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diff --git a/old/11216.txt b/old/11216.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f1cb372 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11216.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5042 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Happy Venture, by Edith Ballinger Price + +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: The Happy Venture + +Author: Edith Ballinger Price + +Release Date: February 21, 2004 [EBook #11216] +[Date last updated: January 8, 2005] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HAPPY VENTURE *** + + + + +Produced by Thaadd and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + +THE HAPPY VENTURE + + BY + +EDITH BALLINGER PRICE + +AUTHOR OF "BLUE MAGIC," +"US AND THE BOTTLEMAN," +"SILVER SHOAL LIGHT," ETC. + + +ILLUSTRATED BY + +THE AUTHOR + + + +Published in 1920, 1921, by The Century Co. + +CONTENTS + + + I TALES IN THE RAIN + II HAVOC + III UP STAKES + IV THE FINE OLD FARMHOUSE + V THE WHEELS BEGIN TO TURN + VI THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HEDGE + VII A-MAYING +VIII WORK + IX FAME COMES COURTING + X VENTURES AND ADVENTURES + XI THE NINE GIFTS + XII "ROSES IN THE MOONLIGHT" +XIII "THE SEA IS A TYRANT" + XIV THE CELESTINE PLAYS HER PART + XV MARTIN! + XVI ANOTHER HOME-COMING + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + +"Now can you see it? _Now_?" +The Maestro sat down beside Kirk +The slack length of it flew suddenly aboard +"Phil--Phil!" Kirk was saying then + + + + + +THE HAPPY VENTURE + + + +CHAPTER I + +[Illustration: "Now can you see it? _Now?_"] + + +TALES IN THE RAIN + +"'How should I your true love know, + From another one? +By his cockle hat and staff, + And his sandal shoon...'" + +It was the fourth time that Felicia, at the piano, had begun the old +song. Kenelm uncurled his long legs, and sat up straight on the +window-seat. + +"Why on earth so everlasting gloomy, Phil?" he said. "Isn't the rain bad +enough, without that dirge?" + +"The sky's 'be-weeping' him, just the way it says," said Felicia. She +made one complete revolution on the piano-stool, and brought her strong +fingers down on the opening notes of another verse. + +"'He is dead and gone, ladie, + He is dead and--'" + +Kenelm sat down again in the window-seat. +He knew that Felicia was anxious about their +mother, and he himself shared her anxiety. +The queer code of fraternal secrecy made him +refrain from showing any sign of this to his +sister, however. He yawned a little, and said, +rather brusquely: + +"This rain's messing up the frost pretty well. There shouldn't be much +left of it by now." + +"Crocuses soon ..." Felicia murmured. She began humming to an almost +inaudible accompaniment on the piano: + +"'Ring, ting, it is the merrie springtime....'" + +The rain rolled dully down the clouded window-panes and spattered off +the English-ivy leaves below the sill. They quivered up and down on pale +stems--bright, waxed leaves, as shining as though they had been +varnished. + +Kirk drifted in and made his way to Felicia. + +"She's better," he observed. "She said she was glad we were having +fun." He frowned a little as he ran his finger reflectively down +Felicia's sleeve. "But she's bothered. She has think-lines in her +forehead. I felt 'em." + +"You have a think-line in your own forehead," said Felicia, promptly +kissing it away. "Don't _you_ bother." + +"Where's Ken?" Kirk demanded. + +"In the window-seat." + +Thither Kirk went, a tumble of expectancy, one hand before him and his +head back. He leaped squarely upon Ken, and made known his wishes at +once. They were very much what Kenelm expected. + +"See me a story--a long one!" + +"Oh, law!" Kenelm sighed; "you must think I'm made of 'em. Don't crawl +all over me; let me ponder for two halves of a shake." + +Kirk subsided against his brother's arm, and a "think-line" now became +manifest on Kenelm's brow. + +"See me a story"--Kirk's own queer phrase--had been the demand during +most of his eight years. It seemed as though he could never have enough +of this detail of a world visible to every one but himself. He must know +how everything looked--even the wind, which could certainly be _felt_, +and the rain, and the heat of the fire. From the descriptions he had +amassed through his unwearied questioning, he had pieced out for himself +a quaint little world of color and light,--how like or unlike the +actuality no one could possibly tell. + +"Blue is a cool thing, like water, or ice clinking in your glass," he +would say, "and red's hot and sizzly, like the fire." + +"Very true," his informants would agree; but for all that, they could +not be sure what his conception might be of the colors. + +Things were so confusing! There, for instance, were tomatoes. They were +certainly very cool things, if you ate them sliced (when you were +allowed), yet you were told that they were as red as red could be! And +nothing could have been hotter than the blue tea-pot, when he picked it +up by its spout; but that, to be sure, was caused by the tea. Yet the +_hot_ wasn't any color; oh, dear! + +Ken had not practised the art of seeing stories for nothing. He plunged +in with little hesitation, and with a grand flourish. + +"My tale is of kings, it is," he said; "ancient kings--Babylonian kings, +if you must know. It was thousands and thousands of years ago they +lived, and you'd never be able to imagine the wonderful cities they +built. They had hanging gardens that were----" Felicia interrupted. + +"It's easy to tell where you got _this_ story. I happen to know where +your marker is in the Ancient History." + +"Never you mind where I got it," Ken said. "I'm trying to describe a +hanging garden, which is more than you could do. As I was about to say, +the hanging gardens were built one above the other; they didn't really +hang at all. They sat on big stone arches, and the topmost one was so +high that it stuck up over the city walls, which were quite high enough +to begin with. The tallest kinds of trees grew in the gardens; not just +flowers, but big palm-trees and oleanders and citron-trees, and +pomegranates hung off the branches all ready to be picked,--dark greeny, +purpley pomegranates all bursting open so that their bright red seeds +showed like live coals (do you think I'm getting this out of the history +book, Phil?), and they were _this_-shaped--" he drew a pomegranate on +the back of Kirk's hand--"with a sprout of leaves at the top. And there +were citrons--like those you chop up in fruit-cake--and grapes and +roses. The queen could sit in the bottomest garden, or walk up to the +toppest one by a lot of stone steps. She had a slave-person who went +around behind her with a pea-cock-feathery fan, all green and gold and +beautiful; and he waved the fan over her to keep her cool. Meanwhile, +the king would be coming in at one of the gates of the city. They were +huge, enormous brass gates, and they shone like the sun, bright, and the +sun winked on the king's golden chariot, too, and on the soldiers' +spears. + +"He was just coming home from a lion-hunt, and was very much pleased +because he'd killed a lot of lions. He was really a rather horrid +man,--quite ferocious, and all,--but he wore most wonderful purple and +red embroidered clothes, the sort you like to hear about. He had a tiara +on, and golden crescents and rosettes blazed all over him, and he wore a +mystic, sacred ornament on his chest, round and covered all over with +queer emblems. He rode past the temple, where the walls were painted in +different colors, one for each of the planets and such, because the +Babylonish people worshipped those--orange for Jupiter, and blue for +Mercury, and silver for the moon. And the king got out of his chariot +and climbed up to where the queen was waiting for him in the toppest +gar--" + +"Don't you tell me they were so domestic and all," Felicia objected. +"They probably--" + +"Who's seeing this story?" Ken retorted. "You let me be. I say, the +queen was waiting for him, and she gave him a lotus and a ripe +pomegranate, and the slaves ran and got wine, and the people with harps +played them, and she said--Here's Mother!" + +Kirk looked quite taken aback for a moment at this apparently irrelevant +remark of the Babylonian queen, till a faint rustle at the doorway told +him that it was his own mother who had come in. + +She stood at the door, a slight, tired little person, dressed in one of +the black gowns she had worn ever since the children's father had died. + +"Don't stop, Ken," she smiled. "What did she say?" + +But either invention flagged, or self-consciousness intervened, for +Kenelm said: + +"Blessed if I know what she _did_ say! But at any rate, you'll agree +that it was quite a garden, Kirky. I'll also bet a hat that you haven't +done your lesson for to-morrow. It's not _your_ Easter vacation, if it +is ours. Miss Bolton will hop you." + +"Think of doing silly reading-book things, after hearing all that," Kirk +sighed. + +"Suppose you had to do cuneiform writing on a dab of clay, like the +Babylonish king," Ken said; "all spikey and cut in, instead of sticking +out; much worse than Braille. Go to it, and let Mother sit here, +laziness." + +Kirk sighed again, a tremendous, pathetic sigh, designed to rouse +sympathy in the breasts of his hearers. It roused none, and he wandered +across the room and dragged an enormous book out upon the floor. He +sprawled over it in a dim corner, his eyes apparently studying the +fireplace, and his fingers following across the page the raised dots +which spelled his morrow's lesson. What nice hands he had, Felicia +thought, watching from her seat, and how delicately yet strongly he used +them! She wondered what he could do with them in later years. "They +mustn't be wasted," she thought. She glanced across at Ken. He too was +looking at Kirk, with an oddly sober expression, and when she caught his +eye he grew somewhat red and stared out at the rain. + +"Better, Mother dear?" Felicia asked, curling down on a footstool at +Mrs. Sturgis's feet. + +"Rather, thank you," said her mother, and fell silent, patting the arm +of the chair as though she were considering whether or not to say +something more. She said nothing, however, and they sat quietly in the +falling dusk, Felicia stroking her mother's white hand, and Ken humming +softly to himself at the window. Kirk and his book were almost lost in +the corner--just a pale hint of the page, shadowed by the hand which +moved hesitantly across it. The hand paused, finally, and Kirk demanded, +"What's 'u-g-h' spell?" + +"It spells 'Ugh'!" Ken grunted. "What on earth are you reading? Is +_that_ what Miss Bolton gives you!" + +"It's not my lesson," Kirk said; "it's much further along. But I can +read it." + +"You'll get a wigging. You'd better stick to 'The cat can catch the +mouse,' _et cetera_." + +"I finished that _years_ ago," said Kirk, loftily. "This is a different +book, even. Listen to this: 'Ugh! There--sat--the dog with eyes--as--big +as--as--'" + +"Tea-cups," said Felicia. + +"'T-e-a-c-' yes, it _is_ tea-cups," Kirk conceded; "how did you know, +Phil?--'as big as tea-cups,--staring--at--him. "You're a nice--fellow," +said the soldier, and he--sat him--on--the witch's ap-ron, and took as +many cop--copper shillings--as his--pockets would hold.'" + +"So that's it, is it?" Ken said. "Begin at the beginning, and let's hear +it all." + +"Ken," said his mother, "that's in the back of the book. You shouldn't +encourage him to read things Miss Bolton hasn't given him." + +"It'll do him just as much good to read that, as that silly stuff at the +beginning. Phil and I always read things we weren't supposed to have +reached." + +"But for him--" Mrs. Sturgis murmured; "you and Phil were different, Ken. +Oh, well,--" + +For Kirk had turned back several broad pages, and began: + +"There came a soldier marching along the highroad--one, two! one, +two!..." + +Little by little the March twilight settled deeper over the room. There +was only a flicker on the brass andirons, a blur of pale blossoms where +the potted azalea stood. The rain drummed steadily, and as steadily came +the gentle modulations of Kirk's voice, as the tale of "The Tinder-Box" +progressed. + +It was the first time that he had ever read aloud anything so ambitious, +and his hearers sat listening with some emotion--his mother filled with +thankfulness that he had at last the key to a vast world which he now +might open at a touch; Ken, with a sort of half-amazed pride in the +achievements of a little brother who was surmounting such an obstacle. +Felicia sat gazing across the dim room. + +"He's reading us a story!" she thought, over and over; "Kirk's reading +to us, without very many mistakes!" She reflected that the book, for +her, might as well be written in Sanskrit. "I ought to know something +about it," she mused; "enough to help him! It's selfish and stupid not +to! I'll ask Miss Bolton." + +The soldier had gone only as far as the second dog's treasure-room, when +Maggie came to the door to say that supper was ready. From between the +dining-room curtains came the soft glow of the candles and the inviting +clink of dishes. "'He threw--away all the copper--money he had, and +filled his--knapsack with silver,'" Kirk finished in a hurry, and shut +the book with a bang. + +"I wouldn't have done that," he said, as Felicia took the hand he held +out for some one to take; "I should think all the money he could +possibly get would have been useful." + +"You've said it!" Ken laughed. + +"Yes," Mrs. Sturgis murmured with a sigh, "all the money one can get +_is_ useful. You read it very beautifully, darling--thank you." + +She kissed his forehead, and took her place at the head of the table, +where the candles lit her gentle face and her brown eyes--filled now, +with a sudden brimming tenderness. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +HAVOC + +The town ran, in its lower part, to the grimy water-front, where there +was ever a noise of the unloading of ships, the shouts of teamsters, and +the clatter of dray-horses' big hoofs on bare cobblestones. Ken liked to +walk there, even on such a dreary March day as this, when the horses +splashed through puddles, and the funnels of the steamers dripped +sootily black. He had left Felicia in the garden, investigating the +first promise of green under the leaf-coverlet of the perennial bed. +Kirk was with her, questing joyously down the brick path, and breathing +the warm, wet smell of the waking earth. + +Ken struck down to the docks; even before he reached the last dingy +street he could see the tall masts of a sailing-ship rising above the +warehouse roofs. It was with a quickened beat of the heart that he ran +the last few steps, and saw her in all her quiet dignity--the +_Celestine_, four-masted schooner. It was not often that sailing vessels +came into this port. Most of the shipping consisted of tugs with their +barges, high black freighters, rust-streaked; and casual tramp steamers +battered by every wind from St. John's to Torres Straits. The +_Celestine_ was, herself, far from being a pleasure yacht. Her bluff +bows were salt-rimed and her decks bleached and weather-bitten. But she +towered above her steam-driven companions with such stalwart grace, such +simple perfection, that Ken caught his breath, looking at her. + +The gang-plank was out, for she lay warped in to one of the wharves, and +Ken went aboard and leaned at the rail beside a square man in a black +jersey, who chewed tobacco and squinted observantly at the dock. From +this person, at first inclined to be taciturn, Ken learned that the +_Celestine_ was sailing the next night, bound for Rio de Janeiro, "and +mebbe further." Rio de Janeiro! And here she lay quietly at the slimy +wharf, beyond which the gray northern town rose in a smoky huddle of +chimney-pots. + +Behind Ken, some of the crew began hoisting the foresail to dry. He +heard the rhythmic squeak of the halliards through the sheaves, and the +scrape of the gaff going up. + +"Go 'n lend 'em a hand, boy, since yer so gone on it," the jerseyed one +recommended quite understandingly. So Ken went and hauled at a rope, and +watched the great expanse of sodden gray canvas rise and shiver and +straighten into a dark square against the sky. He imagined himself one +of the crew of the _Celestine_, hoisting the foresail in a South +American port. + +"I'd love to roll to Rio +Some day before I'm old..." + +The sail rose steadily to the unsung chorus. Ken was quite happy. + +He walked all the way home--it was a long walk--with his head full of +plans for a seafaring life, and his nostrils still filled with the +strange, fascinating, composite smell of the docks. + +Felicia met him at the gate. She looked quite done for, he thought, and +she caught his sleeve. + +"Where _have_ you been?" she said, with a queer little excited hitch in +her voice. "I've been almost wild, waiting for you. Mother's headache +is horribly worse; she's gone to bed. A letter came this morning, I +don't know what, but I think it has something to do with her being so +ill. She simply cries and cries--a frightening sort of crying--and says, +'I can't--can't!' and wants Father to tell her what to do." + +They were in the hall by this time. + +"Wants _Father_!" Ken said gravely. "Have you got the doctor, Phil?" + +"Not yet; I wanted to ask you." + +"Get him--quick." + +Ken ran upstairs. Halfway, he tumbled over something crouched beside the +banisters. It was Kirk, quite wretched. He caught Ken's ankle. + +"Mother's crying," he said; "I can hear her. Oh, _do_ something, Ken!" + +"I'm going to," said his brother. "Don't sit here in the dark and make +yourself miserable." + +He recollected that the landing was no darker for Kirk than any other +place, and added: "You're apt to be stepped on here--I nearly smashed +you. Hop along and tell Maggie that I'm as hungry as an ostrich." But +however hungry Ken may have been as he trudged home from the docks, he +was not so now. A cold terror seized him as he leaned above his mother, +who could not, indeed, stop her tears, nor tell him more than that she +could not bear it, she could not. Ken had never before felt quite so +helpless. He wished, as much as she, that his father were there to tell +them what to do--his tall, quiet father, who had always counseled so +well. He breathed a great thankful sigh when the doctor came in, with +Felicia, white faced, peeping beside his shoulder. Ken said, "I'm glad +you'll take charge, sir," and slipped out. + +He and Felicia stood in Kirk's room, silently, and after what seemed an +eternity, the doctor came out, tapping the back of his hand with his +glasses. He informed them, with professional lack of emotion, that their +mother was suffering from a complete nervous breakdown, from which it +might take her months to recover. + +"Evidently," said he, "she has been anxious over something, previous to +this, but some definite shock must have caused the final collapse." + +He was a little man, and he spoke drily, with a maddening deliberation. +"There was a letter--this morning," Felicia said, faintly. + +"It might be well to find the letter, in order to ascertain the exact +nature of the shock," said the doctor. + +Ken went to his mother's room and searched her desk. He came back +presently with a legal envelop, and his face was blank and half +uncomprehending. The doctor took the paper from him and skimmed the +contents. + +"Ah--_hm_. 'United Stock ... the mine having practically run out ... war +causing further depreciation ... regret to inform you, ... _hm_, yes. My +dear young people, it appears from this that your mother has lost a good +deal of money--possibly all her money. I should advise your seeing her +attorney at once. Undoubtedly he will be able to make a satisfactory +adjustment." + +He handed the paper back to Ken, who took it mechanically. Then, with +the information that it would be necessary for their mother to go to a +sanatorium to recuperate, and that he would send them a most capable +nurse immediately, the doctor slipped out--a neat little figure, +stepping along lightly on his toes. "Can you think straight, Ken?" +Felicia said, later, in the first breathing pause after the doctor's +departure and the arrival of the brisk young woman who took possession +of the entire house as soon as she stepped over the threshold. + +"I'm trying to," Ken replied, slowly. He began counting vaguely on his +fingers. "It means Mother's got to go away to a nervous sanatorium +place. It means we're poor. Phil, we may have to--I don't know what." + +"What do they do with people who have no money?" Felicia asked dismally. +"They send them to the poor-farm or something, don't they?" + +"Don't talk utter bosh, Phil! As if I'd ever let you or Kirk go to the +poor-farm!" + +"Kirk!" Felicia murmured. "Suppose they took him away! They might, you +know--the State, and send him to one of those institutions!" + +"Oh, drop it!" snapped Ken. "We don't even know how much money it is +Mother's lost. I don't suppose she had it all in this bally mine. Who +_is_ her attorney, anyway!" + +"Mr. Dodge,--don't you remember? Nice, with a pink face and bristly +hair. He came here long ago about Daddy's business." + +There was a swift rush of feet on the stairs, a pause in the hallway, +and Kirk appeared at the door. + +"I told Maggie," said he, "and supper's ready. And what's _specially_ +nice is the toast, because I made it myself--only Norah told me when it +was done." + +Ken and Felicia looked at one another, and wondered how much supper they +could eat. Then Ken swung Kirk to his shoulder, and said: + +"All right, old boy, we'll come and eat your toast." + +"Is the crackly lady taking care of Mother?" Kirk asked over a piece of +his famous toast, as they sat at supper. + +"Yes," said Felicia. "Her name's Miss McClough. Why, did you meet her?" + +"She said, 'Don't sit in people's way when you see they're in a hurry,'" +said Kirk, somewhat grieved. "_I_ didn't know she was coming. I don't +think I like her much. Her dress creaks, and she smells like the +drug-store." + +"She can't help that," said Ken; "she's taking good care of Mother. And +I told you the stairway was no place to sit, didn't I!" + +"I've managed to find out _something_," Ken told Felicia, next day, as he +came downstairs. "Mother would talk about it, in spite of Miss McThing's +protests, and I came away as soon as I could. She says there's a little +Fidelity stock that brings enough to keep her in the rest-place, so she +feels a little better about that. (By the way, she tried to say she +wouldn't go, and I said she had to.) Then there's something else--Rocky +Head Granite, I think--that will give us something to live on. We'll +have to see Mr. Dodge as soon as we can; I'm all mixed up." + +They did see Mr. Dodge, that afternoon. He was nice, as Felicia had +said. He made her sit in his big revolving-chair, while he brought out a +lot of papers and put on a pair of drooping gold eye-glasses to look at +them. And the end of the afternoon found Ken and Felicia very much +confused and a good deal more discouraged than before. It seemed that +even the Rocky Head Granite was not a very sound investment, and that +the staunch Fidelity was the only dependable source of income. + +"And Mother must have that money, of course, for the rest-place," +Felicia said. "For Heaven's sake, don't tell her," Ken muttered. + +His sister shot him one swift look of reproach and then turned to Mr. +Dodge. She tried desperately to be very businesslike. + +"What do you advise us to do, Mr. Dodge?" she said. "Send away the +servants, of course." + +"And Miss Bolton," Ken said; "she's an expensive lady." + +"Yes, Miss Bolton. I'll teach Kirk--I can." + +"How much is the rent of the house, Mr. Dodge, do you know?" Ken asked. +Mr. Dodge did know, and told him. Ken whistled. "It sounds as though +we'd have to move," he said. + +"The lease ends April first," said the attorney. + +"We could get a little tiny house somewhere," Felicia suggested. +"Couldn't you get quite a nice one for six hundred dollars a year?" + +This sum represented, more or less, their entire income--minus the +expenses of Hilltop Sanatorium. + +"But what would you eat?" Mr. Dodge inquired gently. + +"Oh, dear, that's true!" said Felicia. And clothes! What _do_ you think +we'd better do?" + +"You have no immediate relatives, as I remember?" Mr. Dodge mused. + +"None but our great-aunt, Miss Pelham," Ken said, "and _she_ lives in +Los Angeles." + +"She's very old, too," Phil said, "and lives in a tiny house. She's not +at all well off; we shouldn't want to bother her. And there is Uncle +Lewis." + +"Oh, _him_!" said Ken, gloomily. + +"It takes three months even to get an answer from a letter to him," +Felicia explained. "He's in the Philippines, doing something to +Ignorants." + +"Igorrotes, Phil," Ken muttered. + +"He sounds unpromising," Mr. Dodge sighed. "And there are no friends who +would be sufficiently interested in your problem to open either their +doors or their pocket-books?" + +"We don't know many people here," Felicia said. "Mother hasn't gone out +very much for several years." + +Ken flushed. "And we'd rather people didn't open anything to us, +anyhow," he said. + +"Except, perhaps, their hearts," Mr. Dodge supplemented, "or their +eyes, when they see your independent procedure!" He tapped his knee with +his glasses. "My dear children, I suggest that you move to some other +house--perhaps to some quaint little place in the country, which would +be much less expensive than anything you could find in town. Your mother +had best go away, as the doctor advises--she