, and laid her +head down on her lap, with little sobs, half laughter and half tears. + +"There, there!"--and Miss Craydocke softly patted her golden hair, and +spoke as she would soothe a fretted and excited child. + +Next morning, at breakfast, Sin Saxon was as beautifully ruffled, +ratted, and crimped, as gay, as bewitching, and defiant as ever, seated +next Madam Routh, assiduously devoted to her in the little attentions +of the meal, in high spirits and favor; even saucily alluding, across +the table, to "_our_ howl, Miss Craydocke!" + +Public opinion was carried by storm; the benison of sleep had laid +wrath. Nobody knew that, an hour before, she had been in Madam Routh's +room, making a clean breast of the whole transaction, and disclosing +the truth of Miss Craydocke's magnanimous and tactful interposition, +confessing that without this she had been at her wits' ends how to put a +stop to it, and promising, like a sorry child, to behave better, and +never do so any more. + +Two hours later she came meekly to Miss Craydocke's room, where the +"bee" was gathered,--for mere companionship to-day, with chess and +fancy-work,--her flourishes all laid aside, her very hair brushed close +to her pretty head, and a plain gingham dress on. + +"Miss Craydocke!" she said, with an air she could not divest of a little +comicality, but with an earnestness behind it shining through her eyes, +"I'm good; I'm converted. I want some tow-cloth to sew on immediately." +And she sat down, folding her hands, waiting. + +Miss Craydocke laughed. "I don't know. I'm afraid I haven't anything to +be done just now, unless I cut out some very coarse, heavy homespun." + +"I'd be glad if you would. Beggars mustn't be choosers; but if they +might, I should say it was the very thing. Sackcloth, you know; and +then, perhaps, the ashes might be excused. I'm in solemn earnest, +though. I'm reformed. You've done it; and you," she added, turning +round short on Leslie Goldthwaite,--"you've been at it a long time, +_unbeknownst_ to yourself; and you, ma'am,--you finished it last night. +It's been like the casting out of the devils in Scripture. They always +give a howl, you know, and go out of 'em!" + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + + +"FRIENDS OF MAMMON." + +Sin Saxon came heart and soul into Miss Craydocke's generous and +delicate plans. The work was done, to be sure. The third trunk, that had +been "full of old winter dresses to be made over," was locked upon the +nice little completed frocks and sacks that forestalled the care and +hurry of "fall work" for the overburdened mother, and were to gladden +her unexpecting eyes, as such store only can gladden the anxious family +manager who feels the changeful, shortening days come treading, with +their speedy demands, upon the very skirts of long, golden sunshiny +August hours. + +Susan and Martha Josselyn felt, on their part, as only busy workers feel +who fasten the last thread, or dash a period to the last page, and turn +around to breathe the breath of the free, and choose for once and for a +while what they shall do. The first hour of this freedom rested them +more than the whole six weeks that they had been getting half-rest, with +the burden still upon their thought and always waiting for their hands. +It was like the first half-day to children, when school has closed and +books are brought home for the long vacation. All the possible delight +of coming weeks is distilled to one delicious drop, and tasted then. + +"It's 'none of my funeral,' I know," Sin Saxon said to Miss Craydocke. +"I'm only an eleventh-hour helper; but I'll come in for the holiday +business, if you'll let me; and perhaps, after all, that's more in my +line." + +Everything seemed to be in her line that she once took hold of. She had +little private consultations with Miss Craydocke. "It's to be your party +to Feather-Cap, but it shall be my party to Minster Rock," she said. +"Leave that to me, please. Now the howl's off my hands, I feel equal to +anything.'" + +Just in time for the party to Minster Rock, a great basket and box from +home arrived for Sin Saxon. In the first were delicious early peaches, +rose-color and gold, wrapped one by one in soft paper and laid among +fine sawdust; early pears, also, with the summer incense in their +spiciness; greenhouse grapes, white and amber and purple. The other held +delicate cakes and confections unknown to Outledge, as carefully put up, +and quite fresh and unharmed. "Everything comes in right for me," she +exclaimed, running back and forth to Miss Craydocke with new and more +charming discoveries as she excavated. Not a word did she say of the +letter that had gone down from her four days before, asking her mother +for these things, and to send her some money; "for a party," she told +her, "that she would rather give here than to have her usual summer +_fete_ after her return." + +"You quite eclipse and extinguish my poor little doings," said Miss +Craydocke, admiring and rejoicing all the while as genuinely as Sin +herself. + +"Dear Miss Craydocke!" cried the girl; "if I thought it would seem like +that, I would send and tip them all into the river. But you,--you +_can't_ be eclipsed! Your orbit runs too high above ours." + +Sin Saxon's brightness and independence, that lapsed so easily +into sauciness, and made it so hard for her to observe the mere +conventionalisms of respect, in no way hindered the real reverence that +grew in her toward the superiority she recognized, and that now softened +her tone to a tenderness of humility before her friend. + +There was a grace upon her in these days that all saw. Over her real wit +and native vivacity, it was like a porcelain shade about a flame. One +could look at it, and be glad of it, without winking. The brightness was +all there, but there was a difference in the giving forth. What had been +a bit self-centred and self-conscious--bright as if only for being +bright and for dazzling--was outgoing and self-forgetful, and so +softened. Leslie Goldthwaite read by it a new answer to some of her old +questions. "What harm is there in it?" she had asked herself on their +first meeting, when Sin Saxon's overflow of merry mischief, that yet did +"no special or obvious good," made her so taking, so the centre of +whatever group into which she came. Afterward, when, running to its +height, this spirit showed in behavior that raised misgivings among the +scrupulous and orderly that would not let them any longer be wholly +amused; and came near betraying her, or actually did betray her, into +indecorums beyond excuse or countenance, Leslie had felt the harm, and +begun to shrink away. "Nothing _but_ leaves" came back to her; her +summer thought recurred and drew to itself a new illustration. This it +was to have no aim but to rustle and flaunt; to grow leaves continually; +to make one's _self_ central and conspicuous, and to fill great space. +But now among these very leaves gleamed something golden and glorious; +something was ripening suddenly out that had lain unseen in its +greenness; the time of figs seemed coming. Sin Saxon was intent upon new +purpose; something to be _done_ would not let her "stand upon the order" +or the fashion of her doing. She forgot her little airs, that had been +apt to detract from her very wit, and leave it only smartness; bright +things came to her, and she uttered and acted them; but they seemed +involuntary and only on the way; she could not help herself, and nobody +would have had it helped; she was still Sin Saxon; but she had simply +told the truth in her wayward way that morning. Miss Craydocke had done +it, with her kindly patience that was no stupidity, her simple dignity +that never lowered itself and that therefore could not be lowered, and +her quiet continuance in generous well-doing,--and Sin Saxon was +different. She was won to a perception of the really best in life,--that +which this plain old spinster, with her "scrap of lace and a front," had +found worth living for after the golden days were over. The impulse of +temperament, and the generosity which made everything instant and entire +with her, acted in this also, and carried her full over to an enthusiasm +of affectionate cooeperation. + +There were a few people at Outledge--of the sort who, having once made +up their minds that no good is ever to come out of Nazareth, see all +things in the light of that conviction--who would not allow the praise +of any voluntary amendment to this tempering and new direction of Sin's +vivacity. "It was time she was put down," they said, "and they were glad +that it was done. That last outbreak had finished her. She might as well +run after people now whom she had never noticed before; it was plain +there was nothing else left for her; her place was gone, and her reign +was over." Of all others, Mrs. Thoresby insisted upon this most +strongly. + +The whole school-party had considerably subsided. Madam Routh held a +tighter rein; but that Sin Saxon had a place and a power still, she +found ways to show in a new spirit. Into a quiet corner of the +dancing-hall, skimming her way, with the dance yet in her feet, between +groups of staid observers, she came straight, one evening, from a +bright, spirited figure of the German, and stretched her hand to Martha +Josselyn. "It's in your eyes," she whispered,--"come!" + +Night after night Martha Josselyn had sat there with the waltz-music in +her ears, and her little feet, that had had one merry winter's training +before the war, and many a home practice since with the younger ones, +quivering to the time beneath her robes, and