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diff --git a/17892.txt b/17892.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2843a6c --- /dev/null +++ b/17892.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6839 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Honey-Sweet, by Edna Turpin, Illustrated by +Alice Beard + + +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: Honey-Sweet + + +Author: Edna Turpin + + + +Release Date: March 1, 2006 [eBook #17892] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HONEY-SWEET*** + + +E-text prepared by Barbara Tozier, Graeme Mackreth, Bill Tozier, and the +Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team +(https://www.pgdp.net/) + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustration. + See 17892-h.htm or 17892-h.zip: + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/8/9/17892/17892-h/17892-h.htm) + or + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/8/9/17892/17892-h.zip) + + + + + +HONEY-SWEET + + + * * * * * + + +The MacMillan Company +New York Boston Chicago +San Francisco +MacMillan & Co., Limited +London Bombay Calcutta +Melbourne +The MacMillan Co. of Canada, Ltd. +Toronto + + + * * * * * + + + +[Illustration: Anne sat pale and wordless] + + + + * * * * * + + + +HONEY-SWEET + +by + +EDNA TURPIN + +Illustrated by Alice Beard + + + + + + + +New York +The MacMillan Company +1914 +All rights reserved +Copyright, 1911, +by the MacMillan Company. +Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1911. Reprinted June, +1913; August, 1914. +Norwood Press +J.S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. +Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. + + + + + +To +ANNE WOOLSTON ROLLER +and +MARY ADAMS MITCHELL + + + + +HONEY-SWEET + +CHAPTER I + + +Anne and her uncle were standing side by side on the deck of the +steamship _Caronia_ due to sail in an hour. Both had their eyes fixed on +the dock below. Anne was looking at everything with eager interest. Her +uncle, with as intent a gaze, seemed watching for something that he did +not see. Presently he laid his hand on Anne's shoulder. + +"I'm going to walk about, Nancy pet," he said. "There's your chair and +your rug. If you get tired, go to your stateroom--where your bag is, you +know." + +"Yes, uncle." Anne threw him a kiss as he strode away. + +She felt sure she could never tire of that busy, changing scene. It was +like a moving-picture show, where one group chased away another. +Swift-footed stewards and stewardesses moved busily to and fro. In twos +and threes and larger groups, people were saying good-bys, some +laughing, some tearful. Messenger boys were delivering letters and +parcels. Oncoming passengers were jostling one another. Porters with +armfuls of bags and bundles were getting in and out of the way. Trunks +and boxes were being lowered into the hold. Anne tried to find her own +small trunk. There it was. No! it was that--or was it the one below? +Dear me! How many just-alike brown canvas trunks were there in the +world? And how many people! These must be the people that on other days +thronged the up-town streets. Broadway, she thought, must look lonesome +to-day. + +Every minute increased the crowd and the confusion. + +There came a tall, raw-boned man with two heavy travelling bags, +following a stout woman dressed in rustling purple-red silk. She spoke +in a shrill voice: "Sure all my trunks are here? The little black one? +And the box? And you got the extra steamer rug? Ed-ward! And I +dis-tinct-ly told you--" + +"The very best possible. Positively the most satisfactory arrangements +ever made for a party our size." This a brisk little man with a +smile-wrinkled face was saying to several women trotting behind him, +each wearing blue or black serge, each lugging a suit-case. + +A porter was wheeling an invalid chair toward the gang-plank. By its +side walked a gentlewoman whom fanciful little Anne likened to a +partridge. In fact, with her bright eyes and quick movements, she was +not unlike a plump, brown-coated bird. + +She fluttered toward the chair and said in a sweet, chirpy voice: +"Comfortable, Emily? Lean a little forward and let me put this pillow +under your shoulders. There, dear! That's better, I'm sure. Just a +little while longer. How nicely you are standing the journey!" + +A man in rough clothes stopped to exchange parting words with a youth in +paint-splotched overalls. + +--"Take it kind ye're here to see me off. I been a saying to mesilf four +year I'd get back to see the folks in the ould counthry. And here I am +at last wid me trunk in me hand--" holding out a bulging canvas bag. +"Maybe so I'll bring more luggage back. There's a tidy girl I used to +know--" + +Beyond this man, Anne's roving eyes caught a glimpse of a familiar, +gray-clad figure. She waved her hand eagerly but it attracted no +greeting in return. Her uncle looked worried and nervous. Indeed, he +started like a hunted wild creature, when a boy spoke suddenly to him. +It was Roger, an office boy whom Anne had seen on the holiday occasions +when she had met her uncle down-town. Roger held out a yellow envelope. +Her uncle snatched it, and--just then there came between him and Anne a +group of hurrying passengers--a stout man in a light gray coat and a +pink shirt, a stout woman in a dark silk travelling coat, and two stout, +short-skirted girls with good-natured faces, round as full moons. The +younger girl was dragging a doll carriage carelessly with one hand. The +doll had fallen forward so that her frizzled yellow head bounced up and +down on her fluffy blue skirts. + +"Oh! Poor dollie!" exclaimed Anne to herself. "I do wish uncle--" she +caught a fleeting glimpse of him beside the workman with the canvas +bag--"if just he hadn't hurried so. How could I forget Rosy Posy? I wish +that fat girl would let me hold her baby doll. She's just dragging it +along." + +Presently the Stout family, as Anne called it to herself, came +sauntering along the deck near her. She started forward, wishing to beg +leave to set the fallen doll to rights, and then stopped short, too shy +to speak to the strange girl. + +A lean, sour-faced man in black bumped against her. "What an awkward +child!" he said crossly. + +Anne reddened and retreated to the railing. Feeling all at once very +small and lonely, she searched the dock for her uncle but he was nowhere +to be seen. + +Then a bell rang. People hurried up the gang-plank. Last of all was a +workman in blue overalls, with a soft hat jammed over his eyes. Orders +were shouted. The gang-plank was drawn in. Then the _Caronia_ wakened +up, churned the brown water into foam, crept from the dock, picked her +way among the river vessels, and sped on her ocean voyage. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +It was eight o'clock and a crisp, clear morning. A stewardess was +offering tea and toast to Mrs. Patterson, the frail little lady whom +Anne had observed in a wheel-chair the afternoon before. Seen closely, +her face had a pathetic prettiness. With the delicate color in her soft +cheeks, she looked like a fading tea rose. Yet one knew at a glance that +she and bird-like Miss Sarah Drayton were sisters. There was the same +oval face--this hollowed and that plump; the same soft brown hair--this +wavy and that sleek; the same wide-open hazel eyes--these soft and +sombre, those bright as beads. + +"If you drink a few spoonfuls, dear, you may feel more like eating," +Miss Drayton's cheery voice was saying. "And do taste the toast. If +it's as good as it looks, you'll devour the last morsel." + +Mrs. Patterson sipped the tea and nibbled a piece of toast. "It lacks +only one thing--an appetite," she announced, smiling at her sister as +she pushed aside the tray. "Did you hear that? I thought I heard--is it +a child crying?" + +The stewardess started. "Gracious! I forgot her! A little girl's just +across from you, ma'am--an orphant, I guess. She's travelling alone with +her uncle. And he charged me express when he came on board to look after +her. Of course I forgot. My hands are that full my head won't hold it. +It's 'Vaughan here' and it's 'Vaughan there,' regular as clockwork. Why +ain't he called on me again?" + +She trotted out and tapped on the door of the stateroom opposite. There +was a brief silence. Vaughan was about to knock again when the door +opened slowly. There stood a slim little girl struggling for +self-control, but her fright and misery were too much for her, and in +spite of herself tears trickled down her cheeks. + +"She's an ugly little lady," thought Vaughan to herself. + +Vaughan was wrong. The child had a piquant face, full of charm, and her +head and chin had the poise of a princess. She had fair straight hair, +almond-shaped hazel eyes under pencilled brows, and a nose "tip-tilted +like a flower." Peggy Callahan, whose acquaintance you will make later, +said she guessed it was because Anne's nose was so cute and darling that +her eyebrows and her eyes and her mouth all pointed at it. But now the +little face was dismal and splotched with tears, the tawny hair was +tousled, and the white frock and white hair-ribbons were crumpled. + +"Were you knocking at my door?" Anne asked in a voice made steady with +difficulty. + +"Yes, miss. I thought you might be sick. We heard you crying." + +"Oh!" The pale face reddened. "I didn't know any one could hear. The +walls of these rooms aren't very thick, are they?" + +"No, miss." In spite of herself, Vaughan smiled at the quaint dignity of +the child. "Don't you want me to change your frock? Dear me! I ought not +to have forgot you last night! And breakfast? You haven't had breakfast, +have you?" + +"No. Are you the--the--" Anne drew her brows together, in an earnest +search for a forgotten word. + +"I'm the stewardess, miss." + +"Oh, yes!--the stewardess. Uncle said you'd take care of me. Where is +he? I want Uncle Carey." + +"Have you seen him this morning, miss?" asked Vaughan. + +"No. Not since a long time ago. Yesterday just before the boat sailed. +When Roger was handing him a piece of yellow paper. I waited on deck for +him hours and hours. Where is he now?" + +"In his stateroom, maybe--or the smoking-room--or on deck. Maybe he's +waiting this minute for you to go to breakfast. We'll have you ready in +a jiffy." + +Anne's face brightened. "I can bathe myself--almost. You may scrub the +corners of my ears, if you please. And I can't quite part my hair +straight. Will you find Uncle Carey? and see if he is ready for me?" + +"Oh, yes, miss. If you'll tell me his name." + +"Uncle Carey? He's Mr. Mayo. Mr. Carey Mayo of New York." + +"Yes, miss. I'll find him. Just you wait a minute. I forget your name, +miss." + +"Anne. Anne Lewis." + +The good-natured stewardess bustled about in a vain effort to find Mr. +Carey Mayo. He was not in his stateroom, nor in the saloon, nor in the +smoking-room, nor on deck. In her perplexity, she addressed the captain +whom she met at the dining-room door. + +"Beg pardon, sir; I'm looking for a Mr. Mayo, sir, and I can't find him +anywheres." + +"Well?" Captain Wards was gnawing the ends of his mustache. + +"It's for his niece, sir, a little girl. She ain't seen him since +yesterday, sir. Been crying till she's 'most sick." + +"My word!" exclaimed Captain Wards. "I had forgotten there was a child. +She's not the only one that wants him. I've had a wireless from New +York--the chief of police," the captain explained to a gentleman at his +elbow. "This Mayo is one of the bunch down in that Stuyvesant Trust +Company. They've been examining the books, but his tracks were so +cleverly covered that he was not even suspected at first. Yesterday they +found out. But their bird had flown. He's on our register all +right,--self and niece,--but we can't find him anywhere else." + +They looked again and again in the tidy, empty little stateroom, as if +it must give some sign, some clew to the missing man. There were his +travelling bags strapped and piled where the porter had dumped them. The +steward who had shown Mr. Mayo his stateroom remembered that he had come +on board early, more than an hour before sailing time. Oh, yes, the man +had taken good notice of Mr. Mayo. Could tell just how he looked. +Slender youngish gentleman. Good clothes, light gray, well put on. Clean +shaven. Face not round, not long. Blue eyes--or gray--perhaps brown. +Darkish hair--it might be some gray. Nothing remarkable about his nose. +Nor his complexion--not fair--not dark. Anyway, the steward would know +him easy, and was sure he wasn't aboard. + +A deck steward said he had looked for Mr. Mayo not long before the +vessel sailed. A boy had brought a telegram for him. But a first-cabin +lady had called the steward to move her chair. + +The chap said he was Mr. Mayo's office boy and could find him if he +were on the _Caronia_. + +No one had seen Mr. Mayo after the boy brought this telegram. Evidently, +some one had warned him that his guilt was discovered and he had hurried +away to avoid arrest. Where was he now? And what was to become of his +little niece? + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +During the search for her uncle, Anne awaited the stewardess's return +with growing impatience and hunger. In that keen salt air it was no +light matter to have gone dinnerless to bed and to be waiting at nine +o'clock for breakfast. At last she heard approaching steps. She flung +her door open, expecting to see her uncle or at least the stewardess. +Instead, she stood face to face with a strange boy, a jolly, +freckle-faced youngster of about thirteen. + +"Good-morning," he said cheerily. Then he beat a tattoo on the opposite +door. + +"Mother! Aunt Sarah! Aunt Sarah! Mother!" he called. "Must I wait and go +to breakfast with you? I am starving. Aren't you ready? Please!" + +Anne was still standing embarrassed in her doorway when the opposite +door opened and facing her stood the bird-like lady whom she had seen +the afternoon before. Miss Drayton kissed her nephew good-morning, +straightened his necktie, and smoothed down a rebellious lock of curly +dark hair. She smiled at the sober little girl across the passage as she +announced to the impatient youngster that she was quite ready for +breakfast and would go with him as soon as he had bade his mamma +good-morning. As he disappeared in the stateroom, the stewardess came +back, looking worried. + +"I--I--can't find your uncle, miss," she said. + +Anne's eyes filled with tears. She swallowed a sob and steadied her +voice to say: "He--must have forgotten--'bout me. I--don't have +breakfast with him 'cept Sundays." + +"The captain said I'd better show you the way to the dining-room, miss. +A waiter will look after you." + +The shy child shrank back. "I saw the dining-room yesterday," she said. +"There--there are such long tables and so many strange people. I--I +don't think I want any breakfast. Couldn't you bring me a mug of milk +and one piece of bread?" + +Miss Drayton came forward with a cordial smile. "Come to breakfast with +me, dear. My sister is not well enough to leave her stateroom this +morning, so there will be a vacant seat beside me. I am Miss Drayton and +this is my nephew, Patrick Patterson, who has such an appetite that it +will make you hungry just to see him eat. After breakfast we'll find +your uncle and scold him about forgetting you. Or perhaps he didn't +forget. He may have wanted you to have a morning nap to put roses in +those pale cheeks. Will you come with me?" + +"If you would just take charge of her, ma'am," exclaimed the stewardess. + +Anne's sober face had brightened while Miss Drayton was speaking. +Indeed, smiles came naturally in the presence of that cheery little +lady. With a murmured "Thank you," the child slipped her hand in Miss +Drayton's and together they entered the dining-room. + +While breakfast was being served, Pat Patterson gave and obtained a good +deal of information. He told Anne that he was from Washington, the +finest city in the world. He learned that she called Virginia home, +though she lived now in New York. Pat was going to spend a year in +France with his mother and Aunt Sarah. Uncle Carey, with whom Anne was +travelling, had told her nothing of his plans except that he and she +were going "abroad" and were to "have a grand time" on "the Continent." +Pat's father was to come over later for a few weeks; he was down south +now, helping build the "big ditch"--the Panama Canal. "Where is your +father?" he asked Anne. + +"Dead." + +"Oh!" with awkward sympathy. + +"Long time ago, when I was little." + +"Do you remember him?" + +"If I shut my eyes tight. It's like he was walking to meet me, out of +the big picture." + +"And your mother--" Pat hesitated. + +"I remember her real well. I was seven then. That was over a year ago. +Sometimes it seems such a little while since we were at home--and then +it seems a long, long, long time." + +"You've been living with your uncle since?" asked Miss Drayton, gently. + +"Yes. Uncle Carey. Where is he? I do want Uncle Carey so bad." The +child's voice trembled. + +"Don't worry, dear. We'll find him," said Miss Drayton, as they left the +dining-room. + +The captain, who had kept his eyes on the little party, anticipated Miss +Drayton's questioning. Drawing her aside, he explained the situation. +"The scoundrel is probably safe in Canada by this time," he ended. +"He'll take good care to lay low. This child's other relatives will have +to be hunted up and informed. I'll send a wireless to New York. The +stewardess will take care of the little girl." + +"Oh, as to that," Miss Drayton answered, "it will be only a pleasure to +me. She's a dear, quaint little thing." + +"That's good of you," said Captain Wards, heartily. "I was about to ask +you--you're so kind and have made friends with her, you see--to tell her +that her uncle isn't here." + +"Oh!"--Miss Drayton shrank from that bearing of bad tidings. "How can +I?" + +The captain looked uncomfortable. "It is a good deal to ask," he +admitted. "I suppose I--or the stewardess--" + +"But no. Poor little one!" Miss Drayton took herself in hand as she +thought of the shy, lonely child. "She must be told. And, as you say, +I've made friends with her, so it may come less hard from me. Leave it +to me, then, captain." And she went slowly back to Anne whose face +clouded at seeing her new friend alone. + +"I thought Uncle Carey would come back with you," she said. +"Please--where is he?" + +"Anne, when was the last time that you saw Uncle Carey?" inquired Miss +Drayton. + +"A little while before the steamer left New York," answered Anne. "He +said he was going to walk around. And he was down there on the--the +platform below." + +"The dock? On shore, you mean, and not on the steamer?" + +"Yes, on the dock; that's it. And Roger--Roger that stays in Uncle +Carey's office--gave him a letter--a yellow envelope. Then some people +got in the way. And I haven't seen him any more." + +"Let's you and I sit down in this quiet corner, Anne," said Miss +Drayton, "and I'll tell you what I think. That yellow letter was a +telegram. It was about business, and it made your uncle go away in a +hurry. Such a great hurry that he didn't have time to see you and tell +you he was going." + +"Didn't he come back? Isn't he on the steamer?" Anne asked anxiously. + +Miss Drayton shook her head. "I think not, dear. They've looked +everywhere." + +Tears were trickling down the child's pale cheeks. "And he left me--all +by myself?" + +"No, dear; no, little one." Miss Drayton drew the little figure into her +lap. "He left you with good friends all around you. We'll take such care +of you--Captain Wards, that kind stewardess, and I. Isn't it nice that +you and I are next-door neighbors? Bless your dear heart! Of course it's +a disappointment. You miss your uncle. Snuggle right down in my arms and +have your cry out." + +Anne winked back her tears. "It hurts--to cry," she said rather +unsteadily. "But you see it's--it's lonesome. I wish Rosy Posy was +here." + +"Is Rosy Posy one of your little friends at home?" asked Miss Drayton, +wishing to divert Anne's thoughts. + +"Yes, Miss Drayton. She's my best little friend. And so beautiful! Such +lovely long yellow curls. She sleeps with me every night. And I tell her +all my secrets. I've had her since I was a little girl." + +"Oh! Rosy Posy's your doll, is she?" questioned Miss Drayton. + +Anne nodded assent. "Uncle Carey gave her to me. I make some of her +clothes. Louise makes the frilly ones. We were getting her school +dresses ready. Uncle Carey said I really truly must go to school this +year. Then yesterday he came home in such a hurry. Louise thought he was +sick. He never comes home that time of day; and his face was pale and +his eyes shiny. He said he had to go away on business and was going to +take me with him. Louise packed in such a hurry. And I left my dear +Rosy Posy." The child's lip quivered. "Uncle kept saying, 'We ought to +be gone. We ought to be gone. Hurry up. Hurry up.' And we drove away +real fast. Then we got out and got in another carriage. It was so hot, +with all the curtains down! I was glad when we came on the boat. But I +do miss Rosy Posy so bad--and Uncle Carey." + +Miss Drayton spoke quickly in her cheeriest tone. "Aren't you glad that +Louise is there to take good care of Rosy Posy? I expect she'll have a +beautiful lot of frilly frocks when you get home. Some time I must tell +you about my pet doll, Lady Ann, and her yellow silk frock." + +"I'd like to hear it now," said Anne. + +"And I'd like to tell you," smiled back Miss Drayton. "But I must leave +Pat to play ring toss with you while I go to see about my sister. She +isn't well and I want to persuade her to take a cup of broth." + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +Miss Drayton explained her prolonged absence by relating to her sister +the story of their little fellow-voyager. Mrs. Patterson's languid air +gave way to attention and interest. It was pitiful to think that so near +them a deserted child had sobbed away the lonely hours of the long +night. A faint smile came as the lady listened to the tale of Rosy Posy, +Anne's "best little friend" with the "such lovely long yellow curls." +Then her eyes grew misty again. + +"Poor all-alone little one!" she exclaimed. "With no friend, not even a +doll." Then at a sudden thought her eyes sparkled. "Sarah," she said, +"I'll make her a doll. And it shall be a darling. You remember the baby +dolls I used to make for church bazaars?" + +"What beauties they were!" said her sister. "Like real babies, instead +of just-alike dolls that come wholesale out of shops. I remember one I +bought to send out West in a missionary box. You had given it the +dearest crooked little smile. I wanted to keep it and cuddle it myself. +But, Emily dear, it is too great an undertaking for you to make a doll +now. You'll overtax your strength. And, besides, you've no materials. +We'll buy a doll in Paris for this little girl." + +"Paris! With all these lonesome days between!" objected Mrs. Patterson. +"Indeed, it will not hurt me, Sarah. Why, I feel better already. And +you'll help me. If you'll get out your work-basket, I'll rummage in this +trunk for what I need." + +A muslin skirt was selected as material for the doll's body and her +underwear, and a dainty dressing-sacque was chosen to make her frock. +Mrs. Patterson pencilled an outline on the cloth, then rubbed out, +redrew, changed, and corrected the lines, with painstaking care. At +last she threw back her head and looked at her work through narrowed +eyelids. + +"She is going to be a very satisfactory baby," she announced; "just +plump enough to cuddle comfortably." + +"Surely you will stop now, dear, and finish another time," urged Miss +Drayton, after the pieces were cut out and sewed together with firm, +short, even stitches. "You may not feel it, but I am sure you are +tired--and how tired you will be when you _do_ feel it!" + +"Indeed, no, Sarah," said Mrs. Patterson. "This rests me. I've not +thought about myself for an hour. Why did you mention the tiresome +subject? That skirt must have another tuck, please. And it needs lace at +the bottom. Just borrow some, dear, from any of my white things. Now I +must have some sawdust." + +The stewardess came to their help, and persuaded a steward to open a +case of bottles and give her the sawdust in which they were packed. +Mrs. Patterson received it with an exclamation of delight and held out a +silver coin in return. But Vaughan put her hands behind her. + +"Please'm," she said, "it ain't much. But I wanted to do something for +that poor little orphant." + +Mrs. Patterson smiled her thanks, then she pushed and shook and crammed +the sawdust in place, taking a childlike eager interest in seeing the +limp form grow shapely and firm. This done, she consented to take +luncheon and a nap, after which Miss Drayton brought Anne to make her +acquaintance. When Mrs. Patterson sent them out "for a whiff of fresh +air," she thrust into her sister's hand a workbag with frilly white +things to tuck and ruffle. Then she drew out her box of colors. Under +her deft touches, now fast, now slow, the baby face grew life-like and +lovable. + +"She's to be a comfort baby for a troubled little mother," said Mrs. +Patterson to herself. "She must be one of the happy-looking babies that +one always smiles at." + +And she was. Her mouth curved upward in a smile that brought out a dear +little dimple in the left cheek, and her big blue eyes crinkled at the +corners with a smile climbing upward from the lips. There were two +shell-like little ears and some soft shadowy locks of hair, peeping out +from under a lace-edged cap with strings tied under the chin. + +When she was fitted out in the garments that Miss Drayton had fashioned, +that lady exclaimed: "Why, Emily, Emily! You never painted a picture +that was more beautiful. That darling smile! And the dimple!" + +There was some debate as to when the doll should be presented and it was +finally decided to give her as bed-time comfort. Promptly at eight +o'clock, Mrs. Patterson insisted on undressing Anne, while Miss Drayton +and Vaughan hovered outside the open door. Anne submitted rather +unwillingly and took a long time to brush her teeth. Then she knelt down +to say her prayers. After the + + "Now I lay me down to sleep" + +there followed silence. Indeed, she remained so long on her knees that +Miss Drayton whispered to Mrs. Patterson a warning against standing and +Vaughan moved to get a chair. The whisper brought Anne to her feet. + +"I oughtn't kept you waiting," she said; and then she explained +shamefacedly, "I wasn't saying my prayers for good. I was just saying +them over and over for lonesome. It's--it's such a big night in here all +by myself." + +Mrs. Patterson gave her a good-night kiss and turned the covers back for +her to snuggle in bed. And there--wonder of wonders!