will be much better looked +after, and of course she mustn't know what you do. I'll watch over this +Rocky Head concern, and you may feel perfectly secure in the Fidelity. +And don't hesitate to ask me anything you want to know, at any time." + +He rose, pushing back his papers. + +"Don't we owe you something for all this, sir?" Ken asked, rather red. + +Mr. Dodge smiled. "One dollar, and other valuable considerations," he +said. + +Kenelm brought out his pocketbook, and carefully pulled a dollar bill +from the four which it contained. He presented it to Mr. Dodge, and +Felicia said: + +"Thank you so very, very much!" + +"You're very welcome," said the attorney, "and the best of luck to you +all!" When the glass door had closed behind the pair, Mr. Dodge sat +down before his desk and wiped his glasses. He looked at the dollar +bill, and then he said--quite out loud-- + +"Poor, poor dears!" + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +UP STAKES + +That night, Kenelm could not sleep. He walked up and down his room in +the dark. His own head ached, and he could not think properly. The one +image which stood clearly out of the confusion was that of the +_Celestine_, raising gracious spars above the house-tops. The more he +thought of her, the more a plan grew in his tired mind. The crew of the +_Celestine_ must be paid quite well--he could send money home every week +from different ports--he could send gold and precious things from South +America. There would be one less person to feed at home; he would be +earning money instead of spending it. + +He turned on his light, and quickly gathered together his hockey +sweater, his watch-cap, and an old pair of trousers. He made them into a +bundle with a few other things. Then he wrote a letter, containing many +good arguments, and pinned it on Felicia's door. He tiptoed downstairs +and out into the night. From the street he could see the faint green +light from his mother's room, where Miss McClough was sitting. He turned +and ran quickly, without stopping to think. + +No one was abroad but an occasional policeman, twirling his night-stick. +On the wharves the daylight confusion was dispelled; there was no +clatter of teaming, no sound but the water fingering dank piles, and the +little noises aboard sleeping vessels. But the _Celestine_ was awake. +Lights gleamed aboard her, men were stirring, the great mass of her +canvas blotted half the stars. She was sailing, that night, for Rio de +Janeiro. + +Ken slipped into the shadow of a pile-head, waiting his chance. His +heart beat suffocatingly; his hands were very cold. Quietly he stepped +under the gang-plank, swung a leg over it, drew himself aboard, and lay +flat on deck beside the rail of the _Celestine_ in a pool of shade. A +man tripped over him and stumbled back with an oath. The next instant +Ken was hauled up into the light of a lantern. + +"Stowaway, eh?" growled a squat man in dungaree. "Chuck him overboard, +Sam, an' let him swim home to his mamma." + +In that moment, Ken knew that he could never have sailed with the +_Celestine_, that he would have slipped back to the wharf before she +cast loose her hawsers. He looked around him as if he had just awakened +from sleep-walking and did not know where he found himself. He gazed up +at the gaunt mainmast, black against the green night sky, at the main +topsail, shaking still as the men hauled it taut. + +"I'm not a stowaway," he said; "I'm going ashore now." + +He walked down the gang-plank with all the dignity he could muster, and +never looked behind him as he left the wharf. He could hear the rattle +of the _Celestine's_ tackle, and the _boom, boom_ of the sails. Once +clear of the docks he ran, blindly. + +"Fool!" he whispered. "Oh, what a fool! what a senseless idiot!" + +The house was dark as he turned in at the gate. He stopped for an +instant to look at its black bulk, with Orion setting behind the +chimney-pots. + +"I was going to leave them--all alone!" he whispered fiercely. "Good +Heavens!" + +He removed the letter silently from Felicia's door,--he was reassured by +seeing its white square before he reached it,--and crept to his own +room. There a shadowy figure was curled up on the floor, and it was +crying. + +"Kirk! What's up?" Ken lifted him and held him rather close. + +"You weren't here," Kirk sniffed; "I got sort of rather l-lonely, so I +thought I'd come in with you--and the b-bed was perfectly empty, and I +couldn't find you. I t-thought you were teasing me." + +"I was taking a little walk," Ken said. "Here, curl up in bed--you're +frozen. No, I'm not going away again--never any more, ducky. It was nice +in the garden," he added. + +"The garden?" Kirk repeated, still clinging to him. "But you smell +of--of--oh, rope, and sawdust, and--and, Ken, your face is wet!" + + * * * * * + +Mrs. Sturgis protested bitterly against going away. She felt quite able +to stay at home. To be sure, she couldn't sleep at all, and her head +ached all the time, and she couldn't help crying over almost +everything--but it was impossible that she should leave the children. +In spite of her half-hysterical protests, the next week saw her ready to +depart for Hilltop with Miss McClough, who was to take the journey with +her. + +"You needn't worry a scrap," laughed Felicia, quite convincingly, at the +taxi door. "We've seen Mr. Dodge, and there'll be money enough. You just +get well as quick as ever you can." + +"Good-by, my darlings," faltered poor Mrs. Sturgis, quite ready to +collapse again. "Good-by, Kirk--my precious, precious baby! How can I!" + +And the taxicab moved away, giving them just one glimpse of their mother +with her poor head on Miss McClough's capable shoulder. + +"Well," Ken remarked, "here we are." + +And there was really nothing more to be said on the subject. + +Such a strange house! Maggie and Norah gone; Felicia cooking queer +meals--principally poached eggs--in the kitchen; Miss Bolton failing to +appear every morning at ten o'clock as she had done for the last three +years; Mother gone, and not even a letter from her--nothing but a +type-written report from the physician at Hilltop. + +Gone also, as Kirk discovered, was the lowboy beside the library door. +It was a most satisfactory piece of furniture. From its left-hand corner +you could make a direct line to the window-seat. It also had smoothly +graceful brass handles, and a surface delicious to the touch. When Kirk, +stumbling in at the library door, failed to encounter it as usual, he +was as much startled as though he had found a serpent in its stead. He +tried for it several times, and when his hands came against the +bookshelves he stopped dead, very much puzzled and quite lost. Felicia +found him there, standing still and patiently waiting for the low-boy to +materialize in its accustomed place. + +"Where is it!" he asked her. + +"It's not there, honey," she said. "We're going to a different house, +and it's sent away." + +"A different house! When? What _do_ you mean?" + +"We've finished renting this one," said Felicia. "We thought it would be +nice to go to another one--in the country. Oh, you'll like it." + +"How queer!" Kirk mused. "Perhaps I shall. But I don't know about this +corner; it used to be covered up. Please start me right." + +She did so, and then ran off to attend to a peculiar pudding which was +boiling over on the stove. She had not told him that the low-boy was +sent away to be sold. When she and Ken had discovered the appalling sum +it would cost to move the furniture anywhere, they heartbrokenly +concluded that the low-boy and various other old friends must go to help +settle the accounts of Miss Bolton and the nurse. + +"There are some things," Ken stoutly pronounced, however, "that we'll +take with us, if I have to go digging ditches to support 'em. And some +we'll leave with Mr. Dodge--I know he won't mind a few nice tables and +things." + +For the "different house" was actually engaged. Mr. Dodge shook his head +when he heard that Ken had paid the first quarter's rent without having +even seen the place. + +"Fine old farm-house," said the advertisement; "Peach and apple +orchards. Ten acres of land. Near the bay. Easy reach of city. Only +$15.00 per month." + +There was also a much blurred photograph of the fine old farm-house, +from which it was difficult to deduce much except that it had a gambrel +roof. + +"But it does sound quite wonderful," Felicia said to the attorney. "We +thought we wouldn't go to see it because of its costing so much to +travel there and back again. But don't you think it ought to be nice? +Peach and apple orchards,--and only fifteen dollars a month!" + +"I dare say it is wonderful," said Mr. Dodge, smiling. "At any rate, +Asquam itself is a very pretty little bayside place--I've been there. +Fearfully hard to get your luggage, but charming once you're there. +Don't forget me! I'll always be here. And you'd better have a little +more cash for your traveling expenses." + +"I hope it really came out of our money," Ken said, when he saw the +cash. + +Nothing but a skeleton of a house, now. No landmarks at all were left +for Kirk, and he tumbled over boxes and crates, and lost himself in the +bare, rugless halls. The beds that were to be taken to Asquam were still +set up,--they would be crated next day,--but there was really nothing +else left in the rooms. Three excited people, two of them very tired, +ate supper on the corner of the kitchen table--which was not going to +the farm-house. That house flowered hopefully in its new tenants' minds. +Felicia saw it, tucked between its orchards, gray roof above gnarled +limbs, its wide stone door-step inviting one to sit down and look at the +view of the bay. And there would be no need of spending anything there +except that fifteen dollars a month--"and something for food," Felicia +thought, "which oughtn't to be much, there in the country with hens and +things." + +It amused Kirk highly--going to bed in an empty room. He put his clothes +on the floor, because he could find no other place for them. Felicia +remonstrated and suggested the end of the bed. + +"Everything else you own is packed, you know," said she. "You'd better +preserve those things carefully." + +"Sing to me," he said, when he was finally tucked in. "It's the last +night--and--everything's so ugly. I want to pretend it's just the same. +Sing '_Do-do, petit frere_,' Phil." + +Felicia sat on the edge of the bed and sang the little old French +lullaby. She had sung it to him often when she was quite a small girl, +and he a very little boy. She remembered just how he used to look--a +cuddly, sleepy three-year-old, with a tumble of dark hair and the same +grave, unlit eyes. He was often a little frightened, in those days, and +needed to hold a warm substantial hand to link him with the mysterious +world he could not see. + +"_Do-do, p'tit frere, do-do_." + +His hand groped down the blanket, now, for hers, and she took it and +sang on a bit unsteadily in the echoing bareness of the dismantled room. + +A long time afterward, when Kenelm was standing beside his window +looking out into the starless dark, Felicia's special knock sounded +hollowly at his door. + +She came over to him, and stood for a while silently. Then she turned +and said suddenly in a shy, low voice: + +"Oh, Ken, I don't know how you feel about it, but--but, I think, +whatever awful is going to happen, we must try to keep things beautiful +for Kirk." + +"I guess we must," Ken said, staring out. "I'd trust you to do it, old +Phil. Cut along now to bed," he added gruffly; "we'll have to be up like +larks to-morrow." + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +THE FINE OLD FARM-HOUSE + +Asquam proper is an old fishing-village on the bayside. The new Asquam +has intruded with its narrow-eaved frame cottages among the gray old +houses, and has shouldered away the colonial Merchants' Hall with a +moving-picture theater, garish with playbills and posters. Two large and +well-patronized summer hotels flourish on the highest elevation (Asquam +people say that their town is "flatter'n a johnny cake"), from which a +view of the open sea can be had, as well as of the peninsulas and +islands which crowd the bay. + +On the third day of April the hotels and many of the cottages were +closed, with weathered shutters at the windows and a general air of +desolation about their windy piazzas. Asquam, both new and old, +presented a rather bleak and dismal appearance to three persons who +alighted thankfully from the big trolley-car in which they had lurched +through miles of flat, mist-hung country for the past forty minutes. + +The station-agent sat on a tilted-up box and discussed the new arrivals +with one of his ever-present cronies. + +"Whut they standin' ther' fer?" he said. "Some folks ain't got enough +sense to go in outen the rain, seems so." + +"'T ain't rainin'--not so's to call it so," said the crony, whose name +was Smith. "The gell's pretty." + +"Ya-as, kind o'," agreed the station-agent, tilting back critically. +"Boy's upstandin'." + +"Which one?" + +"Big 'n. Little 'un ain't got no git-up-'n'-git fer one o' his size. +Look at him holdin' to her hand." + +"Sunthin' ails him," Smith said. "Ain't all there I guess." + +The station-agent nodded a condescending agreement, and cocked his foot +on another box. At this moment the upstanding boy detached himself from +his companions, and strode to where the old man sat. + +"I beg your pardon," he said, "can you tell me how far it is to the +Baldwin farm, and whether any of Mr. Sturgis's freight has come yet?" + +"Baldwin fa'm?" and the station-agent scratched his ear. "Oh, you mean +out on the Winterbottom Road, hey? 'Beout two mile." + +"And Mr. Sturgis's freight?" + +"Nawthin' come fer that name," said the agent, "'less these be them." He +indicated four small packages in the baggage-room. + +"Oh no," said Ken, "they're big things--beds, and things like that. +Well, please let me know if they do come. I'm Mr. Sturgis." + +"Oh, you be," said the agent, comprehensively. + +"Ain't gonna walk away out to the Baldwin place with all them valises, +air you?" Smith inquired, breaking silence for the first time. + +"I don't know how else we'll get there," Ken said. + +"_Yay_--Hop!" shouted Smith, unexpectedly, with a most astonishing +siren-like whoop. + +Before Ken had time to wonder whether it was a prearranged signal for +attack, or merely that the man had lost his wits, an ancient person in +overalls and a faded black coat appeared from behind the baggage-house. +"Hey? Well?" said he. + +"Take these folks up to the Baldwin place," Smith commanded; "and don't +ye go losin' no wheels this time--ye got a young lady aboard." At which +sally all the old men chuckled creakily. + +But the young lady showed no apprehension, only some relief, as she +stepped into the tottering surrey which Hop drove up beside the +platform. As the old driver slapped the reins on the placid horse's +woolly back, the station-agent turned to Smith. + +"George," he said, "the little 'un ain't cracked. He's blind." + +"Well, gosh!" said Smith, with feeling. + +Winterbottom Road unrolled itself into a white length of half-laid dust, +between blown, sweet-smelling bay-clumps and boulder-filled meadows. + +"Is it being nice?" Kirk asked, for the twentieth time since they had +left the train for the trolley-car. + +Felicia had been thanking fortune that she'd remembered to stop at the +Asquam Market and lay in a few provisions. She woke from calculations of +how many meals her family could make of the supplies she had bought, +and looked about. + +"We're near the bay," she said; "that is you can see little silvery +flashes of it between trees. They're pointy trees--junipers, I think and +there are a lot of rocks in the fields, and wild-flowers. Nothing like +any place you've ever been in--wild, and salty, and--yes, quite nice." + +They passed several low, sturdy farm-houses, and one or two boarded-up +summer cottages; then two white chimneys showed above a dark green +tumble of trees, and the ancient Hopkins pointed with his whip saying: + +"Ther' you be. Kind o' dull this time year, I guess; but my! Asquam's +real uppy, come summer--machines a-goin', an' city folks an' such. +Reckon I'll leave you at the gate where I kin turn good." + +The flap-flop of the horse's hoofs died on Winterbottom Road, and no +sound came but the wind sighing in old apple-boughs, and from somewhere +the melancholy creaking of a swinging shutter. The gate-way was grown +about with grass; Ken crushed it as he forced open the gate, and the +faint, sweet smell rose. Kirk held Felicia's sleeve, for she was +carrying two bags. He stumbled eagerly through the tall dry grass +of last summer's unmown growth. + +"Now can you see it? _Now_?" + +But Felicia had stopped, and Kirk stopped, too. + +"Are we there? Why don't you say anything?" + +Felicia said nothing because she could not trust her voice. Kirk knew +every shade of it; she could not deceive him. Gaunt and gray the "fine +old farm-house" stood its ground before them. Old it assuredly was, and +once fine, perhaps, as its solid square chimneys and mullioned windows +attested. But oh, the gray grimness of it! the sagging shutter that +creaked, the burdocks that choked the stone door-step, the desolate wind +that surged in the orchard trees and would not be still! + +Ken did what Felicia could not do. He laughed--a real laugh, and swept +Kirk into warm, familiar arms. + +"It's a big, jolly, fine old place!" he said. "Its windows twinkle +merrily, and the front door is only waiting for the key I have in my +pocket. We've got home, Quirk--haven't we, Phil?" + +Felicia blessed Ken. She almost fancied that the windows did twinkle +kindly. The big front door swung open without any discourteous +hesitation, and Ken stood in the hall. + +"Phew--dark!" he said. "Wait here, you fellows, while I get some +shutters open." + +They could hear his footsteps sound hollowly in the back rooms, and +shafts of dusky light, preceded by hammerings and thumpings, began +presently to band the inside of the house. Felicia stepped upon the +painted floor of the bare hall, glanced up the narrow stairs, and then +stood in the musty, half-lit emptiness of what she guessed to be the +living-room, waiting for Ken. Kirk did not explore. He stood quite still +beside his sister, sorting out sounds, analyzing smells. Ken came in, +very dusty, rubbing his hands on his trousers. + +"Lots of fireplaces, anyway," he said. "Put down your things--if you've +anywhere to put 'em. I'll load all the duffle into this room and see if +there's any wood in the woodshed. Glory! No beds, no blankets! There'll +_have_ to be wood, if the orchard primeval is sacrificed!" And he went, +whistling blithely. + +"This is an adventure," Felicia whispered dramatically to Kirk. "We've +never had a real one before; have we?" + +"Oh, it's nice!" Kirk cried suddenly. "It's low and still, and--the +house wants us, Phil!" + +"The house wants us," murmured Felicia. "I believe that's going to help +me." + +It was quite the queerest supper that the three had ever cooked or +eaten. Perhaps "cooked" is not exactly the right word for what happened +to the can of peas and the can of baked beans. Ken did find wood--not in +the woodshed, but strewing the orchard grass; hard old apple-wood, gray +and tough. It burned merrily enough in the living-room fireplace, and +the chimney responded with a hollow rushing as the hot air poured into +it. + +"It makes it seem as if there were something alive here besides us, +anyway," Felicia said. + +They were all sitting on the hearth, warming their fingers, and when the +apple-wood fire burned down to coals that now and again spurted +short-lived flame, they set the can of peas and the can of baked beans +among the embers. They turned them gingerly from time to time with two +sticks, and laughed a great deal. The laughter echoed about in the empty +stillness of the house. + +Ken's knife was of the massive and useful sort that contains a whole +array of formidable tools. These included a can-opener, which now did +duty on the smoked tins. It had been previously used to punch holes in +the tops of the cans before they went among the coals--"for we don't +want the blessed things blowing up," Ken had said. Nothing at all was +the matter with the contents of the cans, however, in spite of the +strange process of cookery. The Sturgises ate peas and baked beans on +chunks of unbuttered bread (cut with another part of Ken's knife) and +decided that nothing had ever tasted quite so good. + +"No dish-washing, at any rate," said Ken; "we've eaten our dishes." + +Kirk chose to find this very entertaining, and consumed another +"bread-plate," as he termed it, on the spot. + +The cooking being finished, more gnarly apple-wood was put on the fire, +and the black, awkward shadows of three figures leaped out of the bare +wall and danced there in the ruddy gloom. Bedtime loomed nearer and +nearer as a grave problem, and Ken and Felicia were silent, each +wondering how the floor could be made softest. + +"The Japanese sleep on the floor," Ken said, "and they have blocks of +wood for pillows. Our bags are the size, and, I imagine, the +consistency, of blocks of wood. _N'est-ce pas, oui, oui_?" + +"I'd rather sleep on a rolled-up something-or-other _out_ of my bag than +on the bag itself, any day--or night," Felicia remarked. + +"As you please," Ken said; "but act quickly. Our brother yawns." + +"Bedtime, honey," Felicia laughed to Kirk. "Even queerer than +supper-time was." + +"A bed by night, a hard-wood floor by day," Ken misquoted murmurously. + +"Hard-wood!" Felicia sniffed. "_Hard_ wood!" + +The problem now arose: which was most to be desired, an overcoat under +you to soften the floor, or on top of you to keep you warm? + +"If he has my overcoat, it'll do both," Ken suggested. "Put his sweater +on, too." "But what'll _you_ do?" Kirk objected. + +"Roll up in _your_ overcoat, of course," Ken said. + +This also entertained Kirk. + +"No, but really?" he said, sober all at once. + +"Don't you fret about me. I'll haul it away from you after you're +asleep." + +And Kirk snuggled into the capacious folds of Ken's Burberry, apparently +confident that his brother really would claim it when he needed it. + +Ken and Felicia sat up, feeding the fire occasionally, until long after +Kirk's quiet breathing told them that he was asleep. + +"Well, we've made rather a mess of things, so far," Ken observed, +somewhat cheerlessly. + +"We were ninnies not to think that none of the stuff would have come," +Felicia said. "We'll _have_ to do something before to-morrow night. This +is all right for once, _but_--!" + +"Goodness knows when the things will come," said Ken, poking at the +fore-stick. "The old personage said that all the freight, express, +everything, comes by that weird trolley-line, at its own convenience." + +"Shouldn't you think that they'd have something dependable, in a summer +place?" Felicia signed. "Oh, it seems as if we'd been living for years +in houses with no furniture in them. And the home things will simply +rattle, here." + +"I wish we could have brought more of them," Ken said. "We'll have to +rout around to-morrow and buy an oil-stove or something and a couple of +chairs to sit on. Ah hum! Let's turn in, Phil. We've a tight room and a +fire, anyhow. Shall you be warm enough?" + +"Plenty. I've my coat, and a sweater. But what are you going to do?" + +"Oh, I'll sit up a bit longer and stoke. And really, Kirk's overcoat +spreads out farther than you'd think. He's tallish, nowadays." + +Felicia discovered that there are ways and ways of sleeping on the +floor. She found, after sundry writhings, the right way, and drifted off +to sleep long before she expected to. + +Ken woke later in the stillness of the last hours of night. The room was +scarcely lit by the smoldering brands of the fire; its silence hardly +stirred by the murmurous hissing of the logs. Without, small marsh frogs +trilled their silver welcome to the spring, an unceasing jingle of tiny +bell-notes. Kirk was cuddled close beside Ken, and woke abruptly as Ken +drew him nearer. + +"You didn't take your overcoat," he whispered. + +"We'll both have it, now," his brother said. "Curl up tight, old man; +it'll wrap round the two of us." + +"Is it night still?" Kirk asked. + +"Black night," Ken whispered; "stars at the window, and a tree swaying +across it. And in here a sort of dusky lightness--dark in the corners, +and shadows on the walls, and the fire glowing away. Phil's asleep on +the other side of the hearth, and she looks very nice. And listen--hear +the toads?" + +"Is that what they are? I thought it was a fairy something. They make +nice noises! Where do they live?" + +"In some marsh. They sit there and fiddle away on bramble roots and sing +about various things they like." + +"What nice toads!" murmured Kirk. + +"_Sh-sh!