seen other girls chosen out +and led away,--young matrons, and little short-petticoated children +even, taken to "excursionize" between the figures,--while nobody thought +of her. "I might be ninety, or a cripple," she said to her sister, "from +their taking for granted it is nothing to me. How is it that everything +goes by, and I only twenty?" There had been danger that Martha +Josselyn's sweet, generous temper should get a dash of sour, only +because of there lying alongside it a clear common-sense and a pure +instinct of justice. Susan's heart longed with a motherly tenderness for +her young sister when she said such words,--longed to put all pleasant +things somehow within her reach. She had given it up for herself, years +since. And now, all at once, Sin Saxon came and "took her out." + +It was a more generous act than it shows for, written. There is a little +tacit consent about such things which few young people of a "set" have +thought, desire, or courage to disregard. Sin Saxon never did anything +more gracefully. It was one of the moments that came now, when she wist +not that she shone. She was dropping, little by little, in the reality +of a better desire, that "satisfaction" Jeannie Hadden had spoken of, of +"knowing when one is at one's prettiest," or doing one's cleverest. The +"leaf and the fruit" never fitted better in their significance than to +Sin Saxon. Something intenser and more truly living was taking the place +of the mere flutter and flash and grace of effect. + +It was the figure in which the dancers form in facing columns, two and +two, the girls and the young men; when the "four hands round" keeps them +moving in bright circles all along the floor, and under arches of raised +and joined hands the girls came down, two and two, to the end, forming +their long line face to face against the opposing line of their +partners. The German may be, in many respects, an undesirable dance; it +may be, as I have sometimes thought, at least a selfish dance, affording +pleasure chiefly to the initiated few, and excluding gradually, almost +from society itself, those who do not participate in it. I speak of it +here neither to uphold nor to condemn,--simply because they _did_ dance +it at Outledge as they do everywhere, and I cannot tell my story without +it; but I think at this moment, when Sin Saxon led the figure with +Martha Josselyn, there was something lovely, not alone in its graceful +grouping, but in the very spirit and possibility of the thing that so +appeared. There is scope and chance even here, young girls, for the +beauty of kindness and generous thought. Even here, one may give a joy, +may soothe a neglect, may make some heart conscious for a moment of the +great warmth of a human welcome; and, though it be but to a pastime, I +think it comes into the benison of the Master's words when, even for +this, some spirit gets a feeling like them,--"I was a stranger, and ye +took me in." + +Some one, standing behind where Leslie Goldthwaite came to her place at +the end of the line by the hall-door, had followed and interpreted the +whole; had read the rare, shy pleasure in Martha Josselyn's face and +movement, the bright, expressive warmth in Sin Saxon's and the +half-surprise of observation upon others; and he thought as I do. + +"'Friends of the mammon of unrighteousness.' That girl has even +sanctified the German!" + +There was only one voice like that, only one person who would so speak +himself out. Leslie Goldthwaite turned quickly, and found herself face +to face with Marmaduke Wharne. "I am so glad you have come!" said she. + +He regarded her shrewdly. "Then you can do without me," he said. "I +didn't know by this time how it might be." + +The last two had taken their places below Leslie while these words were +exchanged, and now the whole line moved forward to meet their partners, +and the waltz began. Frank Scherman had got back to-day, and was dancing +with Sin Saxon. Leslie and Dakie Thayne were together, as they had been +that first evening at Jefferson, and as they often were. The four +stopped, after their merry whirl, in this same corner by the door where +Mr. Wharne was standing. Dakie Thayne shook hands with his friend in his +glad boy's way. Across their greetings came Sin Saxon's words, spoken to +her companion,--"You're to take her, Frank." Frank Scherman was an old +childhood's friend, not a mere mountain acquaintance. "I'll bring up +plenty of others first, but you're to wait and take _her_. And, wherever +she got her training, you'll find she's the featest-footed among us." It +was among the children--training them--that she had caught the trick of +it, but Sin Saxon did not know. + +"I'm ready to agree with you, with but just the reservation that _you_ +could not make," Frank Scherman answered. + +"Nonsense," said Sin Saxon. "But stop! here's something better and +quicker. They're getting the bouquets. Give her yours. It's your turn. +Go!" + +Sin Saxon's blue eyes sparkled like two stars; the golden mist of +her hair was tossed into lighter clouds by exercise; on her cheeks a +bright rose-glow burned; and the lips parted with their sweetest, +because most unconscious, curve over the tiny gleaming teeth. Her +word and her glance sent Frank Scherman straight to do her bidding; +and a bunch of wild azaleas and scarlet lilies was laid in Martha +Josselyn's hand, and she was taken out again into the dance by the +best partner there. We may trust her to Sin Saxon and Frank +Scherman, and her own "feat-footedness;" everything will not go by +her any more, and she but twenty. + +Marmaduke Wharne watched it all with that keen glance of his that was +like a level line of fire from under the rough, gray brows. + +"I am glad you saw that," said Leslie Goldthwaite, watching also, and +watching him. + +"By the light of your own little text,--'kind, and bright, and +pleasant'? You think it will do me good?" + +"I think it _was_ good; and I am glad you should really know Sin +Saxon--at the first." And at the best; Marmaduke Wharne quite understood +her. She gave him, unconsciously, the key to a whole character. It might +as easily have been something quite different that he should have first +seen in this young girl. + +Next morning they all met on the piazza. Leslie Goldthwaite presented +Sin Saxon to Mr. Wharne. + +"So, my dear," he said, without preface, "you are the belle of the +place?" + +He looked to see how she would take it. There was not the first twinkle +of a simper about eye or lip. Surprised, but quite gravely, she looked +up, and met his odd bluntness with as quaint an honesty of her own. "I +was pretty sure of it a while ago," she said. "And perhaps I was, in a +demoralized sort of a way. But I've come down, Mr. Wharne,--like the +coon. I'll tell you presently," she went on,--and she spoke now with +warmth,--"who is the real belle,--the beautiful one of this place! There +she comes!" + +Miss Craydocke, in her nice, plain cambric morning-gown, and her smooth +front, was approaching down the side passage across the wing. Just as +she had come one morning, weeks ago; and it was the identical "fresh +petticoat" of that morning she wore now. The sudden coincidence and +recollection struck Sin Saxon as she spoke. To her surprise, Miss +Craydocke and Marmaduke Wharne moved quickly toward each other, and +grasped hands like old friends. + +"Then you know all about it!" Sin Saxon said, a few minutes after, when +she got her chance. "But you _don't_ know, sir," she added, with a +desperate candor, "the way I took to find it out! I've been tormenting +her, Mr. Wharne, all summer. And I'm heartily ashamed of it." + +Marmaduke Wharne smiled. There was something about this girl that suited +his own vein. "I doubt she _was_ tormented," he said quietly. + +At that Sin Saxon smiled, too, and looked up out of her hearty shame +which she had truly felt upon her at her own reminder. "No, Mr. Wharne, +she never was; but that wasn't my fault. After all, perhaps,--isn't that +what the optimists think?--it was best so. I should never have found her +thoroughly out in any other way. It's like"--and there she stopped short +of her comparison. + +"Like what?" asked Mr. Wharne, waiting. + +"I can't tell you now, sir," she answered with a gleam of her old +fearless brightness. "It's one end of a grand idea, I believe, that I +just touched on. I must think it out, if I can, and see if it all holds +together." + +"And then I'm to have it?" + +"It will take a monstrous deal of thinking, Mr. Wharne." + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + + +QUICKSILVER AND GOLD. + +"If I could only remember the chemicals!" said Sin Saxon. She was down +among the outcrops and fragments at the foot of Minster Rock. Close in +around the stones grew the short, mossy sward. In a safe hollow between +two of them, against a back formed by another that rose higher with a +smooth perpendicular, she had chosen her fireplace, and there she had +been making the coffee. Quite intent upon the comfort of her friends she +was to-day; something really to do she had: "in better business," as +Leslie Goldthwaite phrased it to herself once, she found herself, than +only to make herself brilliant and enchanting after the manner of the +day at Feather-Cap. And let me assure you, if you have not tried it, +that to make the coffee and arrange the feast at a picnic like this is +something quite different from being merely an ornamental. There is the +fire to coax with chips and twigs, and a good deal of smoke to swallow, +and one's dress to disregard. And all the rest are off in scattered +groups, not caring