--there lay in the +bed a whiterobed figure--a dear, beautiful, smiling baby doll. Anne +looked at it for one breathless minute and then clasped it close. + +"You precious! you lovely!" she exclaimed. "Is--is she my own baby?" + +"Yes, she's yours," Mrs. Patterson assured her. "She came to take the +place of Rosy Posy who had to stay at home. She hasn't 'long yellow +curls' like Rosy Posy, but you see she's young yet--only a baby in long +dresses. I think maybe her hair will grow." + +Hugging the baby doll tight in one arm, Anne threw the other around Mrs. +Patterson's neck, and kissed her again and again. + +"You are so good. You are so good," she said over and over. + +"What are you going to call your new baby?" asked Miss Drayton. + +"I'd like to name her for you," Anne said, looking at Mrs. Patterson. + +Mrs. Patterson smiled. "My name is Emily," she said. + +"Then that's her name. Mrs. Emily Patterson. Only--" there was a +thoughtful pause--"that does sound sorter 'dicalous for a baby in a long +dress." + +"Call her Emily Patterson," suggested the doll's namesake. + +But Anne shook her head. "That wouldn't sound 'spectful," she objected; +"and Patterson is your 'Mrs.' name." Then her face brightened. "Oh! Her +name can be Mrs. Emily Patterson, and I'll call her a pet name. I don't +like nicknames, but pet names are dear. She shall be what Aunt Charity +used to call me--'Honey-Sweet.' I can sing it like she did:-- + + "'Honey, honey! Sweet, sweet, sweet! + Honey, honey! Honey-Sweet!'" + +As Anne crooned the words over and over, her voice sank drowsily. When +Miss Drayton went a few minutes later to turn out the light, Anne was +fast asleep, smiling in her dreams at Honey-Sweet who lay smiling on the +pillow beside her. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +The shipboard day passed, uneventful and pleasant. Anne had made for +herself an explanation of her uncle's absence, which no one had heart to +correct. + +"He's nawful busy, Uncle Carey is," she explained. "I reckon he stayed +there talking to Roger--he always has so many things to tell Roger to +do!--and the boat was gone before he knew it. So he just had to wait. I +'spect he'll come on one of those other boats. Wouldn't it be funny if +one of them would come splashing along right now and Uncle Carey would +wave his hand at me and say 'Hello, Nancy pet! Here I am.'" + +Mrs. Patterson put a caressing hand on the child's head but did not +speak. Lying back in her steamer chair, she looked across the +gray-green water and thought and wondered. Presently Anne crumpled her +steamer rug on the deck and nestled down in it. She chirped to +Honey-Sweet and wiggled her finger at the smiling red mouth, playing she +was a mother-bird bringing a fat worm to her nestling. Hour after hour, +while Miss Drayton and Mrs. Patterson read or talked together, Anne +would sit beside them, sometimes chattering and 'making believe' with +Honey-Sweet, sometimes prattling to her grown-up friends about her old +home in Virginia or her life in New York. + +Mrs. Patterson petted her and made dainty frocks for Honey-Sweet. Brisk, +practical Miss Drayton gave Anne spelling lessons and set her problems +in number work, protesting that she was too large a girl to spend all +her time playing and looking at fairy-tale books, blue, red, and green. +Why, she did not even read them except by bits and snatches, but made up +tales to fit the pictures, and told over and over the stories that were +read to her. + +She was always ready to drop a book for a romp with Pat Patterson. +Bounding about the deck together, they looked like a greyhound and a St. +Bernard--she slim and alert, he with his rough hair tumbling over his +merry, freckled face. Often their games ended by her stalking away with +Honey-Sweet, in offended dignity. Pat was such a tease! + +"Isn't that a pretty doll?" he said one day, with suspicious +earnestness. "I say, lend her to me awhile, Anne." + +Anne objected. + +"Oh, you Anne! You wouldn't be selfish, would you?" wheedled Pat. +"Didn't I lend you my bow and arrows yesterday? And I always give you +half my macaroons. Just hand her over for a minute. Let me see the color +of her eyes." + +"You know they are blue--like the story-book princess,--'her eyes were +as bright and as blue as the sky above the summer sea,'" quoted Anne, +reluctantly letting him take her pet. + +"Blue they are. D'ye know, Anne, I think she'd make a capital William +Tell's child. Don't believe she'd be afraid for me to shoot the apple +off her head. Let's see." + +Before Anne could interfere, Pat had suspended Honey-Sweet to a hook out +of her reach. A ball of string was fixed on her head by means of a wad +of chewing-gum. + +Then Pat stepped back, drew his bow, and made a great show of aiming his +arrow at the pretended apple. + +"How brave she is! She does not wink an eyelid," he said solemnly. "To +think! to think! If me aim be not true, I'll ki-ill me child," he +exclaimed, shaking with mock fear and dismay. + +"Oh, Pat, Pat, don't!" implored Anne, grasping his arm. + +"Away, away!" said Pat, drawing back. "Me heart failed but for a +moment. William Tell is himself once more. Behold!" And he took aim +again. + +"Stop him! stop him! Don't let him shoot Honey-Sweet!" cried Anne. + +Miss Drayton looked up quickly from her book. + +"Patrick Henry Patterson!" she said severely. "Shame on you! Stop +teasing that child. Give her the doll this instant--this instant, sir!" + +Anne hugged her regained pet and walked away, carefully avoiding Pat's +mischievous eyes. A few minutes later, a bag of macaroons slipped over +her shoulder, and a merry voice announced: "William Tell gives this to +his br-rave, beloved child." And before Anne could speak, Pat was gone +to join some other boys in a game of ring toss. + +With a forgiving smile at him, she sauntered on and stood gazing over +the railing at the motley crowd in the steerage. She was looking for +the Irish mother with three curly-haired children. She wanted to share +her macaroons with them. They always looked hungry, and it was really as +much fun to throw them bonbons as to feed the greedy little squirrels in +Central Park. The children were not in sight, however, and Anne +loitered, leaning on the rail. She felt rather than saw some one +watching her. Looking down, she met for a fleeting second the dark, +intent eyes of a steerage passenger, a man in a coarse shirt and blue +overalls. His face--as much of it as she could see under the broad soft +hat pulled over the eyes--was covered with a dark scrubby beard. + +On a sudden impulse, Anne leaned forward and called in her clear little +voice: "Here, you man in blue overalls! catch!" + +The man started violently, and the macaroons rolled on the deck. He +leaned forward and seemed intent on picking up the fragments, but his +hand shook so that it was slow work. "Thank you, little lady," he said +after awhile, in a gruff voice. "I hope you have good friends." + +"Indeed, I have. Have you?" + +Perhaps he did not hear her. At all events, he moved quickly away, +without raising his head. Then Pat came, calling Anne. He wanted her to +hear what a man was telling about the headlands that were beginning to +take form on the horizon. Their voyage was almost over. In a few hours, +they would reach Liverpool. + +The dock was entered at last and with as little delay as possible Mrs. +Patterson's party drove to the Roxton Hotel. No one noticed that the +carriage was followed closely by a shabby cab. Unseen, its passenger--a +man in blue overalls with a soft hat pulled over his eyes--watched the +little party enter the hotel. Then he alighted, paid his fare, +shouldered his canvas travelling bag, and disappeared down a dingy +street. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +"What news for Anne?" wondered Miss Drayton as they drove to their +hotel. Captain Wards had sent a wireless message to the New York chief +of police, asking that Anne's relatives be informed of her whereabouts +and that tidings of them be sent to Miss Drayton at the Roxton Hotel in +Liverpool. Awaiting her, there were two cablegrams. Both were from the +New York chief of police. One was in these words: "No trace Mayo. Will +find and notify child's other relatives." The other cablegram read thus: +"No trace any relatives of child. Letter will follow." + +Miss Drayton handed the cablegrams to her sister resting in an easy +chair before the sea-coal fire which chased away the gloom of the foggy +morning. + +Mrs. Patterson read the messages thoughtfully. "It is her disappointment +that grieves me," she said, looking at Anne who was sitting in a corner +teaching Honey-Sweet a spelling lesson. "For myself, I should like to +keep her always. A dear little daughter! I've always wanted one." + +"Ye-es," said Miss Drayton, doubtfully, "but--we know so little about +this child. Her uncle a felon! Who knows what bad blood is in her +veins?" + +"That child?" Mrs. Patterson laughed, glancing toward Anne. "Why, she +carries her letters of credit in her face. Look at that earnest mouth, +those honest eyes. I'd trust them anywhere." + +"Oh, well!" Miss Drayton put the subject aside. "Her people will turn up +and claim her. There are lots of them, it seems. She's always talking +about Aunt This and Uncle That and Cousin the Other. Why, Emily! You +ought to have had your tonic a quarter of an hour ago. And a nap." + +That evening the subject of Anne's relatives was brought forward at the +dinner table by the child herself. Seeing her eyes rove shyly around the +room, Miss Drayton said, "You look as if you were watching for somebody +or something. What is it, Anne?" + +"I was thinking," replied the child, "maybe--there are so many people in +this big room--maybe Uncle Carey is here and can't find me." + +The truth--as much of it as was necessary for her to know--might as well +be told now and here. "Anne," said Miss Drayton, "we telegraphed back. +There is no news of your uncle. He--he missed the boat. We don't know +where to send a message to him. Try to be content to stay with us until +some of your home people claim you." + +"I don't want to be selfish, Anne dear, but I'm not longing for any one +to claim you," said Mrs. Patterson, with a caressing smile. "I didn't +know how dreadfully I needed a little daughter till you came. I don't +want to give you up. How nice it will be some day to have a big daughter +to take care of me!" + +Anne looked up with shining, affectionate eyes. "I'm most big now, you +know, Mrs. Patterson," she said. "I'm eight years old and going on nine. +I love to be your girl, but--" her lip quivered--"I do wish I knew where +Uncle Carey was." + +"Suppose, Anne, you write to some of your relatives," suggested Miss +Drayton,--"any whose addresses you know. The Aunt Charity you speak of +so often--where does she live? Is she your mother's sister or your +father's?" + +Anne's laughter shook the teardrops from her lashes. "Why, Miss +Drayton," she replied, "I thought you knew. Aunt Charity is black. She +was my nurse. She and Uncle Richard--he's her husband--lived with us +from the time I can remember." + +"Oh!" said Miss Drayton. "But cousins? Those people you talk about and +call cousin--Marjorie and Patsy and Dorcas and Dick and Cornelius and +the others--they are real cousins, aren't they? Do you know how near? +First? or second? or third?" + +Anne looked perplexed. "There are a lot of cousins. Yes, Miss Drayton, +they're real. I don't know what kin any of them are. I call them +'cousin' because mother did. They lived near home--five or six or ten +miles away. And they'd spend a day or week with us. And we'd go to see +them." + +"Oh! Virginia cousins!" Mrs. Patterson laughed. "Some time you and I'll +go to see them and take Honey-Sweet, won't we?--Sarah, Sarah! Let's not +make any more investigations. Wait, like our old friend, Mr. Micawber, +for 'something to turn up.'" + +The mails were watched with interest for the promised letter from the +New York police, but day after day passed without bringing it. The +American party lingered at the Liverpool hotel. Mrs. Patterson pleaded +each day that she needed to rest a little longer before making the +journey to Nantes. The doctor, called in to prescribe for her, looked +grave and suggested that she consult a certain famous physician in +Paris. + +Miss Drayton was so disturbed about her sister's illness that she paid +little attention to Pat and Anne. The children, left to their own +devices, wandered about the streets in a way that would have been +thought shocking had any one thought about the matter. + +Once when Anne was walking with Pat and again when she was driving with +Mrs. Patterson and Miss Drayton, she caught a glimpse of the steerage +passenger who had spoken to her on the dock, and felt that he was +watching her. And then he spoke to her. It was one morning when she had +gone out alone to buy some picture postcards. She stopped to look in a +shop window, and when she turned, there at her elbow stood the man in +blue overalls. + +"Wait a minute," he said, in a strained, muffled voice, as she started +to walk on. "Do you want news of your uncle?" + +"Of course I do," she answered in surprise. + +"I can give you news. Walk this afternoon to the bridge beyond the shop +where you buy lollipops. Tell no one what I say. No one. If you do, some +great harm will come to your uncle. Will you come?--alone?" + +"If I can." + +"If you do not, you may never hear of your uncle again. Never." + +"Who are you? Do you know Uncle Carey? Tell me--" + +"Not now. Not here," he said hurriedly, glancing at the people coming +and going on the street. "This afternoon. Will you come?" + +"Yes." + +"Tell no one. Promise." + +"I promise." + +He hurried away, and Anne stood quite still, with a strange, bewildering +fear at her heart. Then she turned--picture postcards had lost all their +charm--and went back to the hotel. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +That afternoon Pat went sight-seeing with a new-made friend, Darrell +Connor, and his father. While Anne was hesitating to ask permission to +go out, fearing to be refused or questioned, the matter was settled in +the simplest possible way. Miss Drayton coaxed her sister to lie down on +the couch in the pleasant sitting-room. + +"I will draw the curtains," she said; "perhaps if it be dark and quiet, +you will fall asleep. Anne, you may sit in your bedroom or take your +doll for a walk." + +"Honey-Sweet and her little mother look as if they needed fresh air," +said Mrs. Patterson, smiling faintly. + +Excited and vaguely troubled, but walking straight with head erect, Anne +went to the bridge. Against the railing leaned a familiar figure in +blue overalls and slouch hat. No one else was near. The man turned. + +"Nancy pet--" it was her uncle's name for her and it was her uncle's +voice that spoke. "Those people are good to you? They will take care of +you till--while you are alone?" + +"Uncle Carey, Uncle Carey! It _is_ you!" + +"Yes, it is I. Don't come nearer, dear. Stand by the railing with +your doll. Don't speak till those people pass. Now listen, little +Anne. I am hiding from men who want to put me in prison. I can't +tell you about it. Some day you will know. Oh, Lord! some day you must +know all. Think of Uncle Carey sometimes, dear, and keep on loving him. +Remember how we used to sit in the sleepy-hollow chair and tell fairy +tales. My Nancy pet! Poor little orphan baby! It is hard to leave you +alone--dependent--among strangers. Here! This little package is for you. +Lucky I forgot and left it in my pocket after I took it out of the +safety deposit box. Everything else is gone. What will you do with it? +No, no! you can't carry it in your hand. Here!" He tore a strip from his +handkerchief, knotted it around the little package, and tied it under +her doll's skirts. "Be careful of it, dear. They're not of great value, +but they were your mother's." + +While he was speaking, Anne stood dazed. The world seemed upside down. +Could that rough-bearded man in shabby clothes be handsome, fastidious +Uncle Carey? Ah! there was the dear loving voice, there were the dear +loving eyes. She threw her arms around her uncle and he pressed her +close while she kissed him again and again. + +"Uncle Carey," she cried, "I've wanted you so bad. But why do you look +so--so different? What makes all that hair on your face? It--it isn't +pretty and it scratches my cheek." She rubbed the reddened skin with her +forefinger. + +"You must not tell any one that you have seen me. Not any one. Do you +understand?" her uncle spoke hurriedly. "If people find out that I am +here, they will hunt me up and put me in prison." + +"Not Mrs. Patterson, uncle, nor Pat, nor Miss Drayton. They are too +good. Mayn't I tell them?" + +"No, no!" + +"Uncle! they wouldn't hurt you. And it's such hard work to keep a +secret." + +"Ah, poor child! And it may be a long, long time," considered Mr. Mayo. +Then he asked suddenly, "Where are you going from here? Do you know +these ladies' plans?" + +"To spend the winter in France. The name of the place is like mine. +Nan--Nan--No! not Nancy." + +"Nantes?" + +"Yes, uncle. Nantes. That's it." + +"When you get to Nantes, then, you may tell your friends about seeing +me." + +Through the fog a policeman loomed in view, coming leisurely down the +quiet street. + +"I must go," Mr. Mayo said hurriedly. "Good-by, Nancy pet." + +Anne caught his hand in both of hers. "Oh, uncle!" she cried. "Don't go. +I want you. I want to go with you." + +"Dear little one! What a fool I was! oh, what a fool! Good-by!" + +He kissed her and was gone. Anne stood motionless, silent, looking after +him as he hurried down a by-street. + +"Did 'ee beg off you, my little leddy?" asked the friendly policeman, as +he came up. "'As that dirty fellow frighted you?" + +"Oh, no. He didn't beg. I am not frightened," Anne answered quickly. +"I'm going home now." + +"If so be folks worrit you on the streets, a'lays holler for a cop," +said the guardian of the peace. "We'll take care of you. That's what +we're here for. And I've chillen of me own and a'lays look out +partic'lar for the little ones." + +"Thank you, thank you! Good-by." + +Anne's disturbed looks would have excited comment, had her friends not +been occupied with troubles of their own. The doctor in his visit that +afternoon had urged Miss Drayton to go to Paris as soon as possible and +put Mrs. Patterson under charge of the physician whom he had before +recommended. + +"If any one can help her, he is the man," said Dr. Foster. + +"'If!' Is it so serious?" faltered Miss Drayton. + +The doctor hesitated. Then he said: "We must hope for the best. Your +sister may get on nicely." + +"Is her throat worse?" asked Miss Drayton. + +"I--er-r--I prefer to have you consult Dr. La Farge," replied the +doctor. + +It was resolved, then, to go to Paris at once. While Miss Drayton was +packing, the American mail came in, and brought a letter from New York +police headquarters. The officer, whose interest in the case had led him +to push his inquiries as far as possible, wrote at length. In the +investigation of the Stuyvesant Trust Company, accused of violating the +Anti-Trust Law, certain business papers had been secured which proved +that Mr. Carey Mayo had taken trust funds, speculated in cotton futures, +lost heavily during a panic, and covered his misuse of the company's +funds by falsifying his accounts. Evidently it had been a mere +speculation not a deliberate theft. Mr. Mayo had been refunding larger +or smaller sums month by month for a year. Had it not been for this +investigation of the company's affairs, he might and probably would have +replaced the whole amount and his guilt would never have been known. +When the investigation began, he made hasty plans to escape to Europe +with his niece. Being informed that he was about to be arrested, he +left the child on the steamer, as we know, and escaped--to Canada, the +police thought. + +A number of his acquaintances in the city had been interviewed. They had +known Mr. Mayo for years, but only in the way of business and knew +nothing of his family; one or two had heard him mention a sister and a +niece. + +The servants in his Cathedral Parkway apartment had been found and +questioned. The cook had been with Mr. Mayo two years. He was "an +easy-going gentleman, good pay, and no interferer." The year before, she +said, he had gone to Virginia, summoned by a telegram announcing his +sister's death, and had brought back his orphan niece, Anne Lewis. The +cook had never seen nor heard of any other member of his family. + +The police officer suggested that the child should be put in an +institution for the care of destitute children. He gave information as +to the steps necessary in such a case and professed his willingness to +give any further help desired. + +Miss Drayton and Mrs. Patterson read and reread the letter. + +"Well?" asked Miss Drayton. + +"We'll not send her to an asylum, you know," said Mrs. Patterson, +decidedly. "Unless her own people claim her, we will keep her. Anne +shall be my little daughter." + +So it was settled, and the family party went on to Paris. The great +physician made a careful examination of Mrs. Patterson. He, too, was +unwilling to express an opinion about her condition. He would prefer, he +said, to have madame under treatment awhile at his private hospital, a +quiet place in the suburbs. + +It was promptly decided to accept Dr. La Farge's suggestion. Mrs. +Patterson's health being the object of their journey, there was no +reason why they should winter in Nantes if in Paris she could secure +more helpful treatment. It was resolved, therefore, to send Pat and Anne +to boarding-schools while Mrs. Patterson and Miss Drayton put themselves +under the doctor's orders. + +"Oh! Aren't we going to Nantes?" asked Anne, when Miss Drayton informed +her of the changed plans. + +"No, Anne. I've just told you, we are all going to stay in or near +Paris." + +"Not going there at all? ever?" the child persisted. + +"I don't know; probably not." Miss Drayton was worried and this made her +tone crisp and impatient. + +"O--oh!" wailed Anne, her self-control giving way before the sudden +disappointment. "I want to go. I want to go to Nantes." + +Miss Drayton was amazed. What ailed the child? Why this passionate +desire to go to Nantes, a city of which, as she owned, she had never +even heard until she was told that it was their destination? + +"Anne, Anne! For pity's sake!" said Miss Drayton. "Why are you so +anxious to go to Nantes?" + +But Anne only rocked back and forth, sobbing, "I want to go to Nantes! I +want to go to Nantes!" + +She had been counting the days till, according to her uncle's +permission, she might tell her friends about seeing him. She felt sure +they would explain the puzzling change in his appearance, and tell when +she would see him again. Now, after all, they were not going to Nantes, +and she must keep