_" whispered Ken; "we're waking Phil. Good night--good morning, +I mean. Warm enough now?" + +"Yes. Oh, Ken, _aren't_ we having fun?" + +"Aren't we, though!" breathed his brother, pulling the end of the +Burberry over Kirk's shoulders. + + * * * * * + +The sun is a good thing. It clears away not only the dark shadows in the +corners of empty rooms, but also the gloom that settles in anxious +people's minds at midnight. The rising of the sun made, to be sure, +small difference to Kirk, whose mind harbored very little gloom, and was +lit principally by the spirits of those around him. Consequently, when +his brother and sister began reveling in the clear, cold dawn, Kirk +executed a joyous little _pas seul_ in the middle of the living-room +floor and set off on a tour of exploration. He returned from it with his +fingers very dusty, and a loop of cobwebs over his hair. + +"It's all corners," he said, as Felicia caught him to brush him off, +"_and_ steps. Two steps down and one up, and just when you aren't +'specting it." + +"You'd better go easy," Ken counseled, "until you've had a personally +conducted tour. You'll break your neck." + +"I'm being careful. And I know already about this door. There's a kink +in the wall and then a hump in the floor-boards just before you get +there. It's an exciting house." + +"That it is!" said Ken, reaching with a forked stick for the handle of +the galvanized iron pail which sat upon the fire. Nobody ever heard of +boiling eggs in a galvanized iron pail but that is exactly what the +Sturgises did. The pail, in an excellent state of preservation, had been +found in the woodshed. The pump yielded, unhesitatingly, any amount of +delicious cold water, and though three eggs did look surprisingly small +in the bottom of the pail, they boiled quite as well as if they'd been +in a saucepan. + +"Only think of all the kettles and things I brought!" Felicia mourned. +"We'll have to buy some plates and cups, though, Ken." Most of the +Sturgis china was reposing in a well-packed barrel in a room over Mr. +Dodge's garage, accompanied by many other things for which their owners +longed. + +"How the dickens do we capture the eggs!" Ken demanded. "Pigs in +clover's not in it. Lend a hand, Phil!" + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +THE WHEELS BEGIN TO TURN + +Ken walked to Asquam almost immediately after breakfast, and Felicia +explored their new abode most thoroughly, inside and out. Corners and +steps there were in plenty, as Kirk had said; it seemed as if the house +had been built in several pieces and patched together. Two biggish rooms +downstairs, besides the kitchen; a large, built-in, white-doored closet +in the living-room,--quite jolly, Felicia thought,--rusty nails driven +in unbelievable quantities in all the walls. She couldn't imagine how +any one could have wanted to hang anything in some of the queer places +where nails sprouted, and she longed to get at them with a claw-hammer. + +Upstairs there was one big room (for Ken and Kirk, Phil thought), a +little one for herself, and what she immediately named "The Poke-Hole" +for trunks and such things. When Mother came home, as come she must, the +extra downstairs room could be fitted up for her, Felicia decided--or +the boys could take it over for themselves. The upstairs rooms were all +under the eaves, and, at present, were hot and musty. Felicia pounded +open the windows which had small, old-fashioned panes, somewhat lacking +in putty. In came the good April air fresh after the murk of yesterday, +and smelling of salt, and heathy grass, and spring. It summoned Felicia +peremptorily, and she ran downstairs and out to look at the "ten acres +of land, peach and apple orchards." + +Kirk went, too, his hand in hers. + +"It's an easy house," he confided. "You'd think it would be hard, but +the floor's different all over--bumpy, and as soon as I find out which +bump means what, I'll know how to go all over the place. I dare say it's +the same out here." + +Felicia was not so sure. It seemed a trackless waste of blown grass for +one to navigate in the dark. It was always a mystery to her how Kirk +found his way through the mazy confusion of unseen surroundings. Now, on +unfamiliar ground, he was unsure of himself, but in a place he knew, it +was seldom that he asked or accepted guidance. The house was not +forbidding, Felicia decided--only tired, and very shabby. The burdocks +at the door-step could be easily disposed of. It was a wide stone +door-step, as she had hoped and from it, though there was not much view +of the bay, there were nice things to be seen. Before it, the orchard +dropped away at one side, leaving a wide vista of brown meadows, sown +with more of the pointy trees and grayed here and there by rocks; beyond +that, a silver slip of water, and the far shore blue, blue in the +distance. To the right of the house the land rolled away over another +dun meadow that stopped at a rather civilized-looking hedge, above which +rose a dense tumble of high trees. To the left lay the over-grown +dooryard, the old lichened stone wall, and the sagging gate which opened +to Winterbottom Road. Felicia tried to describe it all to Kirk, and +wondered as she gazed at him, standing beside her with the eager, +listening look his face so often wore, how much of it could mean +anything to him but an incomprehensible string of words. + +Ken returned from Asquam in Hop's chariot, surrounded by bundles. + +"Luxury!" he proclaimed, when the spoils were unloaded. "An oil-stove, +two burners--and food, and beautiful plates with posies on 'em--and tin +spoons! And I met Mrs. Hopkins and she almost fainted when I told her +we'd slept on the floor. She wanted us to come to her house, but it's +the size of a butter-box, and stuffy; so she insisted on sending three +quilts. Behold! And the oil-stove was cheap because one of the doors was +broken (which I can fix). So there you are!" + +"No sign of the goods, I suppose?" + +"Our goods? Law, no! Old Mr. Thingummy put on his spectacles and peered +around as if he expected to find them behind the door!" + +"Oh, my only aunt! They _are_ wonderful plates!" Felicia cried, as she +extracted one from its wrapper. + +"That's my idea of high art," Ken said, "I got them at the Asquam +Utility Emporium. And have you remarked the chairs? Mrs. Hopkins sent +those, too. They were in her corn-crib,--on the rafters,--and she said +if we didn't see convenient to bring 'em back, never mind, 'cause she +was plumb tired of clutterin' 'em round from here to thar." + +"Mrs. Hopkins seems to be an angel unawares," said Felicia, with +enthusiastic misapplication. + +It was the finding of the ancient sickle near the well that gave Ken the +bright idea of cutting down the tall, dry grass for bedding. + +"Not that it's much of a weapon," he said. "Far less like a sickle than +a dissipated saw, to quote. But the edge is rusted so thin that I +believe it'll do the trick." + +Kirk gathered the grass up into soft scratchy heaps as Ken mowed it, +keeping at a respectful distance behind the swinging sickle. Ken began +to whistle, then stopped to hear the marsh frogs, which were still +chorusing their mad joy in the flight of winter. + +"I made up a pome about those thar toads," Ken said, "last night after +you'd gone to sleep again." + +Kirk leaped dangerously near the sickle. + +"You haven't made me a pome for ages!" he cried. "Stop sickling and do +it--quick!" + +"It's a grand one," Ken said; "listen to this! + +"Down in the marshes the sounds begin +Of a far-away fairy violin, +Faint and reedy and cobweb thin. + +"Cricket and marsh-frog and brown tree-toad, +Sit in the sedgy grass by the road, +Each at the door of his own abode; + +"Each with a fairy fiddle or flute +Fashioned out of a briar root; +The fairies join their notes, to boot. + +"Sitting all in a magic ring, +They lift their voices and sing and sing, +Because it is April, 'Spring! Spring!'" + +"That _is_ a nice one!" Kirk agreed. "It sounds real. I don't know how +you can do it." + +A faint clapping was heard from the direction of the house, and turning, +Ken saw his sister dropping him a curtsey at the door. "That," she said, +"is a poem, not a pome--a perfectly good one." + +"Go 'way!" shouted Ken. "You're a wicked interloper. And you don't even +know why Kirk and I write pomes about toads, so you don't!" + +"I never could see," Ken remarked that night, "why people are so keen +about beds of roses. If you ask me, I should think they'd be uncommon +prickly and uncomfortable. Give me a bed of herbs--where love is, don't +you know?" + +"It wasn't a bed of herbs," Felicia contended; "it was a dinner of +them. This isn't herbs, anyway. And think of the delectable smell of +the bed of roses!" + +"But every rose would have its thorn," Ken objected. "No, no, 'herbs' is +preferable." + +This argument was being held during the try-out of the grass beds in the +living-room. + +"See-saw, Margery Daw, +She packed up her bed and lay upon straw," + +sang Felicia. + +But the grass _was_ an improvement. Grass below and Mrs. Hop's quilts +above, with the overcoats in reserve--the Sturgises considered +themselves quite luxurious, after last night's shift at sleep. + +"What care we if the beds don't come?" Ken said. "We could live this way +all summer. Let them perish untended in the trolley freight-house." + +But when Kirk was asleep, the note of the conversation dropped. Ken and +Felicia talked till late into the night, in earnest undertones, of ways +and means and the needs of the old house. + +And slowly, slowly, all the wheels did begin to turn together. Some of +the freight came,--notably the beds,--after a week of waiting. Ken and +Hop carried them upstairs and set them up, with much toil. Ken chopped +down two dead apple-trees, and filled the shed with substantial fuel. +The Asquam Market would deliver out Winterbottom Road after May first. +Trunks came, with old clothes, and Braille books and other books--and +things that Felicia had not been able to leave behind at the last +moment. Eventually, came a table, and the Sturgises set their posied +plates upon it, and lighted their two candles stuck in saucers, and +proclaimed themselves ready to entertain. + +"And," thought Felicia, pausing at the kitchen door, "what a difference +it does make!" + +Firelight and candle-light wrought together their gracious spell on the +old room. The tin spoons gleamed like silver, the big brown crash towel +that Ken had jokingly laid across the table looked quite like a runner. +The light ran and glowed on the white-plastered ceiling and the heavy +beams; it flung a mellow aureole about Kirk, who was very carefully +arranging three tumblers on the table. + +The two candle-flames swayed suddenly and straightened, as Ken opened +the outer door and came in. + +He too, paused, looking at the little oasis in the dark, silent house. + +"We're beginning," he said, "to make friends with the glum old place." + +There was much to be done. The rusty nails were pulled out, and others +substituted in places where things could really be hung on them--notably +in the kitchen, where they supported Felicia's pots and pans in neatly +ordered rows. The burdocks disappeared, the shutters were persuaded not +to squeak, the few pieces of furniture from home were settled in places +where they would look largest. Yes, the house began to be friendly. The +rooms were not, after all, so enormous as Felicia had thought. The +furniture made them look much smaller. At the Asquam Utility Emporium, +Felicia purchased several yards of white cheese-cloth from which she +fashioned curtains for the living-room windows. She also cleaned the +windows themselves, and Ken did a wondrous amount of scrubbing. + +Now, when fire and candle-light shone out in the living room, it looked +indeed like a room in which to live--so thought the Sturgises, who +asked little. + +"Come out here, Phil," Ken whispered plucking his sister by the sleeve, +one evening just before supper. Mystified, she followed him out into the +soft April twilight; he drew her away from the door a little and bade +her look back. + +There were new green leaves on the little bush by the door-stone; they +gleamed startlingly light in the dusk. A new moon hung beside the +stalwart white chimney--all the house was a mouse-colored shadow against +the darkening sky. The living-room windows showed as orange squares cut +cheerfully from the night. Through the filmy whiteness of the +cheese-cloth curtains, could be seen the fire, the table spread for +supper, the gallant candles, Kirk lying on the hearth, reading. + +"Doesn't it look like a place to live in--and to have a nice time in?" +Ken asked. + +"Oh," Felicia said, "it almost does!" + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HEDGE + +The civilized-looking hedge had been long since investigated. The plot +of land it enclosed--reached, for the Sturgises, through a breach in the +hedge--was very different from the wild country which surrounded it. The +place had once been a very beautiful garden, but years and neglect had +made of it a half-formal wilderness, fascinating in its over-grown +beauty and its hint of earlier glory. For Kirk, it was an enchanted land +of close-pressing leafy alleys, pungent with the smell of box; of +brick-paved paths chanced on unexpectedly--followed cautiously to the +rim of empty, stone-coped pools. He and Felicia, or he and Ken, went +there when cookery or carpentry left an elder free. For when they had +discovered that the tall old house, though by no means so neglected as +the garden, was as empty, they ventured often into the place. Kirk +invented endless tales of enchanted castles, and peopled the still +lawns and deserted alleys with every hero he had ever read or heard of. +Who could tell? They might indeed lurk in the silent tangle--invisible +to him only as all else was invisible. So he liked to think, and +wandered, rapt, up and down the grass-grown paths of this enchanting +play-ground. + +It was not far to the hedge--over the rail fence, across the stubbly +meadow. Kirk had been privately amassing landmarks. He had enough, he +considered, to venture forth alone to the garden of mystery. Felicia was +in the kitchen--not eating bread and honey, but reading a cook-book and +making think-lines in her forehead. Ken was in Asquam. Kirk stepped off +the door-stone; sharp to the right, along the wall of the house, then a +stretch in the open to the well, over the fence--and then nothing but +certain queer stones and the bare feel of the faint path that had +already been worn in the meadow. + +Kirk won the breach in the hedge and squeezed through. Then he was alone +in the warm, green-smelling stillness of the trees. He found his way +from the moss velvet under the pines to the paved path, and followed +it, unhesitating, to the terrace before the house. On the shallow, +sun-warmed steps he sat playing with fir-cones, fingering their scaly +curves and sniffing their dry, brown fragrance. He swept a handful of +them out of his lap and stood up, preparatory to questing further up the +stone steps, to the house itself. But suddenly he stood quite still, for +he knew that he was not alone in the garden. He knew, also, that it was +neither Ken nor Felicia who stood looking at him. Had one of the +fairy-tale heroes materialized, after all, and slipped out of magic +coverts to walk with him? Rather uncertainly, he said, "Is somebody +there?" + +His voice sounded very small in the outdoor silence. Suppose no one were +there at all! How silly it would sound to be addressing a tree! There +was a moment of stillness, and then a rather old voice said: + +"Considering that you are looking straight at me, that seems a somewhat +foolish question." + +So there _was_ some one! Kirk said: + +"I can't see you, because I can't see anything." + +After a pause, the voice said, "Forgive me." But indeed, at first +glance, the grave shadowed beauty of Kirk's eyes did not betray their +blindness. + +"Are you one of the enchanted things, or a person?" Kirk inquired. + +"I might say, now, that I am enchanted," said the voice, drily. + +"I don't think I quite know what you mean," Kirk said. "You sound like a +_Puck of Pook's Hill_ sort of person." + +"Nothing so exciting. Though Oak and Ash and Thorn do grow in my +garden." + +"_Do_ they? I haven't found them. I knew it was a different place, ever +so different from anything near--different from the other side of the +hedge." + +"I am not so young as you," said the voice, "to stand about hatless on +an April afternoon. Let us come in and sit on either side of the +chimney-corner." + +And a long, dry, firm hand took Kirk's, and Kirk followed unhesitatingly +where it led. + +The smoothness of old polished floors, a sense of height, absolute +silence, a dry, aromatic smell--this was Kirk's impression as he crossed +the threshold, walking carefully and softly, that he might not break +the spellbound stillness of the house. Then came the familiar crackle of +an open fire, and Kirk was piloted into the delicious cozy depths of a +big chair beside the hearth. Creakings, as of another chair being pulled +up, then a contented sigh, indicated that his host had sat down opposite +him. + +"May I now ask your name?" the voice inquired. + +"I'm Kirkleigh Sturgis, at Applegate Farm," said Kirk. + +"' ... I s'pose you know, Miss Jean, +That I'm Young Richard o' Taunton Dean....'" + +murmured the old gentleman. + +Kirk pricked up his ears instantly. "Phil sings that," he said +delightedly. "I'm glad you know it. But you would." + +"Who'd have thought _you_ would know it?" said the voice. "I am fond of +_Young Richard_. Is Phil your brother?" + +"She's my sister--but I have a brother. He's sixteen, and he's almost as +high as the doorways at Applegate Farm." + +"I seem not to know where Applegate Farm is," the old gentleman mused. + +"It's quite next door to you," said Kirk. + +"They call it the Baldwin place, really. But Ken happened to think that +Baldwin's a kind of apple, and there _is_ an orchard and a gate, so we +called it that." + +"The old farm-house across the meadow!" There was a shade of perplexity +in the voice. "You live _there_?" + +"It's the most beautiful place in the world," said Kirk, with +conviction, "except your garden." + +"Beautiful--to you! Why?" + +"Oh, everything!" Kirk said, frowning, and trying to put into words what +was really joy in life and spring and the love of his brother and +sister. "Everything--the wind in the trees, and in the chimney at night, +and the little toads that sing,--do you ever hear them?--and the fire, +and, and--_everything_!" + +"And youth," said the old gentleman to himself, "and an unconscious +courage to surmount all obstacles. But perhaps, after all, the unseen +part of Applegate Farm is the more beautiful." Aloud, he said: "Do you +like to look at odd things? That is--I mean--" + +Kirk helped him out. "I do like to," he said. "I look at them with my +fingers--but it's all the same." + +Such things to look at! They were deposited, one after the other, in +Kirk's eager hands,--the intricate carving of Japanese ivory, +entrancingly smooth--almost like something warm and living, after one +had held it for a few adoring moments in careful hands. And there was a +Burmese ebony elephant, with a ruby in his forehead. + +"A ruby is red," Kirk murmured; "it is like the fire. And the elephant +is black. I see him very well." + +"Once upon a time," said the old gentleman, "a rajah rode on him--a +rajah no bigger than your finger. And his turban was encrusted with the +most precious of jewels, and his robe was stiff with gold. The elephant +wore anklets of beaten silver, and they clinked as he walked." + +Kirk's face was intent, listening. The little ebony elephant stood +motionless on his palm, dim in the firelight. + +"I hear them clinking," he said, "and the people shouting--oh, so far +away!" + +He put the treasure back into his host's hand, at last. "I'd like, +please, to look at _you_," he said. "It won't hurt," he added quickly, +instantly conscious of some unspoken hesitancy. + +"I have no fear of that," said the voice, "but you will find little +worth the looking for." + +Kirk, nevertheless, stood beside the old gentleman's chair, ready with a +quick, light hand to visualize his friend's features. + +"My hair, if that will help you," the voice told him, "is quite white, +and my eyes are usually rather blue." + +"Blue," murmured Kirk, his fingers flitting down the fine lines of the +old gentleman's profile; "that's cool and nice, like the sea and the +wind. Your face is like the ivory thing--smooth and--and carved. I think +you really must be something different and rather enchanted." + +But the old man had caught both Kirk's hands and spread them out in his +own. There was a moment of silence, and then he said: + +"Do you care for music, my child?" + +"I love Phil's songs," Kirk answered, puzzled a little by a different +note in the voice he was beginning to know. "She sings and plays the +accompaniments on the piano." + +"Do you ever sing?" + +"Only when I'm all alone." The color rushed for an instant to Kirk's +cheeks, why, he could not have said. + +"Without a word, the old gentleman, still holding Kirk's hands, pushed +him gently into the chair he had himself been sitting in. There was a +little time of stillness, filled only by the crack and rustle of the +fire. Then, into the silence, crept the first dew-clear notes of +Chopin's F Sharp Major Nocturne. The liquid beauty of the last bars had +scarcely died away, when the unseen piano gave forth, tragically +exultant, the glorious chords of the Twentieth Prelude--climbing higher +and higher in a mournful triumph of minor chords and sinking at last +into the final solemn splendor of the closing measures. The old +gentleman turned on the piano-stool to find Kirk weeping passionately +and silently into the cushions of the big chair. + +"Have I done more than I meant?" he questioned himself, "or is it only +the proof?" His hands on Kirk's quivering shoulders, he asked, "What is +it?" + +Kirk sat up, ashamed, and wondering why he had cried. "It was because +it was so much more wonderful than anything that ever happened," he said +unsteadily. "And I never can do it." + +The musician almost shook him. + +"But you can," he said; "you must! How can you _help_ yourself, with +those hands? Has no one guessed? How stupid all the world is!" + +He pulled Kirk suddenly to the piano, swept him abruptly into the wiry +circle of his arm. + +"See," he whispered; "oh, listen!" + +He spread Kirk's fingers above the keyboard--brought them down on a fine +chord of the Chopin prelude, and for one instant Kirk felt coursing +through him a feeling inexplicable as it was exciting--as painful as it +was glad. The next moment the chord died; the old man was again the +gentle friend of the fireside. + +"I am stupid," he said, "and ill-advised. Let's have tea." + +The tea came, magically--delicious cambric tea and cinnamon toast. Kirk +and the old gentleman talked of the farm, and of Asquam, and other +every-day subjects, till the spring dusk gathered at the window, and the +musician started up. "Your folk will be anxious," he said. "We must be +off. But you will come to me again, will you not?" + +Nothing could have kept Kirk away, and he said so. + +"And what's _your_ name, please?" he asked. "I've told you mine." A +silence made him add, "Of course, if you mind telling me--" + +Silence still, and Kirk, inspired, said: + +"Phil was reading a book aloud to Mother, once, and it was partly about +a man who made wonderful music and they called him 'Maestro.' Would you +mind if I called you Maestro--just for something to call you, you know?" + +He feared, in the stillness, that he had hurt his friend's feelings, but +the voice, when it next spoke, was kind and grave. + +"I am unworthy," it said, "but I should like you to call me Maestro. +Come--it is falling dusk. I'll go with you to the end of the meadow." + +And they went out together into the April twilight. + +Ken and Felicia were just beginning to be really anxious, when Kirk +tumbled in at the living-room door, with a headlong tale of enchanted +hearthstones, ebony elephants, cinnamon toast, music that had made him +cry, and most of all, of the benevolent, mysterious presence who had +wrought all this. Phil and Ken shook their heads, suggested that some +supper would make Kirk feel better, and set a boundary limit of the +orchard and meadow fence on his peregrinations. + +"But I promised him I'd come again," Kirk protested; "and I can find the +way. I _must_, because he says I can make music like that--and he's the +only person who could show me how." + +Felicia extracted a more coherent story as she sat on the edge of Kirk's +bed later that evening. She came downstairs sober and strangely elated, +to electrify her brother by saying: + +"Something queer has happened to Kirk. He's too excited, but he's simply +shining. And do you suppose it can possibly be true that he has music in +him? I mean _real_, extraordinary music, like--Beethoven or somebody." + +But Ken roared so gleefully over the ridiculous idea of his small +brother's remotely resembling Beethoven, that Phil suddenly thought +herself very silly, and lapsed into somewhat humiliated silence. + + * * * * * + +It was some time before the cares of a household permitted the Sturgises +to do very much exploring. One of their first expeditions, however, had +been straight to the bay from the farm-house--a scramble through wild, +long-deserted pastures, an amazingly thick young alder grove, and +finally out on the stony, salty water's edge. Here all was silver to the +sea's rim, where the bay met wider waters; in the opposite direction it +narrowed till it was not more than a river, winding among salt flats and +sudden rocky points until it lost itself in a maze of blue among the +distant uplands. The other shore was just beginning to be tenderly +alight with April green, and Felicia caught her breath for very joy at +the faint pink of distant maple boughs and the smell of spring and the +sea. A song-sparrow dropped a sudden, clear throatful of notes, and +Kirk, too, caught the rapture of the spring and flung wide his arms in +impartial welcome. + +Ken had been poking down the shore and came back now, evidently with +something to say. + +"There's the queerest little inlet down there," he said, "with a tide +eddy that runs into it. And