in the least to watch the pot boil, but supposing, +none the less, that it will. To be sure, Frank Scherman and Dakie Thayne +brought her firewood, and the water from the spring, and waited loyally +while she seemed to need them; indeed, Frank Scherman, much as he +unquestionably was charmed with her gay moods, stayed longest by her in +her quiet ones; but she herself sent them off, at last, to climb with +Leslie and the Josselyns again into the Minster, and see thence the +wonderful picture that the late sloping light made on the far hills and +fields that showed to their sight between framing tree-branches and tall +trunk-shafts as they looked from out the dimness of the rock. + +She sat there alone, working out a thought; and at last she spoke as I +have said: "If I could only remember the chemicals!" + +"My dear! What do you mean? The chemicals? For the coffee?" It was Miss +Craydocke who questioned, coming up with Mr. Wharne. + +"Not the coffee,--no," said Sin Saxon, laughing rather absently, as too +intent to be purely amused. "But the--assaying. There,--I've remembered +_that_ word, at least!" + +Miss Craydocke was more than ever bewildered. "What is it, my dear? An +experiment?" + +"No; an analogy. Something that's been in my head these three days. I +can't make everything quite clear, Mr. Wharne, but I know it's there. I +went, I must tell you, a little while ago, to see some Colorado +specimens--ores and things--that some friends of ours had, who are +interested in the mines; and they talked about the processes, and +somebody explained. There were gold and silver and iron, and copper and +lead and sulphur, that had all been boiled up together some time, and +cooled into rock. And the thing was to sort them out. First, they +crushed the whole mass into powder, and then did something to +it--applied heat, I believe--to drive away the sulphur. That fumed off, +and left the rest as promiscuous as before. Then they--oxidized the +lead, however they managed it, and got that out. You see I'm not quite +sure of the order of things, or of the chemical part. But they got it +out, and something took it. Then they put in quicksilver, and that took +hold of the gold. Then there were silver and copper and iron. So they +had to put back the lead again, and that grappled the silver. And what +they did with the copper and iron is just what I can't possibly +recollect, but they divided them somehow, and there was the great rock +riddle all read out. Now, haven't we been just like that this summer? +And I wonder if the world isn't like it, somehow? And ourselves, too, +all muddled up, and not knowing what we _are_ made of, till the right +chemicals touch us? There's so much in it, Mr. Wharne, I can't put it +in clear order. But it _is_ there,--isn't it?" + +"Yes, it is there," answered Mr. Wharne, with the briefest gravity. For +Miss Craydocke, there were little shining drops standing in her eyes, +and she tried not to wink lest they should fall out, pretending they had +been really tears. And what was there to cry about, you know? + +"Here we have been," Sin Saxon resumed, "all crushed up together, and +the characters coming out little by little, with different things. +Sulphur's always the first,--heats up and flies off,--it don't take long +to find that; and common oxygen gets at common lead, and so on; but, +dear Miss Craydocke, do you know what comforts me? That you _must_ have +the quicksilver to discover the gold!" + +Miss Craydocke winked. She had to do it then, and the two little round +drops fell. They went down, unseen, into the short pasture-grass, and I +wonder what little wild-flowers grew of their watering some day +afterward. + +It was getting a little too quiet between them now for people on a +picnic, perhaps; and so in a minute Sin Saxon said again: "It's good to +know there is a way to sort everything out. Perhaps the tares and wheat +mean the same thing. Mr. Wharne, why is it that things seem more sure +and true as soon as we find out we can make an allegory to them?" + +"Because we do _not_ make the allegory. It is there, as you have said. +'I will open my mouth in parables. I will utter things which have been +kept secret from the foundation of the world.' These things are that +speech of God that was in the beginning. The Word made flesh,--it is He +that interpreteth." + +That was too great to give small answer to. Nobody spoke again till Sin +Saxon had to jump up to attend to her coffee, that was boiling over, and +then they took up their little cares of the feast, and their chat over +it. + +Cakes and coffee, fruits and cream,--I do not care to linger over these. +I would rather take you to the cool, shadowy, solemn Minster cavern, the +deep, wondrous recess in the face of solid rock, whose foundation and +whose roof are a mountain; or above, upon the beetling crag that makes +but its porch-lintel, and looks forth itself across great air-spaces +toward its kindred cliffs, lesser and more mighty, all around, making +one listen in one's heart for the awful voices wherewith they call to +each other forevermore. + +The party had scattered again, after the repast, and Leslie and the +Josselyns had gone back into the Minster entrance, where they never +tired of standing, and out of whose gloom they looked now upon all the +flood of splendor, rosy, purple, and gold, which the royal sun flung +back--his last and richest largess--upon the heights that looked longest +after him. Mr. Wharne and Miss Craydocke climbed the cliff. Sin Saxon, +on her way up, stopped short among the broken crags below. There was +something very earnest in her gaze, as she lifted her eyes, wide and +beautiful with the wonder in them, to the face of granite upreared +before her, and then turned slowly to look across and up the valley, +where other and yet grander mountain ramparts thrust their great +forbiddance on the reaching vision. She sat down, where she was, upon a +rock. + +"You are very tired?" Frank Scherman said, inquiringly. + +"See how they measure themselves against each other," Sin Saxon said, +for answer. "Look at them, Leslie and the rest, inside the Minster that +arches up so many times their height above their heads,--yet what a +little bit, a mere mousehole, it is out of the cliff itself; and then +look at the whole cliff against the Ledges, that, seen from anywhere +else, seem to run so low along the river; and compare the Ledges with +Feather-Cap, and Feather-Cap with Giant's Cairn, and Giant's Cairn with +Washington, thirty miles away!" + +"It is grand surveying," said Frank Scherman. + +"I think we see things from the little best," rejoined Sin Saxon. +"Washington is the big end of the telescope." + +"Now you have made me look at it," said Frank Scherman, "I don't think I +have been in any other spot that has given me such a real idea of the +mountains as this. One must have steps to climb by, even in imagination. +How impertinent we are, rushing at the tremendousness of Washington in +the way we do; scaling it in little pleasure-wagons, and never taking in +the thought of it at all!" + +Something suddenly brought a flush to Sin Saxon's face, and almost a +quiver to her lips. She was sitting with her hands clasped across her +knees, and her head a little bent with a downward look, after that long, +wondering mountain gaze, that had filled itself and then withdrawn for +thought. She lifted her face suddenly to her companion. The impetuous +look was in her eyes. "There's other measuring too, Frank. What a fool +I've been!" + +Frank Scherman was silent. It was a little awkward for him, scarcely +comprehending what she meant. He could by no means agree with Sin Saxon +when she called herself a fool; yet he hardly knew what he was to +contradict. + +"We're well placed at this minute. Leslie Goldthwaite and Dakie Thayne +and the Josselyns half way up above there, in the Minster. Mr. Wharne +and Miss Craydocke at the top. And I down here, where I belong. +Impertinence! To think of the things I've said in my silliness to that +woman, whose greatness I can no more measure! Why didn't somebody stop +me? I don't answer for you, Frank, and I won't keep you; but I think +I'll just stay where I am, and not spoil the significance!" + +"I'm content to rank beside you; we can climb together," said Frank +Scherman. "Even Miss Craydocke has not got to the highest, you see," he +went on, a little hurriedly. + +Sin Saxon broke in as hurriedly as he, with a deeper flush still upon +her face. "There's everything beyond. That's part of it. But she helps +one to feel what the higher--the Highest--must be. She's like the rock +she stands on. She's one of the steps." + +"Come, Asenath, let's go up." And he held out his hand to her till she +took it and rose. They had known each other from childhood, as I said; +but Frank Scherman hardly ever called her by her name. "Miss Saxon" was +formal, and her school sobriquet he could not use. It seemed to mean a +great deal when he did say "Asenath." + +And Sin Saxon took his hand and let him lead her up, notwithstanding the +"significance." + +They are young, and I am not writing a love-story; but I think they +will "climb together;" and that the words that wait to be said are mere +words,--they have known and understood each other so long. + + * * * * * + +"I feel like a camel at a fountain, drinking in what is to last through +the dry places," said Martha Josselyn, as they came up. "Miss Saxon, you +don't know what you have given us to-day. I shall take home the hills in +my heart." + +"We might have gone without seeing this," said Susan. + +"No, you mightn't," said Sin Saxon. "It's