her secret alone, forever and forever. It was too +dreadful! + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +Pat was sent to a boarding-school near Paris, and it was decided that +Anne should attend St. Cecilia's School, a select institution where +American girls continued their studies in English and had lessons in +French and music. Mrs. Patterson herself went to enter Anne as a pupil. + +St. Cecilia's School faced a little park on a quiet street. It was a +red-brick building, with balconies set in recesses between white +stuccoed pillars. Everything about the place was formal and dignified. +The lower floor was occupied by parlors, offices, class-rooms, and +dining-rooms. Through wide-open doors at the end of the hall, Mrs. +Patterson and Anne had a pleasant view of the long piazza at the back of +the house. It opened on a grass-plot edged with flowerbeds. The neat +gravel paths ended in short flights of steps, under rose-covered +archways, that led down a terrace to the playground. + +While they waited in a handsome, formal parlor for Mademoiselle Duroc, +Mrs. Patterson chatted pleasantly to Anne about the swings and arbors +and pear-trees on the playground. But Anne sat silent, with a lump in +her throat, and clutched her friend's hand tighter and tighter, while +she watched for the principal's entrance as she would have watched for +an ogre in whose den she had been trapped. At last--it was really in a +very few minutes--Mademoiselle Duroc entered the room. While she talked +with Mrs. Patterson, Anne regarded her with awe. + +Like her surroundings, Mademoiselle was formal and handsome. She was of +middle height, but she carried herself with such stately grace that she +impressed Anne as being very tall. Her glossy hair, of which no one +ever saw a strand out of place, was arranged in elaborate waves and +coils supported by a tall shell comb. She wore a very long, very stiff +black silk gown trimmed with beads and lace, and she had a purple silk +shawl around her shoulders. When she moved, her skirts rustled in a +stately fashion and sent forth a stately odor of sandalwood. + +"I shall have to do whatever she tells me," Anne knew at once. "If she +tells me to walk in the fire, I shall have to go." + +That was the impression Mademoiselle Duroc always made on people. She +was a born general, and if she had been a man and had lived a century +earlier, she would have been one of the great Napoleon's marshals and +led a freezing, starving little band to impossible victories;--so Miss +Morris said. Miss Morris, a stout, middle-aged, New England lady, was +Mademoiselle's assistant. She had a kind heart, but the girls thought +her cross because she was always making a worried effort to secure the +order and attention which came of themselves as soon as Mademoiselle +entered the study-hall. When Miss Morris scolded--which was often, as +Anne was to learn--her face grew very red and her voice very rough, and +she flapped her arms in a peculiar way. Anne did not like to be scolded +but she liked to watch Miss Morris when she was angry; it was strange +and interesting to see a person look so much like a turkey-cock. + +Anne usually watched people very closely with her bright, soft, hazel +eyes. Now, however, she was too frightened and miserable to raise her +eyes above Mademoiselle's satin slippers, even to look at Miss Morris +who came in to take charge of the new pupil. + +"This is my borrowed daughter, for the winter at least," Mrs. Patterson +explained, with her arm around the shy, excited child. "You will find +her studious and you will find her obedient. I shall expect you to give +her back to me next summer a very learned young lady." + +Anne clung to Mrs. Patterson's hand like a drowning man to a raft. +"Don't leave me," she whispered imploringly. "Please take me back with +you. Oh, please!" + +"Dearie, I wish I could," her friend answered with a caress. "But I +can't. My little girl must stay here now--and study--and be good." + +Anne watched the carriage start off, feeling that it must, must, must +turn and come back to get her. But it rolled out of sight under the +archway of trees. Then Miss Morris took her by the hand and led her into +a small office. She read a long list of things that Anne must do and a +still longer list of things that she must not do. She called on Anne to +read in two or three little books, and questioned her about arithmetic +and history and geography. + +Finally she escorted the new pupil to the dormitory. It was a large, +spotless apartment which Anne was to share with five other American +girls, some older, some younger, than herself. Each girl had her own +little white bed, her own little white dressing-table and washstand, her +own little white box with chintz-cushioned top, in which to keep her +private belongings. Miss Morris called Louise, one of the maids, to +unpack Anne's trunk. As the articles were put in her box and drawers and +on her shelves and hooks in the dormitory closet, Miss Morris said: "Now +remember where your shoes are, and keep them there." + +"Do not forget to put your aprons always in that corner of the third +shelf." + +"The left-hand drawer of the dressing-table is for your handkerchiefs, +and the right-hand drawer is for your hair-ribbons." + +Anne sat by, with Honey-Sweet clasped in her arms, and meekly answered, +"Yes, Miss Morris," or "No, Miss Morris," as the occasion demanded. + +It was luncheon-time when the unpacking was finished and in the +dining-room Anne met her five room-mates. Fat, freckle-faced, stupid +Amelia Harvey and clever, idle Madge Allison were cousins in charge of +Madge's older sister who was studying art. Annette and Bebe Girard were +pretty, dark-eyed chatterboxes whose father was consul at Havre. Fair, +chubby, even-tempered Elsie Hart was the daughter of a clergyman who was +travelling in the Holy Land. + +Anne, who had never in her life had to do a certain thing at a certain +time, did not find it easy to adjust her habits to the routine of school +life. Her morning toilette was especially troublesome. She tumbled out +of bed a little behind time at Louise's summons and during each +operation of the dressing period she fell a little farther behind. In +vain Louise reproved and hurried her. + +One Wednesday morning, Anne was especially provoking. Not that she meant +to be. It just happened so. She dawdled over her bath, and when Louise +tried to hurry her, she stopped quite still to argue the matter. + +"You want me to be clean, don't you?" she asked. + +"But yes! Not to the scrub-off of the skin," protested Louise. + +Anne continued to rub her ears. "It's a--a 'sponsibility to wash my own +corners. And Mrs. Patterson says it's a disgrace to be dingy," she +explained. + +Then she sat down on the floor and proceeded to put on her +stockings,--that is, she meant to put them on, but she became so +absorbed in trying to spell her name backwards that she forgot about the +stockings. Louise caught her by the shoulder. + +"You will dress instant, Mees Anne," she threatened, "or I report you to +Mademoiselle." + +Anne had heard that threat too often to be disturbed by it. She went to +get a fresh apron, then, seeing that Honey-Sweet's frock was soiled, she +selected a fresh frock for her doll whom she reproved severely for being +so untidy and so slow about dressing. Louise, who was wrestling with +Annette's curls, turned and saw Anne devoting herself to her doll's +toilette when she ought to have been finishing her own. The much-tried +maid snatched away Honey-Sweet and shook her heartily. + +"Don't, don't, Louise!" cried Anne. "Don't you hurt Honey-Sweet. I'll +dress. I'll hurry. I'll be quick." + +Louise looked keenly at Anne's flushed, earnest face. Then she gave poor +Honey-Sweet a smart little smack. "The wicked _bebe_!" she exclaimed. +"She does not permit that you make the toilette. If you are not dressed +in six minutes exact, I give the spank once more to the bad _bebe_!" + +Anne's fingers hurried as she had not known they could hurry and in +exactly four minutes she presented herself for Louise to tie her +hair-ribbons, while she cuddled and pitied her rescued baby. + +"Oh, ho! Mees Anne," said Louise, her eyes sparkling with satisfaction +at having found a way to enforce promptness. "Each morning that is +tardy, I give the spank to the wicked _bebe_ that makes you to delay." + +To save Honey-Sweet from punishment, Anne sprang up the next morning at +Louise's first call and dressed at once. To her surprise, she found that +it was really pleasanter than dawdling over her toilette, and Louise +good-naturedly gave her permission to take Honey-Sweet for a +before-breakfast stroll to the arbor in the playground. + +From the first, Anne got on well in her classes. She did not like to +study lessons in books--she was always getting tangled up in long +sentences or stumbling over big words--but where she once, in spite of +the printed page, understood a subject, she made it her own. The scenes +and events described in her history, geography, and reading lessons were +vivid to her mind's eye and she pictured them vividly to others. Her +classmates soon found that they could learn a lesson in half the time +and with half the effort by studying it with Anne. + +"I speak to study the hist'ry with Anne to-day," Amelia would say. + +"Anne, if you'll go over the g'og'aphy lesson with me, I'll work your +'zamples for you," Madge would promise. + +The girls found, too, that Anne could tell the most delightful stories. +And she was always inventing charming new ways to play. Instead of +keeping her paper dolls limp and loose, like the other girls, she pasted +them on stiff cardboard, pulled them about with threads, and had a +moving-picture show to illustrate a story that she made up. The +admission price was five pins, those not too badly bent being accepted. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +Through all these days and weeks, Anne and Honey-Sweet were bearing +about the secret which her uncle had intrusted to her. Sometimes it +perplexed her and weighed heavy on her mind. Sometimes she forgot all +about it for days together. Then with a start there would come, like a +black figure stalking between her and the sunlight, the thought of her +uncle's strange appearance, of the danger which he said was hanging over +him if she told that she had seen him--told anywhere except at Nantes. + +One night she dreamed that she told the secret. And the words were +hardly off her lips before she saw her uncle pursued by a crowd, ragged, +loud-voiced, wild-eyed people, like those she and Annette had seen that +day when, falling behind their schoolmates out walking, they had taken +a hurried short-cut and had run frightened along a dingy street. Anne +dreamed that she saw her uncle running--running--running--almost +spent--mouth open--panting breath. A moment more and the outstretched +hands would catch him. They were not hands, they were sharp, cruel claws +about to seize him. She wakened herself with a scream. + +"No, no, no!" she sobbed, "I will never, never, never tell!" + +The little package was still hidden where Mr. Mayo had put it. Once or +twice when she was alone Anne had opened it, but she always felt as if +some one was looking at her and about to question her, and she put it +hastily away. There were three rings,--one a plain heavy band of yellow +gold, one set with a blazing red stone, one with a cluster of sparkling +white gems. There was a bead purse with a gold piece and a few silver +coins in it. And there was a gold locket containing the portrait of a +high-bred old gentleman with soft, dark hair falling in curls about his +shoulders. + +One gray morning early in November, Anne was wakened by an uncomfortable +lump against her side. Sleepily she put her hand down to find out what +it was. Her fingers closed on something hard, and opening them she saw +rings, locket, and purse. The string around the packet had worn in two, +the packet had come open and spilled its contents. Anne started up in +bed, wide awake now, and glanced fearfully around. Honey-Sweet, snuggled +down under the pillow, lay peacefully unaware that she had lost the +treasure intrusted to her. All the girls were asleep. But at any moment +one of them might wake. And it was almost time for Louise to come, +bringing water and towels. Anne sprang out of bed, and with hurrying, +trembling fingers tied the trinkets in the corner of a handkerchief and +thrust them in the bottom of her box. + +Her thoughts wandered many times during the long routine of the long +day--recitations, practice, exercise, study periods. Suppose Louise +should open the box to put away clothes or to set its contents in order, +find the packet, and report her to Mademoiselle. The rules required that +all jewelry be given in charge to one of the teachers. How would +she--how could she--explain having these things? In the afternoon +play-time, Anne ran to the dormitory, took out her workbox, and began +with hurried, awkward stitches to sew a handkerchief into a bag to +contain the jewels. How the thread snarled and knotted! How slowly the +work progressed! + +And then all at once, "Anne!" said a surprised voice. + +Anne gave a great start and tried to hide her work. + +"Anne, it is forbidden to come to the dormitory at this hour." It was +Mademoiselle Duroc that spoke. "Report for a demerit this evening. But +what is it that you do there?" + +Anne was silent. + +"Anne Lewis! Answer!" + +"I was just making a little bag," she murmured. + +"For what purpose?" asked the awful voice. + +Anne faltered. "To--to put some things in." + +"What things?" + +Anne clasped her hands imploringly. "I cannot tell you, Mamzelle. I +cannot. I cannot." + +"You cannot tell?" repeated Mademoiselle Duroc. "I like not the +mysteries. But I like the less to see you excite yourself into +hysterics. Go downstairs and do not permit yourself to be found here +again at this hour." + +Anne dropped the unfinished bag into her box and went slowly downstairs. +Mademoiselle Duroc followed her into the hall, stood there an undecided +moment, then returned to the dormitory and paused beside Anne's box. She +raised the lid, then dropped it, shaking her head. + +"It is the most likely some child's nonsense about a string of buttons +or such a matter. It suits not with the sense of dignity for me to +search her box like a dishonest servant maid's," she said and returned +to her room. + +That night Anne tossed restlessly about until the other girls were +asleep, then rose with sudden resolve to finish the bag by the moonlight +which poured through the muslin curtains. She laid the trinkets on the +pillow beside Honey-Sweet and stitched away on the bag. A little more, a +very little more, and her work would be done. She would tie the bag +around Honey-Sweet's waist and then surely the troublesome jewels would +be safe. Suddenly there came a piercing scream from the bed beside hers. +Mademoiselle Duroc's door across the hall flew open, admitting a broad +stream of light. + +"What is the matter?" demanded Mademoiselle. "Who screamed?" + +For a moment no one spoke. Mademoiselle turned on the electric lights +and her sharp black eyes searched the room. Bebe and Annette, wakened by +the turmoil, sat up in bed, blinking at the light. Madge rolled over and +grunted. Elsie continued to snore serenely. But Amelia and Anne were +wide awake. Amelia was sitting bolt upright, staring about her. Anne had +not moved; she held the needle in her right hand, the unfinished bag in +her left; beside her on the pillow gleamed the jewels. Mademoiselle's +eyes took in every detail. + +"I demand to know who screamed," she repeated. + +Amelia spoke sheepishly. "I was so sound asleep," she said. "And then I +waked up. I can't help being 'fraid of ghosts and burglars and things. +I saw--it's Anne--but I didn't know. I just saw something between me and +the window, and the hand went up and down--up and down. It frightened +me. I screamed." + +"It is the misfortune to be a so fearful coward," commented +Mademoiselle, dryly. "And you, Anne Lewis, you also are due to explain." + +Anne sat pale and wordless. + +"You will have the goodness to give me those things from your pillow +which belong not there," said Mademoiselle, taking possession of them. +"Now you will please to put on your slippers and your dressing-gown, and +we will have the interview in my room. This dormitory needs no more +disturbance. I commend you to sleep, young ladies. I suggest, Amelia, +that you cultivate repose and courage." + +Anne entered Mademoiselle Duroc's room with one thought in her +bewildered brain. "I must not tell. I must not tell," she said over and +over to herself. She stood with downcast eyes before Mademoiselle Duroc +who examined the trinkets one after another. + +"These rings are, I judge, of considerable value," she said. "This is an +exquisite little ruby. The locket is quaintly enamelled. The miniature +is of masterful workmanship; whose portrait is it?" she asked, raising +her eyes to Anne's frightened face. + +Anne shook her head. Her voice failed her. And she did not know that the +stately old gentleman was her mother's grandfather. + +"And you so disregard the rules as to have jewels in your open box--and +money of this value," continued Mademoiselle, emptying the coins out of +the bead purse and putting her finger on the gold piece. + +"Is that money?" asked Anne, in amazement. + +Mademoiselle looked up. "Do you mean to tell me that you were unaware +that this is a twenty-dollar coin?" she asked. + +"I never thought," answered Anne. "Of course I ought to have known. It +was stupid. But I had never seen gold money before." + +"Where did you get it?" demanded Mademoiselle. "And the other things?" + +It was the question that Anne dreaded. + +"I cannot tell you, Mamzelle," she answered, in a low voice. + +"Anne! I demand to know whose things these are," said Mademoiselle, in +her most awful voice. + +"Mine, mine," cried Anne. "But I cannot tell you about them, Mamzelle. +Indeed I cannot--not if you kill me. I promised. I promised." + +In vain did Mademoiselle Duroc question. At last she dismissed Anne who +crept back to bed, and, holding Honey-Sweet tight, sobbed herself to +sleep. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +The next morning Anne was summoned to the office; there she was coaxed +and threatened by Miss Morris and questioned keenly by Mademoiselle +Duroc. All to no purpose. She said in breathless whispers that she +didn't mean to be disobedient, she didn't want to refuse to answer, but +she could not, could not tell anything about the jewels. She confessed +that Miss Drayton and Mrs. Patterson did not know that she had them. + +"She must answer." Miss Morris's voice was rougher than it had ever been +in Mademoiselle Duroc's presence. "Permit me to whip her, Mademoiselle, +and make her tell." + +Mademoiselle shook her head slowly. Her voice was like spun silk as she +replied: "If she does not answer when I speak, it is not my thought that +she would answer to the rod. Anne!" She fixed her clear, commanding +eyes again on the little culprit. + +"Oh, Mamzelle, don't ask me," sobbed Anne. "I would tell you if I could. +I will do anything else you want me. But I cannot--cannot--cannot tell." + +Mademoiselle Duroc rose, looked over Anne's head as if she were not +there, and spoke to Miss Morris. "For the present, certainly, it is +useless to persist," she said. "Unless Anne Lewis makes the explanation +of this matter, for a month she may not go on the playground, she may +not take any recreation except a walk alone in the yard, she may have +double tasks in the three studies in which her grade marks are lowest. I +should send the full account of the matter to Madame Patterson and +request that this child be removed from St. Cecilia's School, were it +not that Miss Drayton writes her sister is very ill. Therefore I will +wait until the visit which Miss Drayton proposes to make to the city +before the holidays and then I will place this matter before her. Anne +is now excused from the room. I do not desire to see longer that which I +have not before seen--a pupil who does not obey me." + +Neither Mademoiselle Duroc nor Miss Morris mentioned the subject and we +may be sure that Anne did not, but somehow the girls got hold of enough +to gossip over and misrepresent the matter. It was whispered that Anne +had a great heap of jewels and money and was being punished because she +would not tell from whom she had stolen them. Perhaps she was to be sent +to prison. Her classmates stared at her with curious, unfriendly eyes +and even when she was allowed again to go on the playground, they kept +away from her. Poor little Anne was very lonely. + +Several days after the jewels were discovered, Miss Morris was +exceedingly cross. It was impossible to please her, even with perfect +recitations, and those Anne had, for she was studying more diligently +than she had ever done--even the hated arithmetic--partly to occupy the +long, lonely hours and partly to make up for her unwilling disobedience. +By degrees Miss Morris became less stern. Anne ought to be punished and +that severely, she thought; no pupil had ever before dared disobey +Mademoiselle. But Miss Morris hated to see a child so lonely and +miserable. She grew gentler and gentler with Anne, crosser and crosser +with the other girls. It was certainly no affair of theirs to punish a +classmate for--they knew not what. + +She saw and approved that sweet-tempered little Elsie Hart smiled and +nodded to Anne at every quiet chance. Elsie would have liked to go on +being friends, but that, she knew, would make the other girls angry and +she prudently preferred to be on bad terms with one rather than with +four. But she always offered her Saturday bonbons to Anne as to the +other girls; she couldn't enjoy them herself if she were so mean and +stingy as not to do that, she declared stoutly. + +One afternoon--Anne was looking especially dejected as she took her +lonely walk in the west yard--Miss Morris thrust into Elsie's hands a +bag of candies and whispered hurriedly: "When you go to divide--yonder +is Anne under the grape arbor and I do believe she's crying." + +Elsie trotted straight to Anne with her smiles and bonbons. Anne was so +cheered that she came in, sat down at the study-table, and took up her +history with whole-hearted interest. + +Amelia, on the other side of the table, looked up and frowned. "That's +an awful hard hist'ry lesson," she said. + +Anne was disinclined to speak to Amelia--Amelia had been so +hateful!--but finally she said rather curtly: "I don't think it's hard." + +Amelia twirled a box that she held in her hand. "I do. I can't remember +those old Mexican names, or who went where and which whipped when." + +That made Anne laugh. "Of course you can," she said. "Just play you're +there, marching 'long with the 'Merican soldiers. There's General +Taylor, sitting stiff and straight on a white horse. Up rides a little +Mexican on a pony. 'Look at our gre't big army and see how few men +you've got,' he says. 'S'render, General Taylor, s'render, before we +beat you into a cocked hat.' General Taylor looks at him--no, he +doesn't, he looks 'way 'cross the hills,--mountains, I mean--and says, +'General Taylor never s'renders.' And the Mexican whips his pony and +gallops away. Then General Taylor he draws up his little army of five +thousand br-rave Americans right here--" Anne put her finger on an +ink-spot. + +"Let me get my book, Anne, and you go over all the lesson, won't you?" +pleaded Amelia. "I used to know my lessons when you did that. And Miss +Morris says if I don't do better she is going to drop me out of class +and give me review work in recreation hour. Please, Anne." + +"I don't care if I do," responded Anne. She was lonely enough to feel +that she would even enjoy studying a history lesson with stupid Amelia. + +"I'll leave my box here." Amelia started off, but came back a moment +later. "I forgot I left my purse in my box," she said. She opened the +purse and counted the money. "I had another two-franc piece," she said, +with a sharp look at Anne. Anne glanced from the dominoes that she was +drawing up in line of battle on the table. + +"Did you?" she asked unconcernedly. + +Her indifference provoked Amelia. "Yes, I did," she asserted. "I had two +two-franc pieces in my purse. One of them's gone. Did you take it, Anne +Lewis?" + +"Take it?" Anne repeated. Was Amelia really suspecting--accusing her of +taking the money? That was impossible! + +"Yes, take it," cried Amelia, flushed and angry. "You stole those jewels +and money from no one knows who. Now you've stolen my money. You've got +to give it back." + +Every drop of blood seemed to ebb from Anne's face, leaving it as pale +as ashes, while her narrowed eyes blazed like live coals. + +"If you say that I--that word--again, Amelia Harvey," she said slowly, +"I will strike you." + +"Why, Anne Lewis!" exclaimed the shocked voice of Miss Morris who was +sitting at her desk, correcting exercises. "What a wicked speech!" + +Anne was unrepentant. "She shall not say--that," she said. "She is +wicked to tell such a falsehood." + +"I want my money," persisted Amelia. + +"How much money did you have in your purse, Amelia?" asked Miss Morris. +"Think now. Be sure." + +"I had two two-franc pieces," insisted Amelia, "and one is gone." + +"You had two yeth'day," lisped Elsie Hart, who had just come in. "And +you bought a boxth of chocolath." + +Amelia reddened. "I--I'd forgot," she muttered. + +"Forgot! Amelia! You spent your money and then accused your schoolmate +of taking it!" Miss Morris exclaimed indignantly. "You are a careless, +careless, bad, bad girl. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You must +beg Anne to forgive you." + +"I'll not forgive her, not if she asks me a thousand years," stormed +Anne. + +"Anne, Anne," reproved Miss Morris. "What a bitter, revengeful spirit! +It makes me unhappy to hear you speak so." + +"I don't care. I'm unhappy. I want everybody else to be unhappy," said +Anne, as she left the room, sobbing as if her heart would break. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +The long days dragged by and brought at last the Christmas holidays. +Mrs. Patterson was stronger. She was able to join the shopping +excursion, waiting in the carriage while Miss Drayton came in to get +Anne. + +Miss Drayton exclaimed at sight of the pale little face. + +"What is the matter with her, Mademoiselle Duroc?" she inquired +anxiously. "She has not been ill? Has she been studying too hard?" + +"She studies," answered Mademoiselle; "but she thrived till the month +ago. There is a matter which I must beg leave to discuss with you and +madame your sister." + +The little hand which lay in Miss Drayton's twitched and clung tight. +Miss Drayton smiled protectingly at the child, who looked like a +quivering rabbit cowering before hunting dogs. "If it be a matter of +broken rules--or anything unpleasant--let us pass it by, Mademoiselle +Duroc. If you please! This is Christmas, you know." + +"The matter is too serious to ignore," protested Mademoiselle. + +"If it must be," Miss Drayton yielded reluctantly. "But we must not +spoil our Christmas. And, really, my sister is still too unwell to be +annoyed. After Christmas, if it must be." + +"After Christmas, then," Mademoiselle submitted. + +Anne threw herself into Mrs. Patterson's arms in an ecstasy of delight. +"I'm so glad that it hurts," she exclaimed. "I'd forgot what good times +there are in the world." + +"Let me hold Honey-Sweet. She's too heavy for you," urged Pat. + +"No, I thank you," laughed Anne. "She doesn't want to be a William +Tell's child or a Daniel in the lions' den. I was so glad you sent me +word to bring Honey-Sweet, Mrs. Patterson," she continued joyously. "I +wanted to bring her, and it's so much nicer when she's invited." + +"I want you to lend her to me a little while," Mrs. Patterson answered. +"I'll not make her a William Tell's child or a Daniel in the lions' den. +I--let me whisper it so she'll not hear--I want to get her a Christmas +present and it is one I can't select in her absence." + +They made the round of the shops, gay with Christmas decorations and +thronged with merry shoppers. Anne was full of eager excitement. Mrs. +Patterson gave her a little purse full of shining silver pieces, which +she was to spend as she pleased. + +Anne clapped her hands with delight. "I'll buy a present for Elsie," she +said, "and perhaps I'll get something for Miss Morris and Louise." + +"I would buy a gift for each of my classmates, if I were you," Mrs. +Patterson suggested. "It is pleasant to remember every one." + +"O--oh!" Anne's face clouded. "But if they haven't been nice--" + +"Those are the very ones to remember at Christmas time," interrupted +Mrs. Patterson. "Peace and good will! If there is any one who has been +especially un-nice to you, this is such a good time to be specially nice +to that person." + +"But I'm not going to forgive Amelia," Anne asserted quietly but +positively. + +"Well, well, dearie! we'll not talk about anything disagreeable to-day," +said Mrs. Patterson. "But do you know, I think it would be fun to give +Amelia the nicest present of all?" + +"Mademoiselle Duroc was pretty bad, too," said Anne. + +"Then what about a nice present for Mademoiselle?" inquired Mrs. +Patterson. "But just as you like, dear. This is do-as-you-please day +for you and Pat. Now Honey-Sweet and I are going to do a little shopping +alone and then we'll rest and wait for you in the ladies' room." + +"I like to do what you say," said Anne, thoughtfully. "Maybe I won't +hate so bad to give them presents if I make a play of it. I'll try." + +She counted out her silver pieces and decided on the price of the gifts +that she would choose for each of her teachers and classmates. Then she +shut her eyes and when she opened them she 'made pretend' she was +Mademoiselle Duroc, moving slow and stately like a parade or a +procession, and she chose a stiff little jet-and-gold hair ornament. +Next Anne was Miss Morris. For a minute she puffed out her cheeks and +flapped her arms, imitating the turkey-cock mood. Then she thrust out +her chin, drew down her brows, and hurried along, with her fingers +clenched as if she held a handful of exercises. That was the busy, +hard-working, kind-hearted Miss Morris for whom she selected a +silver-mounted ink-stand. There was an enamelled belt pin for +finery-loving Annette, a gay set of paper dolls for little Bebe, a new +story book for book-loving Madge, a silver stamp-box for Elsie, and for +Amelia a pretty blue silk workbag fitted with needles, thimble, and +scissors. There was a box of bonbons for Louise and for the cross cook a +gay fan which displayed the red, white, and blue of the American +flag,--"for I shouldn't be so cross if I were not so uncomfortable in my +hot, hot kitchen," Anne said, waddling along with arms akimbo, "and I'm +sure I can keep cooler with such a be-yu-tiful fan." + +"Now I've bought my duty presents, I'll buy my love ones," announced +Anne, gayly. "I'm going to buy Elsie another present--a big box of +'chocolate creamth'--she does adore them. These three wise monkeys are +for Pat. There isn't anything good enough for dear Mrs. Patterson, but +I'll get her a lovely big bottle of cologne. Don't you peep, Miss +Drayton, while I choose your present," Anne charged, as she tripped +about the shop, selecting at last a pretty silver hat pin. + +Miss Drayton laughingly asserted that Anne, chattering away in her +assumed characters, was as good as a play and exclaimed that she had no +idea it was so late and they must go at once to Mrs. Patterson who would +be worn out waiting for them. So Pat was dragged from the display of +sporting goods, and they hurried to the ladies' room where Mrs. +Patterson was resting in an easy chair. She was pale but smiling. + +"I'm like you, Anne," she said; "I had forgotten what good times there +are in the world. Before we go to luncheon, I want to know if +Honey-Sweet's mother approves of her. I told you that her hair would +grow, you know. See!" She untied the strings and took off Honey-Sweet's +cap. Instead of a bald head with a few painted ringlets, there were wavy +golden locks of real hair. It is no use to try to express Anne's +delight. She couldn't do it herself. She laughed and cried and hugged +first Honey-Sweet, then Mrs. Patterson, then both together. + +A soft wet snow was falling, and amid its whiteness and the glittering +lights and the merry bustle of the holiday crowds, the carriage turned +homeward. After such a happy day, nothing could ever be so bad again, it +seemed to Anne, as she kissed her friends good-by and ran +light-heartedly up the steps. + +The gift-giving and gift-receiving and merry-making of the Christmas +holidays brought Anne back into the circle of her schoolmates. But her +troubles were not over. One afternoon early in the new year, Mrs. +Patterson and Miss Drayton came for the promised interview with +Mademoiselle Duroc. She showed them the purse and jewels discovered in +Anne's possession, and told them the whole story. Mrs. Patterson and +Miss Drayton were amazed. They had never before seen any of the +articles. Miss Drayton had packed Anne's trunk on the steamer and had +unpacked and repacked it at the Liverpool hotel and she was sure that +the things were not in the child's baggage. Two of the rings were of +considerable value. The locket was handsome and looked like an heirloom. + +"The child does not know whose portrait it contains,--that she +confesses," said Mademoiselle Duroc. "And there is the money--the gold +piece." + +Perplexed as she was, Mrs. Patterson's faith was unshaken in the child +who had always seemed so straightforward and honorable. Miss Drayton +wanted to believe in Anne, but she remembered the uncle whose story they +had not told Mademoiselle; after all, they knew little of the child; +nothing of her family, except that her uncle had used his employer's +money and had fled from justice. Was the taint of dishonesty in her +blood? For all her candid appearance, Anne had been keeping a secret. +But perhaps there was some explanation which she would make to her +friends, though she had withheld it from Mademoiselle Duroc. + +Anne was summoned and came tripping into the room. Her face clouded when +she saw the jewels in Mademoiselle Duroc's hand and the grave, +questioning faces of her friends. + +"Don't ask me about those, please, dear Mrs. Patterson," she entreated. +"I can't tell you anything now. I'll tell you all about it then." + +"Then? when?" asked Miss Drayton. + +"Wh-when we get to Nantes--if ever we do go there," sobbed Anne. + +"What nonsense is this, Anne?" inquired Miss Drayton. "Of course you +must explain the matter. Did you have these things on shipboard?" + +"No, Miss Drayton." + +"Where did you get them?" + +The child did not answer. + +"Whose are these things, Anne?" asked Miss Drayton, more sternly. + +"Mine, mine, mine!" cried Anne. "Indeed, I'll tell you all about them +when we get to Nantes." + +"Anne! What do you mean? Nantes! What has Nantes to do with it? You are +making my sister ill. See how pale she is!--Emily, dear Emily, don't +look so troubled. If only I had taken the matter up with you alone, +Mademoiselle Duroc!" + +"I wish I could tell. I do wish I could," moaned Anne. + +Entreaty and command were in vain. + +"We shall have to let the matter rest for the present," said Miss +Drayton, at last. "It has overtaxed my sister's strength." + +"Never mind me," protested Mrs. Patterson. "I am troubled only for the +child's sake. Oh, there must be some reasonable, right explanation of it +all!" + +"I hope so," said Miss Drayton, hopelessly. + +Mademoiselle Duroc had taken no part in the conversation with Anne. Now +she spoke: "Permit me to suggest that I prefer not to retain charge of a +pupil that has the secrets and mysteries. Will madame be so good--" + +"No, no, Mademoiselle Duroc!" interrupted Miss Drayton. "You will--you +must--do us the favor to keep the child for the present, until my sister +is stronger--until we are able to make other arrangements." + +There was a pause. Then Mademoiselle said inquiringly, "These jewels, +you will take charge of them?" + +"No, oh, no!" said Miss Drayton, hastily. "Something may turn up--there +may be some claimant--but she insists they are hers.--Oh, dear! oh, +dear!--We will come back, Mademoiselle, when my sister is better and we +will discuss the matter again." + +But week after week passed without bringing the promised visit. Instead, +Anne received kind but brief and worried notes from Miss Drayton, +enclosing the weekly pocket money. Now and then, there was a picture +post-card from Mrs. Patterson, with a loving message to Anne or two or +three lines to Honey-Sweet. The invalid was not improving. In fact, she +was growing worse. So the days wore on till February. + +One crisp frosty morning found Mrs. Patterson lying on a couch beside +her window. In the foreground was a park-like expanse with trees showing +their graceful branching in exquisite tracery against the clear blue +sky. Beyond lay Paris, its red and gray roofs showing among the bare +trees, with domes, spires, and gilded crosses cresting the irregular +line. + +"The view here is beautiful, is it not?" said Miss Drayton. + +Mrs. Patterson did not move her eyes from the horizon line. "I was +thinking of home," she said. "How beautiful it is there these February +mornings! Our noble rows of elms and oaks and maples! Up the avenue, the +domes of the Capitol and the Library are shining against the gray or +gold or rosy sky. And there is the monument pointing heavenward. Oh, the +broad streets, the merry, busy throngs of our own people! I should like +to see it all again. Sarah, let us go home. I want--to be there--my last +days." + +Miss Drayton's eyes filled with tears, but she kept her voice steady: +"It shall be as you wish, sister. We will go home," she said. + +Leaving Pat and Anne at school, they made the home-going voyage, and +Mrs. Patterson spent her last weeks in her beloved homeland. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +After her sister's death, Miss Drayton went with a cousin for a quiet +summer in the Adirondacks. Before leaving, she had meant to talk to her +brother-in-law about Anne, to tell him of her sister's wish to keep the +child, and to say that she herself would take charge of the little +orphan. But she was so tired! Life seemed very empty and yet she shrank +from any new responsibility. So day after day passed, and she went away +without saying a word about Anne. After all, it would be time enough, +she thought, when the children were brought back to America. + +In his great new loneliness, Mr. Patterson's heart turned more than ever +to his son; and he put aside business engagements and went, by the +swiftest boat and the fastest train, to join Pat in Paris and bring him +home. + +Father and son met with a formal but hearty handshake. + +"Howdy, dad." + +"Hello, son. How's your health?" + +The French man-servant, looking on at this greeting, shrugged his +shoulders. "My son and I would have given the kiss and the embrace," he +commented to himself. "But they--how very American!" + +'Very American' they both were. Mr. Patterson was a slim, alert business +man, with a firm chin cleft in the middle, mouth hidden by a tawny, +drooping mustache, deep-set gray eyes under a broad brow from which the +brown hair was rapidly receding at the temples. Pat had his father's +cleft chin, straight nose, and square forehead; but his mouth curved +like his mother's and like hers were the hazel eyes and curly dark hair. +He was a sturdy, well-set-up young American, who played good football +and excellent baseball and studied fairly well--not that he had any deep +interest in books, for he meant to be a business man like his father, +but his mother wished him to get good reports and a certain +class-standing was necessary to keep from being debarred sports. + +Mr. Patterson was glad that Pat liked his school, glad that he did not +like it so well as to regret going home. "After all, there is nothing +like an American school for an American boy," he said. + +"And baseball the way we play it at home is the thing," declared Pat. + +They made plans for their voyage the next week, and then Mr. Patterson +rose to go, saying he'd be in again, but couldn't tell just when, as +he'd be pretty busy, examining some new motor machinery. + +"Have you been to see little sister, father?" inquired Pat. + +Mr. Patterson looked at his son without replying. How he had hoped +there would be a little sister--that his home would ring with the music +of young, happy voices! How sad and silent it was now! He pulled himself +together as Pat impatiently repeated the question. + +"Father, have you been to see little sister?--Anne Lewis, you know. +Mother said she was to be my little sister--and I must be good to her. +She's a number one little chap. Can throw a ball straight and can reel +off dandy tales that she makes up herself. Don't you think she's +cute-looking?" + +"I haven't seen her, son," answered Mr. Patterson. "Fact is, I had +really forgotten that child. I must see about her." + +Anne, shy and silent always with strangers, entered the drawing-room +slowly. She put her hand timidly into Mr. Patterson's, then sat down, +very prim and uncomfortable, with her legs dangling from the edge of the +chair and answered his questions in a shy undertone and the fewest +possible words. Mr. Patterson was hardly less embarrassed than she. + +After he asked about her health and her studies, and how she liked +school, and if she would be glad to go back to America, and told her +that he had seen Pat and Pat had asked about her, there seemed really +nothing else to say. It was a relief when Mademoiselle Duroc entered the +room and asked if Anne might be excused to practise a marching song. + +"I beg ten thousand pardons for the interruption," she said. "But +monsieur understands, I am quite sure. The finals of school approach so +rapidly and we would not have the pupils fail to do credit to the kind +patrons." + +"Of course, of course. That's all right," answered Mr. Patterson. "I +wished to talk to you, anyway--about this child--" as Anne accepted the +excuse and gladly departed. "Can you give me a few minutes now? Thank +you.--I cannot say. I suppose the child has improved. I had not seen +her before. She was alone on shipboard and my wife took charge of +her.--Oh, no! there was no formal adoption. I shall take her back to +America, of course. Her people may turn up or--or--I haven't decided +what I'll do about her. I haven't really thought about it. Tell me what +you can about the child, please." + +Mademoiselle Duroc answered with careful details. Anne was clever, +fairly studious, well-mannered, amiable, rather quick-tempered. The +session marks had not been made out but they would show her standing +good in most of her studies. Deportment excellent. "Her mark in that +would be almost perfect were it not for the one affair. I refer to the +jewel episode. One has informed monsieur of that?" + +Mr. Patterson confessed his ignorance and Mademoiselle Duroc related the +incident which we already know. No light had ever been thrown on the +matter. + +"Do you suppose she stole the things?" asked Mr. Patterson, bluntly. + +Mademoiselle shrugged her shoulders and thrust the question from her +with a sweeping gesture of both hands. "There has been nothing to +prove--nothing to disprove. Absolutely. I look at that slim, small child +sometimes and raise my hands to heaven in amaze." + +Mr. Patterson rose. "Thank you. I have taken a great deal of your time. +You understand it was important for me to know about this child. My wife +wished to adopt her. If she had lived--but without her I should hesitate +under any circumstances; under these, I cannot undertake the +responsibility. I will put the little girl in an orphanage in her native +state. That is the best place for a child that needs oversight +and--er--probably severe discipline. I have engaged passage for the +twelfth. I will send a cab for the child. You will have her ready? +Thank you. If you will mail me your bill to Hotel Amitie, it shall have +prompt attention." + +"Thank you, monsieur. If I am not to see you again, you will now take +charge of the small packet, the jewels?" + +"No, no, indeed." Mr. Patterson drew back. + +"But madame directed me to keep them for the child if there arose no +claimants," said Mademoiselle. + +"Then turn them over to the child. You got them from her," said Mr. +Patterson. "I have nothing to do with them. Good-morning." + +Awaiting the sailing-date set by Mr. Patterson, Anne lingered some days +after the other pupils. One morning Louise came in to pack her trunk and +to say that Mademoiselle Duroc wished to see her in the small study. + +"I sent for you to bid you farewell and to return to you these jewels," +Mademoiselle said. "It is grief to me that you have been so secret +about the matter and made the distress for your friends." + +Anne's eyes filled with tears. It hurt her to remember that she had +refused to answer Mrs. Patterson's questions. How pale and troubled the +dear face had looked! And now she could never, never explain. Could she +ever tell Miss Drayton or Pat? Probably not. What a dreadful thought! "I +am so sorry, Mamzelle," she faltered. "Indeed, it is not my fault. I had +to promise. I was not to tell any one till we went to Nantes. I kept +hoping we would go. Now we never shall. And I do want to tell them." + +Here was a clew and Mademoiselle's quick wit followed it. "Is it that +you mean, Anne," she asked, "that some one--a person whose wish had the +right to be regarded--told you that you might explain the matter to your +guardian when you went to Nantes?" + +"Yes, Mamzelle, that was it," Anne responded eagerly. "He said I might +tell then." + +"He," mused Mademoiselle. "Who, Anne?" + +Anne did not answer. + +"Where were you when he told you this?" + +Anne hesitated, debating with herself whether her uncle would wish her +to tell. Mademoiselle changed the question. + +"When he had you to promise that, were you expecting to go to Nantes?" + +"Yes, Mamzelle." Anne was sure she might answer this. "And then seeing +Dr. La Farge changed all the plans, you know." + +Mademoiselle nodded her head. Yes, she knew. "I begin to understand some +of the affair, Anne," she said, thinking intently and putting her +thoughts into slow English. "I think you have been making the mistake. +This person he wished you to let a certain time lapse before the telling +by you. For some reason. One week or two weeks or three. It was known +to him that you expected to go to Nantes? Ah! so he did tell you to +promise to await that time? So it was!" + +"I haven't told you anything I ought not to, have I, Mamzelle?" inquired +Anne, anxiously. "He said if I told--before we reached Nantes, you +know--it would bring him dreadful harm." + +"Indeed, no," laughed Mademoiselle Duroc. "You have told me nothing but +that you are the so faithful, so stupid promise-keeper. Take my word for +it, Anne," she continued gravely, "the time has long passed to which the +'he' wished to defer the telling about the jewels. It is due your +friends and you that you make the matter clear. As soon as possible. I +regret that we did not understand. I have much of interest for the +secret. But I see that it is not for me." + +Louise tapped at the door and said that Miss Anne's trunk was ready and +the cab was waiting. + +Mademoiselle gave Anne a stately salute and put the little package in +her hand. "Ask Mr. Patterson to take charge of this packet for you," she +said. "Good-by, my child. _Bon voyage!_" + +Anne followed Louise who straightened her ribbons and tied on her hat. + +"Louise," she said, in her halting French, "I've not been very much +trouble to you, have I?" + +"Not more than the usual. Young ladies are born to be the +trouble-makers," responded Louise. + +"Because I didn't want to. And I should like some one to be sorry I am +going," said Anne. "Here is the silver piece Mr. Patterson gave me. You +take it, Louise. Would you mind--won't you kiss me good-by, Louise, and +can you miss me one little bit?" + +"A thousand thanks, little one!" exclaimed Louise. "How droll you are! +I will give you many kisses with all the good will. Yes, and I do grieve +to see you go, you alone little one!" + +The return voyage was rough and stormy. Mr. Patterson was half-sick and +wholly miserable all the way. He lay pale and silent in his steamer +chair, trying to rouse himself now and then to talk with Pat about +subjects of schoolboy interest. But it was an effort and Pat felt it so; +after a few restless minutes, he was apt to say:-- + +"Excuse me, father, I've thought of something I want to tell Anne." + +"Please tell me when it's ten o'clock, father; Anne and I are to play +ring-toss." + +"Anne has been telling a ripping story. I'll go and hear some more of +it, if you don't mind." + +Mr. Patterson did mind. He was, though he did not confess it to himself, +jealous of Anne for whom his son was always so ready and eager to leave +him. He justified to himself his dislike of the child by recalling the +jewel episode. + +Anne had not given him even the half-way explanation that Mademoiselle +Duroc had obtained. She was going to tell Miss Drayton--how she longed +to see that good friend and pour forth the story! But Mr. Patterson +asked no questions and it never occurred to her to offer him any +information. She had given him her precious packet and asked him to take +charge of it, according to Mademoiselle's suggestion. He had accepted +the charge reluctantly, as a matter of necessity. As soon as they passed +the custom-house in New York, he sealed the articles in an envelope +which he handed to Anne, saying curtly: "You had these before; take them +again." + +Mr. Patterson, Pat, and Anne took the first south-bound train, and a few +hours later found them in Washington. Passing from the noble Union +Station, they took an Avenue car and whirled past Peace Monument, +between the shabby buildings on the right and the Botanical Gardens on +the left. Mr. Patterson sat in frowning silence. A sorry home-coming +this. How eager he had been in former days to reach the old home in +Georgetown, which now was closed and silent. Ah! he must try not to +think about that. He pulled himself together and rang the bell. + +"We are going to stop at the Raleigh," he said, in answer to Pat's +surprised look. "Our house is shut up, you know. I'll have you children +sent to your rooms. I must get off some telegrams and attend to some +business. We'll get out of this hot hole to-morrow." + +Pat pleaded and was allowed to take Anne for a sight-seeing ride. What a +gay time they had! Everything delighted Anne--the stately Capitol, the +gold-domed Library of Congress, the noble-columned Treasury Building, +the sky-pointing Washington Monument, the broad streets over-arched +with stately trees, the grassy squares and flower-bordered circles +dotted with statues. + +"Oh, isn't it beautiful? Isn't it beautiful?" Anne exclaimed over and +over. "I told them America was the best. I told them so. I do wish +Mademoiselle Duroc could see it and Louise and cook Cochon." + +Mr. Patterson was waiting for his son in the hotel lobby. "Here, Pat, +come here," he said. "Orton, this is my boy.