there's an old motor-boat hove way up on the +rocks in there among the bushes." + +"What about it?" Felicia asked. + +"I merely wished it were ours." + +"Naturally it's some one else's." + +"He takes mighty poor care of it, then. The engine's all rusted up, and +there's a hole stove in the bottom." + +"Then _we_ shouldn't want it." + +"It could be fixed," Ken murmured; "easily. I examined it." + +He stared out at the misty bay's end, thinking, somehow, of the +_Celestine_, which he had not forgotten in his anxieties as a +householder. + +But even the joy of April on the bayside was shadowed when the mail came +to Applegate Farm that day. The United States mail was represented, in +the environs of Asquam, by a preposterously small wagon,--more like a +longitudinal slice of a milk-cart than anything else,--drawn by two +thin, rangy horses that seemed all out of proportion to their load. Their +rhythmic and leisurely trot jangled a loud but not unmusical bell which +hung from some hidden part of the wagon's anatomy, and warned all +dwellers on Rural Route No. 1 that the United States mail, ably piloted +by Mr. Truman Hobart, was on its way. + +The jangling stopped at Applegate Farm, and Mr. Hobart delved into a +soap-box in his cart and extracted the Sturgis mail, which he delivered +into Kirk's outstretched hand. Mr. Hobart waited, as usual, to watch, +admire, and marvel at Kirk's unhesitating progress to the house, and +then he clucked to the horses and tinkled on his way. + +There was a penciled note from Mrs. Sturgis, forwarded, as always, from +Westover Street, where she, of course, thought her children were (they +sent all their letters for her to Mr. Dodge, that they might bear the +Bedford postmark--and very difficult letters those were to write!), a +bill from the City Transfer Company (carting: 1 table, etc., etc.), and +a letter from Mr. Dodge. It was this letter which shadowed Applegate +Farm and dug a new think-line in Ken's young forehead. For Rocky Head +Granite was, it seemed, by no means so firm as its name sounded. Mr. +Dodge's hopes for it were unfulfilled. It was very little indeed that +could now be wrung from it. The Fidelity was for Mother--with a margin, +scant enough, to eke out the young Sturgises' income. There was the bill +for carting, other bills, daily expenses. Felicia, reading over Ken's +shoulder, bit her lip. + +"Come back to town, my dear boy," wrote Mr. Dodge, "and I will try to +get you something to do. You are all welcome to my house and help as +long as you may have need." + +It had been dawning more and more on Ken that he had been an idiot not +to stay in town, where there _was_ work to do. He had hated to prick +Phil's ideal bubble and cancel the lease on the farm,--for it was really +she who had picked out the place,--but he was becoming aware that he +should have done so. This latest turn in the Sturgis fortunes made it +evident that something must be done to bring more money than the +invested capital yielded. There was no work here; unless perhaps he +might hire out as a farm-hand, at small wages indeed. And he knew +nothing of farm work. Nevertheless, he and Felicia shook their heads at +Mr. Dodge's proposal. They sat at the table within the mellow ring of +lamplight, after Kirk had gone to bed, and thrashed out their +problem,--pride fighting need and vanquishing judgment. It was a good +letter that Kenelm sent Mr. Dodge, and the attorney shook his own head +as he read it in his study, and said: + +"I admire your principle, my boy--but oh, I pity your inexperience!" + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +A MAYING + +The City Transfer bill was paid; so were the other bills. Ken, on his +way out from Asquam, stopped with a sudden light in his dogged face and +turned back. He sought out the harbor-master, who was engaged in +painting a dory behind his shop. + +"Wal, boy, want to get a fish-hook?" he queried, squinting toward Ken +with a preoccupied eye. (He sold hardware and fishing-tackle, as well as +attending to the duties of his post.) + +Ken disclaimed any desire for the fish-hook, and said he wanted to ask +about a boat. + +"Ain't got none for sale ner hire, just now," the harbor-master replied. + +Ken said, so he had heard, but that wasn't it. And he told the man about +the abandoned power-boat in the inlet. The harbor-master stood up +straight and looked at Ken, at last. + +"Wal, ding!" said he. "That's Joe Pasquale's boat, sure's I'm +a-standin' here!" + +"Who," said Ken, "is Joe Pasquale?" + +"He is--or _woz_--a Portugee fisherman--lobsterman, ruther. He got +drownded in Febrerry--fell outen his boat, seems so, an' we got _him_, +but we never got the boat. Couldn't figger wher' she _had_ got to. He +was down harbor when 't happent. Cur'ous tide-racks 'round here." + +"Whose is she, then?" Ken asked. "Any widows or orphans?" + +"Nary widder," said the harbor-master, chewing tobacco reflectively. +"_No_ kin. Finders keepers. B'longs to you, I reckon. Ain't much good, +be she?" + +"Hole stove in her," Ken said. "The engine is all there, but I guess +it'll need a good bit of tinkering at." + +"Ain't wuth it," said the harbor-master. "She's old as Methusaly, +anyways. Keep her--she's salvage if ever there wuz. Might be able to +git sunthin' fer her enjine--scrap iron." + +"Thanks," said Ken; "I'll think it over." And he ran nearly all the way +to Applegate Farm. + +Kirk did not forget his promise to the Maestro. He found the old gentleman +in the garden, sitting on a stone bench beside the empty fountain. + +"I knew that you would come," he said. "Do you know what day it is?" + +Kirk did not, except that it was Saturday. + +"It is May-day," said the Maestro, "and the spirits of the garden are +abroad. We must keep our May together. Come--I think I have not +forgotten the way." + +He took Kirk's hand, and they walked down the grass path till the sweet +closeness of a low pine covert wove a scented silence about them. The +Maestro's voice dropped. + +"It used to be here," he said. "Try--the other side of the pine-tree. +Ah, it has been so many, many years!" + +[Illustration: The Maestro sat down beside Kirk] + +Kirk's hand sought along the dry pine-needles; +then, in a nook of the roots, what but +a tiny dish, with sweetmeats, set out, and little +cups of elder wine, and bread, and cottage +cheese! The Maestro sat down beside Kirk on +the pine-needles, and began to sing softly in a +rather thin but very sweet voice. + +"Here come we a-maying, + All in the wood so green; +Oh, will ye not be staying? + Oh, can ye not be seen? + +Before that ye be flitting, + When the dew is in the east, +We thank ye, as befitting, + For the May and for the feast. + +Here come we a-maying, + All in the wood so green, +In fairy coverts straying + A-for to seek our queen." + +"One has to be courteous to them," he added at the end, while Kirk sat +rapt, very possibly seeing far more garden spirits than his friend had +any idea of. + +"I myself," the Maestro said, "do not very often come to the garden. It +is too full, for me, of children no longer here. But the garden folk +have not forgotten." + +"When I'm here," murmured Kirk, sipping elder wine, "Applegate Farm and +everything in the world seem miles and years away. Is there really a +magic line at the hedge?" + +"If there is, you are the only one who has discovered it," said the old +gentleman, enigmatically. "Leave a sup of wine and a bit of bread for +the Folk, and let us see if we cannot find some May-flowers." + +They left the little pine room,--Kirk putting in the root hollow a +generous tithe for the garden folk,--and went through the garden till +the grass grew higher beneath their feet, and they began to climb a +rough, sun-warmed hillside, where dry leaves rustled and a sweet earthy +smell arose. + +"Search here among the leaves," the Maestro said, "and see what you +shall find." + +So Kirk, in a dream of wonder, dropped to his knees, and felt among the +loose leaves, in the sunshine. And there were tufts of smooth foliage, +all hidden away, and there came from them a smell rapturously +sweet--arbutus on a sunlit hill. Kirk pulled a sprig and sat drinking in +the deliciousness of it, till the old gentleman said: + +"We must have enough for a wreath, you know--a wreath for the queen." + +"Who is our Queen of the May?" Kirk asked. + +"The most beautiful person you know." + +"Felicia," said Kirk, promptly. + +"Felicia," mused the Maestro. "That is a beautiful name. Do you know +what it means?" + +Kirk did not. + +"It means happiness. Is it so?" + +"Yes," said Kirk; "Ken and I couldn't be happy without her. She _is_ +happiness." + +"Kenneth is your brother?" + +"Kenelm. Does that mean something?" + +The old gentleman plucked May-flowers for a moment. "It means, if I +remember rightly, 'a defender of his kindred.' It is a good Anglo-Saxon +name." + +"What does my name mean?" Kirk asked. + +The Maestro laughed. "Yours is not a given name," he said. "It has no +meaning. But--you mean much to me." + +He caught Kirk suddenly in a breathless embrace, from which he released +him almost at once, with an apology. + +"Let us make the wreath," he said. "See, I'll show you how." + +He bound the first strands, and then guided Kirk's hands in the next +steps, till the child was fashioning the wreath alone. + +"'My love's an arbutus +On the borders of Lene,'" + +sang the Maestro, in his gentle voice. "Listen +and I will tell you what you must say to Felicia +when you crown her Queen of the May." + +The falling sun found the wreath completed and the verse learned, and +the two went hand in hand back through the shadowy garden. + +"Won't you make music to-day?" Kirk begged. + +"Not to-day," said the old gentleman. "This day we go a-maying. But I am +glad you do not forget the music." + +"How could I?" said Kirk. At the hedge, he added: "I'd like to put a bit +of arbutus in your buttonhole, for your May." + +He held out a sprig in not quite the right direction, and the Maestro +stepped forward and stooped to him, while Kirk's fingers found the +buttonhole. + +"Now the Folk can do me no harm," smiled the old gentleman. "Good-by, my +dear." + + * * * * * + +Felicia was setting the table, with the candle-light about her hair. If +Kirk could have seen her, he would indeed have thought her beautiful. He +stood with one hand on the door-post, the other behind him. "Phil?" he +said. + +"Here," said Felicia. "Where have you been, honey?" + +He advanced to the middle of the room, and stopped. There was something +so solemn and unchancy about him that his sister put a handful of forks +and spoons on the table and stood looking at him. Then he said, slowly: + +"I come a-maying through the wood, + A-for to find my queen; +She must be glad and she must be good, + And the fairest ever seen. + +And now have I no further need + To seek for loveliness; +She standeth at my side indeed-- + Felicia--Happiness!" + +With which he produced the wreath of Mayflowers, and, flinging himself +suddenly upon her with a hug not specified in the rite, cast it upon her +chestnut locks and twined himself joyfully around her. Phil, quite +overcome, collapsed into the nearest chair, Kirk, May-flowers and all, +and it was there that Ken found them, rapturously embracing each other, +the May Queen bewitchingly pretty with her wreath over one ear. "I +didn't make it up," Kirk said, at supper. "The Maestro did--or at least +he said the Folk taught him one like it. I can't remember the thanking +one he sang before the feast. And Ken, he says _your_ name's good +Anglo-Saxon and means 'a defender of his kindred.'" + +"It does, does it?" said Ken. "You'll get so magicked over there some +time that we'll never see you again; or else you'll come back cast into +a spell, and there'll be no peace living with you." + +"No, I won't," Kirk said. "And I like it. It makes things more +interesting." + +"I should _think so_," said Ken--secretly, perhaps, a shade envious of +the Maestro's ability. + +As he locked up Applegate Farm that night, he stopped for a moment at +the door to look at the misty stars and listen to the wind in the +orchard. + +"'A defender of his kindred,'" he murmured. "_H'm!_" + + * * * * * + +Hardly anything is more annoying than a mysterious elder brother. That +Ken was tinkering at the _Flying Dutchman_ (as he had immediately called +the power-boat, on account of its ghostly associations) was evident to +his brother and sister, but why he should be doing so they could not +fathom. + +"We can't afford to run around in her as a pleasure yacht," Felicia +said. "Are you going to sell her?" + +"I am not," Ken would say, maddeningly, jingling a handful of bolts in +his pocket; "not I." + +The patch in the _Flying Dutchman_ was not such as a boat-builder would +have made, but it was water-tight, and that was the main point. The +motor required another week of coaxing; all Ken's mechanical ingenuity +was needed, and he sat before the engine, sometimes, dejected and +indignant. But when the last tinkering was over, when frantic spinnings +of the flywheel at length called forth a feeble gasp and deep-chested +gurgle from the engine, Ken clapped his dirty hands and danced alone on +the rocks like a madman. + +He took the trial trip secretly--he did not intend to run the risk of +sending Phil and Kirk to that portion of Davy Jones' locker reserved for +Asquam Bay. But when he landed, he ran, charging through baybush and +alder, till he tumbled into Felicia on the door-step of Applegate Farm. + +"I didn't want to tell you until I found out if she'd work," he gasped, +having more enthusiasm than breath. "You might have been disappointed. +But she'll go--and _now_ I'll tell you what she and I are going to do!" + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +WORK + +On a morning late in May, a train pulled into the Bayside station, which +was the rail terminal for travelers to Asquam, and deposited there a +scattering of early summer folk and a pile of baggage. The Asquam +trolley-car was not in, and would not be for some twenty minutes; the +passengers grouped themselves at the station, half wharf, half platform, +and stared languidly at the bay, the warehouse, and the empty track down +which the Asquam car might eventually be expected to appear. It did not; +but there did appear a tall youth, who approached one of the groups of +travelers with more show of confidence than he felt. He pulled off his +new yachting-cap and addressed the man nearest him: + +"Are you going to Asquam, sir?" + +"I am, if the blamed trolley-car ever shows up." + +"Have you baggage?" + +"Couple of trunks." + +"Are you sending them by the electric freight?" + +"No other way _to_ send them," said the man, gloomily. "I've been here +before. I've fortified myself with a well-stocked bag, but I sha'n't +have a collar left before the baggage comes. As for my wife--" + +"I can get your luggage to Asquam in a bit over an hour," said the +businesslike young gentleman. + +The somewhat bored group lifted interested heads. They, too, had trunks +doomed to a mysterious exile at the hands of the electric freight. + +"I'm Sturgis," said the youth, "of the Sturgis Water Line. I have a +large power-boat built for capacity, not looks. Your baggage will be +safe in a store-room at the other end,"--Captain Sturgis here produced a +new and imposing key,--"and will be taken to your hotel or cottage by a +reliable man with a team at the usual rate of transfer from the trolley. +My charges are a little higher than the trolley rates, but you'll have +your baggage before luncheon, instead of next week." A murmuring arose +in the group. + +"Let's see your vessel, Cap," said another man. + +Ken led the way to a boat skid at the foot of the wharf, and pointed out +the _Flying Dutchman_, unpainted, but very tidy, floating proudly beside +the piles. + +"I have to charge by bulk rather than weight," said the proprietor of +the Sturgis Water Line, "and first come, first served." + +"Have you a license?" asked a cautious one. + +Ken turned back a lapel and showed it, with the color rushing suddenly +to his face. + +But the upshot of it was, that before the Asquam car--later than +usual--arrived at Bayside, the _Flying Dutchman_ was chugging out into +the bay, so loaded with trunks that Ken felt heartily for the Irishman, +who, under somewhat similar circumstances, said "'t was a merrcy the +toide wasn't six inches hoigher!" Out in the fairway, Ken crouched +beside his engine, quite thankful to be alone with his boat and the +harvest of trunks--so many more than he had hoped to have. For this was +the first trip of the Sturgis Water Line, and its proprietor's heart, +under the new license, had pounded quite agonizingly as he had +approached his first clients. + +Down at Asquam, the room on the wharf under the harbor-master's shop +stood waiting to receive outgoing or incoming baggage; at the wharf, Hop +would be drawn up with his old express-wagon. For Hop was the shore +department of the Line, only too glad to transport luggage, and in so +doing to score off Sim Rathbone, who had little by little taken Hop's +trade. He and Ken had arranged financial matters most amicably; Ken was +to keep all his profits, Hop was to charge his usual rates for transfer, +but it was understood that Hopkins, and he alone, was shore agent of the +Sturgis Water Line, and great was his joy and pride. + +Ken, on this first day, helped the old man load the trunks, rode with +him to their various destinations, saw them received by unbelieving and +jubilant owners, and then tore back to Applegate Farm, exultant and +joyful. Having no breath for words, he laid before Felicia, who was +making bread, four dollars and a half (six trunks at seventy-five cents +apiece), clapped the yachting cap over Kirk's head, and cut an ecstatic +pigeon-wing on the kitchen floor. "One trip!" gasped Phil, touching the +money reverently with a doughy finger. "And you're going to make two +round trips every day! That's eighteen dollars a day! Oh, Ken, it's a +hundred and twenty-five dollars a week! Why, we're--we're millionaires!" + +Ken had found his breath, and his reason. + +"What a little lightning calculator!" he said. "Don't go so fast, +Philly; why, your castle scrapes the clouds! This time of year I won't +carry _any_ baggage on the up trips--just gasolene wasted; and there's +the rent of the dock and the store-room,--it isn't much, but it's quite +a lot off the profit,--and gas and oil, and lots of trips when I sha'n't +be in such luck. But I _do_ think it's going to work--and pay, even if +it's only fifteen or twenty dollars a week." + +Whereupon Felicia called him a lamb, and kissed him, and he submitted. + +That night they had a cake. Eggs had been lavished on it to produce its +delectable golden smoothness, and sugar had not been stinted. + +"It's a special occasion," Felicia apologized, "to celebrate the Sturgis +Water Line and honor Captain Kenelm Sturgis--defender of his kindred," +she added mischievously. + +"Cut it!" muttered Ken; but she took it to mean the cake, and handed him +a delicious slice. + +"All right," said Ken. "Let's feast. But don't be like the girl with the +pitcher of milk on her head, Phil." + + * * * * * + +If you suppose that Miss Felicia Sturgis was lonely while her brother, +the captain, was carrying on his new watery profession, you are quite +mistaken. She hadn't time even to reflect whether she was lonely or not. +She had no intention of letting Applegate Farm sink back to the untidy +level of neglect in which she had found it, and its needs claimed much +of her energy. She tried to find time in which to read a little, for she +felt somewhat guilty about the unceremonious leave she had taken of her +schooling. And there was cookery to practise, and stockings to mend, +and, oh dear, such a number of things! + +But Kirk's education filled the most important place, to her, in the +scheme of things at Asquam. If she had not been so young, and so +ambitious, and so inexperienced, she might have faltered before the task +she set herself, temporary though it might be. Long before the Sturgis +Water Line had hung out its neat shingle at the harbor-master's wharf; +before the Maestro and music had made a new interest in Kirk's life; +while Applegate Farm was still confusion--Felicia had attacked the +Braille system with a courage as conscientious as it was unguided. She +laughed now to think of how she had gone at the thing--not even studying +out the alphabet first. In the candle-light, she had sat on the edge of +her bed--there was no other furniture in the room--with one of Kirk's +books on her knee. Looking at the dots embossed on the paper conveyed +nothing to her; she shut her eyes, and felt the page with a forefinger +which immediately seemed to her as large as a biscuit. Nothing but the +dreadful darkness, and the discouraging little humps on the paper which +would not even group themselves under her fingers! Felicia had ended her +first attempt at mastering Braille, in tears--but not altogether over +her own failure. + +"Oh, it must be hideous for him!" she quavered to the empty room; +"simply hideous!" + +And she opened her eyes, thankful to see even good candle-light on bare +walls, and the green, star-hung slip of sky outside the window. But +somehow the seeing of it had made her cry again. + +Next day she had swallowed her pride and asked Kirk to explain to her a +few of the mysteries of the embossed letters. He was delighted, and +picked the alphabet, here and there, from a page chosen at random in the +big book. The dots slunk at once into quite sensibly ordered ranks, and +Felicia perceived a reason, an excuse for their existence. + +She learned half the alphabet in an hour, and picked out _b_ and _h_ and +_l_ joyfully from page after page. Three days later she was reading, +"The cat can catch the mouse"--as thrilled as a scientist would be to +discover a new principle of physics. Kirk was thrilled, also, and +applauded her vigorously. + +"But you're looking at it, and that's easier," he said. "And you're +growner-up than me." + +Felicia confessed that this was so. + +And now what a stern task-mistress she had become! She knew all the long +words in the hardest lessons, and more too. There was no escaping +school-time; it was as bad as Miss Bolton. Except that she was +Felicia--and that made all the difference in the world. Kirk labored +for her as he had never done for Miss Bolton, who had been wont to say, +"If only he would _work_--" The unfinished sentence always implied +untold possibilities for Kirk. + +But Felicia was not content that Kirk could read the hardest lessons +now. They plunged into oral arithmetic and geography and history, to +which last he would listen indefinitely while Phil read aloud. And +Felicia, whose ambition was unbounded,--as, fortunately, his own +was,--turned her attention to the question of writing. He could write +Braille, with a punch and a Braille slate,--yes, indeed!--but who of the +seeing world could read it when he had done? And he had no conception of +our printed letters; they might as well have been Chinese symbols. He +would some day have a typewriter, of course, but that was impossible +now. Phil, nothing daunted by statements that the blind never could +write satisfactorily, sent for the simplest of the appliances which make +it possible for them to write ordinary characters, and she and Kirk set +to work with a will. + +On the whole, those were very happy mornings. For the schoolroom was in +the orchard--the orchard, just beginning to sift scented petals over +the lesson papers; beginning to be astir with the boom of bees, and the +fluttering journeys of those busy householders, the robins. The high, +soft grass made the most comfortable of school benches; an upturned box +served excellently for a desk; and here Kirk struggled with the elusive, +unseen shapes of A. B. C.