my good luck to see you see +it, that's all. It couldn't be in the order of things, you know, that +you should be so near it, and want it, and not have it, somehow." + +"So much _is_ in the order of things, though!" said Martha. "And there +are so many things we want, without knowing them even to _be_!" + +"That's the beauty of it, I think," said Leslie Goldthwaite, turning +back from where she stood, bright in the sunset glory, on the open rock. +Her voice was like that of some young prophet of joy, she was so full of +the gladness and loveliness of the time. "That's the beauty of it, I +think. There is such a worldful, and you never know what you may be +coming to next!" + +"Well, this is our last--of the mountains. We go on Tuesday." + +"It isn't your last of us, though, or of what we want of you," rejoined +Sin Saxon. "We must have the tableaux for Monday. We can't do without +you in Robin Gray or Consolation. And about Tuesday,--it's only your own +making up of minds. You haven't written, have you? They don't expect +you? When a week's broken in upon, like a dollar, the rest is of no +account. And there'll be sure to be something doing, so many are going +the week after." + +"We shall have letters to-night," said Susan. "But I think we must go on +Tuesday." + +Everybody had letters that night. The mail was in early, and Captain +Green came up from the post-office as the Minster party was alighting +from the wagons. He gave Dakie Thayne the bag. It was Dakie's delight to +distribute, calling out the fortunate names as the expectant group +pressed around him, like people waiting the issue of a lottery venture. + +"Mrs. Linceford, Miss Goldthwaite, Mrs. Linceford, Mrs. _Lince_ford! +Master--hm!--Thayne," and he pocketed a big one like a dispatch. +"Captain Jotham Green. Where is he? Here, Captain Green; you and I have +got the biggest, if Mrs. Linceford does get the most. I believe she +tells her friends to write in hits, and put one letter into three or +four envelopes. When I was a _very_ little boy, I used to get a dollar +changed into a hundred coppers, and feel ever so much richer." + +"That boy's forwardness is getting insufferable!" exclaimed Mrs. +Thoresby, sitting apart, with two or three others who had not joined the +group about Dakie Thayne. "And why Captain Green should give _him_ the +bag always, I can't understand. It is growing to be a positive +nuisance." + +Nobody out of the Thoresby clique thought it so. They had a merry time +together,--"you and I and the post," as Dakie said. But then, between +you and me and that confidential personage, Mrs. Thoresby and her +daughters hadn't very many letters. + +"That is all," said Dakie, shaking the bag. "They're only for the very +good, to-night." He was not saucy: he was only brimming-over glad. He +knew "Noll's" square handwriting, and his big envelopes. + +There was great news to-night at the Cottage. They were to have a hero, +perhaps two or three, among them. General Ingleside and friends were +coming, early in the week, the Captain told them with expansive face. +There are a great many generals and a great many heroes now. This man +had been a hero beside Sheridan, and under Sherman. Colonel Ingleside +he was at Stone River and Chattanooga,--leading a brave Western regiment +in desperate, magnificent charges, whose daring helped to turn that +terrible point of the war and made his fame. + +But Leslie, though her heart stirred at the thought of a real, great +commander fresh from the field, had her own news that half neutralized +the excitement of the other: Cousin Delight was coming, to share her +room with her for the last fortnight. + +The Josselyns got their letters. Aunt Lucy was staying on. Aunt Lucy's +husband had gone away to preach for three Sundays for a parish where he +had a prospect of a call. Mrs. Josselyn could not leave home +immediately, therefore, although the girls should return; and their room +was the airiest for Aunt Lucy. There was no reason why they should not +prolong their holiday if they chose, and they might hardly ever get away +to the mountains again. More than all, Uncle David was off once more for +China and Japan, and had given his sister two more fifties,--"for what +did a sailor want of greenbacks after he got afloat?" It was "a clover +summer" for the Josselyns. Uncle David and his fifties wouldn't be back +among them for two years or more. They must make the most of it. + +Sin Saxon sat up late, writing this letter to her mother:-- + +DARLING MAMMA,--I've just begun to find out really what to do here. +Cream doesn't always rise to the top. You remember the Josselyns, our +quiet neighbors in town, that lived in the little house in the +old-fashioned block opposite,--Sue Josselyn, Effie's schoolmate? And how +they used to tell me stories and keep me to nursery-tea? Well, they're +the cream; they and Miss Craydocke. Sue has been in the hospitals,--two +years, mamma!--while I've been learning nocturnes, and going to Germans. +And Martha has been at home, sewing her face sharp; and they're here now +to get rounded out. Well now, mamma, I want so--a real dish of mountains +and cream, if you ever heard of such a thing! I want to take a wagon, +and invite a party as I did my little one to Minster Rock, and go +through the hills,--be gone as many days as you will send me money for. +And I want you to take the money from that particular little corner of +your purse where my carpet and wall-paper and curtains, that were to +new-furnish my room on my leaving school, are metaphorically rolled up. +There's plenty there, you know; for you promised me my choice of +everything, and I had fixed on that lovely pearl-gray paper at ----'s, +with the ivy and holly pattern, and the ivy and scarlet-geranium carpet +that was such a match. I'll have something cheaper, or nothing at all, +and thank you unutterably, if you'll only let me have my way in this. It +will do me so much good, mamma! More than you've the least idea of. +People can do without French paper and Brussels carpets, but everybody +has a right to mountain and sea and cloud glory,--only they don't half +of them get it, and perhaps that's the other half's lookout! + +I know you'll understand me, mamma, particularly when I talk sense; for +you always understood my nonsense when nobody else did. And I'm going to +do your faith and discrimination credit yet. + +Your bad child,--with just a small, hidden savor of grace in her, +_being_ your child,-- + +ASENATH SAXON. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + + +"WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL US?" + +Saturday was a day of hammering, basting, draping, dressing, rehearsing, +running from room to room. Upstairs, in Mrs. Green's garret, Leslie +Goldthwaite and Dakie Thayne, with a third party never before introduced +upon the stage, had a private practicing; and at tea-time, when the +great hall was cleared, they got up there with Sin Saxon and Frank +Scherman, locked the doors, and in costume, with regular accompaniment +of bell and curtain, the performance was repeated. + +Dakie Thayne was stage-manager and curtain-puller; Sin Saxon and Frank +Scherman represented the audience, with clapping and stamping, and +laughter that suspended both; making as nearly the noise of two hundred +as two could: this being an essential part of the rehearsal in respect +to the untried nerves of the _debutant_, which might easily be a little +uncertain. + +"He stands fire like a Yankee veteran." + +"It's inimitable," said Sin Saxon, wiping the moist merriment from her +eyes. "And your cap, Leslie! And that bonnet! And this unutterable old +oddity of a gown! Who did contrive it all? and where did they come from? +You'll carry off the glory of the evening. It ought to be the last." + +"No, indeed," said Leslie. "Barbara Frietchie must be last, of course. +But I'm so glad you think it will do. I hope they'll be amused." + +"Amused! If you could only see your own face!" + +"I see Sir Charles's, and that makes mine." + +The new performer, you perceive, was an actor with a title. + +That night's coach, driving up while the dress-rehearsal of the other +tableaux was going on at the hall, brought Cousin Delight to the Green +Cottage, and Leslie met her at the door. + +Sunday morning was a pause and rest and hush of beauty and joy. They +sat--Delight and Leslie--by their open window, where the smell of the +lately harvested hay came over from the wide, sunshiny entrance of the +great barn, and away beyond stretched the pine woods, and the hills +swelled near in dusky evergreen, and indigo shadows, and lessened far +down toward Winnipiseogee, to where, faint and tender and blue, the +outline of little Ossipee peeped in between great shoulders so +modestly,--seen only through the clearest air on days like this. +Leslie's little table, with fresh white cover, held a vase of ferns and +white convolvulus, and beside this Cousin Delight's two books that came +out always from the top of her trunk,--her Bible and her little "Daily +Food." To-day the verses from Old and New Testaments were these: "The +steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and he delighteth in his +way." "Walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the +time." + +They had a talk about the first,--"The steps," the little details; not +merely the general trend and final issue; if, indeed, these could be +directed without the other. + +"You always make me see things, Cousin Delight," Leslie said. + +"It is very plain," Delight answered; "if people only would read the +Bible as they read even a careless letter from a