--Pat, here's a streak of +luck for us. I've just run across this friend of mine who's instructor +at George Washington University. He's taking a party of boys to a camp +in the Virginia mountains--fine boating and swimming, all the fun you +want. Starting to-night. Says he can manage to take another boy. How +would you like to go with him instead of to your Aunt Sarah?" + +"Fine!" said Pat, eagerly. "I've always wanted to go camping. Good +fishing, too?" + +"Great. You trot along with Mr. Orton, and let him help you get the +things you need. He kindly says he will." + +"There's Anne, father," said Pat, looking toward the little figure +hovering shyly on the outskirts of the group. "Is Anne going, too?" + +"This is just a boy's camp, Pat," laughed Mr. Orton. "There isn't any +room for girls in our rough-and-tumble gang." + +Mr. Patterson summoned a maid to take Anne to her room. "I'm going to +take Anne to Richmond to-morrow," he explained curtly. "I'll try to run +up and see you, Pat, before I get back to work. Time's getting pretty +scarce, though. Run along and get your rig. Draw on me, Orton, for what +you need. Fit him out O.K." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +Leaving Anne at a Richmond hotel, Mr. Patterson drove to an orphanage on +the outskirts of the city. He had wired the superintendent that he was +coming and had brought letters and papers from the Washington office of +the Associated Charities. He told Miss Farlow, the superintendent, the +story of the child, without mentioning the jewel affair. + +"Let them find her out for themselves," he reflected. "I'll not start +her off with a handicap." + +As he went out of the bare, spotless sitting-room into the bare, +spotless hall, the children of the 'Home' filed past, two by two, for +their afternoon walk. There were twenty-six sober-faced girls in blue +cotton frocks and broad-brimmed straw hats. + +"They take exercise regularly, sir," said the superintendent. "We're +careful with them in all ways. They're well-fed, kept neat, taught good +manners, and have all pains taken with their education and training. We +do our best for them and try to get them good homes." + +"I am sure of that." Good heavens!--how he would hate his child to be +one of the twenty-six! Poor little Anne! Mr. Patterson caught himself up +impatiently. He was no more responsible for her than for any, or all, of +the others. If his wife had lived--but he--a widower, whose job kept him +thousands of miles away from home most of the time,--it was unreasonable +to expect him to keep an orphan girl whom his family had picked up. Ugh! +How he'd hate to trot along in that blue-frocked line! "I'm a dawdling +idiot," he said irritatedly to himself. "What am I worrying about? I've +done the sensible thing, the only possible thing. Her own people +deserted her. I've secured her a decent home and honest training. Whew! +It's later than I thought. I'll have to rush to make that four-ten +train." + +An hour later, having given hurried explanations to Anne and started her +off in a cab, he was on a north-bound train. + +And Anne? + +The bewildered child gathered only one fact from his speech. She was not +going to Miss Drayton, as she had expected--dear Miss Drayton, to whom +she longed to pour forth her secret. Instead, she was going to +strangers--people, Mr. Patterson said, who took care of little girls +that had no fathers and mothers. + +She hugged Honey-Sweet tight in her arms and walked up the steps of the +square brown house. + +If you have never seen the 'Home for Girls,' you will wish me to +describe Anne's new abode. Let me see. I have said that the house was +square and brown, haven't I? with many green-shuttered windows. The +grounds were large and well-kept--almost too spick and span, for one +expects twenty-six children to leave behind them such marks of good +times as paper dolls and picture-books, croquet-mallets and tennis balls +on trampled turf. + +The brick walk led straight between rows of neatly-clipped box to the +front door. In the grass plot on the right, there was a circle of +scarlet geraniums and on the left there was a circle of scarlet +verbenas. On one side of the porch, there was a neatly-trimmed rose-bush +with straggling yellow blossoms, and on the other side there was a white +rose-bush. + +The front door was open. Anne saw a long, narrow hall with whitewashed +walls and a bare, clean floor. A curtain which screened the back of the +hall fluttered in the breeze, and disclosed a long rack holding +twenty-six pairs of overshoes, and above them, each on its own hook, +twenty-six straw hats. Anne counted them while she waited and her heart +sank--why, she could not have told. She knew that no matter how long she +might live, she would never, never, never want a broad-brimmed straw hat +with a blue ribbon round it. A subdued clatter of knives and forks came +from a room at the back. Anne reflected that this place seemed more like +a boarding-school than a home. How odd it was to have a sign over the +door saying that it was a 'Home'! And 'for Girls.' How did the people +choose that their children were to be just girls? + +While she was thinking these things, the cabman put her trunk down on +the porch, rang the bell, and stamped down the steps. No use waiting +here for a fee. A door at the back of the hall opened, and there came +forward a girl with a scrubbed-looking face and a blue-and-white gingham +apron over a blue cotton frock. She fixed her round china-blue eyes on +Anne, and waited for her to speak. + +Anne opened her mouth and then shut it again. She did not know what to +say. The blue-aproned girl caught sight of the trunk. + +"Oh, you're a new one!" she exclaimed. + +She was so positive that Anne did not like to disagree with her. "I--I +reckon I'm newer than I'm old," she said politely. + +The girl grinned. "You come to stay, ain't you? That your trunk?" + +"Yes," stammered Anne. "Mr. Patterson says--there's a lady here--" + +"You want to see Miss Farlow. She's the superintendent," explained the +girl, still grinning. "Just you wait in the office till she comes from +supper--" and she opened a door on the right. "My! didn't that cabman +leave a lot of mud on the steps?--and tracks on the porch? Mollie'll +have to scrub it again. She'll be so mad!" + +The next day there was a new pair of overshoes on the rack, and instead +of twenty-six, there were twenty-seven broad-brimmed, blue-ribboned +hats. + +After all, Anne was not unhappy in her new surroundings. She missed +cheery Miss Drayton and mischievous Pat, of course, but they seemed so +far away from the sober life of the institution that she accepted +without wonder the fact that she heard nothing from either of them. The +past year was like a dream. Anne felt sometimes as if she had been at +the 'Home' forever and forever. She soon solved, to her own satisfaction +and Honey-Sweet's, the meaning of the name 'Home for Girls.' "It's one +of the words that means it isn't the thing it says," she explained. +"Like butterfly. That isn't a fly and it doesn't make butter. And 'Home +for Girls' means that it isn't a home at all, but a schooly, +outside-sort-of place." + +The girls lacked mothering, it is true, but they were governed kindly +though strictly. The simple fare was wholesome and the daily round of +work, study, and exercise brought the children to it with healthy +appetites. It being vacation time, the schoolroom was closed. But each +girl had household tasks, which she was required to perform with +accuracy, neatness, and despatch. + +"The world is full of dawdlers and half-doers," said Miss Farlow, +wisely. "Their ranks are crowded. But there is always good work and good +pay for those who have the habit of doing work well--be it baking +puddings or writing Greek grammars. I want my girls to form the habit of +well-doing." + +Anne always listened with respect to Miss Farlow. She was one of the +grown-ups that it seemed must always have been grown up. You would have +amazed Anne if you had told her that Miss Farlow was still young and, +with her fresh color, good features, and soft, abundant hair, really +ought to be pretty. But there were anxious lines around the eyes and +mouth, and the hair was always drawn straight back so as to show at its +worst the high, knobby forehead. Poor, patient, earnest, hard-working +Miss Farlow! She was brought face to face with much of the world's need +and longed to remove it all and was able to relieve so little. She had +at her disposal funds to support twenty homeless girls. Because she +could not bear to turn away one needing help, she was always saving and +scrimping so as to take care of more. One cannot wonder that she found +life serious and solemn. Yet if only she had known how to laugh and +forget her work sometimes, she might have done more good as well as been +happier herself. + +From the first, Anne was a puzzle to the sober-minded lady. A few days +after Anne entered the home, she was sent into the office to be +reproved. Slim and erect in her short blue frock, she stood before the +superintendent. Miss Farlow looked at the slip of paper from the pupil +teacher: "Anne Lewis; disorderly; laughed aloud in the Sunday study +class." + +"Why did you laugh during the Bible lesson, Anne Lewis?" asked Miss +Farlow. She always called each girl by her full name. "You knew that it +was naughty, did you not?" + +"I did not mean to be naughty," said Anne, penitently. "I just laughed +at myself." + +"Laughed at yourself?" Miss Farlow was puzzled. + +"I was thinking," Anne explained. "My eyes were half-shut and--it was +the way the light was shining--I could see us all from our chins down in +the shiny desk. Then I thought, suppose all the mirrors in the world +were broken so we could never see our faces! We'd never know whether we +were ourselves or one of the other girls--we're so exactly alike, you +know. And I thought how funny it would be not to know whether you were +yourself or some one else, and maybe comb some one else's hair when you +meant to get the tangles out of your own--and I laughed out loud." + +Miss Farlow did not smile. "What a queer, foolish thing that was for you +to think!" she said. "I will not punish you this time, since you did not +mean to be naughty. But if you do such a thing again, I must take away +your Saturday afternoon holiday." + +That would be a severe punishment, for the girls dearly loved the +freedom of the long Saturday afternoons. From early dinner until +teatime, they amused themselves as they pleased, indoors or on the +'Home' grounds, under the general oversight of a pupil-teacher. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +One Saturday afternoon in July, while the other girls were playing and +chattering on a shady porch, Anne slipped with Honey-Sweet through a +hole in the hedge and sauntered toward an old brown-stone house set in +spacious grounds near the 'Home.' Anne had long been wanting to explore +the place. She had never seen any one there--the house was closed for +the summer--and in her stories it figured as an enchanted castle. As she +walked ankle-deep in the unclipped grass under the catalpa and +elm-trees, she looked around with eager interest. + +She liked everything about the place, even the clump of great rough dock +which had grown up around the back door. A frog hopped under the broad +leaves as she passed. She almost expected to see it come forth changed +to a fairy. Of course she didn't believe in fairies now, but this looked +like a place where they would stay if there were any. + +At last she wandered toward a great clump of boxwood near a side gate. +It made such a mass of greenery that Anne pulled aside a branch to see +if it were green inside too. She gave a gasp of delight. The tall, +close-growing stems were thickly leaved on the outside and bare within; +in the centre there was a hollow space, like a little room. There must +be fairies, after all, to make such a beautiful place as this. + +Anne pulled aside a branch and crept in. One might have passed a yard +away and never suspected that she was there. After a while, she put +Honey-Sweet down and set to work as a tidy housekeeper should. With a +broom of twigs, she swept up the dead leaves. Then she went out and +pulled handfuls of grass to make a carpet, which she patterned over +with blue stars of periwinkle. For chairs she brought two or three flat +stones. How time flew! While she was looking for green moss to cover +these stones, she was startled to see the sun setting, a red ball on the +horizon. She hurried back to the 'Home.' As she slipped through the +hedge, Emma, the pupil-teacher in charge, hurried across the yard. + +"Where on earth have you been, Anne?" she asked crossly. "The +supper-bell rang long ago. I've looked for you everywhere. Where've you +been, I say?" + +"Over there," Anne answered, nodding vaguely toward the lawn. + +"Out of bounds!" exclaimed Emma. "You knew better, Anne. That you did. +You come straight to Miss Farlow. She was dreadful worried when I told +her I couldn't find you." + +Miss Farlow, too, reproved Anne sharply. She was to have a +bread-and-water supper, and then go straight to bed. And she must never +again go out of bounds alone--never. That was strictly forbidden. + +Anne ate her bread and drank her water with a downcast air. She was not +thinking about the scolding and her punishment. She was troubled because +Miss Farlow had forbidden her to go off the 'Home' grounds again. Must +she give up her dear secret playhouse? She and Honey-Sweet had had such +a good time! And they were planning to spend all their Saturday +afternoons there. Finally she asked Emma what would be done if she +disobeyed Miss Farlow and went outside bounds again. + +Emma knew and answered promptly and cheerfully. She would be whipped, +and that severely. + +Anne turned this over in her mind. She was very much afraid of the rod +which had seldom been used to correct her--but a whipping did not last +long, after all, and it would be far worse to give up her beautiful new +playhouse. If Miss Farlow wished to whip her for going there, why, Miss +Farlow would have to do it. Grown-up people had to have their way. But +she wondered if Miss Farlow would not just as lief whip her before she +went as after she came back. It would be a pity to spoil the beautiful +afternoon with expectation of punishment. + +After prayers next Saturday morning, Anne lingered near Miss Farlow's +desk. + +"Do you wish to speak to me, Anne Lewis?" asked that lady, frowning over +a handful of bills. + +"If you please--wouldn't you as soon--won't you please whip me before I +go out of bounds?" she requested. + +"What's that you're saying, Anne Lewis? What do you mean?" asked Miss +Farlow. + +Anne explained. + +"Pity sake!" the bewildered lady exclaimed. She looked at Anne over her +spectacles, then took them off and stared as if trying to find out what +kind of a queer little creature this was. "Do you mean," she inquired +solemnly, "that you'd rather be a bad girl and go out of bounds and be +whipped--rather than be good and stay in bounds?" + +"If you please, Miss Farlow." Anne stood her ground bravely though her +knees were shaking. + +"Anne Lewis, if whipping will not make you obey, we must--must try +something else," Miss Farlow said severely. She considered awhile, then +she asked: "Why are you so anxious to go out of bounds?" + +Anne went a step nearer. "It isn't far," she said. "Just across the +hedge. It's a secret. A beautiful place. I take Honey-Sweet--she's my +doll--and we play stories. It's just my private property." Anne used the +words she heard often from the larger girls. + +"You mean that you play it is," Miss Farlow corrected gravely. "You +don't get in mischief--or go where it's unsafe?" + +"Indeed I don't, Miss Farlow," said Anne, earnestly. "I just sit there +and play with Honey-Sweet." + +"It's safe and near, and the Marshalls are away--they wouldn't care," +considered Miss Farlow. "I'll allow you to go there this one afternoon. +Tell Emma I say you may play beyond the hedge." + +Anne skipped away with a radiant face. On hearing her message, Emma +scowled and said: "I think you oughtn't to have any holiday at all for +making so much trouble last Saturday. I could have crocheted dozens of +rows on my mat while I was looking for you. I tell you what, missy, if +you're naughty and disobedient, you'll be sent away from here." + +"Sent where, Miss Emma?" asked Anne. + +"Oh, away. Back where you came from," answered Emma. + +Anne ran away, happier than ever. Being sent away, then, was the +"something else" that Miss Farlow said they must try if she were naughty +and disobedient. "Back where she came from!" That meant to Miss Drayton +and Pat. Anne resolved that she would be very naughty so they would send +her away as soon as possible. That evening she began to carry out her +plan and let a cup fall while she was washing dishes. Jane, who was +helping her, looked frightened, but Anne only smiled. That was one step +toward Miss Drayton. During the days that followed, Anne was a very +naughty girl. She came late to breakfast, with rough hair and dangling +ribbons; she tore her aprons; she rumpled her frocks; her usually tidy +bed was in valleys and mountains; her tasks were neglected or ill done. +She was reproved; she was punished. But she accepted each reproof and +punishment calmly. + +"Next time," she thought, "they will think I am bad enough to send me +away--back to dear Miss Drayton." + +The punishment she disliked most was that on Saturday afternoon, instead +of being allowed to go out, she was sent to her room in disgrace. She +was sitting doleful by a window, neglecting the task assigned her, when +Milly came in. Milly was one of the larger girls who went out as a +seamstress. + +"You kept in, ain't you?" she said, sitting down and beginning to make +buttonholes. + +Anne nodded. + +"What's come over you?" Milly asked. "You don't act like the same girl +you used to be. Why, you're downright bad." + +Anne smiled knowingly. "That I am," she agreed. + +"How come?" Milly inquired. + +Anne hesitated, then she poured out the whole story. 'She wanted so much +to go back to Miss Drayton. And didn't Milly think she was 'most bad +enough now?' + +Milly threw back her head and laughed till she cried. + +"Oh, you Anne! you Anne!" she exclaimed. At last she got breath enough +to explain that Emma had only said that because she was provoked. It was +not true. Anne would not be sent away. Indeed, there was nowhere to send +her. Miss Farlow took charge of her and would keep her because there was +no one else to care for her. She would stay there till she was large +enough to go out and work for herself, as Milly did. + +Anne was much disappointed. She had set her heart on going back to Miss +Drayton. Still it was disagreeable to be naughty and in disgrace all the +time. Louise used to say, too, that no one loved naughty girls, and Anne +loved to be loved. She didn't care to be large if she had to make +dresses like Milly, when she went away from the 'Home.' She did hate to +sew! She cried a little while, then she washed her face, brushed her +hair, learned the hymn set her as an afternoon task, and went downstairs +to tea, a meek, well-behaved girl again. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +The weeks went by, one as like another as the blue-clad children. A +September Saturday afternoon found Anne, with Honey-Sweet clasped in her +arms, in a secluded corner near the boundary hedge. She had told +Honey-Sweet all the happenings of the week--that she was head in +reading, that she would have cut Lucy down in spelling-class if the girl +next above her had not spelt 'scissors' on her fingers--that Miss 'Liza +had not found a wrinkle in her bed-clothes all the week. She cuddled and +kissed Honey-Sweet to her heart's content, crooning over and over her +old lullaby:-- + + "Honey, honey! Sweet, sweet, sweet! + Honey, honey! Honey-Sweet!" + +Then she wandered into her world of 'make believe.' Once upon a time, +there was a fair, forlorn princess on a milk-white steed. She was lost +in a forest. It was, though the princess did not know it, an enchanted +forest. And there was a cruel giant who had seized twenty-seven fair, +forlorn princesses whom he had made his serving-maids. They could be +freed only by a magic ring worn by a gallant knight who did not know +about their danger. Anne stopped in the middle of her story, keeping +mouse-still so as not to frighten a robin beside the hedge. + +She gave a start when a voice near her piped out, "Tell on, little girl, +tell on; I like that story." + +Anne looked around. No one was in sight. + +"If you don't tell on, I'll cry. Then mother will punish you," said the +shrill little voice. + +Anne stood up and looked all about. At last she discovered the speaker. +He was a small boy who had climbed a low-branching apple-tree on the +other side of the hedge. A smaller boy was walking beside a +white-capped, white-aproned nurse at a little distance. Anne had made +believe that the brown-stone house was the castle of the wandering +knight who was to return and rescue the enchanted princesses. It had +been closed all the summer and Anne was surprised and grieved to see now +that it was open and occupied by everyday people. + +As his command was not obeyed, the small boy made good his threat and +wailed aloud. The white-capped nurse came running to him. + +"What is the matter, Master Dunlop? Have you hurt yourself on that +naughty tree? I'll beat it for you. Don't you cry." + +Dunlop paused in his wailing to say: "It's that girl over there. She +stopped telling a story. And I told her to keep on. And she didn't." + +"Oh, Master Dunlop! A-talking to them charity chillen!" exclaimed the +nurse. "You're in mischief soon as my back's turned. Come away, Master +Dunlop, come along with me and Master Arthur. You'll catch--no telling +what." + +"I've had fever," announced Dunlop, proudly. "And I'm not to be fretted. +Mamma told you so. I won't go, Martha. I'll cry if you try to make me. I +want to hear that story.--Tell it, girl," he commanded. + +"We don't answer people that speak to us like that, do we, Honey-Sweet?" +said Anne, turning away. "We'll go under the elm-tree in the far +corner.--And the fair, forlorn princess got off her milk-white steed to +pick some berries--and whizz! gallop! off he went and left her. So the +princess walked on alone through the forest--" as Anne spoke she was +walking away from the hedge. + +Dunlop began to scream again. + +Martha spoke hastily. "If you'll hush, I'll ask her to tell you the +story. If you scream, Master Dunlop, your mother'll call you in and +she'll make you take a spoonful of that bitter stuff." + +"You call that girl, then," he commanded. + +Martha raised her voice. "Little girl, oh, little girl!