--and conquered them! His first completed +manuscript was a letter to his mother, and Phil, looking at it, thought +all the toil worth while. The letter had taken long, but Felicia had not +helped him with it. + +DEAR MOTHER + + I AM WRITING THIS M +YSELF A ROBIN IS SINGI +NG NEARME BECAUSE HE H +AS THREE EGGS WHICH FI +L FOUND YESTERDAY. I H +OPE YOU AREBETTER DEAR +AND CAN COME BACK SOON +YOUR KIRK XXXXXXXXXXXX + +Mrs. Sturgis's feelings, on reading this production, may be imagined. +She wept a little, being still not herself, and found heart, for the +first time, to notice that a robin was singing outside her own window. +There is no question but that Kirk's days were really the busiest of +the Sturgis family's. For no sooner did the Three R's loose their hold +on him at noon, than the Maestro claimed him for music after lunch, +three times a week. Rather tantalizing music, for he wasn't to go near +the piano yet. No, it was solfeggio, horrid dry scales to sing, and +rhythm, and notation. But all was repaid when the Maestro dropped to the +piano-stool and filled a half-hour with music that made Kirk more than +ever long to master the scales. And there was tea, always, and slow, +sun-bathed wanderings in the garden, hand in hand with the Maestro. + +He must hear, now, all about the Sturgis Water Line, and Ken's yachting +cap with the shiny visor, and how Kirk had taken the afternoon trip +three times, and how--if the Maestro didn't know it already--the sound +of water at the bow of a boat was one of the nicest noises there was. + +"There are those who think so," said the old gentleman. "Kirk, tell Ken +not to let the sea gain a hold on him. He loves it, does he not?" + +"Yes," said Kirk, aghast at the sudden bitter sorrow in the gentle +voice. "Why?" + +"The sea is a tyrant. Those she claims, she never releases. I know." + +He stood among the gently falling blossoms of the big quince-tree by the +terrace. Then he suddenly drew Kirk to him, and said: + +"I spoke of the garden being filled, to me, with the memory of children; +did I not?" + +Kirk remembered that he had--on May-day. + +"A little boy and a little girl played here once," said the Maestro, +"when the pools were filled, and the garden paths were trim. The little +girl died when she was a girl no longer. The boy loved the sea too well. +He left the garden, to sail the seas in a ship--and I have never seen +him since." + +"Was he your little boy?" Kirk hardly dared ask it. + +"He was my little boy," said the Maestro. "He left the garden in the +moonlight, and ran away to the ships. He was sixteen. Tell Kenelm not to +love the sea too much." + +"But Ken wouldn't go away from Phil and me," said Kirk; "I _know_ he +wouldn't." + +Kirk knew nothing of the call that the looming gray sails of the +_Celestine_ had once made. + +"I thought," said the Maestro, "that the other boy would not leave his +sister and his father." He roused himself suddenly. "Perhaps I do Ken +injustice. I want to meet the gallant commander of the _Flying +Dutchman_. It seems absurd that such close neighbors have not yet met. +Bring him--and Felicia, when you come again. We'll drink to the success +of the Sturgis Water Line. And don't dare to tell me, next time, that +you never heard of the scale of A flat major, my little scamp!" + +Kirk, to whom the Maestro's word was law, delivered his message very +solemnly to Ken, who laughed. + +"Not much fear of my cultivating too strong an affection for Mud Ocean, +as navigated by the _Dutchman_. If I had a chance to see real water and +real ships, it might be different." + +"But how horrid of his son never to let him know--poor old gentleman!" +said Felicia, who was putting on her hat at the window. + +"Probably the old gentleman was so angry with him in the beginning that +he didn't dare to, and now he thinks he's dead," Ken said. + +"Who thinks who's dead?" Phil asked. "You'd never make a rhetorician." + +"I should hope not!" said her brother. "Why, the sailor thinks his +father's dead. Get your hat, Kirk." + +"We're going to an auction," Felicia explained. + +"A 'vandew'," Ken corrected. "You and Phil are, that is, to buy shoes +and ships and sealing-wax, and a chair for my room that won't fall down +when I sit in it, and crockery ware--and I guarantee you'll come home +with a parlor organ and a wax fruit-piece under a glass case." + +Phil scoffed and reproved him, and he departed, whistling "Rocked in the +Cradle of the Deep," lugubriously. His brother and sister caught up with +him, and they all walked together toward Asquam, Ken bound for his boat, +and the others for the "vendu," which was held at an old farm-house +where Winterbottom Road joined Pickery Lane. + +Many ramshackle old wagons were already drawn up in the barn-yard and +hitched to trees along the cart track. Their owners were grouped in the +dooryard around the stoves and tables and boxes of "articles too +numerous to mention," chattering over the merits and flaws of mattresses +and lamps, and sitting in the chairs to find out whether or not they +were comfortable. A bent old farmer with a chin-beard, stood chuckling +over an ancient cradle that leaned against a wash-tub. + +"There's one most 's old 's I be!" he said, addressing the world at +large; "fust thing I 'member, I crawled outen one like thet!" + +The auctioneer was selling farm tools and stock at the other side of the +house, and most of the men-folks were congregated there--tall, solemn +people, still wearing winter mufflers--soberly chewing tobacco and +comparing notes on the tools. Felicia and Kirk, though they would have +liked well enough to own the old white horse and the Jersey heifers, +felt themselves unable to afford live stock, and stayed in the dooryard. +Among the furniture so mercilessly dragged from its familiar +surroundings to stand on the trampled grass, was a little, square, +weathered thing, which Felicia at first failed to recognize as the +inevitable melodeon. It lacked all the plush and gewgaws of the parlor +organ of commerce; such a modest, tiny gray box might easily have passed +for a kitchen chest. + +Felicia pushed back the cover, and, pressing a pedal with one foot, +gave forth the chords of her favorite, "How should I your true love +know?" The organ had a rather sweet old tone, unlike the nasal and +somewhat sanctimonious drone of most melodeons, and Felicia, hungry for +the piano that had not been brought to Asquam, almost wished she could +buy it. She remembered Ken's prophecy--"you'll come home with a +melodeon"--and turned away, her cheeks all the pinker when she found the +frankly interested eyes of several bumpkins fixed upon her. But Kirk was +not so ready to leave the instrument. + +"Why don't we get that, Phil?" he begged. "We _must_ have it; don't you +think so?" + +"It will go for much more than we can afford," said Felicia. "And you +have the Maestro's piano. Listen! They're beginning to sell the things +around here." + +"But _you_ haven't the Maestro's piano!" Kirk protested, clinging very +tightly to her hand in the midst of all this strange, pushing crowd. + +The people were gathering at the sunny side of the house; the +auctioneer, at the window, was selling pots and candles and +pruning-shears and kitchen chairs. Felicia felt somehow curiously +aloof, and almost like an intruder, in this crowd of people, all of whom +had known each other for long years in Asquam. They shouted pleasantries +across intervening heads, and roared as one when somebody called +"'Lisha" bought an ancient stovepipe hat for five cents and clapped it +on his head, adding at least a foot to his already gaunt and towering +height. She felt, too, an odd sense of pathos at the sight of all these +little possessions--some of them heirlooms--being pulled from the old +homestead and flaunted before the world. She did not like to see two or +three old women fingering the fine quilts and saying they'd be a good +bargain, for "Maria Troop made every stitch on 'em herself, and she +allus was one to have lastin' things." Poor little Mrs. Troop was there, +tightly buttoned up in her "store clothes," running hither and thither, +and protesting to the auctioneer that the "sofy" was worth "twicet as +much's Sim Rathbone give for 't." + +A fearful crash of crockery within brought her hand to her heart, and a +voice from the crowd commented jocularly, "Huh! Breakin' up +housekeepin'!" Even Mrs. Troop smiled wryly, and the crowd guffawed. + +"Now here," bellowed the auctioneer, "is a very fine article sech as you +don't often see in _these_ days. A melodeon, everybody, a parlor organ, +in size, shape, and appearance very unusual, so to _say_." + +"Ain't it homely!" a female voice remarked during the stout auctioneer's +pause for breath. + +"Not being a musician, ladies and gents, I ain't qualified to let you +hear the tones of this instrument, _but_--I am sure it will be an +ornament to any home and a source of enjoyment to both old and _young_. +Now--what'll you give me for this fine old _organ_?" + +"Seventy-five cents," a deep voice murmured. + +"Got your money with you, Watson?" the auctioneer inquired bitingly. "I +am ashamed of this offer, folks, but nevertheless, I am offered +seventy-five cents--_seventy-five cents_, for this fine old instrument. +Now who'll--" + +The melodeon climbed to two dollars, with comparative rapidity. The +bidders were principally men, whose wives, had they been present, would +probably have discouraged the bidding, on the score that it was +impossible to have that thing in the house, when Jenny's had veneer +candle-stands and plush pedals. Felicia was just beginning to wonder +whether entering into the ring would push the melodeon too high, and the +auctioneer was impatiently tapping his heel on the soap-box platform, +when a clear and deliberate voice remarked: + +"Two dollars and ten cents." + +Several heads were turned to see the speaker, and women peeped over +their husbands' shoulders to look. They saw a child in green +knickerbockers and a gray jersey, his hand in that of a surprised young +girl, and his determined face and oddly tranquil eyes turned +purposefully to the auctioneer. + +"Make it a quarter," said a man lounging against the leader-pipe. + +"Two and a quarter," said the auctioneer. "I'm bid two dollars and a +quarter for the organ." + +"Two dollars and fifty cents," said the young bidder, a shade of +excitement now betraying itself in his voice. The girl opened her mouth, +perhaps to protest, and then closed it again. "Two-fifty!" bawled the +auctioneer. "Two-fifty? Going--any more? Going--going--" he brought his +big hands together with a slap, "_Gone!_ at two dollars _and_ fifty +cents, to--who's the party, Ben?" + +Ben, harassed, pencil in mouth, professed ignorance. + +"Kirkleigh Sturgis," said the owner of the musical instrument, +"Winterbottom Road." + +"Mister Sturgis," said the auctioneer, while Ben scribbled. "Step right +up, young man. Give Ben your money and put your pianner in your pocket. +Now folks, the next article--" + +Kirk and Felicia, not to speak of the organ, two chairs, a wash-basin, a +frying-pan, two boxes of candles, a good mop, and a pot of soft soap, +were all carted home by the invaluable Hop. They met Ken, in from his +second trip, in the middle of Winterbottom Hill, and they gave him a +lift. + +"Oh, if you knew what you're sitting on!" Phil chuckled. + +"Good heavens! Will it go off?" cried Ken, squirming around to look down +at his seat. "I thought it was a chest, or something." + +"It's--a melodeon!" Phil said weakly. + +"A melodeon! Oh, ye gods and little fishes!" shouted Ken. "Oh, my +prophetic soul!" and he laughed all the way to Applegate Farm. + +But while Felicia was clattering pans in the kitchen, and Ken went +whistling through the orchard twilight to the well, the purchaser of the +organ felt his way to it, not quite sure, yet, of its place by the +window. He sat down in front of it, and pressed the stiff old pedals. +His careful fingers found a chord, and the yellow notes responded with +their sweet, thin cadence--the _vox humana_ stop was out. He pulled, by +chance, the diapason, and filled the room with deep, shaken notes. Half +frightened at the magic possibilities, he slipped from the chair and ran +out into the young May night, to whisper to it something of the love and +wonder that the Maestro's music was stirring in him. Here in the twilit +dooryard he was found by his brother, who gave him the hand unoccupied +by the bucket and led him in to the good, wholesome commonplaces of +hearth-fire and supper and the jolliest of jokes and laughter. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +FAME COMES COURTING + +At first, each day in the old house had been an adventure. That could +not last, for even the most exciting surroundings become familiar when +they are lived in day after day. Still, there are people who think every +dawn the beginning of a new adventure, and Felicia, in spite of pots and +pans, was rather of this opinion. + +It was, for instance, a real epoch in her life when the great old +rose-bush below the living-room windows budded and then bloomed. She had +watched it anxiously for weeks, and tended it as it had not been tended +for many years. It bloomed suddenly and beautifully,--"out of sheer +gratitude," Ken said,--and massed a great mound of delicate color +against the silver shingles of the west wall. It bore the sweet, small, +old-fashioned roses that flower a tender pink and fade gracefully to +bluish white. Felicia gathered a bunch of them for the Maestro, who had +bidden the three to come for tea. Neither Ken nor Felicia had, as yet, +met Kirk's mysterious friend, and were still half inclined to think him +a creature of their brother's imagination. + +And, indeed, when they met him, standing beside the laden tea-table on +the terrace, they thought him scarcely more of an actuality, so utterly +in keeping was he with the dreaming garden and the still house. Felicia, +who had not quite realized the depth of friendship which had grown +between this old gentleman and her small brother, noted with the +familiar strangeness of a dream the proprietary action with which the +Maestro drew Kirk to him, and Kirk's instant and unconscious response. +These were old and dear friends; Ken and Felicia had for a moment the +curious sensation of being intruders in a forgotten corner of enchanted +land, into which the likeness of their own Kirk had somehow strayed. But +the feeling passed quickly. The Maestro behind the silver urn was a +human being, after all, talking of the Sturgis Water Line--a most +delightful human being, full of kindliness and humor. Kirk was really +their own, too. He leaned beside Felicia's chair, stirring his tea and +she slipped an arm about him, just to establish her right of possession. + +The talk ran on the awakening of Applegate Farm, the rose-bush, lessons +in the orchard, many details of the management of this new and exciting +life, which the Maestro's quiet questioning drew unconsciously from the +eager Sturgises. + +"We've been talking about nothing but ourselves, I'm afraid," Felicia +said at last, with pink cheeks. She rose to go, but Kirk pulled her +sleeve. No afternoon at the Maestro's house was complete for him without +music, it seemed, and it was to the piano that the Maestro must go; +please, please! So, through the French windows that opened to the +terrace, they entered the room which Kirk had never been able to +describe, because he had never seen it. Ken and Phil saw it now--high +and dim and quiet, with book-lined walls, and the shapes of curious and +beautiful things gleaming here and there from carved cabinet and table. + +The Maestro sat down at the piano, thought for a moment, and then, +smiling, rippled into the first bars of a little air which none of his +listeners had ever before heard. Eerily it tripped and chimed and lilted +to its close, and the Maestro swung about and faced them, smiling still, +quizzically. + +"What does it mean?" he asked. "I am very curious to know. Is it merely +a tune--or does it remind you of something!" + +The Sturgises pondered. "It's like spring," Felicia said; "like little +leaves fluttering." + +"Yes, it is," Ken agreed. "It's a song of some sort, I think--that is, +it ought to have words. And it's spring, all right. It's like--it's +like--" + +"It's like those toads!" Kirk said suddenly. "Don't you know? Like +little bells and flutes, far off--and fairies." + +The Maestro clapped his hands. + +"I have not forgotten how, then," he said. "It _has_ words, Kenelm. I +hope--I hope that you will not be very angry with me." + +He played the first twinkling measures again, and then began to sing: + +"Down in the marshes the sounds begin +Of a far-away fairy violin, +Faint and reedy and cobweb thin." +Cobweb thin, the accompaniment took up the +plaintive chirping till the Maestro sang the +second verse. + +"I say," said Ken, bolt upright in his chair. "I _say_!" + +"_Are_ you angry?" asked the Maestro. He flung out his hands in a +pleading gesture. "Will he forgive me, Kirk?" + +"Why, why--it's beautiful, sir!" Ken stammered. "It's only--that I +don't see how you ever got hold of those words. It was just a thing I +made up to amuse Kirk. He made me say it to him over and over, about +fifty-nine times, I should say, till I'm sure I was perfectly sick of +it." + +"Having heard it fifty-nine times," said the old gentleman, "he was able +to repeat it to me, and I took the opportunity to write it off on a bit +of paper, because, my dear boy, I liked it." + +"A lovely, scrumptious tune," said Kirk. "It makes it nicer than ever." + +"What do you say," said the Maestro, "to our giving this unsurpassed +song to the world at large?" + +"Do you mean having it printed?" Felicia asked quickly, "Oh, what fun!" +She beamed at Ken, who looked happy and uncomfortable at once. + +"I'm afraid I'm too unknown, sir," he said. "I--I never thought of such +a thing." + +"Perhaps," said the Maestro, with a smile, "the composer is sufficiently +well known to make up for the author's lack of fame." + +Ken's face grew a shade redder. "Of course," he stammered. "Oh, I beg +your pardon." + +"Then the permission is granted?" + +Quite naturally, Ken granted it, with what he thought ill-worded thanks, +and the Sturgises walked home across the meadow without knowing on what +they trod. + +"A real author!" Felicia said. "I _told_ you that wasn't a pome, when I +first heard it." + +But Ken chose to be severe and modest, and frowned on the "Toad +Song"--as it was familiarly called--for a topic of conversation. And as +weeks slid by, the whole affair was almost forgotten at Applegate Farm. + +Those were weeks during which the Maestro, from the shadowy hero of +Kirk's tales, became a very real part of this new life that was slowly +settling to a familiar and loved existence. The quiet garden and the +still old house became as well known to Ken and Felicia as to their +brother, and, indeed, the Maestro might often have been seen in the +living-room at Applegate Farm, listening to Kirk's proud performance on +the melodeon, and eating one of Phil's cookies. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +VENTURES AND ADVENTURES + +Ken had not much time for these visits. The Sturgis Water Line was so +popular that he could not even find a spare day or two in which to haul +out the _Dutchman_ and give her the "lick of paint" she needed. He had +feared that, with the filling of the cottages at the beginning of the +season, business would fall off, but so many weekly visitors came and +went at the hotels that the _Dutchman_ rarely made a trip entirely +empty, and quite often she was forced to leave, till the next time, a +little heap of luggage which even her wide cockpit could not carry. +Sometimes Ken made an extra trip, which brought him back to the pier at +Asquam as the first twilight was gathering. + +He had just come in from such an "extra," one day during the busy Fourth +of July weekend, and climbed out upon the wharf when the shadows of the +pile-heads stretched darkly up the streetway. Hop fastened the +tail-board of his wagon behind the last trunk, rubbed his hands, and +said: + +"Wife sent ye down some pie. Thought ye desarved it a'ter runnin' up 'n' +down all day." + +He produced the pie, wrapped up in a paper, from under the seat, and +presented it to Ken with a flourish and a shuffle that were altogether +characteristic. Supper was waiting at Applegate Farm, Ken knew, but the +pie--which was a cherry one, drippy and delectable--was not to be +resisted, after long hours on the water. He bit into it heartily as he +left Asquam and swung into Pickery Lane. + +He hurried along, still wrapped in the atmosphere which had surrounded +him all day. He felt still the lift of the boat over the short swell, he +smelled the pleasant combination of salt, and gasolene, and the whiff of +the hayfields, and his eyes still kept the glare and the blue, and the +swinging dark shape of the _Dutchman's_ bows as he headed her down the +bay. Just before he reached Winterbottom Road, he saw, rather vaguely +through the twilight, the figures of a man and a small boy, coming +toward him. They had, apparently, seen him, also, for the man walked +more quickly for a step or two, then stopped altogether, and finally +turned sharply off the road and swung the child over a stone wall, with +a quick remark which Ken did not hear. + +He did hear, however, the child's reply, for it was in a clear and +well-known voice. It said: "I don't think _this_ can be the way. I +didn't come over a wall." + +The remainder of the cherry pie dropped to the dust of the Winterbottom +Road. Not more than three gigantic leaps brought Ken to the spot; he +vaulted the wall with a clean and magnificent spring that would have won +him fame at school. The man was a stranger, as Ken had thought--an +untidy and unshaven stranger. He was not quite so tall as Ken, who +seized him by the arm. + +"May I ask where you're going?" roared Ken, at which the small boy +leaped rapturously, fastened himself to Ken's coat-tail, and cried: + +"Oh, I'm so glad it's you! I started to come and meet you, and I walked +farther than I meant, and I got lost, and I met this person, and he said +he'd take me home, and--" + +"Shut up!" said Ken. "_And let go of me!"_ at which Kirk, thoroughly +shocked, dropped back as though he could not believe his ears. + +"I was takin' the kid home," muttered the man, "just like he says." + +"Why were you going in exactly the opposite direction, then?" Ken +demanded. + +As he leaped abreast of the man, who was trying to back away, the day's +receipts of the Sturgis Water Line jingled loudly in his trousers +pocket. The stranger, whose first plan had been so rudely interfered +with, determined on the instant not to leave altogether empty-handed, +and planted a forcible and unexpected blow on the side of Ken's head. +Ken staggered and went down, and Kirk, who had been standing dangerously +near all this activity, went down on top of him. It so happened that he +sprawled exactly on top of the trousers pocket aforesaid, and when the +man sought, with hasty and ungentle hands, to remove him from it, Kirk +launched a sudden and violent kick, in the hope of its doing some +execution. + +Kirk's boots were stout, and himself horrified and indignant; his heel +caught the stranger with full force in the temple, and the man, too, +was added to the prostrate figures in the darkening field. Two of them +did not long remain prostrate. Ken lurched, bewildered, to his feet, and +seeing his foe stretched by some miracle upon the ground, he bundled +Kirk over the wall and followed giddily. Stumbling down the shadowy +road, with Kirk's hand in his, he said: + +"That was good luck. I must have given the gentleman a crack as he got +me." + +"He was trying to steal your money, I think," Kirk said. "I was lying on +top of you, so I kicked him, hard." + +"Oh, _that_ was it, was it?" Ken exclaimed. "Well, very neat work, even +if not sporting. By the way, excuse me for speaking to you the way I +did, but it wasn't any time to have a talk. You precious, trusting +little idiot, don't you know better than to go off with the first person +who comes along?" + +"He said he'd take me home," Kirk said plaintively. "I told him where it +was." + +"You've got to learn," said his brother, stalking grimly on in the dusk, +"that everybody in the world isn't so kind and honest as the people +you've met so far. That individual was going to take you goodness knows +where, and not let us have you back till we'd paid him all the money we +have in the world. If I hadn't come along just at that particular +moment, that's what would have happened." + +Kirk sniffed, but Ken went on relentlessly: + +"What were you doing outside the gate, anyway? You're not allowed +there. I don't like your going to the Maestro's, even, but at least it's +a safe path. There are automobiles on Winterbottom Road, and they +suppose that you can see 'em and get out of their way. I'm afraid we'll +have to say that you can't leave the house without Phil or me." + +Ken was over-wrought, and forgot that his brother probably was, also. +Kirk wept passionately at last, and Ken, who could never bear to see his +tears, crouched penitent in the gloom of the road, to dry his eyes and +murmur tender apologies. At the gate of the farm, Ken paused suddenly, +and then said: + +"Let's not say anything about all this to Phil; she'd just be worried +and upset. What do you say?" + +"Don't let's," Kirk agreed. They shook hands solemnly, and then turned +to the lighted windows of Applegate Farm. But it would not have been so +easy to keep the unpleasant adventure secret, or conceal from Felicia +that something had been wrong, if she herself had not been so obviously +cherishing a surprise. She had thought that Kirk was waiting at the gate +for Ken, and so had been spared any anxiety on that score. She could +hardly wait for Ken to take off his sweater and wash his hands. Supper +was on the table, and it was to something which lay beside her elder +brother's plate that her dancing eyes kept turning. + +Ken, weary with good cause, sat down with a sigh, and then leaned +forward as if an electric button had been touched somewhere about his +person. + +"What--well, by Jiminy!" shouted Ken. "I never believed it, never!" + +"It's real," Phil said excitedly; "it looks just like a real one." + +"_What?