friend, counting each +word of value, and searching for more meaning and fresh inference to +draw out the most. One word often answers great doubts and askings that +have troubled the world." + +Afterward, they walked round by a still wood-path under the Ledge to the +North Village, where there was a service. It was a plain little church, +with unpainted pews; but the windows looked forth upon a green mountain +side, and whispers of oaks and pines and river-music crept in, and the +breath of sweet water-lilies, heaped in a great bowl upon the communion +table of common stained cherrywood, floated up and filled the place. The +minister, a quiet, gray-haired man, stayed his foot an instant at that +simple altar, before he went up the few steps to the desk. He had a +sermon in his pocket from the text, "The hairs of your heads are all +numbered." He changed it at the moment in his mind, and, when presently +he rose to preach, gave forth in a tone touched, through the very +presence of that reminding beauty, with the very spontaneousness of the +Master's own saying, "Consider the lilies." And then he told them of +God's momently thought and care. + +There were scattered strangers, from various houses, among the simple +rural congregation. Walking home through the pines again, Delight and +Leslie and Dakie Thayne found themselves preceded and followed along the +narrow way. Sin Saxon and Frank Scherman came up and joined them when +the wider openings permitted. + +Two persons just in front were commenting upon the sermon. + +"Very fair for a country parson," said a tall, elegant-looking man, +whose broad, intellectual brow was touched by dark hair slightly +frosted, and whose lip had the curve that betokens self-reliance and +strong decision,--"very fair. All the better for not flying too high. +Narrow, of course. He seems to think the Almighty has nothing grander to +do than to finger every little cog of the tremendous machinery of the +universe,--that he measures out the ocean of his purposes as we drop a +liquid from a phial. To me it seems belittling the Infinite." + +"I don't know whether it is littleness or greatness, Robert, that must +escape minutiae," said his companion, apparently his wife. "If we could +reach to the particles, perhaps we might move the mountains." + +"We never agree upon this, Margie. We won't begin again. To my mind, the +grand plan of things was settled ages ago,--the impulses generated that +must needs work on. Foreknowledge and intention, doubtless; in that +sense the hairs _were_ numbered. But that there is a special direction +and interference to-day for you and me--well, we won't argue, as I said; +but I never can conceive it so; and I think a wider look at the world +brings a question to all such primitive faith." + +The speakers turned down a side way with this, leaving the ledge path +and their subject to our friends. Only to their thoughts at first; but +presently Cousin Delight said, in a quiet tone, to Leslie, "That doesn't +account for the steps, does it?" + +"I am glad it _can't_," said Leslie. + +Dakie Thayne turned a look toward Leslie, as if he would gladly know of +what she spoke,--a look in which a kind of gentle reverence was +strangely mingled with the open friendliness. I cannot easily indicate +to you the sort of feeling with which the boy had come to regard this +young girl, just above him in years and thought and in the attitude +which true womanhood, young or old, takes toward man. He had no sisters; +he had been intimately associated with no girl-companions; he had lived +with his brother and an uncle and a young aunt, Rose. Leslie +Goldthwaite's kindness had drawn him into the sphere of a new and +powerful influence,--something different in thought and purpose from the +apparent unthought of the present little world about her; and this +lifted her up in his regard and enshrined her with a sort of pure +sanctity. He was sometimes really timid before her, in the midst of his +frank chivalry. + +"I wish you'd tell me," he said suddenly, falling back with her as the +path narrowed again. "What are the 'steps'?" + +"It was a verse we found this morning,--Cousin Delight and I," Leslie +answered; and as she spoke the color came up full in her cheeks, and her +voice was a little shy and tremulous. "'The steps of a good man are +ordered by the Lord.' That one word seemed to make one certain. +'Steps,'--not path, nor the end of it; but all the way." Somehow she was +quite out of breath as she finished. + +Meantime Sin Saxon and Frank had got with Miss Goldthwaite, and were +talking too. + +"Set spinning," they heard Sin Saxon say, "and then let go. That was his +idea. Well! Only it seems to me there's been especial pains taken to +show us it can't be done. Or else, why don't they find out perpetual +motion? Everything stops after a while, unless--I can't talk +theologically, but I mean all right--you hit it again." + +"You've a way of your own of putting things, Asenath," said Frank +Scherman,--with a glance that beamed kindly and admiringly upon her and +"her way,"--"but you've put that clear to me as nobody else ever did. A +proof set in the very laws themselves, momentum that must lessen and +lose itself with the square of the distance. The machinery cavil won't +do." + +"Wheels; but a living spirit within the wheels," said Cousin Delight. + +"Every instant a fresh impulse; to think of it so makes it real, Miss +Goldthwaite,--and grand and awful." The young man spoke with a strength +in the clear voice that could be so light and gay. + +"And tender, too. 'Thou layest Thine hand upon me,'" said Delight +Goldthwaite. + +Sin Saxon was quiet; her own thought coming back upon her with a +reflective force, and a thrill at her heart at Frank Scherman's words. +Had these two only planned tableaux and danced Germans together before? + +Dakie Thayne walked on by Leslie Goldthwaite's side, in his happy +content touched with something higher and brighter through that +instant's approach and confidence. If I were to write down his thought +as he walked, it would be with phrase and distinction peculiar to +himself and to the boy-mind,--"It's the real thing with her; it don't +make a fellow squirm like a pin put out at a caterpillar. She's _good_; +but she isn't _pious!_" + +This was the Sunday that lay between the busy Saturday and Monday. "It +is always so wherever Cousin Delight is," Leslie Goldthwaite said to +herself, comparing it with other Sundays that had gone. Yet she too, for +weeks before, by the truth that had come into her own life and gone out +from it, had been helping to make these moments possible. She had been +shone upon, and had put forth; henceforth she should scarcely know when +the fruit was ripening or sowing itself anew, or the good and gladness +of it were at human lips. + +She was in Mrs. Linceford's room on Monday morning, putting high +velvet-covered corks to the heels of her slippers, when Sin Saxon came +over hurriedly, and tapped at the door. + +"_Could_ you be _two_ old women?" she asked, the instant Leslie opened. +"Ginevra Thoresby has given out. She says it's her cold,--that she +doesn't feel equal to it; but the amount of it is she got her chill with +the Shannons going away so suddenly, and the Amy Robsart and Queen +Elizabeth picture being dropped. There was nothing else to put her in, +and so she won't be Barbara." + +"Won't be Barbara Frietchie!" cried Leslie, with an astonishment as if +it had been angelhood refused. + +"No. Barbara Frietchie is only an old woman in a cap and kerchief, and +she just puts her head out of a window: the _flag_ is the whole of it, +Ginevra Thoresby says." + +"_May_ I do it? Do you think I can be different enough in the two? Will +there be time?" Leslie questioned eagerly. + +"We'll change the programme, and put 'Taking the Oath' between. The caps +can be different, and you can powder your hair for one, and--_would_ it +do to ask Miss Craydocke for a front for the other?" Sin Saxon had grown +delicate in her feeling for the dear old friend whose hair had once been +golden. + +"I'll tell her about it, and ask her to help me contrive. She'll be sure +to think of anything that can be thought of." + +"Only there's the dance afterward, and you had so much more costume for +the other," Sin Saxon said demurringly. + +"Never mind. I shall _be_ Barbara; and Barbara wouldn't dance, I +suppose." + +"Mother Hubbard would, marvelously." + +"Never mind," Leslie answered again, laying down the little slipper, +finished. + +"She don't care _what_ she is, so that she helps along," Sin Saxon said +of her, rejoining the others in the hall. "I'm ashamed of myself and all +the rest of you, beside her. Now make yourselves as fine as you please." + +We must pass over the hours as only stories and dreams do, and put +ourselves, at ten of the clock that night, behind the green curtain and +the footlights, in the blaze of the three rows of bright lamps, that, +one above another, poured their illumination from the left upon the +stage, behind the wide picture-frame. + +Susan Josselyn and Frank Scherman were just "posed" for "Consolation." +They had given Susan this part, after all, because they wanted Martha +for "Taking the Oath," afterward. Leslie Goldthwaite was giving a hasty +touch to the tent drapery and the gray blanket; Leonard Brookhouse and +Dakie Thayne manned the halyards for raising the curtain; there was the +usual scuttling about the stage for hasty clearance; and Sin Saxon's +hand was on the bell, when Grahame Lowe sprang hastily in through the +dressing-room upon the scene. + +"Hold on a minute," he said to Brookhouse. "Miss