--I don't know +your name. Please come back." + +Anne paused, but did not turn her head. + +"This little boy has been ill," Martha continued. "He's just getting +over fever. And he's notiony. Won't you please tell that story to him?" + +Anne walked slowly back. "I do not mind telling him the story," she +answered with grave dignity. "I'm always telling stories to the girls. +But he must ask me proper. I don't 'low for to be spoken to that way." + +"Martha said 'please' to you," mumbled Dunlop, digging his toe in the +turf. + +"You want me to tell the story," said Anne. + +There was a brief silence. + +"I'll cry," he threatened. + +"I don't have to keep you from crying," said Anne, with spirit. "Come +on, Honey-Sweet." + +"Please, you little girl," said Dunlop, hastily. + +"And the princess walked on and on," continued Anne, as if the story had +not been interrupted. "The low briers tore her dress, the tall briers +scratched her hands and pulled her hair. It was getting da-a-rk so she +could hardly see the path. Then all at once she saw a bright light ahead +of her. It got brighter and brighter and it came from a little cabin in +the woods." + +And in the happy land of 'make believe' Anne roamed until the tea-bell +called her back to the real world. + +Where, meanwhile, were Anne's old friends, Miss Drayton and Pat? Let me +hasten to assure you that Pat was not so unmindful of his little adopted +sister as he seemed. He hated to write letters and never wrote any +except the briefest of duty letters to his father and his Aunt Sarah. He +took it for granted that the separation from Anne was only for a time. +She could not come to a boys' camp and she would have to attend a girls' +school. Later, she would be with them--father, Aunt Sarah, and himself. +Of course she would, always. Mother had said she was his adopted sister. +And she was a jolly dear little thing. + +Miss Drayton knew better. She was disturbed at learning from one of Mr. +Patterson's brief, matter-of-course letters that Anne had been sent to +an orphanage. If she had known the plan beforehand, she would have had +Anne sent to her. But as the step was taken, she accepted it and Anne +slipped out of her life. + +Pat had a jolly summer. Camp Riverview was on New River, where, a clear +mountain stream, it begins its journey to the ocean. The boys' tent was +pitched on a level, grassy glade with rolling hills, cleared or wooded, +behind it. Across the river rose rocky bluffs where dwarfed oaks +struggled for a foothold. There were seven boys in the camp and the +wholesome young man who had them in charge was like a big brother. There +were two or three hours of daily study in which the boys were coached +for their autumn examinations. The remainder of the day was free for +sport--boating, fishing, swimming, tramps, and rides. One good time trod +on the heels of another. + +The boys took walking tours through the picturesque country, following +the narrow, roundabout mountain roads, or scrambling up steep paths, or +making trails of their own. They visited Mountain Lake, set like a +clear, shining jewel on the mountain-top. They climbed Bald Knob and +gazed down on lovely valleys and outstretched mountains, range rising +beyond range. Time fails to describe the varied pleasures and interests +of the holiday, the close of which sent Pat, brown and sturdy, to +Woodlawn Academy. There he remained until the passing days and weeks and +months brought again vacation time. In June his father would return from +Panama, and after a few weeks at home Pat was to go with his Aunt Sarah +to the Adirondacks. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +But we must go back to Anne, whom we left telling fairy tales to an +audience across the hedge. A rainy afternoon a few days later, a trim +nurse-maid brought a note to Miss Farlow. It was from Mrs. Marshall who +lived in the brown-stone house next door, asking that a little girl +whose name she did not know, a child with a big rag doll called +Honey-Sweet, might come to spend the afternoon with her children. Her +little boy, just recovering from typhoid fever, was peevish at being +kept indoors. He begged to see the girl who had entertained him a few +days before by telling fairy tales. A visit from her would be a kindness +to a sick child and an anxious mother. + +"It is Anne Lewis that is wanted," said Miss Farlow. "I don't know +about letting her go. Visiting interferes with the daily tasks. I think +it better not to--" + +"Please'm," entreated the bearer of the note, hastening to ward off a +refusal, "do, please'm, let the little girl come. He's that fractious he +has us all wore out. And he do say if the little girl don't come he'll +scream till night." + +"Why doesn't his mother punish him?" asked Miss Farlow. + +"Punish him! Punish Dunlop!" exclaimed Martha, in amazement. + +"Oh, well! the child's ill. I suppose I must let her go," Miss Farlow +consented reluctantly. Anne was sent up-stairs to scrub her already +shining face, to brush her already orderly locks, to take off her +gingham apron and put on a fresh dimity frock. She returned to the +office, twisting her hat-ribbon nervously. + +"If you please, Miss Farlow," she said appealingly, "Honey-Sweet--my +baby doll, you know--was in the note, too. Mayn't I take her with me?" + +Miss Farlow nodded consent and Anne tripped away with Honey-Sweet in her +arms. What a contrast 'Roseland' was to the 'Home' next door! Anne +followed Martha across a great hall with panelled walls and +glass-knobbed mahogany doors and tiger-skin rugs on a well-waxed floor. +Martha led the way up broad, soft-carpeted stairs and turned into a room +at the right. What a charming nursery! It was a large room with three +big windows, which had a cheerful air even on this gray, bleak day. It +had soft, bright-colored rugs and chintz-cushioned wicker chairs. There +was a dado of Mother Goose illustrations on the pink walls. And there +were tables and shelves full of picture-books and toys of all kinds. + +Dunlop stood in the middle of the room, frowning, with hands thrust in +his pockets. He had just kicked over a row of wooden soldiers with which +his small brother was playing and the little fellow was crying over +their downfall. + +"Martha! thanks be that you've come!" exclaimed the maid in charge. + +"Here she is! here she is!" cried Dunlop. "I thought you weren't coming, +girl. You were so slow.--I was just getting ready to begin to scream," +he warned Martha. + +"How do you do, Dunlop?" said Anne, putting out her hand. + +"Say 'howdy' and ask your visitor to take off her hat," Martha +suggested. + +"You come on and tell me a story," said Dunlop, seizing Anne's hand. + +She resisted his effort to drag her to a chair. "I said 'how do you do' +to you. And you haven't said 'how do you do' to me," she reminded her +host. "I want to do and be did polite." + +"Aw! come on," persisted Dunlop. + +Anne stood silent. + +The memory of his former encounter with her stubborn dignity came back +to Dunlop. He said, rather sullenly, "How do you do? and take off your +hat. But I don't know your name." + +"My name is Anne Lewis," said his guest. "And this is Honey-Sweet. I +know your name. Martha told me. You are Dunlop Marshall. Your little +brother's name is Arthur. What a soft, curly, white little dog!" + +"'At's my Fluffles," explained Arthur. + +"Do you know any more stories, Anne Lewis?" inquired Dunlop. "Martha +said she 'spected you didn't." + +"Yes, I do." + +"How many?" + +"O--oh! I don't know. Many as I want to make up. I'm playing a story now +while I wash dishes--this is my dining-room week. I pretend that a funny +little dwarf climbed the beanstalk with Jack--and when the giant tumbled +down he stayed up there in the giant's castle. Do you want to hear that +story?" + +"You bet! Tell on," said Dunlop--and then added, as an afterthought, +"please." + +"'Please!' Ain't that wonderful?" commented Martha. "Why, you make him +have manners!" + +An hour or two later, Mrs. Marshall came into the nursery to see the +little girl whom her son had insisted on having as his guest. Martha was +serving refreshments--animal crackers and cambric tea. + +"Anne has to go at five o'clock," Dunlop explained. "It's nearly that +now. So we're having a party." + +"Anne--what is the rest of your name, little one?" asked Mrs. Marshall. + +"I know. Let me tell," exclaimed Dunlop. "She's named Anne Lewis and she +lived in a big white house on a hill by the river at--at--you tell +where, Anne." + +"'Lewis Hall,'" said Anne. + +"You are a Lewis of 'Lewis Hall!'" exclaimed Mrs. Marshall. "Is it +possible? Was your father--could he have been--Will Watkins Lewis? He +was such a dear friend of my Bland cousins. I remember seeing him at +'Belle Vue' when I was a girl. I never saw him after he married and +settled down at his old home. Let's see. Your mother was a Mayo, wasn't +she?" + +"I am named for her. Anne Mayo Lewis." + +"To think you are Will Watkins Lewis's child! He is dead?--and your +mother?" + +"I can't hardly remember him. But I can shut my eyes and see mother. I +was a big girl--seven when she died." + +"You poor little thing! And where have you been since?" + +"In New York with Uncle Carey. He's mother's brother. Then I was in +Paris at school. Mr. Patterson brought me back to Virginia. I've been +here ever since." + +"Dear, dear! Will Watkins Lewis's child!" repeated Mrs. Marshall. "Where +are all your kins-people and friends?" + +"I don't know 'bout kinfolks. But I have lots and lots of friends," said +Anne, brightening. "All the girls--and the cook--and the 'spress +man--and there used to be Miss Drayton and Pat. And there's always +Honey-Sweet," continued Anne, giving her doll a hug. "Oh, I must hurry! +It's beginning to strike five--and Miss Farlow said five o'clock +pre-cise-ly. Good-by. And thank you." + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +That Saturday afternoon was the first of many that Anne spent at the +brown-stone house next door. The 'Roseland' family became so fond of her +that Mr. and Mrs. Marshall talked about adopting her. 'It was too +important a matter to decide offhand,' Mr. Marshall said; 'too great a +responsibility to undertake lightly. They would wait awhile. Of course +the child would like to come.' + +Mrs. Marshall was sure that she would be overjoyed. She asked one +afternoon, "How would you like to stay with us all the time, my dear?" + +Anne was not prepared to say. "It's lovely to visit you and I always +want to stay longer," she responded. She considered the question on her +way to the 'Home,' and arrived at a positive conclusion. + +"I don't believe I'd like it, Honey-Sweet," she said,--"not at all. I +like them every one and it's a lovely visiting-place. I'm glad I'm going +to spend to-morrow night there. But Dunlop--he's much nicer to be +company than home-folks with." + +The next day was Christmas Eve. When Anne entered the 'Roseland' +nursery, snow was beginning to fall, fluttering down in big wet flakes. + +Dunlop, his stocking in his hand, was prancing about the room. He wished +it would be dark and time to hang up his stocking--and he did wish it +was to-morrow morning and time to get his presents. He wanted a nail +driven in front of the fireplace; he was afraid Santa Claus wouldn't +think to look at the end of the mantel-piece. His own stocking was too +small. He had told Santa to bring him a football and an express wagon +and lots of other things. He was going to borrow a big fat stocking from +the big fat cook. Off he ran. + +Little Arthur was sitting beside a low table on which lay two +picture-books, one less badly torn than the other, and one of his +favorite toys, a woolly white dog, now three-legged through some nursery +mishap. Arthur regarded them thoughtfully. He had a pencil clenched in +his chubby fist and on the table before him was a piece of paper. + +"What are you doing, Artie dear?" asked Anne. + +He looked up at her with big round blue eyes. He was a quiet, +good-tempered little fellow, now perplexed with serious thoughts. + +"I'm going to hang up all two my socks," he announced. + +"Why, Arthur-boy! that sounds selfish--not like you," exclaimed Anne. +"You don't want more than your share of Santa Claus's pretty things, do +you? Don't you want him to save some toys and books and candies for +other little boys?" + +Arthur followed his own course of thought, without regard to Anne's +questions. "One sock is for me," he said. "I hope Santa'll 'member and +give me what I asked him." + +"What did you ask him to bring you, honey?" inquired Anne. + +Arthur looked at her gravely. "I'se forgot. Was so many fings. And one +sock is for Santa C'aus. I'm going to fill it all full of fings. A +apple. And popcorn balls--Marfa made 'em. And my dear woolly dog's for +Santa. Will he care if it's foot's bwoke?" + +"But, Arthur darling," suggested Anne, "I wouldn't give the woolly dog +away. You love it best of all your toys." + +"Yes, I do," agreed Arthur. "Old Santa'll love him, too. And I'll give +him my wed wose. Mamma wored it to her party las' night. Smell it, Anne; +ain't it sweet? And see here,"--he opened his chubby fist. "Fahver give +me five cents. I'm goin' to give it to Santa C'aus. And tell him to buy +him anyfing he wants wif it." + +Anne hugged him heartily. "You dear, cute, generous, precious darling!" +she exclaimed. + +Arthur drew away with sober dignity. Anne's caresses interfered with his +serious occupation. "I was w'iting Santa a letter," he explained. "But I +can't w'ite weal good. I'm fwead he can't wead it. Wouldn't you w'ite my +letter, Anne?" he asked, gazing doubtfully at his scribbling. + +"That I will. I'll write just what you tell me," said Anne. "Give me the +pencil. And you may hold Honey-Sweet while I'm writing." + +This was the letter:-- + +"Dear Santa Claus,--I thank you for the presents you gave me +last Christmas. I thank you for the presents you are going to give me +this Christmas. Santa Claus, the things in this sock are for you. I give +you a red rose. And a woolly dog. He can stand up if you prop him with +his tail. And five cents to buy you anything you want. I asked Martha +to put out the fire so you won't get burnt coming down the chimney. +Santa Claus, I wish you and Mrs. Santa Claus a merry Christmas. And +good-by. + + "Your loving friend, + + "Arthur Marshall." + +Arthur breathed a sigh of relief when the letter was sealed and the sock +containing it and the chosen gifts was hung by the mantel-piece. He lay +down on a goatskin rug and looked into the flickering fire, prattling +about what Santa Claus would say when he found the gifts. Presently he +dropped asleep. + +Twilight fell. From the gray skies the snow came down steadily. The +small, hard flakes tinkled against the window-panes. A northeast wind +shook the elm-tree branches, rattled the windows, and moaned around the +house. Anne sat staring out into the gathering night. How bleak it was! +how lonely-looking! She shivered and hugged Honey-Sweet close. + +"I'm terrible late," said Martha, bustling in and hurrying to draw the +curtains and light the gas. "We had to finish putting up the greens. And +Master Dunlop did bother so. Nothing would do but he must 'help.' +'Help,' I say! He's one of them chillen that no matter where you turn +he's in the way. You shall have tea now, Miss Anne. I know you're +starving. And my blessed baby's fast asleep on the floor! Why, Miss +Anne! You been crying! What's the matter, dear? Did that Dunlop--" + +"Nobody. Nothing," said Anne, turning her reddened eyes from the light. +"Perhaps my eyes are sore. Maybe the snow hurts them." + +"Oh, ho! You just ought 'a' been with me," said Dunlop, strutting in. "I +hanged a wreath in the parlor window. I did it all to myself. Martha she +just held it straight and mother tied the string. Martha said I +bothered. Martha don't know. Mother says I'm her little man.--Come +along, you old Santa Claus! Hurry! Or I'll come up that chimney and take +all your toys and your reindeers, too," he shouted up the chimney. + +"Don't, 'Lop," remonstrated Arthur who was sleepily rubbing his eyes and +opening his mouth, bird-like, for spoonfuls of bread and milk. "Don't +talk that way. It's ugly. And Santa C'aus'll get mad and not come. Or +he'll bring you switches." + +"Mother won't let him," blustered Dunlop. "Mother says she told him to +bring me a heap of things--a gun and a 'spress wagon and a engine that +runs on a track and lots more things.--Say, Anne, is there really truly +a sure-'nough Santa Claus? George Bryant says there isn't not. Tell me, +Anne. Does Santa Claus really come down the chimney?" + +"You stay awake and see," advised Anne. + +"I'm going to. I'm not going to shut--my--eyes--all--night--long," he +said emphatically. + +"Marfa, don't put on any more coal," begged Arthur. "I so fwead Santa +C'aus'll get burnted." + +The Christmas saint accepted Arthur's offering in the loving spirit in +which it was made and there was a letter of thanks in the sock around +which were heaped more pretty things than he had remembered he wanted. +Dunlop examined his many gifts with shrieks of delight. His one regret +was that he didn't see Santa Claus--if there was a Santa Claus. He knew +he didn't go to sleep last night--but he didn't remember anything till +Martha was kindling the fire this morning. + +By Anne's breakfast plate were several dainty packages,--a copy of +_Little Lord Fauntleroy_, a box of dominoes, an embroidered +handkerchief, a box of chocolate creams. And Martha gave Honey-Sweet +pink-flowered muslin for a new dress. + +Breakfast passed in wild confusion. Martha was imploring Dunlop not to +eat any more candy or raisins or oranges or figs or nuts. "You'll be +sick," she said. "And goodness knows, Master Dunlop, you're hard enough +to live with best of times when you're well. Do--don't blow your horn, +Master Dunlop--or beat your drum--or toot your engine--your poor mamma +has such a headache." + +Mrs. Marshall protested, however, that the dear child must be allowed to +enjoy his Christmas. "He is so high-strung," she said, "not like +ordinary children. He can't be controlled like them. I can't bear to +cross him and break his spirit." + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +Before the early dinner at the 'Home,' Miss Farlow assembled the girls +and gave them a Christmas talk. Christmas, she reminded them, is the +time for generous thoughts, for kindly memories, for opening our eyes to +the needs of others and opening our hands to aid those needs. There is +no one so poor, so lonely, that he cannot find some one more needy that +he may help. + +"Kind friends have remembered you this holiday season," she said. "Each +of you has received gifts. Now I hope you want to pass the kindness on. +There is a negro orphanage in town, and I happen to know that its funds +are so limited that after providing needfuls, food, fuel, and clothing, +there is nothing left this year for Christmas cheer. Aren't you willing +to share your good things with those poor children? Won't each of you +bring some of your old toys to the sitting-room at four o'clock and help +fill a Christmas box to send the little orphans?" + +The children responded eagerly, Anne among the first. They hurried to +their rooms and rummaged busily through their boxes and drawers, +collecting old dolls, ragged picture-books, and broken toys. + +Anne opened her drawer and then shut it quickly and sat down dolefully +on the bed-side, swinging her feet. + +"What are you going to give, Anne?" asked one of the other girls. + +"Dunno," was the brief answer. + +A mighty struggle was going on in her heart. She had no old picture-books, +games, nor toys. She had nothing to give--unless--except--there were the +gifts she had received at 'Roseland' this morning--the shining dominoes, +the dainty handkerchief, the ribbon-tied candy box, the book with +fascinating pictures and pages that looked so interesting. It was so +long since she had had any pretty, useless things that it put a lump in +her throat merely to think of giving them up. But she had promised and +she must give something to those poor little black orphans. Which of her +treasures should it be? When she tried to decide on any one, that one +seemed the dearest and most desirable of all. At last in despair she +gathered all her gifts--dominoes, handkerchief, book, candy--in her +apron, ran with them to the sitting-room and dumped them on the table +before Miss Farlow, with "Here! for the old orphans." + +Miss Farlow opened her mouth but before words could come Anne was gone. +She crouched down with Honey-Sweet between her bed and the wall and +sobbed as if her heart would break. + +"I wouldn't mind so much," she explained to Honey-Sweet, "I wouldn't +mind so much if I could have taken out one teeny piece of chocolate +with the darling little silver tongs. I haven't had a box of candy for +months and months. And, oh! Honey-Sweet, I read just three chapters in +that beautiful book, and now I'll never, never know what became of that +dear little boy." + +At teatime Anne, red-eyed and unsmiling, met Miss Farlow on the stairs. + +"Ah! Anne Lewis," said the lady, looking over her spectacles. "You are a +generous child. I only asked and expected some old toys. It was generous +of you to bring your pretty new gifts. But I hardly feel that you ought +to give away the Christmas presents your friends selected for you to +enjoy. I think you'd better take them back." Anne's face shone like the +sun coming from behind a cloud. "Instead, you can give--oh! some old +thing--give that rag doll to put in the box for the little orphans." The +sun went under a dark cloud. + +"Oh!" Anne faltered. Then she hurried on: "Can't no old orphans have +Honey-Sweet. You keep the dominoes and the book and the handkerchief and +the candy. And they may have my gold beads, too. But not Honey-Sweet. +I'd rather have her than Christmas. There--there's a lonesome spot she +just fits in." + +"You'd rather give away your pretty new things than that old rag doll?" +Miss Farlow was amazed. + +"A million times!" cried Anne, hugging her baby fondly. + +"What a queer child you are, Anne Lewis!" said Miss Farlow. "Well, well! +keep your doll, of course, if you wish." + +Anne gave her an impulsive kiss. "Thank you, Miss Farlow! You are so +good," she said. + +The holidays over, the routine of daily life was resumed. The days and +weeks and months passed, busy with work and study. Anne welcomed the +mild spring days which came at last and allowed out-of-door games. +During the autumn, the boxwood playhouse had been a place of delight to +her and Dunlop and Arthur. Now, after a spring cleaning patterned after +Mrs. Marshall's, she and Honey-Sweet again took up quarters there. + +One Saturday afternoon, however, Dunlop came strutting out in an Indian +suit which his mamma had just bought him and announced that he was "heap +big chief" and was going to have the boxwood for his wigwam. + +Anne objected. She had found the treehouse and it was hers; the others +were to play there all they pleased; but she would go straight home +unless the boxwood was to remain, as it had always been, her "private +property," as she proudly said. + +For answer, Dunlop fitted an arrow on his bow and rushed in, yelling, +"You squaw! This is my papa's place. You get out of my wigwam. Get out, +I say." + +Without a word, Anne gathered up Honey-Sweet and marched off, with her +chin in the air. For a whole long week she did not come to 'Roseland.' +Worst of all, on Saturday she played all afternoon with the other girls +on the 'Home' grounds, without once looking over the hedge. + +Arthur threw himself into Martha's arms. "I want my Anne," he sobbed, "I +want her to come back. 'Lop's a bad, bad boy to make my Anne go 'way." + +Shortly before teatime, Anne left the other girls and without seeming to +see any one beyond the hedge, sat down just out of earshot and began to +tell Honey-Sweet a story. This was more than could be borne. Arthur +wailed aloud. + +Suddenly Dunlop broke his way through the hedge, stopped just in front +of Anne, and screamed: "It's your old house. You come on." + +Anne looked at him but did not move. + +He stamped his foot. "Please!" he shouted fiercely. + +"Good and all? Private property?" asked Anne. + +Dunlop nodded. + +Anne rose. "We better go through the gap," she said in an offhand way. +"Miss Emma'll try to have me whipped if we break down the hedge." + +Dunlop trotted by her side in silence. As they crossed the hedge, he +slipped his grimy hand in hers. "Mamma says we are going to the country +next week," he announced; "and I told her you'd have to go, too." + +Indeed, Dunlop flatly refused to go away without Anne. He would not +yield to coaxing and he scorned threats. His wishes finally prevailed +and it was decided that Anne should go with them to spend the week-end +and return to town with Mr. Marshall. + +The little party left 'Roseland' one warm afternoon in June, and sunset +found them all dusty and tired. Dunlop, sitting by his mother, absorbed +her attention. Martha was on the seat behind, with Arthur on her lap. +Anne, beside her, was looking out of the window with a puzzled air. The +willow-bordered river, the meadows and rolling hills, had a familiar +appearance; this fresh, woodsy, evening fragrance was an odor she had +known before; surely she had heard the names of the stations called by +the porter. + +"Lewiston!" he shouted at last. + +Anne started. It was her own home station. As in a dream, she saw in the +twilight the familiar red road shambling over the hills, the dingy +little station with men and boys loafing on the platform, the houses +scattered here and there among trees and gardens. It all came back to +her. This was the route she and her mother had often travelled. A little +way off was the water-tank set in a clump of willows by the roadside. +'Lewis Hall' was on the hill just beyond. In the deepening twilight, +she could not see the square house among the trees. + +A great longing for home possessed her. She slipped past Martha dozing +with Arthur asleep in her lap; hardly knowing what she did, she ran to +the rear of the car. The train was about to stop at the tank. Anne put +her hand on the door-knob. It resisted. A lump came in her throat. Again +she tried the knob. This time it yielded to her pressure. She stepped on +the platform and closed the door behind her. As the train jerked and +stood still, she almost fell but she quickly recovered herself and +scrambled down the steps. + +She stood in a well-remembered thicket of willows. A few steps away was +a footpath--how it all came back to her!