_" Kirk asked wildly; "tell me what!" + +Ken lifted the crisp new sheet of music and stared at it, and then read +aloud the words on the cover. + +"_Fairy Music_," it said--and his name was there, and the Maestro's, and +"_net price, 60c_" "like a real one," indeed. And within were flights +of printed notes, and the words of the "Toad Pome" in cold black and +white. And above them, in small italics, "_Dedicated to Kirkleigh +Sturgis_." + +"Just like Beethoven's things to the Countess von Something, don't you +know!" Phil murmured, awed and rapturous. + +When Ken laid the pages down at last, Kirk seized on them, and though +they could mean nothing to him but the cool smoothness of paper and the +smell of newly dried printers' ink, he seemed to get an immense +satisfaction from them. + +But the surprise was not yet over. Beneath the copy of the song lay a +much smaller bit of paper, long, narrow, and greenish. It bore such +words as _Central Trust Company_, and _Pay to the Order of Kenelm +Sturgis_. The sum which was to be paid him was such as to make Ken put a +hand dramatically to his forehead. He then produced from his pocket the +money which had so nearly gone off in the pocket of the stranger, and +stacked it neatly beside his plate. + +"One day's bone labor for man and boat," he said. "Less than a quarter +as much as what I get for fifteen minutes' scribbling." + +"And the Maestro says there'll be more," Felicia put in; "because there +are royalties, which I don't understand." + +"But," said Ken, pursuing his line of thought, "I can depend on the +_Dutchman_ and my good right arm, and I _can't_ depend on the Pure Flame +of Inspiration, or whatever it's called, so methinks the Sturgis Water +Line will make its first trip at 8:30 promptly to-morrow morning, as +advertised. All the same," he added jubilantly, "what a tremendous lark +it is, to be sure!" + +And he gave way suddenly to an outburst of the sheer delight which he +really felt, and, leaping up, caught Felicia with one hand and Kirk with +the other. The three executed for a few moments a hilarious +ring-around-a-rosy about the table, till Felicia finally protested at +the congealing state of the supper, and they all dropped breathless to +their seats and fell to without more words. + +After supper, Felicia played the Toad Song on the melodeon until it ran +in all their heads, and Kirk could be heard caroling it, upstairs, when +he was supposed to be settling himself to sleep. + +It was not till Ken was bending over the lamp, preparatory to blowing it +out, that Phil noticed the bruise above his eye. + +"How did you get that, lamb?" she said, touching Ken's forehead, +illuminated by the lamp's glow. + +Ken blew out the flame swiftly, and faced his sister in a room lit only +by the faint, dusky reflection of moonlight without. + +"Oh, I whacked up against something this afternoon," he said. "I'll put +some witch-hazel on it, if you like." + +"I'm so _awfully_ glad about the Toad Song," whispered Felicia, slipping +her hand within his arm. "Good old brother!" + +"Good old Maestro," said Ken; and they went arm in arm up the steep +stairs. + +Ken lighted his sister's candle for her, and took his own into the room +he shared with Kirk. There was no fear of candle-light waking Kirk. He +was very sound asleep, with the covers thrown about, and Ken stood +looking at him for some time, with the candle held above his brother's +tranquil face. "I wonder where he'd have been sleeping to-night if I +hadn't come along just about when I did?" mused Ken. "The innocent +little youngster--he never supposed for a minute that the rapscallion +would do anything but take him home. How's he ever going to learn all +the ways of the wicked world? And what _ever_ possessed him to shoot off +the Toad Pome to the Maestro?" + +Ken put the candle on the bureau and undid his necktie. + +"The blessed little goose!" he added affectionately. + +There is nothing like interesting work to make time pass incredibly +quickly. For the Sturgises were interested in all their labors, even the +"chores" of Applegate Farm. It goes without saying that Kirk's +music--which was the hardest sort of work--absorbed him completely; he +lived in a new world. So, almost before they could believe it, September +came, filling the distance with tranquil haze, and mellowing the flats +to dim orange, threaded with the keen blue inlets of the bay. Asters +began to open lavender stars at the door-stone of Applegate Farm; tall +rich milkweed pressed dusty flower-bunches against the fence, and the +sumach brandished smoldering pyramids of fire along the roadsides. + +Ken came home late, whistling, up from Asquam. Trade for the Sturgis +Water Line was heavy again just now; the hotels and cottages were being +vacated every day, and more baggage than the _Dutchman_ could carry lay +piled in the Sturgis "warehouse" till next morning. Ken's whistle +stopped as he swung into Winterbottom Road and began to climb the hill. +Just at the crest of the rise, where the pale strip of road met the +twilight of the sky, the full moon hung, a golden disc scarcely more +luminous than the sky around it. As he moved up the hill, it moved also, +till it floated clear of the dark juniper-trees and stood high above +them. Crickets were taking up their minor creaking, and there was no +other sound. + +Through the half dusk, the white chimneys of Applegate Farm showed +vaguely, with smoke rising so lazily that it seemed almost a stationary +streak of blue across the trees. What a decent old place it was, thought +Ken. Was it only because it constituted home? No; they had worked to +make it so, and it had ripened and expanded under their hands. + +"I shouldn't mind Mother's seeing it, now," Ken reflected. + +He sighed as he remembered the last difficult letter which he and Phil +had composed--a strictly truthful letter, which said much and told +nothing. He wondered how much longer the fiction would have to be +sustained; when the doctor at Hilltop would sanction a revelation of all +that had been going on since that desolate March day, now so long ago. + +As Ken neared the house, he heard the reedy voice of the organ, and, +stopping beside the lighted window, looked in. Felicia was mending +beside the lamp; Kirk sat at the melodeon, rapturously making music. +From the somewhat vague sweetness of the melody, Ken recognized it as +one of Kirk's own compositions--without beginning, middle, or end, but +with a gentle, eerie harmony all its own. The Maestro, who was +thoroughly modern in his instruction, if old-school himself, was +teaching composition hand in hand with the other branches of music, and +he allowed himself, at times, to become rather enthusiastic. "Even if I +didn't want him to make music of his own," he told Felicia, "I couldn't +stop him. So I supply the bricks and mortar for the foundation. He might +as well build his little tunes rightly from the beginning. He will go +far--yes, far. It is sheer harmony." And the Maestro would sigh deeply, +and nod his fine head. + +Ken, remembering these words with some awe, studied his brother's face, +through the pane, and then came quietly in at the door. Kirk left his +tune unfinished, and launched himself in the direction of Ken, who +scooped him into his arms. + +"Do you know, Phil," Ken said, voicing at once the thought he had felt +all the way up Winterbottom Road; "do you know, I think, after all, this +is the very best thing we could have done." + +"What?" Phil asked, not being a mind-reader. + +"_This_," Ken said, sweeping his arm about the lamplit room. "This +place. We thought it was such a horrible mistake, at first. It _was_ a +sort of venture to take." + +"A happy venture," Felicia murmured, bending over her sewing. "But it +wouldn't have been so happy if the defender of his kindred hadn't slaved +on the high seas 'for to maintain his brither and me,' like _Henry +Martin_ in the ballad." + +"Oh, fiddlestick!" said Ken. "Who wants to loaf around? Speaking of +loaf, I'm hungry." + +"Supper's doing itself on the stove," Phil said. "Look lively with the +table, Kirk." + +Kirk did so,--his efficiency as a table-setter had long since been +proved,--and Ken, as the weary breadwinner, stretched out in a chair. + +"Did you happen to remember," said Felicia, coming to the door, spoon in +hand, "that the Kirk has a birthday this week?" + +"It _has_?" exclaimed Ken. "I say, I'd forgotten." + +"It's going to be nine; think of that!" said Phil. "Woof! My kettle's +boiling over!" She made a hasty exit, while Ken collared his brother and +looked him over. + +"Who'd ha' thunk it!" he said. "Well, well, what's to be done about +this?" + +"Lots," said Felicia, suddenly appearing with the supper. "_Lots!_" + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +THE NINE GIFTS + +Two evenings later, Ken confronted his sister at the foot of the stairs +as she came down from seeing Kirk to bed. + +"Where," said Ken, "is your Braille slate?" + +"_What_," said Felicia, "do you want with a Braille slate, if I may +ask?" + +"You mayn't," said Ken, conclusively. + +"But it makes a difference," Phil argued. "If you want to write Braille +with it,--which seems unlikely,--I'll consider. But if you want it to +prop open the door with, or crack nuts on, or something, you can't have +it." + +"I can think of lots better things to crack nuts on than a Braille +slate," said Ken. "I want to use it for its rightful purpose. Come now, +my girl, out with it!" + +"Wish you luck," said Felicia, going to the educational shelf; "here it +is." + +Ken eyed it mistrustfully--a slab of wood, crossed by a movable metal +strip which was pierced with many small, square openings. "Also," said +Ken, "the alphabet of the language." + +"American Uncontracted, or Revised, Grade One and a Half?" Phil asked +airily. + +"They sound equally bad, but if there's any choice, give me the easiest. +Sounds like geological survey stuff." + +Phil rummaged again, and brought to light an alphabet which she had made +for herself in her early Braille days. + +"And the paper and stuff you use," Ken demanded. + +"_Here_, take everything!" cried Felicia, thrusting out handfuls of +irrelevant books and papers. "Stop asking for things in dribbles." + +Ken settled himself at the table, scowled at the embossed alphabet, and +then clamped a piece of the heavy paper into the slate. He grasped the +little punch firmly, and, with a manner vigorous, if not defiant, he set +to work. + +"You just poke holes in the paper through the squares, eh, and they turn +into humps?" + +"The squares don't turn into humps; the holes do. Don't whack so hard." + +There was silence for a short time, broken only by Ken's mutterings and +the click of the stylus. Felicia looked up, then gazed meditatively +across the table at the enterprise. + +"Is it for a Hebrew person?" she inquired gently. + +"_Hebrew?_" Ken said; "I should rather say not. Why?" + +"You're writing it backward--like Yiddish." + +"I'm doing it from left to right, which is the way one usually writes," +said Ken, in a superior tone. "You're looking at it upside-down. You're +twisted." + +"The holes," said Felicia, mildly, "in order to become readable humps on +the other side, have to be punched right to left." + +"Oh!" said Ken. After a moment of thought he exclaimed, somewhat +indignant: "You mean to say, then, that you have to reverse the +positions of all these blooming dots, besides writing 'em backward?" + +"Yes." + +"You have to read 'em one way, and write 'em another, and remember 'em +_both_?" + +"You do." + +"And--and Kirk does that?" + +"Yes; and he knows Revised, Grade One and a Half, too, and our alphabet +besides, and embossed music, a little, and arithmetic, and--" + +"Don't," said Ken. "It makes a fellow feel cheap." + +With which he removed the paper and clamped in a fresh sheet. The work +progressed silently; Ken occasionally gnashed his teeth and tore away +the paper, but after a time the mistakes grew fewer, and Felicia, +looking across at her brother's brown, handsome face, found it tranquil +and sober, an earnest absorption in his gray eyes and a gently whimsical +smile about his mouth. She knew of whom he was thinking, and smiled +tenderly herself as she watched his big hand plod systematically and +doggedly across the unfamiliar way. Bedtime found Ken elated and +exhibiting to his sister several neatly embossed sheets of paper. + +"'All day my--'" read Felicia. + +"Murder!" cried Ken. "I forgot you could read the stuff! Go to bed, go +to bed!" + +At a rather early hour the next morning, Felicia was awakened by the +stealthy approach to her bedside of a small and cautious figure in +pajamas. It stood quite still beside the bed, listening to find out +whether or not she was asleep. She spread her arms noiselessly, and +then flung them about the pajamaed one. When the confusion of kisses, +hugs, and birthday greetings had subsided, and Kirk was tucked under the +quilt, he said: + +"Now see me a story." + +"But I can't--not like Ken," Felicia protested. + +"Oh, _Phil_!" Kirk said in a tone of withering reproach. "Silly! A +birthday special one, please." + +Felicia thought for some time; then she said: + +"It's not very nice, but it's a sort of birthday one. It's called The +Nine Gifts." + +"One for each year," said Kirk, wriggling comfortably. + +"Exactly. Once upon a time there was a nice person who lived in an old +house on a hill. One autumn day was his birthday, but he wasn't thinking +of any gifts, because there could be no one to give him anything, and he +was quite poor--as far as gold and silver went. So he was feeling just a +little sad, because people like to have gifts. He came downstairs and +unlocked his door, and opened it to the beautiful young day all strung +with dew--" + +"Could he see it?" asked Kirk. + +"No," said Felicia, "he couldn't." + +"Then it _was_ me." + +"We-e-ll," said his sister, "possibly. But when he opened the door, in +came the wind, all as fresh and dewy as a dawn-wind can be. It ruffled +up his hair, and fluttered the curtains at the windows, and ran all +about the room. Then it said: + +"'I am the wind. I give you the breath of the dawn, and the first sigh +of the waking fields and hedge-rows, and the cool stillness of the +forest that is always awake. Take my birthday kiss upon your forehead!' + +"And that was the First Gift. The person was quite surprised, but he was +very much pleased, too. He went out and brought in some bread and milk +for his breakfast, and then he went to get some water at the well. There +was a gentle, delicious warmth all about in the air, and a far-off, +round voice said: + +"'I am the sun. I wrap you in a glowing mantle of warmth and light. I +make the earth grow and sing for you. It is I who wake the dawn-wind and +the birds. Take my warm kiss on your upturned face.' + +"And that was the Second Gift. The person thanked the sun very much, +and went in, with his heart all warmed, to eat his breakfast. As he sat +eating, in at the window came all manner of little sounds--twitterings +and sighings and warblings and rustlings, and all the little voices said +together: + +"'We are the sounds of the open. We are the birds in the russet meadow, +and the whispering of the orchard trees, the cheep of the crickets in +the long grass, and the whole humming, throbbing voice of out-of-doors. +Take our kiss upon your waiting senses.' + +"That was the Third Gift. The person ran out at the door to thank the +little sounds, when what should meet him but a host of the most +delicious scents! + +"'We are the smell of the tawny grass, and the good tang of the +wood-smoke. We are the fragrance of ripening apples in the orchard, and +honeysuckle over the wall. We are the clean, cool, mellowing atmosphere +of September. Breathe our sweetness!' + +"That was the Fourth Gift. To be sure, the nice person was quite +overwhelmed by this time, for he never had expected such a thing. As he +stooped to thank the delicious scents, he touched a little clump of +asters by the door-stone. + +"'Greeting!' they piped. 'We are the flowers. We are the asters by the +door, and burnished goldenrod in the orchard; trumpeting honeysuckle on +the fence, sumach burning by the roadside, juicy milkweed by the gate. +Take our cool, green kiss on your gentle fingers!' + +"He stroked their little purple heads, and flung himself down beside +them for a moment, to thank them. As he did so, a big, warm voice came +from beneath him: + +"'I am the earth. I am the cool clasp of the tall grass by the gate. I +am the crispness of the heath-grass on the upland. I will rock you to +sleep on my great, grass-carpeted breast. I will give you rest and +security. Take my great kiss on your body.' + +"That was the Sixth Gift. Dear me! the person was delighted. He lay with +his cheek to the good earth's heart, thanking it, when a big gusty voice +came swinging out of the east. + +"'I am the sea. I give you the sound of water about the boat's bow, and +the cry of the gulls; the wet, salt smack of me, the damp fog on your +face, and the call out into the wide places.' + +"The person jumped up and turned his face to the blue glint of the bay, +and thanked the sea for the Seventh Gift. Then he went into the house to +tidy up the hearth. As he came into the room, a queer, gentle, melodious +voice, which seemed to come from the organ, said: + +"'I am Music. I hold the key to enchantment. It is I who will sum up for +you all the other gifts and make them mine--and yours. Take my kiss +within your soul.' + +"And that was the Eighth Gift," Felicia paused. + +"But the ninth?" Kirk whispered. + +"I'm trying to think of it." + +Kirk clapped his hands suddenly. + +"_I_ know what it was!" he cried. "Don't you? Oh, _don't_ you, Phil?" + +"No, I don't. What was it?" + +"Shall I finish?" Kirk asked. + +"Please do." + +"And the person said, 'Thank you,' to the organ," Kirk proceeded +gleefully; "and then in the door what should stand but a beautiful lady. +And _she_ said: 'I'm your sister Felicia--Happiness.' And _that_ was the +most best gift of _all_!" + +"Naughty person!" said Felicia. "After all those really nice gifts! +But--but if you will have it that, she said, 'Take my kiss upon your +heart of hearts.' Oh, Kirk--darling--I love you!" + +Flowers twined Kirk's chair at the breakfast table--golden honeysuckle, +a sweet, second blooming, and clematis from the Maestro's hedge. Kirk +hung above it, touching, admiring, breathing the sweetness of the +honeysuckle; aware, also, of many others of the Nine Gifts already +perceptible about the room. But his fingers encountered, as he reached +for his spoon, a number of more substantial presents stacked beside his +plate. There was the green jersey which Felicia had been knitting at +privately for some time. He hauled it on over his head at once, and +emerged from its embrace into his sister's. There was, too, a model +boat, quite beautifully rigged and fitted, the painstaking care with +which it was fashioned testifying to the fact that Ken had not been +quite so forgetful of his brother's approaching birthday as he had +seemed to be. "She's called the _Celestine_," said Ken, as Kirk's +fingers sought out rapturously the details of the schooner. "It's +painted on her stern. She's not rigged according to Hoyle, I'm afraid; I +was rather shaky about some of it." + +"She has a flag," Kirk crowed delightedly. "Two of 'em! And a little +anchor--and--" he became more excited as he found each thing: "oh, Ken!" + +There was another gift--a flat one. A book of five or six short stories +and poems that Kirk had loved best to hear his sister read--all written +out in Braille for him in many of Felicia's spare hours. Now he could +read them himself, when Phil had no time to give him. Breakfast was +quite neglected; the cereal grew cold. Kirk, who had not, indeed, +expected so much as the nine gifts of Phil's tale, was quite overcome by +these things, which his brother and sister had feared were little +enough. There was one thing more--some sheets of paper covered with +Braille characters, tucked beside Kirk's plate. + +"That's Ken's handiwork," Felicia said, hastily disclaiming any finger +in the enterprise. "I don't know _what_ you may find!" + +"It's perfectly all right, now," Ken protested. "You'll see! You can +read it, can't you, Kirk?" + +Kirk was frowning and laughing at once. + +"It's a little bit funny," he said. "But I didn't know you could do it +at all. Oh, listen to it!" + +He declaimed this, with some pauses: + +"TO MY RELATIVE, K. S. + +"While I am at my watery work + All up and down the bay, +I think about my brother Kirk + A million times a day. + +"All day my job seems play to me, + My duties they are light, +Because I know I'm going to see + My brother Kirk that night. + +"I ponder over, at my biz, + How nice he is +(That smile of his!), + And eke his cheerful, open phiz. + +"And also I am proud of him, + I sing the praises loud of him, +And all the wondering multitude + At once exclaims: 'Gee Whiz!' + +"It seems this relative of mine + Is going to have a fete. +They tell me that he'll now be nine, + Instead of half-past eight. + How simply fine! + We'll dance and dine! + We'll pass the foaming bowl of wine! + +"And here's our toast +(We proudly boast. +There isn't any need to urge us): +_Hip, Hip, Hooray for Kirkleigh Sturgis_!" + +Ken gave the three cheers promptly, and then said: "That one's silly. +The other's the way I really feel. Oh, don't read it aloud!" + +Kirk, who had opened his mouth to begin the next page, closed it again, +and followed the lines of Braille silently. This is what he read: + +"At eight o'clock on the day you were born, +I found a fairy under a thorn; +He looked at me hard, he looked at me queerly, +And he said, 'Ah, Ken, you shall love him dearly.' + +"I was then myself but a wee small lad, +But I well remember the look that he had; +And I thought that his words came wondrous true, +For whom could I love more dear than you? + +"To-day at dawn I was out alone, +I found a wee fairy beside a stone; +And he said, as he looked at me, far above him, +'Ah, Ken, you have only begun to love him!'" + +There could be no possible answer to this but a rush from Kirk and an +onslaught of hugs, from which it was long before Ken could disentangle +himself. + +"Oh, what have I done!" Ken cried. "Yes, of course I mean it, silly! But +do, do have a care--we're all mixed up with the marmalade and the +oatmeal, as it is!" + +Ken had proclaimed the day a half-holiday for himself, but Kirk was to +go with him on the morning trip, and Phil, too, if she wanted to go. She +did want, so Applegate Farm was locked up, and three radiant Sturgises +walked the warm, white ribbon of Winterbottom Road to the _Dutchman_. +Kirk was allowed to steer the boat, under constant orders from Ken, who +compared the wake to an inebriated corkscrew. He also caught a fish over +the stern, while Ken was loading up at Bayside. Then, to crown the day's +delight, under the door at Applegate, when they returned, was thrust a +silver-edged note from the Maestro, inviting them all to supper at his +house, in honor of the occasion. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +"ROSES IN THE MOONLIGHT" + +The Maestro's house wore always a mantle of gentle aloofness, like +something forgotten among its over-grown garden paths. To Kirk, it was a +place under a spell; to the others, who could see its grave, +vine-covered, outer walls and its dim interior crowded with strange and +wonderful things, it seemed a lodging place for memories, among which +the Maestro moved as if he himself were living a remembered dream. + +On this rich September afternoon, they found him standing on the upper +terrace, waiting for them. He took Kirk's hand, offered his arm +gallantly to Felicia, and they all entered the high-studded hall, where +the firelight, reaching rosy shafts from the library, played +catch-as-catch-can with the shadows. + +Supper, a little later, was served in the dining-room--the first meal +that the Sturgises had eaten there. Tall candles burned in taller silver +candlesticks; their light flowed gently across the gleaming cloth, +touched the Maestro's white hair, and lost itself timidly in the dim +area outside the table. Kirk was enthroned in a big carved chair at the +foot of the table, very grave and happy, with a candle at either side. + +"A fit shrine for devotion," murmured the Maestro, looking across at +him, and then, turning, busied himself vigorously with the carving. + +It was a quite wonderful supper--banquet would have been a more fitting +name for it, the Sturgises thought. For such food was not seen on the +little table at Applegate Farm. And there was raspberry wine, in which +to drink Kirk's health, and the Maestro stood up and made a beautiful +speech. There was also a cake, with nine candles flaring bravely,--no +one had ever before thought to give Kirk a birthday cake with candles +that he could not see, and he was deeply impressed. + +And after it was all over, they gathered content about the library fire, +and the Maestro went to the piano. + +"Kirk," he said quietly, "I have no very exciting present for you. But +once, long ago, I made a song for a child on his birthday. He was just +as old as you. He has no longer any need of it--so I give it, my dear, +to you. It is the greatest gift I have to give." + +In the silence that followed, there crept into the firelit room the +star-clear notes of a little prelude. Then the Maestro sang softly: + +"Roses in the moonlight, + To-night all thine, +Pale in the shade, and bright + In the star-shine; +Roses and lilies white, + Dear child of mine! + +My heart I give to thee, + This day all thine; +At thy feet let it be-- + It is the sign +Of all thou art to me, + Dear child--" + +But the poor Maestro could not finish the verse. He swung about on the +piano-stool, trying to frame a laughing apology. Kirk went to him +instantly, both hands outstretched in his haste. His fingers found the +Maestro's bowed shoulders; his arms went tight about the Maestro's +neck. In his passionately whispered confidence the old gentleman must +have found solace, for he presently smiled,--a real smile,--and then +still keeping Kirk beside him, began playing a sonata. Ken and Felicia, +sunk unobtrusively in the big chairs at the hearth, were each aware of a +subtle kindredship between these two at the piano--a something which +they could not altogether understand. + +"He brings out a side of Kirk that we don't know about," Felicia +thought. "It must be the music. Oh, what music!" + +It was difficult to leave a place of such divine sounds, but Kirk's +bedtime was long past, and the moon stood high and cold above the +Maestro's garden. + +"Is it shining on all the empty pools and things?" Kirk asked, at the +hedge. + +"Yes, and on the meadow, and the silver roof of Applegate Farm," Phil +told him. + +"'Roses in the moonlight, to-night all thine,'" Kirk sang dreamily. + +"Do you mean to say you can sing it so soon?" Ken gasped. + +"He ran away in the moonlight," Kirk murmured. "Away to sea. Would you, +Ken?" + +"Not if I had a father like the Maestro, and a brother like you," +said Ken, fitting the key to the door of Applegate Farm. + +A very few days after Kirk had begun on his new year, he and Felicia +went into Asquam to collect a few things of which the farm-house stood +in need. For there had been a hint that Mrs. Sturgis might soon leave +Hilltop, and Felicia was determined that Applegate Farm should wear its +best face for her mother, who did not, as yet, even know of its +existence. A great many little things, which Felicia had long been +meaning to buy, now seemed to find a legitimate hour for their purchase. +So she and Kirk went the round of the Asquam Utility Emporium, B. B. +Jones Co., and the Beacon Light Store, from each of which places of +business they emerged with another package. + +"I told Ken we'd meet him at the boat," Felicia said, "so we might as +well walk over there now, and all come home together. Oh, how thick the +fog is!" + +"Is it?" Kirk said. "Oh, yes, there goes the siren." + +"I can hardly see the _Dutchman_, it's so white at the end of the pier. +Ken isn't there; he must have gone with Hop to see about something." + +"Let's wait in the boat," Kirk suggested. "I love the gluggy way it +sounds, and the way it sloshes up and down." + +They put the bundles on the wharf and climbed into the boat. The water +slapped vigorously against its side, for the tide was running, and +above, a wraith-like gull occasionally dropped one creaking, querulous +cry. + +"Goodness!" Felicia exclaimed, "with all our shopping, I forgot the +groceries! I'll run back. I'll not be a minute. Tell Ken when he comes." +She scrambled up the steps and ran down the pier, calling back to Kirk: +"Stay just where you are!" + +There were more people in the grocery store than Felicia had ever seen +there, for it was near the closing hour. She was obliged to wait much +longer than she had expected. When she returned to the wharf, Ken was +not in sight. Neither was the _Flying Dutchman_. + +"How queer!" Phil thought. "Ken must have taken her out. How funny of +him; they knew I was coming right back." + +She sat down on a pile-head and began humming to herself as she counted +over her packages and added up her expenditure. She looked up presently, +and saw Ken walking toward her. He was alone. Even then, it was a whole +second before there came over her a hideous, sickening rush of fear. + +She flew to meet him. "Where's the boat--_Ken_, where's the boat?" + +"The boat? I left her temporarily tied up. What's the mat--" At that +moment he saw the empty gray water at the pier head. Two breathless +voices spoke together: + +"Where's Kirk?" + +"He was in the boat," Felicia gasped hoarsely. "I ran back after the +groceries." + +Ken was at the end of the wharf in one agonized leap. In another second +he had the frayed, wet end of rope in his hand. + +"That salvaged line!" he said. "Phil, couldn't you _see_ that only her +stern line was made fast? I left her half-moored till I came back. That +rope was rotten, and it got jammed in here and chafed till it parted." + +"It's my fault," Felicia breathed. + +"Mine," Ken snapped. "Oh, my heavens! look at the fog!" + +"And the tide?" Felicia hardly dared ask. + +"Going out--to sea." + +A blank, hideous silence followed, broken only by the reiterated warning +of the dismal siren at the lighthouse. + +"It's like looking for a needle in a haystack. A boat would have to comb +every foot of the bay in this fog, and night's coming. How long have you +been gone?" + +Felicia looked at her watch. She was astonished to find it had been over +half an hour. + +"Heaven knows where the boat could have got to in half an hour," Ken +muttered, "with this tide. And the wind's going to sea, too." + +Felicia shook him wildly by the arm. "Do you realize--Kirk's in that +boat!" she moaned. "Kirk's _in_ that boat--do you realize it?" + +Ken tore himself free. + +"No, I don't want to realize it," he said in a harsh, high voice. "Get +back to the house, Phil! You can't do anything. I'm going to the harbor +master now--I'm going everywhere. I may not be back to-night." He gave +her a little push, "Go, Phil." + +But he ran after her. "Poor old Phil--mustn't worry," he said gently. +"Get back to the farm before it's dark and have it all cheerful for us +when we come in--Kirk and I." + +And then he plunged into the reek, and Felicia heard the quick beat of +his steps die away down the wharf. + +The harbor master was prompt in action, but not encouraging. He got off +with Ken in his power boat in surprisingly short order. The coast guard, +who had received a very urgent telephone message, launched the +surf-boat, and tried vainly to pierce the blank wall of fog--now +darkening to twilight--with their big searchlight. Lanterns, lost at +once in the murk, began to issue from wharf-houses as men started on +foot up the shore of the bay. + +Ken, in the little hopeless motor-boat, sat straining his eyes beyond +the dripping bow, till he saw nothing but flashes of light that did not +exist. The _Flying Dutchman_--the _Flying Dutchman_--why had he not +known that she must be a boat of ill omen? Joe Pasquale--drowned in +February. "We got him, but we never did find his boat"--"cur'ous +tide-racks 'round here--cur'ous tide-racks." + +The harbor master was really saying that now, as he had said it before. +Yes, the tide ran cruelly fast beside the boat, black and swirling and +deep. A gaunt something loomed into the light of the lantern, and made +Ken's heart leap. It was only a can-buoy, lifting lonely to the swell. + +Far off, the siren raised its mourning voice. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +"THE SEA IS A TYRANT" + +Ken stumbled into the open door of Applegate Farm at three the next +morning. Felicia was asleep in a chair by the cold ashes of the fire. A +guttering candle burned on the table. She woke instantly and stared at +him with wide eyes. + +"What is it?" she said, and then sprang up. "Alone?" + +"Yes," Ken said. "Not yet. I'm going back in a little while. I wanted to +tell you how everybody is working, and all." + +She ran to bring him something to eat, while he flung himself down +before the hearth, dead tired. + +"The fog's still down heavy," he said, when she came back. "The coast +guard's been out all night. There are men on shore, too, and some other +little boats." + +"But the tide was running out," Phil said. "He's gone. Kirk's--gone, +Ken!" + +"No," Ken said, between his teeth. "No, Phil. Oh, no, no!". He +got up and shook himself. "Go to bed, now, and _sleep_. The idea of +sitting up with a beastly cold candle!" + +He kissed her abruptly and unexpectedly and stalked out at the door, a +weary, disheveled figure, in the first pale, fog-burdened gleam of dawn. + +It was some time after the _Flying Dutchman_ parted her one insufficient +mooring-rope before Kirk realized that the sound of the water about her +had changed from a slap to a gliding ripple. There was no longer the +short tug and lurch as she pulled at her painter and fell back; there +was no longer the tide sound about the gaunt piles of the wharf. Kirk, a +little apprehensive, stumbled aft and felt for the stern-line. It gave +in his hand, and the slack, wet length of it flew suddenly aboard, +smacking his face with its cold and slimy end. He knew, then, what had +happened, but he felt sure that the boat must still be very near the +wharf--perhaps drifting up to the rocky shore between the piers. He +clutched the gunwale and shouted: "Ken! Oh, Ken!" He did not know that +he was shouting in exactly the wrong direction, and the wind carried his +voice even farther from shore. His voice sounded much less loud than he +had expected. He tried calling Felicia's name, but it seemed even less +resonant than Ken's. He stopped calling, and stood listening. Nothing +but the far-off fog-siren, and the gulls' faint cries overhead. The wind +was blowing fresher against his cheek, for the boat was in mid-channel +by this time. The fog clung close about him; he could feel it on the +gunwale, wet under his hands; it gathered on his hair and trickled down +his forehead. The broken rope slid suddenly off the stern sheets and +twined itself clammily about his bare knee. He started violently, and +then picked it off with a shiver. + +[Illustration: The slack length of it flew suddenly aboard] + +The lighthouse siren, though still distant, sounded nearer, which meant +that the boat was drifting seaward. Kirk realized that, all at once, and +gave up his shouting altogether. He sat down in the bottom of the boat, +clasped his knees, and tried to think. But it was not easy to think. He +had never in his life wanted so much to _see_ as he did now. It was so +different, being alone in the dark, or being in it with Ken or Felicia +or the Maestro on the kind, warm, friendly land. He remembered quite well +how the Maestro had said: "The sea is a tyrant. Those she claims, she +never releases." + +The sea's voice hissed along the side of the boat, now,--the voice of a +monster ready to leap aboard,--and he couldn't see to defend himself! He +flung his arms out wildly into his eternal night, and then burst +suddenly into tears. He cried for some time, but it was the thought of +Ken which made him stop. Ken would have said, "Isn't there enough salt +water around here already, without such a mess of tears?" + +That was a good idea--to think about Ken. He was such a definite, solid, +comforting thing to think about. Kirk almost forgot the stretch of cold +gray water that lay between them now. It wasn't sensible to cry, +anyway. It made your head buzzy, and your throat ache. Also, afterward, +it made you hungry. Kirk decided that it was unwise to do anything at +this particular moment which would make him hungry. Then he remembered +the hardtack which Ken kept in the bow locker to refresh himself with +during trips. Kirk fumbled for the button of the locker, and found it +and the hardtack. He counted them; there were six. He put five of them +back and nibbled the other carefully, to make it last as long as +possible. + +The air was more chill, now. Kirk decided that it must be night, though +he didn't feel sleepy. He crawled under the tarpaulin which Ken kept to +cover the trunks in foul weather. In doing so, he bumped against the +engine. There was another maddening thing! A good, competent engine, +sitting complacently in the middle of the boat, and he not able to start +it! But even if he had known how to run it, he reflected that he +couldn't steer the boat. So he lay still under the tarpaulin, which was +dry, as well as warm, and tried to think of all sorts of pleasant +things. Felicia had told him, when she gave him the green sweater on his +birthday, that a hug and kiss were knit in with each stitch of it, and +that when he wore it he must think of her love holding him close. It +held him close now; he could feel the smooth soft loop of her hair as +she bent down to say good-night; he could hear her sing, "_Do-do, p'tit +frere_." + +That was a good idea--to sing! He clasped his hands nonchalantly behind +his head, and began the first thing that came to his mind: + +"Roses in the moonlight + To-night all thine, +Pale in the shade--" + +But he did not finish. For the wind's voice was stronger, and the waves +drowned the little tune, so lonely there in the midst of the empty +water. Kirk cried himself to sleep, after all. + +He could not even tell when the night gave way to cold day-break, for +the fog cloaked everything from the sun's waking warmth. It might have +been a week or a month that he had drifted on in the _Flying +Dutchman_--it certainly seemed as long as a month. But he had eaten only +two biscuits and was not yet starved, so he knew that it could not be +even so much as a week. But he did not try to sing now. He was too cold, +and he was very thirsty. He crouched under the tarpaulin, and presently +he ate another hardtack biscuit. He could not hear the lighthouse +fog-signal at all, now, and the waves were much bigger under the boat. +They lifted her up, swung her motionless for a moment, and then let her +slide giddily into the trough of another sea. "Even if I reached a +desert island," Kirk thought mournfully, "I don't know what I'd do. +People catch turkles and shoot at parrots and things, but they can see +what they're doing." + +The boat rolled on, and Kirk began to feel quite wretchedly sick, and +thirstier than ever. He lay flat under the tarpaulin and tried to count +minutes. Sixty, quite fast--that was one minute. Had he counted two +minutes, now, or was it three? Then he found himself counting on and +on--a hundred and fifty-one, a hundred and fifty-two. + +"I wish I'd hurry up and die," said poor Kirk out loud. + +Then his darkness grew more dark, for he could no longer think straight. +There was nothing but long swirling waves of dizziness and a rushing +sound. + +"Phil," Kirk tried to say. "Mother." + +At about this time, Ken was standing in the government wireless station, +a good many miles from Asquam. He had besieged an astonished young +operator early in the morning, and had implored him to call every ship +at sea within reach. Now, in the afternoon, he was back again, to find +out whether any replies had come. + +"No boat sighted," all the hurrying steamers had replied. "Fog down +heavy. Will keep look-out." + +Ken had really given up all hope, long before. Yet--could he ever give +up hope, so long as life lasted? Such strange things had happened--Most +of all, he could not let Phil give up. Yet he knew that he could not +keep on with this pace much longer--no sleep, and virtually no food. But +then, if he gave up the search, if he left a single thing undone while +there was still a chance, could he ever bear himself again? He sat in a +chair at the wireless station, looking dully at the jumping blue spark. + +"Keep on with it, please," he said. "I'm going out in a boat again." + +"The fog's lifting, I think," said the operator. + +"Oh, thank the Lord!" groaned Ken. "It was that--the not being able to +_see_." + +Yes--Kirk had felt that, too. + +At Applegate Farm, Felicia wandered from room to room like a shadow, +mechanically doing little tasks that lay to her hand. She was alone in +her distress; they had not yet told the Maestro of this disaster, for +they knew he would share their grief. Felicia caught the sound of a +faint jingling from without, and moved slowly to the gate, where Mr. +Hobart was putting the mail into the box. She opened her mother's letter +listlessly as she walked back to the house, and sat down upon the +door-step to read it--perhaps it would take her mind for a moment, this +odd, unconscious letter, addressed even to a house which no longer +sheltered them. But the letter smote her with new terror. + +"Oh, if you only knew, my dear, dear chicks, what it +will be to escape this kindly imprisonment--what it will +mean to see you all again! I can hardly wait to come +up the dear old familiar path to 24 Westover Street and +hug you all--I'll hug Ken, even if he hates it, and Kirk, +my most precious baby! They tell me I must be very +careful still, but I know that the sight of you will be +all that I need for the finishing remedy. So expect me, +then, by the 12.05 on Wednesday, and good-by till then, +my own dears." + +Felicia sat on the door-stone, transfixed. Her mother coming home, on +Wednesday--so much sooner than they had expected! She did not even know +of the new house; and if she were to come to a home without Kirk--if +there were never to be Kirk! Almost a week remained before Wednesday; +how could she be put off? What if the week went by without hope; no +hope, ever? Felicia sat there for hours, till the sun of late afternoon +broke through the fog at last, and the mellow fields began one by one to +reappear, reaching into the hazy distance. Felicia rose and went slowly +into the house. On top of the organ lay the book of stories and poems +she had written out in Braille for Kirk. It lay open, as he had left it, +and she glanced at the page. + +"When the voices of children are heard on the green, + And laughing is heard on the hill, +My heart is at rest within my breast, + And everything else is still. +Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down, + And the dews of the night arise.'". .. . + +Felicia gave up the struggle with her grief. Leaving the door of +Applegate Farm wide, she fled blindly to the Maestro. He was playing to +himself and smiling when she crept into the library, but he stopped +instantly when he saw her face. Before she could help herself, she had +told him everything, thrust her mother's letter into his hand, and then +gave way to the tears she had fought so long. The Maestro made no sign +nor motion. His lips tightened, and his eyes blazed suddenly, but that +was all. + +He was all solicitude for Felicia. She must not think of going back to +the empty farm-house. He arranged a most comfortable little supper +beside the fire, and even made her smile, with his eager talk, all +ringing with hope and encouragement. And finally he put her in charge of +his sympathetic little housekeeper, who tucked her up in a great, dark, +soft bed. + +Left alone in the library, the Maestro paced unsteadily up and down. "It +is the sea that takes them!" he whispered. "It took my son; now it has +taken one whom I loved as my son." + +He sank down upon the piano-stool and gazed at the sheet of music on the +music-rack. It was Kirk's last exercise, written out carefully in the +embossed type that the Maestro had been at such pains to learn and +teach. Something like a sob shook the old musician. He raised clenched, +trembling fists above his head, and brought them down, a shattering +blow, upon the keyboard. Then he sat still, his face buried in his arms +on the shaken piano. Felicia, lying stiff and wide-eyed in the great +bed above, heard the crash of the hideous discord, and shuddered. She +had been trying to remember the stately, comforting words of the prayer +for those in peril on the sea, but now, frightened, she buried her face +in the pillow. + +"Oh, dear God," she faltered. "You--You must bring him back--You +_must_!" + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +THE _CELESTINE_ PLAYS HER PART + +"He's a deader," said one of the men, pulling off his watch-cap. + +"No, he ain't," said another. "He's warm." + +"But look at his eyes," said the first. "They ain't right." + +"Where's the old man?" inquired one. + +"Skipper's taking a watch below, arter the fog; don't yer go knockin' +him up now, Joe." + +"Wait till the mate comes. Thunder, why don't yer wrop somep'n round the +kid, you loon?" + +The big schooner was getting under way again. The mate's voice spoke +sharply to the helmsman. + +"Helm up--steady. Nothing off--stead-y." + +Then he left the quarter-deck and strode rapidly down to the little +group amidships. He was a tall man, with a brown, angular face, and +deep-set, rather melancholy, blue eyes. His black hair was just +beginning to gray above his temples, and several lines, caused more by +thought than age, scored his lean face. + +"What have we picked up, here, anyway?" he demanded. "Stand off, and +let me look." + +There was not much to see--a child in a green jersey, with blown, damp +hair and a white face. + +"You tink he's dead?" A big Swede asked the question. + +The mate plunged a quick hand inside the green sweater. + +"No, he's not. But he's blind. Get out with that stuff, Jolak, what d'ye +think this is? Get me some brandy, somebody." + +Jolak retired with the pickled cabbage he had offered as a restorative. +No one looked to see where the brandy came from on a ship where none was +supposed to be but in the medicine chest. It came, however, without +delay, and the mate opened the flask. + +"Now," he said, when he had poured some of its contents down the child's +throat, and lifted him from the deck, "let me through." + +The first thing of which Kirk was conscious was a long, swinging motion, +unlike the short roll of the _Dutchman_. There was also a complex +creaking and sighing, a rustling and rattling. There was a most curious, +half-disagreeable, half-fascinating smell. Kirk lay quietly on something +which seemed much softer and warmer than the bottom of the _Flying +Dutchman_, and presently he became aware of a soft strumming sound, and +of a voice which sang murmurously: + +"Off Cape de Gatte +I lost my hat, +And where d'ye think I found it? +In Port Mahon +Under a stone +With all the girls around it." + +"I like that," said Kirk, in a small voice. "Go on." + +But the singing stopped immediately, and Kirk feared that he had only +dreamed it, after all. However, a large, warm hand was laid quite +substantially on his forehead, and the same voice that had been singing, +said: + +"H'm! Thought you'd have another go at the old world, after all?" + +"Where is this?" Kirk asked. + +"This is the four-mast schooner _Celestine_, returning from South +America. I am Martin, mate of said schooner--at your service. Hungry?" + +"That's funny," said Kirk; "the boat Ken gave me is called the +_Celestine_. And _she's_ a four-masted schooner. Where's Ken?" + +"I'm sorry--I don't know. Hungry?" + +"I think I am," said Kirk. + +Certainly the mate of the _Celestine_ had a most strong and comfortable +arm wherewith to raise a person. He administered bread and hot condensed +milk, and Kirk began to realize that he was very hungry indeed. + +"Now you go to sleep," Mr. Martin advised, after his brief manner. +"Warm, now?" + +Yes, Kirk was quite warm and cozy, but very much bewildered, and +desirous of asking a hundred questions. These the mate forbade. + +"You go to sleep," he commanded. + +"Then please sing another tune," Kirk said. "What was that you were +playing on?" + +"Violin," said Mr. Martin. "Fiddle. I was plunking it like a banjo. Now +I'll play it, if you'll stop talking." + +Kirk did, and the mate began to play. His music was untaught, and he +himself had made up the strange airs he played. They sighed fitfully +through the little cabin like the rush of wind and water without; +blended with it, mingled with the hundred little voices of the ship. The +_Celestine_ slipped on up the coast, singing softly to herself, and Kirk +fell asleep with the undulating wail of the violin and the whisper of +water filling his half-awakened senses. + +He woke abruptly, much later, and called for Felicia suddenly; then, +recollecting hazily where he was, for Mr. Martin. Hearing no sound, he +was frightened, and cried out in remembered terror. + +"Steady!" said the mate's voice. "What's the trouble?" + +"I don't know," said Kirk. "I--I think I need to talk to somebody. There +hasn't been anybody for so long." + +"Well, go ahead," said the mate. "I'm in my bunk. If you think there's +room enough, I'll put you in here. More sociable, rather." + +There was not much room, but Kirk was so thankful to clasp a human being +once more, that he did not care how narrow the quarters might be. He put +his cheek against the mate's arm, and they lay silent, the man very +stiff and unyielding. "The Maestro would like to hear you play," Kirk +murmured. "He loves queer tunes like that. He even likes the ones I make +up." + +"Oh, you make up tunes, do you?" + +"Little ones. But he makes wonderful ones,--and he plays wonderfully, +too." + +"Who?" + +"The Maestro." + +"Who's he?" + +Kirk told him--at great length. He likewise unburdened his heart, which +had been steeped so long in loneliness and terror, and recounted the +wonder and beauty of Applegate Farm, and Felicia and Ken, and the model +ship, and the Maestro's waiting garden, and all that went to make up his +dear, familiar world, left so long ago, it seemed. + +"But," he said rather mournfully, "I don't know whether I shall ever see +any of them again, if we just keep on sailing and sailing. Are you going +back to South America again?" + +The mate laughed a little. "No," he said. "The _Celestine's_ going to +Bedford. We can't put her off her course to drop you at Asquam--harbor's +no good, anyhow. My time's up when she docks. I'll take you home." + +"Have you always been mate of the _Celestine_?" Kirk inquired. + +"I have not," said Mr. Martin. "I signed aboard of her at Rio this trip, +to get up into the Christian world again. I've been deckhand and seaman +and mate on more vessels than I can count--in every part of the +uncivilized world. I skippered one ship, even--pestilential tub that she +was." + +He fell silent after this speech, longer than any he had made so far. + +"Then I'll get home," Kirk said. "_Home_. Can't we let 'em know, or +anything? I suppose they've been worrying." + +"I think it likely that they have," said the mate. "No, this ship's got +no wireless. I'll send 'em a telegram when we dock to-morrow." + +"Thank you," said Kirk. Then, after a long pause: "Oh, if you knew how +awful it was out there." + +"I know," said Mr. Martin. + +The _Celestine_ was bowling into Bedford Harbor with a fair wind. Kirk, +in a reefer any number of sizes too large for him, sat on a +hatch-coaming and drank in the flying wonder of the schooner's way. He +was sailing on a great ship! How surprised Ken would be--and envious, +too, for Ken had always longed to sail in a ship. The wind soughed in +the sails and sang in the rigging, and the water flew past the +_Celestine_ and bubbled away behind her in a