Saxon, General +Ingleside and party are over at Green's,--been there since nine o'clock. +Oughtn't we to send compliments or something, before we finish up?" + +Then there was a pressing forward and an excitement. The wounded soldier +sprang from his couch; the nun came nearer, with a quick light in her +eye; Leslie Goldthwaite, in her mob cap, quilted petticoat, big-flowered +calico train, and high-heeled shoes; two or three supernumeraries, in +Rebel gray, with bayonets, coming on in "Barbara Frietchie;" and Sir +Charles, bouncing out from somewhere behind, to the great hazard of the +frame of lights,--huddled together upon the stage and consulted. Dakie +Thayne had dropped his cord and almost made a rush off at the first +announcement; but he stood now, with a repressed eagerness that trembled +through every fibre, and waited. + +"Would he come?" "Isn't it too late?" "Would it be any compliment?" +"Won't it be rude not to?" "All the patriotic pieces are just coming!" +"Will the audience like to wait?" "Make a speech and tell 'em. You, +Brookhouse." "Oh, he _must_ come! Barbara Frietchie and the flag! Just +think!" "Isn't it grand?" "Oh, I'm so frightened!" These were the +hurried sentences that made the buzz behind the scenes; while in front +"all the world wondered." Meanwhile, lamps trembled, the curtain +vibrated, the very framework swayed. + +"What is it? Fire?" queried a nervous voice from near the footlights. + +"This won't do," said Frank Scherman. "Speak to them, Brookhouse. Dakie +Thayne, run over to Green's, and say, the ladies' compliments to General +Ingleside and friends,--and beg the honor of their presence at the +concluding tableaux." + +Dakie was off with a glowing face. Something like an odd, knowing smile +twinkling out from the glow also, as he looked up at Scherman and took +his orders. All this while he had said nothing. + +Leonard Brookhouse made his little speech, received with applause and a +cheer. Then they quieted down behind the scenes, and a rustle and buzz +began in front,--kept up for five minutes or so, in gentle fashion, till +two gentlemen, in plain clothes, walked quietly in at the open door; at +sight of whom, with instinctive certainty, the whole assembly rose. +Leslie Goldthwaite, peeping through the folds of the curtain, saw a +tall, grand-looking man, in what may be called the youth of middle age, +every inch a soldier, bowing as he was ushered forward to a seat vacated +for him, and followed by one younger, who modestly ignored the notice +intended for his chief. Dakie Thayne was making his way, with eyes +alight and excited, down a side passage to his post. + +Then the two actors hurried once more into position; the stage was +cleared by a whispered peremptory order; the bell rung once, the tent +trembling with some one whisking further out of sight behind it,--twice, +and the curtain rose upon "Consolation." + +Lovely as the picture is, it was lovelier in the living tableau. There +was something deep and intense in the pale calm of Susan Josselyn's +face, which they had not counted on even when they discovered that hers +was the very face for the "Sister." Something made you thrill at the +thought of what those eyes would show, if the downcast, quiet lids were +raised. The earnest gaze of the dying soldier met more, perhaps, in its +uplifting; for Frank Scherman had a look, in this instant of enacting, +that he had never got before in all his practicings. The picture was too +real for applause,--almost, it suddenly seemed, for representation. + +"Don't I know that face, Noll?" General Ingleside asked, in a low tone, +of his companion. + +Instead of answering at once, the younger man bent further forward +toward the stage, and his own very plain, broad, honest face, full over +against the downcast one of the Sister of Mercy, took upon itself that +force of magnetic expression which makes a look felt even across a +crowd of other glances, as if there were but one straight line of +vision, and that between such two. The curtain was going slowly down; +the veiling lids trembled, and the paleness replaced itself with a +slow-mounting flush of color over the features, still held motionless. +They let the cords run more quickly then. She was getting tired, they +said; the curtain had been up too long. Be that as it might, nothing +could persuade Susan Josselyn to sit again, and "Consolation" could not +be repeated. + +So then came "Mother Hubbard and her Dog"--the slow old lady and the +knowing beast that was always getting one step ahead of her. The +possibility had occurred to Leslie Goldthwaite as she and Dakie Thayne +amused themselves one day with Captain Green's sagacious Sir Charles +Grandison, a handsome black spaniel, whose trained accomplishment was to +hold himself patiently in any posture in which he might be placed, until +the word of release was given. You might stand him on his hind legs, +with paws folded on his breast; you might extend him on his back, with +helpless legs in air; you might put him in any attitude possible to be +maintained, and maintain it he would, faithfully, until the signal was +made. From this prompting came the illustration of Mother Hubbard. Also, +Leslie Goldthwaite had seized the hidden suggestion of application, and +hinted it in certain touches of costume and order of performance. Nobody +would think, perhaps, at first, that the striped scarlet and white +petticoat under the tucked-up train, or the common print apron of dark +blue, figured with innumerable little white stars, meant anything beyond +the ordinary adjuncts of a traditional old woman's dress; but when, in +the second scene, the bonnet went on,--an ancient marvel of exasperated +front and crown, pitched over the forehead like an enormous helmet, and +decorated, upon the side next the audience, with black and white eagle +plumes springing straight up from the fastening of an American shield; +above all, when the dog himself appeared, "dressed in his clothes" (a +cane, an all-round white collar and a natty little tie, a pair of +three-dollar tasseled kid gloves dangling from his left paw, and a small +monitor hat with a big spread--eagle stuck above the brim,--the +remaining details of costume being of no consequence),--when he stood +"reading the news" from a huge bulletin,--"LATEST BY CABLE FROM +EUROPE,"--nobody could mistake the personification of Old and Young +America. + +It had cost much pains and many dainty morsels to drill Sir Charles, +with all the aid of his excellent fundamental education; and the great +fear had been that he might fail them at the last. But the scenes were +rapid, in consideration of canine infirmity. If the cupboard was empty, +Mother Hubbard's basket behind was not; he got his morsels duly; and the +audience was "requested to refrain from applause until the end." Refrain +from laughter they could not, as the idea dawned upon them and +developed; but Sir Charles was used to that in the execution of his +ordinary tricks; he could hardly have done without it better than any +other old actor. A dog knows when he is having his day, to say nothing +of doing his duty; and these things are as sustaining to him as to +anybody. This state of his mind, manifest in his air, helped also to +complete the Young America expression. Mother Hubbard's mingled +consternation and pride at each successive achievement of her +astonishing puppy were inimitable. Each separate illustration made its +point. Patriotism, especially, came in when the undertaker, bearing the +pall with red-lettered border,--Rebellion,--finds the dog, with +upturned, knowing eye, and parted jaws, suggestive as much of a good +grip as of laughter, half risen upon fore-paws, as far from "dead" as +ever, mounting guard over the old bone "Constitution." + +The curtain fell at last amid peals of applause and calls for the +actors. + +Dakie Thayne had accompanied with the reading of the ballad, slightly +transposed and adapted. As Leslie led Sir Charles before the curtain, +in response to the continued demand, he added the concluding stanza,-- + + "The dame made a courtesy, + The dog made a bow; + The dame said, 'Your servant,' + The dog said, 'Bow-wow.'" + +Which, with a suppressed "Speak, sir!" from Frank Scherman, was brought +properly to pass. Done with cleverness and quickness from beginning to +end, and taking the audience utterly by surprise, Leslie's little +combination of wit and sagacity had been throughout a signal success. +The actors crowded round her. "We'd no idea of it!" "Capital!" "A great +hit!" they exclaimed. "Mother Hubbard is the star of the evening," said +Leonard Brookhouse. "No, indeed," returned Leslie, patting Sir Charles's +head,--"this is the dog-star." "Rather a Sirius reflection upon the rest +of us," rejoined Brookhouse, shrugging his shoulders, as he walked off +to take his place in the "Oath," and Leslie disappeared to make ready +for "Barbara Frietchie." + +Several persons, before and behind the curtain, were making up their +minds, just now, to a fresh opinion. There was nothing so very slow or +tame, after all, about Leslie Goldthwaite. Several others had known that +long ago. + +"Taking the Oath" was piquant and spirited. The touch of restive scorn +that could come out on Martha Josselyn's face just suited her part; and +Leonard Brookhouse was very cool and courteous, and handsome and +gentlemanly-triumphant as the Union officer. + +"Barbara Frietchie" was grand. Grahame Lowe played Stonewall Jackson. +They had improvised a pretty bit of scenery at the back, with a few +sticks, some paint, brown carpet-paper, and a couple of mosquito