--winding among the willows. +Clasping Honey-Sweet close, Anne walked a little way down the path. Then +she turned and looked back. The train was puffing and panting, lights +were gleaming from its windows. There sat Mrs. Marshall, coaxing +Dunlop, and there was Arthur cuddled in Martha's lap. + +As Anne looked, the train moved slowly away, gathering speed as it went. +Its lights gleamed and faded in the darkness. It was gone. She gazed +after it, with a queer tightness about her throat. Then she walked +steadily down the footpath, across the meadow, through a gate, and along +the hillside. On top of that tree-clad hill was her old home. From one +well-remembered room, flickered lights that seemed to beckon and summon +the homesick child. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +Meanwhile, Anne was the innocent cause of trouble between Pat and his +father. Mr. Patterson came back in the early summer to spend a few weeks +with his son at the old home in Georgetown before midsummer heat drove +them to mountains or seashore. + +The mansion was a roomy, old-fashioned house which his grandfather +Patterson had built when Georgetown was a fashionable suburb of the +capital. As Washington grew, fashion favored other sections, and the +stately homes of Georgetown were stranded among small shops and dingy +tenements. Some old residents, the Pattersons among the number, clung to +their homes. + +Mr. Patterson had been little at home since his wife's death. Every +nook and corner of the house, her pictures on the walls, her books on +the shelves, her easy-chair beside the window, called her to mind. How +lonely and sad he was! His son was little comfort to him in his +loneliness. Except on their ocean voyage, Pat and his father had not +been together for three years and they had grown apart. Pat was no +longer just a merry little chap, ready for a romp with his father. He +was a tall, overgrown lad, absorbed in the sports and work of his +school-world, at a loss what to say to the silent, reserved business man +who made such an effort to talk to him. + +One day, as they sat together at a rather silent dinner, a sudden +thought made Pat drop his salad fork and look up at his father. "When is +Anne coming, father?" he asked. "Where's her school? and when is it +out?" + +"Anne? Anne who?" asked Mr. Patterson, blankly--for the moment +forgetful of the child who had been a brief episode in his busy life. + +"Why, Anne Lewis, of course--our little Anne," said Pat. + +"Oh, that child," answered Mr. Patterson, carelessly. "She is in an +orphan asylum in Virginia. I put her there the week we landed." + +Pat started to his feet. "In an orphan asylum?" he gasped. He knew +asylums only through the experiences of Oliver Twist, and if his father +had said "in jail," the words would not have excited more horror. + +"Of course," replied his father, viewing his emotion with surprise. +"That was where she belonged. We couldn't find any of her own people. +Why, son! You didn't expect me to keep her, did you?" + +"Mother intended that. She said Anne was my--little--sister." The boy +found it difficult to speak. + +"Your mother! If she had lived--but without her--be reasonable, Pat. +How could you and I--we rolling stones--take charge of a little girl? +And now--" + +"There is Aunt Sarah," interrupted Pat, refusing to be convinced. "Or +school. I thought you had her in boarding-school like me. Where is she?" + +Mr. Patterson was just going to tell Pat about Anne and her whereabouts. +But now he was provoked that his son put the question, not as a request, +but as a demand. He spoke sternly. "You forget yourself, Patrick. It is +not your place to take me to task for pursuing the course that I thought +proper in this matter. We will drop the subject, if you please." + +"But, father, Anne--" + +"Patrick!" Mr. Patterson interrupted. "Either sit down and finish your +dinner quietly or go to your room." + +Pat turned on his heel and went up-stairs, but not to his chamber. +Instead, he made his way to a little attic room with a dormer window. +There was a couch which his mother had covered with chintz patterned in +morning-glories, his birth-month flowers. The book-shelves and the chest +for toys were covered with the same design, applied by her dear hands. +How many a rainy Sunday afternoon his mother and he had spent in this +den, reading and talking together! In the months since his mother's +death, he had never missed her as he did now--in these first days at +home. There was no one to take away the loneliness. Aunt Sarah was with +Cousin Hugh. And now Anne was away--not just for a time but for always. +There was no one left but his father, who seemed like a stranger and +whom--he said it over and over to himself--he did not love. + +The boy threw himself face downward on his couch and sobbed as he had +not done since the first days after his mother's death. Where was Anne? +Was she with people who were good to her? If only he had written to her +long ago! Father would have sent the letter, or given the address. He +had begun a letter telling about a big baseball game but he had blotted +it; it was in his portfolio still, unfinished. Poor little Anne! The +tears came afresh. He could see his mother stroking Anne's fair hair, as +she had done one day when he was teasing about Honey-Sweet. + +"My son," the gentle voice had said, "you must be good to our little +girl. Remember, she has no one in the world but us." + +Dear little Anne! What a jolly playmate she was,--brave, good-tempered, +affectionate! and what a generous little soul! How she always insisted +on dividing her fruit and candies with him when he devoured his share +first. + +An hour passed. Mr. Patterson came up-stairs, went from his room into +Pat's, and then walked down the hall. + +"Pat!" he called. "Patrick!" The voice sounded stern but really its +undertone was anxiety. + +Pat did not speak. He scrambled to his feet and descended the stairs. +With set mouth and downcast eyes, he stood before his father. + +"Did I not tell you to go to your room, Pat?" + +"Yes, father." Pat paused in the doorway. "I want to know where Anne +is," he said. + +"Patrick!" Mr. Patterson spoke sternly now. "You forget yourself +strangely to address me in this way. I refuse to answer." + +He turned on his heel and left his son. And he left a breach between +them which the days and weeks widened instead of closing. Pat, feeling +that it would be useless to question his father any more, did not +mention Anne's name again. He picked up his old comrades and went +walking, swimming, and canoeing, keeping as much away from his father as +possible. Mr. Patterson busied himself with office affairs, looking +forward with relief to the end of the so-longed-for vacation. In a few +days, Miss Drayton would join them to take Pat with her to the +Adirondacks. + +At this very time, Miss Drayton, too, was bearing about a disturbed +heart. She was fond of Anne and had always regretted her being sent to +an orphanage, but the feeling was not strong enough to make her reclaim +the child. Anne's uncle was a criminal, after all, and she herself had a +strange secret. How could she have acquired those jewels but by theft? +Miss Drayton shrank from the responsibility of such a child. Perhaps the +strict oversight of an asylum was best for her. + +This course of thought was abruptly changed by the receipt of a letter +forwarded from Washington to the Maryland village where Miss Drayton was +visiting. It was a many-postmarked much-travelled letter, that had +journeyed far and long before it reached her. Mailed in Liverpool, it +was sent to Nantes, in care of the American consul. It had been held, +under the supposition that the lady to whom it was addressed might come +to the city and ask for mail sent there for safe keeping. Finally, the +unclaimed letter was sent to the American embassy at Paris. There it +tarried awhile. Then it fell into the hands of a secretary who knew Miss +Drayton, and he sent the letter to the Washington post-office, +requesting that her street and number be supplied. + +This was done, and the ten-months-old letter reached Miss Drayton one +July afternoon. She glanced curiously from the unfamiliar handwriting to +the signature. Carey G. Mayo. Anne's uncle! + +With changing countenance, she read the letter hastily. + +Then she reread it once and again. + + "Liverpool, England, + + "20 September, 1910. + + "Miss Sarah Drayton, + +"Dear Madam,--I write to you on the eve of leaving the city, to +commend my niece to your care. You have been so good to the child that I +venture to hope you will care for her till I can relieve you of the +burden. She has no near relative and I am in no position to hunt up the +cousins who might take charge of her. + +"I told Anne not to tell you about seeing me till you reached Nantes, +for by that time, if ever, I shall be beyond the reach of officers of +the law. Please keep her mother's rings that I gave to her, unless it +becomes necessary to dispose of them to provide for her. If I live, I +will replace her money that I squandered. + +"Will you leave your address for me with the consul in Nantes? For God's +sake, madam, do not betray me to the hands of the law. I am a guilty +man, but I am putting myself in your power for the sake of this +innocent child. Be very good to her, I implore you. Deal with her as you +would be dealt with in your hour of need. + + "Respectfully yours, + + "Carey G. Mayo." + +This was the secret then, this the mystery. How she had misjudged poor +little Anne! She would hasten to take the child from the asylum and +would do all possible to make up for the lonely, neglected past. She +wrote at once to the consul at Nantes, asking him to forward to her +Washington address any letters which came for her. Then she hastened her +departure to Washington. + +"I came before the time I set," she said to her brother-in-law as soon +as they were alone together, "because I wish to talk to you about Anne +Lewis." Mr. Patterson's brow clouded. "She is in an orphan asylum in +Virginia, is she not? We must get her out. At once. Read this letter." + +Mr. Patterson held the letter unopened in his hand. "The subject is an +unpleasant one," he said. "I've been wanting to tell you about a +conversation I had with Pat. It showed me in a startling way how the boy +is developing. I don't know what to do with him. In my young days, boys +were different. We submitted to our fathers. A year or two of school and +camp life has changed my little Pat into a sullen, self-willed, +unmanageable youngster." He repeated the conversation between Pat and +himself about Anne. + +"And you did not tell him where Anne is?" asked Miss Drayton. + +"Certainly not," replied Mr. Patterson. "His manner was disrespectful. +If he had asked properly, I should have answered him. Of course I had no +objection to telling him." + +"Ah," murmured Miss Drayton. "I hope he didn't think you meant to keep +him ignorant of Anne's whereabouts." + +"Of course not," said Mr. Patterson, indignantly. + +"Children get queer little notions in their queer little heads +sometimes," said Miss Drayton. "I confess, brother, I think you've done +wrong. And I've done wrong. We could have given this orphan child a home +and care--and we did not." + +Her brother-in-law replied that orphan asylums were established to +relieve such cases. + +Miss Drayton did not argue the question. She said softly: "We failed in +the trust that Emily left us--our duty to her little adopted daughter." + +Mr. Patterson was silent. He opened and read Mr. Mayo's letter. Then he +folded it carefully and handed it back. "I will go to-morrow and get +this child from the asylum," he said. + +"Suppose you let me go--with Pat," suggested Miss Drayton. "And, +brother, talk to him. Explain matters." + +But he shook his head. "There is nothing for me to explain. You and I +misunderstood things. I am sorry we did not know all this at first. Then +we would have acted differently. But it is not for Pat to judge my +course. I refuse to defend myself to a young cub." + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +"What are you smiling at, Pat?" Miss Drayton asked her nephew sitting +beside her in the parlor car. They had passed through the tunnel and +crossed the beautiful Potomac Park and the shining river. Washington +Monument, like a finger pointing skyward, was fading in the distance. + +"What amuses you, Pat?" repeated his aunt. + +"Can't help grinning like a possum," answered Pat, with a chuckle. +"Every mile is taking us nearer Anne. How she'll jump and squeal +'oo-ee'--when she sees us! And--look here, Aunt Sarah--" he glanced +cautiously around to be sure that he was not observed, then opened his +travelling-bag and displayed a doll's dress--blue silk with frills and +lace ruffles. "I bought it in an F Street shop yesterday--for +Honey-Sweet, you know," he explained. "Gee! It'll tickle Anne for me to +give that doll a present. She'll--" he whistled a bar of ragtime. + +Miss Drayton laughed heartily. The gift set aside so completely the +lapse of time that she could fancy she saw Anne running to meet them, +her tawny hair flying in the wind and Honey-Sweet clasped in her arms. + +According to its habit, the Southern train was behind time. Instead of +early afternoon, it was twilight when Miss Drayton and Pat reached their +station. Dusk was deepening into drizzling night when their cab set them +down at the gate of the 'Home.' They were ushered through the prim hall +into the superintendent's office. Miss Farlow rose from her desk. + +"You are in charge of this institution?" asked Miss Drayton. + +"I am Miss Farlow, the superintendent." + +"I am Miss Drayton from Washington City. This is my nephew, Patrick +Patterson. We are friends of Anne Lewis." + +"You have news of her?" asked Miss Farlow, starting eagerly forward. + +"News? We have come to see her--to take her home with us--to give her a +home," explained Miss Drayton. + +Miss Farlow sank back on her chair, and buried her face in her hands. +The quiet, reserved woman was weeping bitterly. "If we only had her, if +we only had her!" she moaned. "Poor little motherless, fatherless one! +Oh, it was my fault. I failed in my duty. I tried to do right by her. +God knows I did." + +"What is the matter? What do you mean?" Miss Drayton was frightened. Was +the child dead? injured? She dared not ask. "Anne--where is she?" she +faltered at last. + +"I don't know." Miss Farlow was recovering her self-control and +struggling to speak steadily. "She started on a holiday trip with some +friends. On the way she disappeared. Absolutely disappeared. No one +knows where nor when. The nurse saw her last at Westcot, a few stations +from Lynchburg. The train was in the city before she was missed." + +"We will find her. We must," cried Miss Drayton. + +Miss Farlow was hopeless. "Not a stone has been left unturned. That was +two weeks ago. The trainmen were all questioned. Telegrams were sent to +every station. Mr. Marshall has spared neither trouble nor expense. No +one saw her get off. There is no trace of her. None. If the earth had +opened and swallowed her, she could not have disappeared more +completely. When you came in--strangers--and mentioned her name--my one +thought and hope was that you had found her." Miss Farlow sobbed. "I +think of her day and night. A little lost child! homeless! friendless! +all alone!" + +"Don't, don't!" Pat put up his hand as if to ward off a blow. He +hurried from the room and crouched down in a corner of the cab, +staring out into the wet night. Somewhere in the darkness--in the +rain--homeless--friendless--all alone--was little Anne. + +Surely there was some clew that they might follow to reach the child. +Miss Drayton and Pat went to 'Roseland' to hear the story from Mrs. +Marshall's own lips. She could give them no help. She and her husband +had done all that was possible. They would have done this for the +child's own sake. They were doubly bound to do it for the sake of their +sons who were heart-broken about Anne. Arthur was always begging them to +let Anne come back to see him. Dunlop understood that she was lost and +refused to be comforted. + +Miss Drayton and Pat went into the nursery and found the children at +supper. + +"I know, it's late, ma'am," said Martha, helplessly; "but Master Dunlop +he wouldn't let me have it afore. Do eat now, Master Dunlop. Here's this +nice strawberry jam." + +Dunlop took up the spoon, then paused to ask, "Do you reckon Anne has +any strawberry jam for her supper?" + +Pat shook his head. + +Dunlop's lip quivered. "Then I don't want any. Take it away, Martha," +and he pushed aside the spoon. + +"Do with Anne wath here," lisped Arthur. "I got her thweater yolled up +smooth to keep for her. Whyn't she come?" + +No one could tell him. + +Miss Farlow wished Miss Drayton, according to Mr. Mayo's request, to +take charge of the child's jewels. But Miss Drayton refused. + +"You keep them, please," she urged. "If--when Anne comes back, it will +be to you. She does not know where we are. Oh, I cannot bear the sight +of those miserable jewels," she exclaimed. "The mere thought of them +reminds me how I misjudged our poor child." + +There was nothing she could do in Richmond and she hurried back to +Washington to consult her brother-in-law. How unlike the merry journey +of the day before was the silent, miserable trip! + +"Don't take it so hard, dear boy," Miss Drayton said, clasping Pat's +hand which lay limp in hers a minute and was then withdrawn. "We may +find her yet,--well and happy." + +She spoke in a half-hearted way and Pat shook his head hopelessly. +"She's been gone two weeks," he said, "and no sign of her. I think about +her--like that woman said--homeless--friendless--all alone--a little +lost child--in the wet and dark, like last night." There was a moment's +silence. Then Pat spoke again: "Aunt Sarah, I shall never feel the same +to father. It is his fault. He ought not to have put her there. He +ought to have told me where she was. If he had told me when I asked +him--that was three weeks ago, you know." + +Miss Drayton reasoned, coaxed, entreated. "Think of your mother, Pat," +she said gently. "How you would grieve her!" + +"I do think of her," returned Pat. "She would never have acted so. And +she would never have let father send Anne away." + +Miss Drayton sighed. Was it not sad and pitiful enough to have that poor +little orphan lost? Must her dead sister's husband be estranged from his +only son? + +Pat stood silent while Miss Drayton told his father the story of their +journey. Mr. Patterson listened--surprised at first, then vexed. Now and +then, he interrupted with brief, pointed questions. The answers left him +anxious, distressed. Presently he took off his eyeglasses and put his +hand up as if to shade his eyes from the light. When the tale was +finished, there was a brief silence. A gentle breeze rustled the +elm-tree at the window. A carriage clattered past. A newsboy shouting +"Papers!" ran down the quiet street. + +Mr. Patterson dropped his hand. His lashes were wet with tears. "Lord!" +he said in a broken voice. "Can I ever forgive myself?" + +Pat started forward with tears in his eyes. "Father!" he cried. +"Dear--old--dad! We'll find her yet." + +Mr. Patterson seized the outstretched hand and held it close. "God grant +it," he said. "My son, my son!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + +Meanwhile, where was Anne? Was she as forlorn and miserable in reality +as her friends fancied? Let us see. + +After she slipped unobserved from the railway coach, she followed the +familiar footpath in its leisurely windings across meadow and up-hill. +It led her to a tumble-down fence, surrounding a spacious, deep-turfed +lawn, with native forest trees--oak, elm, and chestnut--growing where +nature had set them. On the crest of the hill, rose a square, +old-fashioned house, dear and familiar. Home, home at last! + +Anne pushed through the gate, hanging ajar on one hinge, and hurried +across the lawn. Even in the twilight, she could see that the microfila +roses by the front porch were still blooming--they had been in bloom +when she went away--and the Cherokee rose on the summer-house was +starred with cream-white blossoms. From the windows of the old +sitting-room, a light was shining and Anne hastened toward the latticed +side-porch which opened into the room. As she approached the steps, a +lank, clay-colored dog came snarling toward her. Two or three puppies +ran out, barking furiously. Anne stopped, too frightened to cry out. + +The sitting-room door opened and a thick-set man in shirt-sleeves came +out on the porch. He peered into the darkness. + +"Who's that?" he asked. Anne, fearfully expecting to be devoured by the +yelping curs, could not answer. "Who's out there, say?" repeated the +man. Anne took two or three steps toward the protection of the light and +the open door. The man answered a question from within. "Don't know. +It's a child," he said, catching sight of Anne, and going to meet her. +"Them pups won't bite. Get away, Red Coat. She'll nip you if she gits a +chance. Come right on in, honey. Whyn't you holler at the gate?" + +Anne followed the strange man through the door that he opened hospitably +wide. It was and was not the dear room that she remembered. There were +the four big windows, the panelled walls, the bookcase with +diamond-paned doors, built in a recess beside the chimney. But where was +the gilt-framed mirror that hung over the mantel-piece? And the silver +candlesticks with crystal pendants? And the old brass fender and +andirons? And the shiny mahogany table with brass-tipped claw feet? And +the little spindle-legged tables with their burdens of books, vases, and +pictures? And the tinkly little old piano? And the carved mahogany +davenport? And the sewing-table, ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl, that +stood always by the south window? And the quaint old engravings and +colored prints? All these were gone. Instead of the threadbare Brussels +carpet patterned with huge bouquets of flowers, there was a striped rag +carpet. There were a few rush-bottomed chairs, a box draped with red +calico on which stood a water-bucket and a wash-pan, a cook-stove before +the fireplace, and in the middle of the room a table covered with a red +cloth, on which was set forth a supper of coffee, corn-cakes, fried +bacon, and cold cabbage and potatoes. A fat, freckle-faced girl, a +little larger than Anne, and two boys of about twelve and fourteen were +seated at the supper-table. Beside the stove stood a stout, fair woman +in a soiled gingham apron. Their four pairs of wide-open, light-blue +eyes stared at Anne. + +"Where you pick up that child, Peter Collins?" demanded the woman, +neglecting her frying cakes. + +"She jes' come to the door," responded Mr. Collins. + +"My sakes!" exclaimed his wife. "Whose child is you? Whar you come from, +here after dark, this way?" + +"Where's Aunt Charity?" asked Anne. + +"Aunt Charity? Don't no Aunt Charity live here. This is Mr. Collins's +house,--Peter Collins. Is you lost?