seething curve of foam. Mr. +Martin stood looking up at the smooth, rounded shape of the main +topsail, and whistling the song about the hat which he had lost and so +miraculously found. He looked more than usually thoughtful and +melancholy. + +A fussy tug took the _Celestine_ the last stage of her journey, and +early afternoon found her warped in to the wharf where Ken had seen her +on the eve of her departure. Then, she had been waking to action at the +beginning of a long cruise; now, a battered gull with gray, folded +wings, she lay at the dock, pointing her bowsprit stiffly up to the +dingy street where horses tramped endlessly over the cobblestones. The +crew was jubilant. Some were leaving for other ships; some were going on +shore leave, with months' pay unspent. + +"I'm attending to this salvage, sir," said Mr. Martin, to the captain. +"My folks live up Asquam way. I'll take him along with me." + +Asquam's languid representative of the telegraph knocked upon the door +of Applegate Farm, which was locked. Then he thrust the yellow envelope +as far under the door as possible and went his way. An hour later, a +tall man and a radiant small boy pushed open the gate on Winterbottom +Road and walked across the yellow grass. Kirk broke away and ran toward +the house, hands outflung. + +"Phil! Ken!" he called jubilantly. + +His face shadowed as his hands came against the unyielding door of the +house. + +"Phil--" he faltered. + +"Perhaps they haven't the telegram," Mr. Martin said. "We'll have to +wait around." + +"They might be at the Maestro's," Kirk said suddenly. "Come--run +quick--I'll show you the way. There's a hole in the hedge--are you too +big to get through?" + +"I think not," said the mate. + +In the Maestro's library, Felicia leaned suddenly upon the piano. "Ken," +she said, breathing hard, "something's going to happen--something!" + +"What more can happen?" Ken said gently. + +"But--oh, please! _Do_ something--I don't know--" + +"Poor child!" murmured the Maestro. "Sit here, Felicia. Help her, Ken." + +"I don't need help," said Phil. "Oh, you think I'm mad, I suppose. I'm +not. Ken--please go and look out--go to the house. Oh, Kirk!" + +The Maestro shook his head and put a hand on Felicia's shoulder. + +"Better go, Ken," he said quietly. + +Kenelm stepped upon the terrace. Through the long window, which he left +open behind him, a joyous voice came quite clearly to the library. + +"And this is the poor empty pool that I told you about, that never has +had any water in it since then--and aren't we at the terrace steps now?" + +Felicia vowed afterward that she didn't faint. Yet she had no clear +recollection of seeing Kirk between the time when she saw him drop the +hand of the tall, strange man and run up the steps, and when they all +were standing around her in the library, looking a little grave. + +"Phil--Phil!" Kirk was saying then. "Oh, aren't you glad to see me at +_all_? It's me--oh, _Phil_!" + +His eager hands sought her face, to be sure it was she, so strange and +quiet. + +"Just a minute, lamb," she heard Ken say, with a hand on Kirk's +shoulder. "Phil doesn't feel quite right." + +Then warm, delicious life rushed over her, and she could move again and +fling her trembling arms around Kirk. She and Ken and the Maestro all +managed to embrace Kirk at once, so that they embraced each other, too. +And Ken was not ashamed of his tears, nor was the Maestro. + +The ex-mate of the _Celestine_ stood discreetly on the terrace, +whistling to himself. But he was not whistling the song about his hat. +No, it was a little plaintive air, dimly familiar, Ken thought. Where +had he heard it before? And why was the Maestro straightening with a +stricken face, from Kirk? + +[Illustration: "Phil--Phil!" Kirk was saying then.] + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +MARTIN! + +"Roses in the moonlight, +To-night all thine." + +That was the tune, to be sure! The Maestro was on his feet. He walked +slowly to the open French window. + +"What--what right have you to come here whistling--_that_?" he breathed. +He wheeled suddenly on Kirk. "Did you sing it to him?" he demanded. "Is +this--_what_ is this?" + +"I didn't," said Kirk, quickly; "Oh, I didn't." + +The air seemed tense, burdened with something that hovered there in the +stillness of the waiting garden. + +"I can think of no one," said the stranger, slowly, "who has a better +right to whistle it here." + +The Maestro grasped the man's arm fiercely. + +"Turn around!" he said. "What do you mean? What _can_ you +mean--unless--" He flung his arm suddenly before his eyes, as he met +the other's gaze. + +"Martin!" he said, in a voice so low that no one but Kirk heard it. And +they stood there, quite still in the pale September sunset--the Maestro +with his arm across his eyes; the mate of the _Celestine_ with his hands +clasped behind him and his lips still shaping the tune of the song his +father had made for him. + +Ken, within the room, swung Kirk into his arms. + +"The library door's open," he whispered to Felicia. "_Cut_--as fast as +ever you can!" + +The little living-room of Applegate Farm bloomed once more into firelit +warmth. It seemed almost to hold forth, kindly welcoming arms to its +children, together again. + +"What shall we talk about first?" Felicia sighed, sinking into the +hearth chair, with Kirk on her lap. "I never _knew_ so many wildly +exciting things to happen all at once!" + +It came about, of course, that they talked first of Kirk; but his +adventures went hand in hand with the other adventure, and the talk flew +back and forth between the _Flying Dutchman_ and the _Celestine_, Kirk +and Mr. Martin--or Martin, the Maestro's son. + +"And it was the same old _Celestine_!" Ken marveled; "that's the queer +part." He fidgeted with the tongs for a moment and then said, "You +didn't know I once nearly ran away to sea on her, did you?" + +Two incredulous voices answered in the negative. + +"It was when I was very, very young," said Ken, removed by six months of +hard experience from his escapade, "and very foolish. Never mind about +it. But who'd have thought she'd restore all our friends and relatives +to us in this way! By the way, where's the ill-starred _Dutchman_?" + +"Up at Bedford," Kirk said. + +"Let her stay there," said Ken. "The season's over here, for the Sturgis +Water Line. And I'm afraid of that boat. When I go up after Mother I'll +try to sell the thing for what I can get." + +Mother! There was another topic! Kirk didn't even know she was coming +home! The talk went off on a new angle, and plan followed plan, till +Ken rose and announced that he was fairly starved. + +"I'm worn to a wraith," said he. "I haven't had the time or the heart +for a decent dinner since some time in the last century. Bring out the +entire contents of the larder, Phil, and let's have a celebration." + +Next morning, while the dew still hung in the hollows, Kirk got up and +dressed himself without waking Ken. He tiptoed out into the new day, and +made his way across the cool, mist-hung meadow to the Maestro's hedge. +For an idea had been troubling him; it had waked with him, and he went +now to make a restoration. + +All was quiet in the garden. The first fallen leaves rustled beneath +Kirk's feet as he went up the paved path and halted beside the dry +fountain. He sat down cross-legged on the coping, with his chin in his +hands, and turned his face to the wind's kiss and the gathering warmth +of the sun. Something stirred at the other side of the pool--a blown +leaf, perhaps; but then a voice remarked: + +"Morning, shipmate." Kirk sprang up. + +"You're just who I wanted to see," he said; "and I thought you _might_ +be wanting to take a walk in the garden, early." + +"You thought right." + +They had come toward each other around the pool's rim, and met now at +the cracked stone bench where two paths joined. Kirk put his hand +through Martin's arm. He always rather liked to touch people while he +talked to them, to be sure that they remained a reality and would not +slip away before he had finished what he wanted to say. + +"What brings you out so early, when you only fetched port last night?" +Martin inquired, in his dry voice. + +"I wanted to talk to you," Kirk said, "about that song." + +"What, about the hat?" + +"No, not that one. The birthday one about the roses. You see, the +Maestro gave it to me on my birthday, because he said he thought you +didn't need it any more. But you're here, and you do. It's your song, +and I oughtn't to have it. So I came to give it back to you," said Kirk. + +"I see," said Martin. + +"So please take it," Kirk pursued, quite as though he had it in his +pocket, "and I'll try to forget it." + +"I don't know," said Martin. "The Maestro loves you now just about as +much as he loved me when I was your size. His heart is divided--so let's +divide the song, too. It'll belong to both of us. You--you made it +rather easier for me to come back here; do you know that?" + +"Why did you stay away so long?" Kirk asked. + +Martin kicked a pebble into the basin of the pool, where it rebounded +with a sharp click. + +"I don't know," he said, after a pause. "It was very far away from the +garden--those places down there make you forget a lot. And when the +Maestro gave up his public life and retired, word trickled down to the +tropics after a year or so that he'd died. And there's a lot more that +you wouldn't understand, and I wouldn't tell you if you could." + +Another pebble spun into the pool. + +"Are you going to stay, now?" + +"Yes, I'm going to stay." + +"I'm glad," said Kirk. They sat still for some moments, and then Kirk +had a sudden, shy inspiration. + +"Do you think," he ventured, "do you think it would be nice if the +fountain could play, now?" + +"Eh?" said Martin, waking from brooding thoughts. + +"The fountain--it hasn't, you know, since you went. And the garden's been +asleep ever since, just like a fairy-tale." + +"A fairy-tale! H'm!" said Martin, with a queer laugh. "Well, let's wake +the fountain, then." + +They found the device that controlled the water, and wrenched it free. +Kirk ran back down the path to listen, breathless, at the edge of the +pool. There came first the rustle of water through long unused channels, +then the shallow splash against the empty basin. Little by little the +sound became deeper and more musical, till the still morning vibrated +faintly to the mellow leap and ripple of the fountain's jubilant voice. + +"Oh!" Kirk cried suddenly. "Oh, I'm happy! Aren't you, Mr. Martin?" + +Martin looked down at the eager, joyous face, so expressive in spite of +the blankness behind the eyes. His own face filled suddenly with a new +light, and he put out his hands as if he were about to catch Kirk to +him. But the moment passed; the reserve of long years, which he could +not in an instant push from him, settled again in his angular face. He +clasped his hands behind him. + +"Yes," said Martin, briefly, "I'm happy." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +ANOTHER HOME-COMING + +Mrs. Sturgis stepped eagerly off the twelve-five train on to the Bedford +Station platform, and stood looking expectantly about her. A few seconds +later Ken came charging through the crowd from the other end of the +platform. They held each other for a moment at arms' length, in the +silent, absorbing welcome when words seem insufficient; then Kenelm +picked up his mother's bag and tucked her hand through his arm. + +"Now don't get a cab, or anything," Mrs. Sturgis begged. "I can +perfectly well walk to the street-car--or up to the house, for that +matter. Oh, I'm so much, much better." + +"Well," Ken said, "I thought we'd have a little something to eat first, +and then--" + +"But we'll have lunch as soon as we get home, dear. What--" + +"Well, the fact is," Ken said hastily, "you see we're not at Westover +Street just now. We've been staying in the country for a while, at the +jolliest old place, and, er--they want you to come up there for a while, +too." + +Ken had been planning different ways of telling his mother of the +passing of the Westover Street house, all the way down from Asquam. He +could not, now, remember a single word of all those carefully thought +out methods of approach. + +"I don't think I quite understand," Mrs. Sturgis said. "Are you staying +with friends? I didn't know we knew any one in the country." + +They were in the middle of the street, and Ken chose to focus his +attention on the traffic. + +"Let's get to the lunch place," he said. "It's quieter there, to talk." + +"Still wearing that old suit, dear?" Mrs. Sturgis said, touching Ken's +sleeve as he hung up his overcoat in the restaurant. + +"Er--this is my good suit," Ken murmured. "That is, it's the only suit I +have--that is--" + +"See here," said Mrs. Sturgis, whose perceptions were beginning to +quicken as she faced a member of her family again with the barrier of +cautious letters thrown aside; "there's been _enough_ money, hasn't +there?" + +"Lots," Ken said hastily. "We've been living royally--wait till you see. +Oh, it's really a duck of a place--and Phil's a perfect wonder." + +"_What's_ a duck of a place?" + +"Applegate Farm. Oh law! Mother dear, I'll have to tell you. It's only +that we decided the old house was too expensive for us to run just for +ourselves, so we got a nice old place in the country and fixed it up." + +"You decided--you got a place in the country? Do you mean to say that +you poor, innocent children have had to manage things like _that_?" + +"We didn't want you to bother. _Please_ don't worry, now." Ken looked +anxiously across the table at his mother, as though he rather expected +her to go off in a collapse again. + +"Nonsense, Ken, I'm perfectly all right! But--but--oh, please begin at +the beginning and unravel all this." + +"Wait till we get on the train," Ken said. "I want to arrange my topics. +I didn't mean to spring it on you this way, at all, Mother. I wish Phil +had been doing this job." + +But Ken's topics didn't stay arranged. As the train rumbled on toward +Bayside, the tale was drawn from him piecemeal; what he tried to +conceal, his mother soon enough discovered by a little questioning. Her +son dissimulated very poorly, she found to her amusement. And, after +all, she must know the whole, sooner or later. It was only his wish to +spare her any sudden shock which made him hold back now. + +"And you mean to tell me that you poor dears have been scraping along on +next to nothing, while selfish Mother has been spending the remnant of +the fortune at Hilltop?" + +"Oh, pshaw, Mother!" Ken muttered, "there was plenty. And look at you, +all nice and well for us. It would have been a pretty sight to see _us_ +flourishing around with the money while you perished forlorn, wouldn't +it?" + +"Think of all the wealth we'll have _now_," Mrs. Sturgis suggested, "all +the hundreds and hundreds that Hilltop has been gobbling." + +"I'd forgotten that," whistled Ken. "Hi-ya! We'll be bloated +aristocrats, we will! We'll have a steak for dinner!" + +"Oh, you poor chicks!" said his mother. She must hear about the Sturgis +Water Line, and hints of the Maestro, and how wonderful Phil had been, +teaching Kirk and all, and how perfectly magnificent Kirk was +altogether--a jumbled rigamarole of salvaged motor-boats, reclaimed +farm-house, music, somebody's son at sea, and dear knows what else, till +Mrs. Sturgis hardly knew whether or not any of this wild dream was +verity. Yet the train--and later, the trolley-car--continued to roll +through unfamiliar country, and Mrs. Sturgis resigned herself trustfully +to her son's keeping. + +At the Asquam Station, Hop was drawn up with his antiquated surrey. He +wore a sprig of goldenrod in his buttonhole, and goldenrod bobbed over +the old horse's forelock. + +"Proud day, ma'am," said Hop, as Ken helped his mother into the wagon, +"Proud day, I'm sure." + +"As if I were a wedding or something," whispered Mrs. Sturgis. "Ken, I'm +excited!" + +She looked all about at the unwinding view up Winterbottom Road--so +familiar to Ken, who was trying to see it all with fresh eyes. They +climbed out at the gate of the farm, and Hop turned his beast and +departed. Half-way up the sere dooryard, Ken touched his wondering +mother's arm and drew her to a standstill. There lay Applegate Farm, +tucked like a big gray boulder between its two orchards. Asters, blue +and white, clustered thick to its threshold, honeysuckle swung buff +trumpets from the vine about the windows. The smoke from the white +chimney rose and drifted lazily away across the russet meadow, which +ended at the once mysterious hedge. The place was silent with the +silence of a happy dream, basking content in the hazy sunlight of the +late September afternoon. + +Mrs. Sturgis, with a little sound of surprised delight, was about to +move forward again, when her son checked her once more. For as she +looked, Kirk came to the door. He was carrying a pan and a basket. He +felt for the sill with a sandaled toe, descended to the wide door-stone, +and sat down upon it with the pan on his knees. He then proceeded to +shell Lima beans, his face lifted to the sun, and the wind stirring the +folds of his faded green blouse. As he worked he sang a perfectly +original song about various things. + +Mrs. Sturgis could be detained no longer. She ran across the brown +grass and caught Kirk into her arms--tin pan, bean-pods, and all. She +kissed his mouth, and his hair, and his eyes, and murmured ecstatically +to him. + +"Mother! _Mother_!" Kirk cried, his hands everywhere at once; and then, +"Phil! _Quick_!" + +But Phil was there. When the Sturgis family, breathless, at last sorted +themselves out, every one began talking at once. + +"_Don't_ you really think it's a nice place?" + +"You came sooner than we expected; we meant to be at the gate." + +"Oh, my dear dears!" + +"_Mother_, come in now and see everything!" (This from Kirk, anxious to +exhibit what he himself had never seen.) + +"Come and take your things off--oh, you _do_ look so well, dear." + +"Look at the nice view!" + +"Don't you think it looks like a real house, even if we did get it?" + +"Oh, children _dear_! let me gather my poor scattered wits." + +So Mrs. Sturgis was lovingly pulled and pushed and steered into the +dusky little living-room, where a few pieces of Westover Street +furniture greeted her strangely, and where a most jolly fire burned on +the hearth. Felicia removed her mother's hat; Ken put her into the big +chair and spirited away her bag. Mrs. Sturgis sat gazing about her--at +the white cheese-cloth curtains, the festive bunches of flowers in every +available jug, the kitchen chairs painted a decorative blue, and at the +three radiant faces of her children. + +Kirk, who was plainly bursting with some plan, pulled his sister's +sleeve. + +"Phil," he whispered loudly, "do you think now would be a good time to +do it!" + +"What? _Oh_--yes! Yes, go ahead, to be sure," said Felicia. + +Kirk galloped forthwith to the melodeon, which Mrs. Sturgis had so far +failed to identify as a musical instrument, seated himself before it, +and opened it with a bang. He drew forth all the loudest stops--the +trumpet, the diapason--for his paean of welcome. + +"It's a triumphal march, in your honor," Felicia whispered hastily to +her mother. "He spent half of yesterday working at it." + +Mrs. Sturgis, who had looked sufficiently bewildered became frankly +incredulous. But the room was now filled with the strains of Kirk's +music. The Maestro would not, perhaps, have altogether approved of its +bombastic nature--but triumphant it certainly was, and sincere. And what +the music lacked was amply made up in Kirk's face as he played--an +ineffable expression of mingled joy, devotion, and the solid +satisfaction of a creator in his own handiwork. He finished his +performance with one long-drawn and really superb chord, and then came +to his mother on flying feet. + +"I meant it to be much, much nicer," he explained, "like a real one that +the Maestro played. But I made it all for you, Mother, anyway--and the +other was for Napoleon or somebody." + +"Oh, you unbelievable old darling!" said Mrs. Sturgis. "As if I wouldn't +rather have that than all the real ones! But, Ken--you didn't tell me +even that he could play do-re-mi-fa!" + +"Well, _Mother_!" Ken protested, "I couldn't tell you _everything_." + +And Mrs. Sturgis, striving to straighten her tangled wits, admitted the +truth of this remark. + +After supper, which was a real feast, including bona fide mutton-chops +and a layer cake, the Sturgis family gathered about the fireside. + +"This is _home_ to you," Mrs. Sturgis said. "How strange it seems! But +you've made it home--I can see that. How did you, you surprising people? +And such cookery and all; I don't know you!" + +Phil and Ken looked at one another in some amusement. + +"The cookery," said Felicia, "I'll admit came by degrees. Do you +remember that very first bread?" + +"If I recall rightly, I replaced that loose stone in the well-coping +with it, didn't I?" said Ken, "or did I use it for the _Dutchman's_ bow +anchor?" + +"Nothing was wrong with those biscuits, tonight," Mrs. Sturgis said. +"Come and sit here with me, my Kirk." + +Felicia blew out the candles that had graced the supper-table, drew the +curtains across the windows where night looked in, and came back to sit +on the hearth at her mother's feet. The contented silence about the fire +was presently broken by a tapping at the outer door, and Ken rose to +admit the Maestro and Martin. The Maestro, after a peep within, +expressed himself loth to disturb such a happy time, but Ken haled him +in without more ado. + +"Nonsense, sir," he said. "Why--why you're part of us. Mother wouldn't +have seen half our life here till she'd met you." + +So the Maestro seated himself in the circle of firelight, and Martin +retired behind a veil of tobacco-smoke--with permission--in the corner. + +"We came," said the Maestro, after a time of other talk, "because we're +going away so soon, and--" + +"Going away!" Three blank voices interrupted him. Kirk left even his +mother's arm, to find his way to the Maestro's. + +"But I do go away," said the old gentleman, lifting a hand to still all +this protest, "every autumn--to town. And I came partly to ask--to beg +you--that when cold weather seems to grip Applegate Farm too bitterly, +you will come, all of you, to pay an old man a long visit. May I ask it +of you, too, Mrs. Sturgis? My house is so big--Martin and I will find +ourselves lost in one corner of it. And--" he frowned tremendously and +shook Kirk's arm, "I absolutely forbid Kirk to stop his music. How can +he study music without his master? How can he study without coming to +stay with his master, as it was in the good old days of apprenticeship?" + +Felicia looked about the little shadow-flecked room. + +"I know what you're thinking," said the Maestro, smoothing Kirk's dark +hair. "You're hating the thought of leaving Applegate Farm. But perhaps +the winter wind will sing you a different tune. Do you not think so, +Mrs. Sturgis?" + +Mrs. Sturgis nodded. "Their experience doesn't yet embrace all the +phases of this," she said. + +"Yes," said the Maestro, "some day before the snows come, you will come +to me. And we'll fill that big house with music, and songs, and +laughing--yes, and work, too. Ah, please!" said the Maestro, quite +pathetically. + +Felicia put her hand out to his. + +"We _will_ come, dear Maestro," she said, "when this little fire will +not keep us warm any longer." + +"Thank you," said the Maestro. + +From behind them came murmurous talk of ships--Ken and Martin +discussing the _Celestine_ and her kind, and the magic ports below the +Line. Kirk whispered suddenly to the Maestro, who protested. + +"Oh, please!" begged Kirk, his plea becoming audible. "_Really_ it's a +nice thing. I know Ken makes fun of it, but I _have_ learned a lot from +it, haven't I? Please, Maestro!" + +"Very well, naughty one," said the musician; "if your mother will +forgive us." + +He bowed to her, and then moved with Kirk into the unlit part of the +room where the little organ stood. With a smile of tender amusement, he +sat down at the odd little thing and ran his fingers up and down the +short, yellowed keyboard. Then, with Kirk lost in a dream of rapt +worship and listening ecstasy beside him, he began to play. And his +touch made of the little worn melodeon a singing instrument, glorified +beyond its own powers by the music he played. + +The dimly firelit room swam with the exquisite echo of the melody. Ken +and Martin sat quiet in their corner. Felicia gazed at the dear people +in the home she had made: at Ken, who had made it with her--dear old +Ken, the defender of his kindred; at Kirk, for whom they had kept the +joy of living alight; at the Maestro, the beautiful spirit of the place; +at her mother, given back to them at last. Mrs. Sturgis looked +wonderingly at her children in the firelight, but most of all at Kirk, +whose face was lighted, as he leaned beside the Maestro, with a radiance +she had never before seen there. + +And without, the silver shape of a waning moon climbed between the +black, sighing boughs of the laden orchard, and stood above the broad, +gray roof of Applegate Farm. + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Happy Venture, by Edith Ballinger Price + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HAPPY VENTURE *** + +***** This file should be named 11216.txt or 11216.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/2/1/11216/ + +Produced by Thaadd and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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