bars; a +Dutch gable with a lattice window, vines trained up over it, and bushes +below. It was a moving tableau, enacted to the reading of Whittier's +glorious ballad. "Only an old woman in a cap and kerchief, putting her +head out at a garret window,"--that was all; but the fire was in the +young eyes under the painted wrinkles and the snowy hair; the arm +stretched itself out quick and bravely at the very instant of the +pistol-shot that startled timid ears; one skillful movement detached and +seized the staff in its apparent fall, and the liberty-colors flashed +full in Rebel faces, as the broken lower fragment went clattering to the +stage. All depended on the one instant action and expression. These were +perfect. The very spirit of Barbara stirred her representative. The +curtain began to descend slowly, and the applause broke forth before the +reading ended. But a hand, held up, hushed it till the concluding lines +were given in thrilling tones, as the tableau was covered from sight. + + "Barbara Frietchie's work is o'er, + And the Rebel rides on his raids no more. + + "Honor to her! and let a tear + Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall's bier. + + "Over Barbara Frietchie's grave, + Flag of Freedom and Union, wave! + + "Peace and order and beauty draw + Round thy symbol of light and law; + + "And ever the stars above look down + On thy stars below in Frederick town!" + +Then one great cheer broke forth, and was prolonged to three. + +"Not be Barbara Frietchie!" Leslie would not have missed that thrill for +the finest beauty-part of all. For the applause--that was for the flag, +of course, as Ginevra Thoresby said. + +The benches were slid out at a window upon a lower roof, the curtain was +looped up, and the footlights carried away; the "music" came up, and +took possession of the stage; and the audience hall resolved itself into +a ball-room. Under the chandelier, in the middle, a tableau not set +forth in the programme was rehearsed and added a few minutes after. + +Mrs. Thoresby, of course, had been introduced to the General; Mrs. +Thoresby, with her bright, full, gray curls and her handsome figure, +stood holding him in conversation between introductions, graciously +waiving her privilege as new comers claimed their modest word. Mrs. +Thoresby took possession; had praised the tableaux, as "quite +creditable, really, considering the resources we had," and was following +a slight lead into a long talk, of information and advice on her part, +about Dixville Notch. The General thought he should go there, after a +day or two at Outledge. + +Just here came up Dakie Thayne. The actors, in costume, were gradually +mingling among the audience, and Barbara Frietchie, in white hair, from +which there was not time to remove the powder, plain cap and kerchief, +and brown woolen gown, with her silken flag yet in her hand, came with +him. This boy, who "was always everywhere," made no hesitation, but +walked straight up to the central group, taking Leslie by the hand. +Close to the General, he waited courteously for a long sentence of Mrs. +Thoresby's to be ended, and then said, simply, "Uncle James, this is my +friend Miss Leslie Goldthwaite. My brother, Dr. Ingleside--why, where is +Noll?" + +Dr. Oliver Ingleside had stepped out of the circle in the last half of +the long sentence. The Sister of Mercy--no longer in costume, +however--had come down the little flight of steps that led from the +stage to the floor. At their foot the young army surgeon was shaking +hands with Susan Josselyn. These two had had the chess-practice +together--and other practice--down there among the Southern hospitals. + +Mrs. Thoresby's face was very like some fabric subjected to chemical +experiment, from which one color and aspect has been suddenly and +utterly discharged to make room for something different and new. Between +the first and last there waits a blank. With this blank full upon her, +she stood there for one brief, unprecedented instant in her life, a +figure without presence or effect. I have seen a daguerreotype in which +were cap, hair, and collar, quite correct,--what should have been a face +rubbed out. Mrs. Thoresby rubbed herself out, and so performed her +involuntary tableau. + +"Of course I might have guessed. I wonder it never occurred to me," Mrs. +Linceford was replying presently, to her vacuous inquiry. "The name +seemed familiar, too; only he called himself 'Dakie.' I remember +perfectly now. Old Jacob Thayne, the Chicago millionaire. He married +pretty little Mrs. Ingleside, the Illinois Representative's widow, that +first winter I was in Washington. Why, Dakie must be a dollar prince!" + +He was just Dakie Thayne, though, for all that. He and Leslie and +Cousin Delight, the Josselyns and the Inglesides, dear Miss Craydocke +hurrying up to congratulate, Marmaduke Wharne looking on without a shade +of cynicism in the gladness of his face, and Sin Saxon and Frank +Scherman flitting up in the pauses of dance and promenade,--well, after +all, these were the central group that night. The pivot of the little +solar system was changed; but the chief planets made but slight account +of that; they just felt that it had grown very warm and bright. + +"Oh, Chicken Little!" Mrs. Linceford cried to Leslie Goldthwaite, giving +her a small shake with her good-night kiss at her door. "How did you +know the sky was going to fall? And how have you led us all this chase +to cheat Fox Lox at last?" + +But that wasn't the way Chicken Little looked at it. She didn't care +much for the bit of dramatic _denouement_ that had come about by +accident,--like a story, Elinor said,--or the touch of poetic justice +that tickled Mrs. Linceford's world-instructed sense of fun. Dakie +Thayne wasn't a sum that needed proving. It was very nice that this +famous general should be his uncle,--but not at all strange: they were +just the sort of people he _must_ belong to. And it was nicest of +all that Dr. Ingleside and Susan Josselyn should have known each +other,--"in the glory of their lives," she phrased it to herself, with +a little flash of girl enthusiasm and a vague suggestion of romance. + +"Why didn't you tell us?" Mrs. Linceford said to Dakie Thayne next +morning. "Everybody would have"--She stopped. She could not tell this +boy to his frank face that everybody would have thought more and made +more of him because his uncle had got brave stars on his shoulders, and +his father had died leaving two millions or so of dollars. + +"I know they would have," said Dakie Thayne. "That was just it. What is +the use of telling things? I'll wait till I've done something that tells +itself." + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + + +LEAF-GLORY. + +There was a pretty general break-up at Outledge during the week +following. The tableaux were the _finale_ of the season's gayety,--of +this particular little episode, at least, which grew out of the +association together of these personages of our story. There might come +a later set, and later doings; but this last week of August sent the +mere summer-birds fluttering. Madam Routh must be back in New York, to +prepare for the reopening of her school; Mrs. Linceford had letters from +her husband, proposing to meet her by the first, in N----, and so the +Haddens would be off; the Thoresbys had stayed as long as they cared to +in any one place where there seemed no special inducement; General +Ingleside was going through the mountains to Dixville Notch. Rose +Ingleside,--bright and charming as her name; just a fit flower to put +beside our Ladies' Delight, finding out at once, as all girls and women +did, her sweetness, and leaning more and more to the rare and delicate +sphere of her quiet attraction,--Oliver and Dakie Thayne,--these were +his family party; but there came to be question about Leslie and +Delight. Would not they make six? And since Mrs. Linceford and her +sisters must go, it seemed so exactly the thing for them to fall into; +otherwise Miss Goldthwaite's journey hither would hardly seem to have +been worth while. Early September was so lovely among the hills; +opportunities for a party to Dixville Notch would not come every day; in +short, Dakie had set his heart upon it, Rose begged, the General was as +pressing as true politeness would allow, and it was settled. + +"Only," Sin Saxon said suddenly, on being told, "I should like if you +would tell me, General Ingleside, the precise military expression +synonymous with 'taking the wind out of one's sails.' Because that's +just what you've done for me." + +"My dear Miss Saxon! In what way?" + +"Invited my party,--some of them,--and taken my road. That's all. I +spoke first, though I didn't speak out loud. See here!" And she produced +a letter from her mother, received that morning. "Observe the date, if +you please,--August 24. 'Your letter reached me yesterday.' And it had +traveled round, as usual, two days in papa's pocket, beside. I always +allow for that. 'I quite approve your plan; provided, as you say, the +party be properly matronized. I'--H'm--h'm! that refers to little +explanations of my own. Well, all is, I was going to do this very +thing,--with enlargements. And now Miss Craydocke and I may collapse." + +"Why, when with you and your enlargements we might make the most +admirable combination? At least, the Dixville road is open to all." + +"Very kind of you to say so,--the first part, I mean,--if you could +possibly have helped it. But there are insurmountable obstacles on that +Dixville road--to us. There's a lion in the way. Don't you see we should +be like the little ragged boys running after the soldier-company? We +couldn't think of putting ourselves in that 'bony light,' especially +before the eyes of Mrs.--Grundy." This last, as Mrs. Thoresby swept +impressively along the piazza in full dinner costume. + +"Unless you go first, and we run after you," suggested the General. + +"All the same. You talked Dixville to her the very first evening, you +know. No, nobody can have an original Dixville idea any more. And I've +been asking them,--the Josselyns, and Mr. Wharne and all, and was just +coming to the Goldthwaites; and now I've got them on my hands, and I +don't know where in the world to take them. That comes of keeping an +inspiration to ripen. Well, it's a lesson of wisdom! Only, as Effie says +about her housekeeping, the two dearest things in living are butter and +experience!" + +Amidst laughter and banter and repartee, they came to it, of course; the +most delightful combination and joint arrangement. Two wagons, the +General's and Dr. Ingleside's two saddle-horses, Frank Scherman's little +mountain mare, that climbed like a cat, and was sure-footed as a +chamois,--these, with a side-saddle for the use of a lady sometimes upon +the last, made up the general equipment of the expedition. All Mrs. +Grundy knew was that they were wonderfully merry and excited together, +until this plan came out as the upshot. + +The Josselyns had not quite consented at once, though their faces were +bright with a most thankful appreciation of the kindness that offered +them such a pleasure; nay, that entreated their companionship as a thing +so genuinely coveted to make its own pleasure complete. Somehow, when +the whole plan developed, there was a little sudden shrinking on Sue's +part, perhaps on similar grounds to Sin Saxon's perception of +insurmountable obstacles; but she was shyer than Sin of putting forth +her objections, and the general zeal and delight, and Martha's longing +look, unconscious of cause why not, carried the day. + +There had never been a blither setting off from the Giant's Cairn. All +the remaining guests were gathered to see them go. There was not a mote +in the blue air between Outledge and the crest of Washington. All the +subtile strength of the hills--ores and sweet waters and resinous +perfumes and breath of healing leaf and root distilled to absolute +purity in the clear ether that sweeps only from such bare, +thunder-scoured summits--made up the exhilarant draught in which they +drank the mountain joy and received afar off its baptism of delight. + +It was beautiful to see the Josselyns so girlish and gay; it was lovely +to look at old Miss Craydocke, with her little tremors of pleasure, and +the sudden glistenings in her eyes; Sin Saxon's pretty face was clear +and noble, with its pure impulse of kindliness, and her fun was like a +sparkle upon deep waters. Dakie Thayne rushed about in a sort of general +satisfaction which would not let him be quiet anywhere. Outsiders looked +with a kind of new, half-jealous respect on these privileged few who had +so suddenly become the "General's party." Sin Saxon whispered to Leslie +Goldthwaite: "It's neither his nor mine, honeysuckle; it's +yours,--Henny-penny and all the rest of it, as Mrs. Linceford said." +Leslie was glad with the crowning gladness of her bright summer. + +"That girl has played her cards well," Mrs. Thoresby said of her, a +little below her voice, as she saw the General himself making her +especially comfortable with Cousin Delight in a back seat. + +"Particularly, my dear madam," said Marmaduke Wharne, coming close and +speaking with clear emphasis, "as she could not possibly have known that +she had a trump in her hand!" + + * * * * * + +To tell of all that week's journeying, and of Dixville Notch; the +adventure, the brightness, the beauty, and the glory; the sympathy of +abounding enjoyment, the waking of new life that it was to some of them; +the interchange of thought, the cementing of friendships,--would be to +begin another story, possibly a yet longer one. Leslie's summer, +according to the calendar, is already ended. Much in this world must +pause unfinished, or come to abrupt conclusion. People "die suddenly at +last," after the most tedious illnesses. "Married and lived happy ever +after," is the inclusive summary that winds up many an old tale whose +time of action only runs through hours. If in this summer-time with +Leslie Goldthwaite your thoughts have broadened somewhat with hers, some +questions for you have been partly answered; if it has appeared to you +how a life enriches itself by drawing toward and going forth into the +life of others through seeing how this began with her, it is no +unfinished tale that I leave with you. + +A little picture I will give you, farther on, a hint of something +farther yet, and say good-by. + +Some of them came back to Outledge, and stayed far into the still, rich +September. Delight and Leslie sat before the Green Cottage one morning, +in the heart of a golden haze and a gorgeous bloom. + +All around the feet of the great hills lay the garlands of early-ripened +autumn. You see nothing like it in the lowlands,--nothing like the fire +of the maples, the carbuncle-splendor of the oaks, the flash of scarlet +sumachs and creepers, the illumination of every kind of little leaf in +its own way, upon which the frost touch comes down from those tremendous +heights that stand rimy in each morning's sun, trying on white caps that +by and by they shall pull down heavily over their brows, till they cloak +all their shoulders also in the like sculptured folds, to stand and +wait, blind, awful chrysalides, through the long winter of their death +and silence. + +Delight and Leslie had got letters from the Josselyns and Dakie Thayne. +There was news in them such as thrills always the half-comprehending +sympathies of girlhood. Leslie's vague suggestion of romance had become +fulfillment. Dakie Thayne was wild with rejoicing that dear old Noll was +to marry Sue. "She had always made him think of Noll, and his ways and +likings, ever since that day of the game of chess that by his means +came to grief. It was awful slang, but he could not help it: it was just +the very jolliest go!" + +Susan Josselyn's quiet letter said,--"That kindness which kept us on and +made it beautiful for us, strangers, at Outledge, has brought to me, by +God's providence, this great happiness of my life." + +After a long pause of trying to take it in, Leslie looked up. "What a +summer this has been! So full; so much has happened! I feel as if I had +been living such a great deal!" + +"You have been living in others' lives. You have had a great deal to do +with what has happened." + +"Oh, Cousin Delight! I have only been _among_ it! I could not +_do_--except such a very little." + +"There is a working from us beyond our own. But if our working runs with +that?--You have done more than you will ever know, little one." Delight +Goldthwaite spoke very tenderly. Her own life, somehow, had been closely +touched, through that which had grown and gathered about Leslie. "It +depends on that abiding. 'In me, and I in you; so shall ye bear much +fruit.'" + +She stopped. She would not say more. Leslie thought her talking rather +wide of the first suggestion; but this child would never know, as +Delight had said, what a centre, in her simple, loving way, she had +been for the working of a purpose beyond her thought. + +Sin Saxon came across the lawn, crowned with gold and scarlet, trailing +creepers twined about her shoulders, and flames of beauty in her full +hands. "Miss Craydocke says she praised God with every leaf she took. +I'm afraid I forgot to, for the little ones. But I was so greedy and so +busy, getting them all for her. Come, Miss Craydocke; we've got no end +of pressing to do, to save half of them!" + +"She can't do enough for her. Oh, Cousin Delight, the leaves _are_ +glorified, after all! Asenath never was so charming; and she is more +beautiful than ever!" + +Delight's glance took in also another face than Asenath's, grown into +something in these months that no training or taking thought could have +done for it. "Yes," she said, in the same still way in which she had +spoken before, "that comes too,--as God wills. All things shall be +added." + + * * * * * + +My hint is of a Western home, just outside the leaping growth and +ceaseless stir of a great Western city; a large, low, cosy mansion, with +a certain Old World mellowness and rest in its aspect,--looking forth, +even, as it does on one side, upon the illimitable sunset-ward sweep of +the magnificent promise of the New; on the other, it catches a glimpse, +beyond and beside the town, of the calm blue of a fresh-water ocean. + +The place is "Ingleside;" the General will call it by no other than the +family name,--the sweet Scottish synonym for Home-corner. And here, +while I have been writing and you reading these pages, he has had them +all with him; Oliver and Susan, on their bridal journey, which waited +for summer-time to come again, though they have been six months married; +Rose, of course, and Dakie Thayne, home in vacation from a great school +where he is studying hard, hoping for West Point by and by; Leslie +Goldthwaite, who is Dakie's inspiration still; and our Flower, our +Pansy, our Delight,--golden-eyed Lady of innumerable sweet names. + +The sweetest and truest of all, says the brave soldier and high-souled +gentleman, is that which he has persuaded her to wear for life,--Delight +Ingleside. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. +by Mrs. A. D. T. 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