--Peter, you Peter Collins! I want +know who on earth this child is you done brung here. You always doing +some outlandish thing! Who is she?" + +"How the thunder I know?" muttered her husband, pulling at his beard. + +Anne stood bewildered. This was home and yet it was not home. Her lips +quivered, she clasped Honey-Sweet tighter, and turned toward the door to +go--where? Everything turned black around her, the floor seemed to give +way under her feet, and in another moment she and Honey-Sweet were in a +forlorn little heap on the floor and she was sobbing as if her heart +would break. + +"I want home! I want somebody!" she wailed piteously. + +Mrs. Collins sat down on the floor and drew the weeping child into her +arms. + +"Thar, thar, honey! don't you cry! don't you cry!" she said soothingly. +"Po' little thing! Le' me take off your hat! Why, yo' little hands is +jest as cold! Lizzie, set the kettle on front of the stove. Jake, you +put some wood in the fire. Now, honey, you set right in this +rocking-chair by the stove and le' me wrap a shawl round you. I'll have +you some cambric tea and fry you some hot cakes in a jiffy. A good +supper'll het you up. I'd take shame to myself, Peter Collins, if I was +you"--she scowled at her husband as she bustled about--"a gre't big man +like you skeerin' a po' little thing like that! What diff'rence do it +make who she is or whar she come from? Anybody with two eyes in his head +can see she's jest a po' little lost thing. You gre't gawk, you!" + +"What is I done, I'd like to know?" inquired Mr. Collins, helplessly. + +Anne had not realized that she was hungry until Mrs. Collins set before +her a plateful of hot crisp cakes. The good woman spread them with +butter and opened a jar of 'company' sweetmeats,--crisp watermelon rind, +cut in leaf, star, and fish shapes. While serving supper, Mrs. Collins +chattered on in a soft, friendly voice. + +"I see how 'twas. You knowed this place before we come here. We been +here two year come next Christmas. Done bought the place. Fust time any +of our folks is ever owned land. Always been renters and share-hands, +movin' to new places soon as we wore out ol' ones. I tell my ol' man +it's goin' to come mighty hard on him now that he's got a place of his +own that's got to be tooken care of." + +By this time, the color had come back to Anne's face and she was smiling +and stroking the sleek black-and-white cat that had jumped in her lap. + +"What is the little girl's name, mammy?" asked Lizzie. Having finished +her supper, she was standing at her mother's side, staring with wide +eyes at Anne and shyly rolling a corner of her apron in her fingers. + +"Sh-sh-sh," whispered Mrs. Collins. "'Tain't perlite to ask questions. +You make her cry again.--But, Peter, I'm worried to think maybe her +folks is missed her and lookin' for her. You have to take the lantern +presen'ly and go and tell 'em she's here." + +"Whar is I gwine? And who I gwi' tell?" asked Mr. Collins. + +"Peter Collins, you is the most unreasonable man I ever see in my life! +You sho ain't goin' to worry the po' little thing and make her cry +again, askin' all kinds of questions. You jest got to hunt up her folks. +They'll be worried to death, missing a child like this, and at night, +too." + +But Anne was now ready to explain cheerfully. "I haven't any folks--not +any real folks of my own now," she said. "Mother is dead and father is +dead. Uncle Carey got lost, I reckon. I used to live here. Mr. +Patterson took me to a--a orphan 'sylum, Mrs. Marshall calls it. The +name over the door is 'Home for Girls.' This evening I was on the train +with Mrs. Marshall and I knew the place when we came to the water-tank. +And I wanted to be here. So we came, Honey-Sweet and I. I thought the +dog was going to bite me." + +"You hear that, Peter Collins?" exclaimed Mrs. Collins. "Now wasn't that +smart of her? She knowed the place and got off the train by herself and +come right up to the house. And Red Coat might 'a' bit the po' child +traipsin' 'long in the dark. You got to shut that dog up nights," she +said, as if every evening was to bring a little lost Anne wandering into +danger. "To think of puttin' a po' little motherless, fatherless thing +in a 'sylum," she continued. "Many homes as thar is in this world!--Le' +me fry you another plateful of nice brown cakes, honey, and get you some +damson preserves--maybe you like them better'n sweetmeats. Or would you +choose raspberry jam?" She had thrown open the diamond-paned doors of +the bookcase, now used as a pantry, and was looking over the rows of +jars. + +"I couldn't eat another mouthful of anything; indeed, I couldn't," +insisted Anne. + +"I wish you would," sighed Mrs. Collins. "It gives me a feelin' to see +yo' po' thin little face--no wider'n a knitting needle." + +Anne laughed. "I ate ever so many cakes. They were so good--as good as +Aunt Charity's. Please--where is Aunt Charity?" + +"Aunt Charity who?" asked Mrs. Collins. + +"Our old Aunt Charity and Uncle Richard that used to live here." + +"Oh! You mean them old darkies. They moved away the year we come here. +They--" + +"Mammy, I want to know her name," insisted Lizzie, in an undertone. +"And I want to see her doll in my own hands." + +"My name is Anne Lewis," Anne informed her. "My doll is named Mrs. Emily +Patterson but I call her Honey-Sweet." + +"That's a mighty pretty dress," said Lizzie, admiringly. + +"I made it, all but the buttonholes," Anne answered proudly. "Martha did +those." + +"Do her shoes really, truly come off?" asked Lizzie. + +"Yes, they do. And her stockings, too. Look here." + +The two girls played happily together with Honey-Sweet until Mrs. +Collins declared that Anne was tired and tucked her away with Lizzie in +a trundle-bed. + +"I dunno when I've set up so late," the good woman said to her husband, +as she wound up the clock. "It's near nine o'clock. But one thing I tell +you, Peter Collins, afore I get a mite of sleep--Nobody's going to send +that po' child back to the 'sylum she's runned away from. Tain't no use +for you to say a word." + +"Is I said a word?" asked Mr. Collins. + +"That po' thing ain't goin' to be drug back to no 'sylum," pursued his +wife. "She shall stay here long as she's a mind to--till her folks come +for her--or till she gets grown--or something. And she shall have all +she wants to eat, sho as my name's Lizabeth Collins. I've heard tell of +them 'sylums. They say the chillen don't have nothin' to eat or wear but +what folks give 'em. Think of them with their po' little empty stomachs +settin' waitin' for somebody to think to send 'em dinner! I'm goin' to +make a jar full of gingercakes fust thing in the mornin' and put it on +the pantry shelf where that child can he'p herself.--Anne, uh! +Anne!--She's 'sleep. I jest wondering if she'd rather have gingercakes +or tea-cakes dusted with sugar and cinnamon. Peter Collins! I tell you, +you got to work and pervide for yo' chillen. I couldn't rest in my +grave if I thought one of them'd ever have to go to a 'sylum. I see you +last week give a knife to that Hawley boy.--What if he was name for +you?--I don't keer if it didn't cost but ten cent. You'll land in the +po' house and yo' chillen in 'sylums if you throw away yo' money on +tother folks' chillens.--Peter, fust thing in the morning you catch me a +chicken to fry for that po' child's breakfast. And remind me--to git +out--a jar of honey," she concluded drowsily. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + +The next morning, after Anne insisted that she could not possibly eat +any more corn-cakes or biscuits or toast or fried apples or chicken or +ham or potato-cakes or molasses or honey, Mrs. Collins picked her up and +put her in a rocking-chair by the south window. + +"Now, you set thar and rest," she commanded, "till Lizzie does up her +work and has time to play with you. You Lizzie! Hurry and wash them +dishes and sweep this floor and dust my room and then take the little +old lady's breakfast to her. It's in the stove, keeping warm." + +"Let me help Lizzie," begged Anne. "I know how to sweep and dust and +wash dishes. We had to do those things--turn about, you know--at the +'Home.'" + +"You set right still," repeated Mrs. Collins, "and let some meat grow on +yo' po' little bones. I know how they treat you at them 'sylums, making +you work day in, day out. Oh, it's a dog's life!" + +"But, Mrs. Collins, they were good to me, and kind as could be. I didn't +have to work so hard. I just did the things that Lizzie does." + +"Uh! Lizzie!" was the response, "that's diff'rent. She's at home. She +works when I tell her--if she chooses," Mrs. Collins concluded with a +chuckle, for Lizzie had dropped her broom and was sitting in the middle +of the floor pulling Honey-Sweet's shoes and stockings off and on. + +Anne went outdoors presently to look around the dear old place. 'Lewis +Hall,' a roomy frame-house built before the Revolution, was on a hill +which sloped gently toward the corn-fields and meadows that bordered the +lazy river beyond which rose the bluffs of Buckingham. Back of the +house, a level space was laid out in a formal garden. The boxwood, +brought from England when that was the mother country, met across the +turf walks. Long-neglected flowers--damask and cabbage roses, zinnias, +cock's-comb, hollyhocks--grew half-wild, making masses of glowing color. +Along the walks, where there had paced, a hundred years before, stately +Lewis ladies in brocade and stately Lewis gentlemen in velvet coats, now +tripped an orphan girl, a stranger in her father's home. But she was a +very happy little maid as she roamed about the spacious old garden on +that sunshiny summer day, gathering hollyhocks and zinnias for ladies to +occupy her playhouse in the gnarled roots of an old oak-tree. + +When Lizzie came out to play, she and Anne wandered away to the fields. +There was a dear little baby brook--how well Anne remembered it!--that +started from a spring on the hillside, trickled among the under-brush, +loitered through the meadow, and emptied into a larger stream that fed +the river. + +"Let's take off our shoes and stockings," said Anne, tripping joyfully +along, "and wade to the creek. You've been there? Part of the way is +sandy. Your feet crunch down in the nice cool sand. Part of the way +there are rocks--flat, mossy ones. They're so pretty--and slippery! It's +fun not knowing when you are going to fall down." + +"There's bamboo-vines," objected Lizzie. "Mother'll whip me if I tear my +dress." + +"Oh, we'll stoop down and crawl under the vines." Anne was ready of +resource. "And we'll dry our dresses in the sun before we go home. Oh, +Lizzie! Look at all the little fishes! Let's catch them! Do don't let +them get by. Aren't they slippery! Tell you what let's play. Let's be +Jamestown settlers and catch fish to keep us from starving. We'll have +our settlement here by the brook--the river James, we'll play it is." + +"How do you play that? I never heard tell of Jamestown settlers," said +Lizzie. + +"A big girl like you never heard about Jamestown settlers!" exclaimed +Anne; then, fearing her surprise at such ignorance would hurt Lizzie's +feelings, she tried to smooth it over. "It really isn't s'prising that +you never heard 'bout them, Lizzie. Mother always said this was such a +quiet place that you never heard any news here. I'll tell you all 'bout +them while we build our huts." + +While Anne told the story of John Smith and played she was the brave +captain directing his band, they dragged brushwood together and erected +cabins. Stones were piled to make fireplaces on which to cook the fish +they were going to catch and the corn they were going to buy from the +Indians. + +"You be the Indians, Lizzie," suggested Anne. "Paint your face with +pokeberries and stick feathers in your hair. They're heap nicer to look +at, but I want to be the Englishmen and talk like Captain John Smith. +All you have to say is 'ugh! ugh!'" + +The morning slipped by so quickly that they could hardly believe their +ears when they heard the farm bell ringing for noon. After dinner, Jake +and Peter went by the settlement, on their way to the tobacco-field, to +help build Powhatan's rock chimney. The boys made bows and arrows and +became so interested in playing Indian that Mr. Collins came for them. +He scolded them roundly and said that no boy who didn't work in the +tobacco-field would get any supper at his house that night. + +"I'm the play Captain Smith," laughed Anne, looking up at the +rough-speaking, soft-hearted man; "but you talk like the real captain. +'I give this for a law,' he said, 'that he who will not work shall not +eat.'" + +Mrs. Collins said that night that the girls must not play Jamestown +settlers any more. They might get ill or hurt or snake-bit; and who +ever heard of such a game for little girls? they ought to stay in the +house and keep their faces white and their frocks clean and play dolls. +Anne and Lizzie, however, teased next day until she relented and even +waddled down the hill to see their settlement. + +"I told them chillen they shouldn't put thar foots in that ma'sh on the +branch, gettin' wet and draggled and catchin' colds and chills," she +explained to her husband. "But they begged so hard I told 'em to go on +and have a good time. Maybe it won't hurt 'em. They're good-mindin' +gals. And I never did believe in encouragin' chillen to disobey you by +tellin' 'em they shouldn't do things you see thar heads set on doin'. +Don't be so hard on the boys, Peter, for stoppin' awhile to play. If the +Lord hadn't 'a' meant for chillen to have play-time, He'd 'a' made 'em +workin' age to begin with." + +The Jamestown colony, like the great undertaking after which it was +patterned, had many ups and downs,--flourishing when Jake and Peter +could steal off to be Indians and new settlers, and then being neglected +and almost deserted. Anne and Lizzie found the most beautiful place to +play keeping house. On the hillside, there were two great rocks, full of +the most delightful nooks and crevices. One of these rocks was Anne's +home, the other was Lizzie's. In the moss-carpeted rooms, lived daisy +ladies, with brown-eyed Susans for maids. They made visits and gave +dinner parties, having bark tables set with acorn-cups and bits of +broken glass and china. They had leaf boats to go a-pleasuring on the +spring brook where they had wonderful adventures. + +Rainy days put an end to outdoor delights, but they only gave more time +for indoor games with their neglected dolls. + +After breakfast one rainy morning, Lizzie asked her mother for some +scraps--she didn't want any except pretty ones--to make dresses for +Honey-Sweet and Nancy Jane. Mrs. Collins replied that she had no idea of +wasting her good bed-quilt and carpet-rag pieces on such foolishness as +doll dresses. But when ten minutes later the girls went back to repeat +their request, they found Mrs. Collins rummaging a bureau drawer. Thence +she produced two generous pieces of pretty dimity,--Honey-Sweet's was +buff with little rose sprigs and Nancy Jane's had daisies on a pale-blue +ground. + +While Lizzie was busy making doll dresses, Anne got a book with pictures +in it and gave forth a story with a readiness that amazed Mrs. Collins. + +"Ain't you a good reader!" she exclaimed. "You read so fast I can't +understand half you say." + +"I'm not reading all that," honesty compelled Anne to confess, as she +beamed with pleasure at Mrs. Collins's praise. "I read when the words +are short, and when they're long and the print's solid, I make it up out +of my head to fit the pictures." + +"Ah! you come of high-learnt folks," said Mrs. Collins, admiringly. +"Now, my Jake and Peter, they can't read nothing but what's in the book +and that a heap of trouble to 'em. And Lizzie here, she's wore out two +first readers and don't hardly know her letters yet." + +Lizzie soon tired of sewing and she and Anne pattered off through the +halls to the bareness and strangeness of which Anne could not get used. +Where, she wondered, were the people in tarnished gilt frames--slim +smiling ladies and stately gentlemen with stocks and wigs--that used to +be there? The two girls played lady and come-to-see in the bare +up-stairs rooms awhile. Then Anne said, "Lizzie, I'm going up the little +ladder into the attic and walk around the chimneys." + +"Don't! It's dark up there," shuddered Lizzie. + +"Dark as midnight," agreed Anne; "heavy dark. You can feel it. It's the +only place I used to be afraid of. I have to make myself go there." + +"Why?" asked Lizzie. + +"I--don't just know--but I do. You wait here." She came back a little +later, dusty, cobwebby, flushed. "I knew there wasn't anything there--in +the dark more'n the light," she said. "I know it, and still I just have +to make myself not be scared. Whew! It's hot up there. Lizzie, let's go +in the parlor. I've not been in there yet." + +"No," objected Lizzie. "The little old lady's in there--or in the room +back of it. Them's her rooms." + +"The little old lady? who is she?" inquired Anne. + +"She's the one I take breakfast and dinner and supper to. She comes here +in the summer and she sits in there and rocks and reads." + +"Doesn't she ever go out?" Anne wanted to know. + +"Oh, yes! she walks in the yard or garden every day. You just ain't +happened to see her. We've played away from the house so much." + +"What kind of looking lady is she?" asked Anne. + +"Oh, she's just a lady. Ma says she's mighty hotty. What's hotty, Anne?" +inquired Lizzie. + +Haughty was a new word to Anne. But she hated to say "I don't know," and +besides words made to her pictures--queer ones sometimes--of their +meaning. "It means she warms up quick," she asserted. "Tell me about +her, Lizzie. How does she look?" + +"She ain't so very tall and she's slim as a bean-pole," said Lizzie. +"Her hair's gray and her skin is white and wrinkly. And she wears long +black dresses. That's all I know." + +"I want to see her. Let's sit at the head of the steps and watch for her +to come out," suggested Anne. + +They sat there what seemed a long time but as the little old lady did +not appear, they finally ran off to play with Honey-Sweet and Nancy +Jane. + +While they were thus engaged, Mr. Collins came from the mill. He shook +his dripping hat, and hung up the stiff yellow rain-coat that he called +a 'slicker.' + +"I come by the station, wife," he announced. "And what you think? Thar's +a gre't big sign up, 'Lost child.'" + +"Sho! Whose child's lost?" inquired Mrs. Collins. + +"It's Anne," was the reply. "The printed paper give her name and age and +all. And it tells anybody that's found her or got news of her to let +them 'sylum folks know." + +"As if anybody with a heart in their body would do that!" commented Mrs. +Collins. "I bound you let folks know she was here. If you jest had sense +enough to keep yo' mouth shet, Peter Collins! That long tongue of yours +goin' to be the ruin of you yet." + +"I ain't unparted my lips," asserted her husband. + +"Now ain't that jest like a man?" Mrs. Collins demanded of the clock. +"'Stead of trying to throw folks off the track, saying something like +'What on earth's a lost child doing here?' or 'Nobody'd 'spect a lost +child to come to my house!'" + +"I wish you'd been thar, Lizbeth," said her admiring husband. "You'd +fixed it up. Well, anyhow, I ain't said a word, so don't nobody know +nothin' from me. All she's got to do is to lay low till this hub-bub's +over." + +In that out-of-the-way place there seemed little danger of Anne's being +discovered. Mrs. Collins, however, made elaborate plans for her +concealment. + +"Anne," she said, "would you mind me callin' you my niece Polly?" + +Anne looked at her in questioning surprise. + +"If so be people from the 'sylum was to look for you, you wouldn't want +to go back thar, would you?" + +"Oh, no! I'd much rather stay here," answered Anne. + +"Bless your heart! and so you shall," exclaimed Mrs. Collins. "I'll trim +your hair and part it on the side and call you my niece Polly. And can't +nobody find out who you are and drag you back to that 'sylum. You shall +stay here forever." + +"Goody, goody!" cried Anne. Then she said thoughtfully, "I do wish I had +some of my things from there. It doesn't matter so much about my +clothes. Lizzie's are most small enough and I s'pose I'll grow to fit +them. But I do wish Honey-Sweet had her dresses, 'spressly her spotted +silk and her blue muslin. And there are some other things. Uncle Carey +said they were my mother's and I don't want Miss Farlow to keep them +always." + +"When you are grown up, you can go and get them," suggested Mrs. +Collins. + +"Oh, so I will," said Anne. "And please, may Lizzie go with me?" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + +A day or two later, Anne wandered alone into the old-fashioned garden. +She had just recalled--bit by bit things from the past came back to +her--a damask rose at the end of the south walk that was her mother's +special favorite. It was bare now of its rosy-pink blossoms and Anne +gathered some red and yellow zinnias to play lady with. The red-gowned +ladies had their home under the Cherokee rose-bush and yellow-frocked +dames were given a place under the clematis-vine; then they exchanged +visits and gave beautiful parties. + +Presently a slim, black-robed lady sauntered down the box-edged turf +walk and stopped near Anne. + +"What are you doing, little girl?" she asked. + +Anne looked up at the lady. "How do you do, cousin?" she said, +scrambling to her feet and putting up her mouth to be kissed. It was one +of the cousins, she knew, and it was the most natural thing in the world +to see her come down the box-edged walk to the rose-arbor; but whether +it was Cousin Lucy or Cousin Dorcas or Cousin Polly, Anne was not sure. + +It was Cousin Dorcas and she stared at the child for a moment, too +amazed to speak. + +"It cannot be little Nancy!" she exclaimed at last. "Child, who are +you?" + +"Why, of course, I'm little Nancy," Anne laughed. + +"What are you doing here? Where did you come from?" + +"I am playing flower dolls." Anne answered the questions gravely in +order. "I got off the train because I wanted to come home. I thought +Aunt Charity and Uncle Richard were here." + +Miss Dorcas Read sat down on a rustic seat and questioned her small +cousin until she drew forth the story of the child's wanderings. + +"I am glad I have found you," the lady said when Anne's story was +finished. "You ought to be with your own people, of course, and I am +your near kinswoman. Your great-grandmother and my grandmother were +sisters. It is little that I have, but that little I shall gladly share +with you. I must take you with me when I go home next week." + +"Where is your home?" asked Anne. + +"In Washington City. I am one of the little army of government clerks," +Miss Dorcas explained. "I come back every summer to spend my vacation +here. I walk in the dear old garden and read the dear old books and live +again in the dear old days. You do not understand now, child; but some +day, if you live long enough, you will understand." + +Lizzie wailed aloud when she learned that Anne was to leave 'Lewis +Hall,' and in her heart Anne preferred her old home to her old cousin. + +"You shouldn't never have gone to a 'sylum," said Mrs. Collins, wiping +her eyes with her apron. "But when one of your blood-kin lays claim to +you, that's diff'rent and I ain't got no call to interfere. I got sense +enough to know my folks ain't like yo' folks. Yours is the real old-time +quality folks and you ought to be brung up with your own kind. Now, we +is a bottom rail that's done come to the top. My chillen's got to be +schooled and give book-learnin'. Some day they'll forget they was ever +anything but top rails, and look down on their old daddy and mammy." + +"I ain't, mammy; I ain't never gwi' look down on you," declared Lizzie. + +"That's all right, honey," answered Mrs. Collins. "I want you to be +hotty and look down on folks. I never could l'arn to do it. I was always +too sociable-disposed." + +"No one can ever look on you except with respect, dear Mrs. Collins," +Miss Dorcas insisted. "Certainly, Anne and I shall always regard you as +one of her best friends. She will want to come to see you next vacation, +if you will let her." + +"Let her! and thank you, ma'am," exclaimed Mrs. Collins. "Now I'm going +to unload them pantry shelves. You shall have sweetmeats and jam and +preserves and pickle for yo' snacks, Anne, and I want you to think of +Lizbeth Collins when you eat 'em." + +Before Anne and Cousin Dorcas went to Washington, it was resolved that +they should visit Aunt Charity and Uncle Richard, who lived on a +plantation eight miles from 'Lewis Hall.' Mrs. Collins doubted the +wisdom of the plan, fearing lest some of the 'sylum folks on the lookout +for Anne would be met on the public road. Miss Dorcas, too, was a little +uneasy. It was finally decided that Anne should wear one of Lizzie's +frocks and her sunbonnet and that if they met any one on the road, Miss +Dorcas was to say in a loud voice, "Lizzie!" and Anne was to answer, +"Yes, ma'am." + +Mr. Collins brought out an old buggy with an old horse called Firefly +and helped Miss Dorcas in, explaining carefully, "This ain't no kicker +and it ain't no jumper. It's jest plain horse with good horse-sense. If +you don't cross yo' lines, you can drive him anywhere." + +"I don't know much about driving," confessed Miss Dorcas. "That is, I've +been driving a great deal but I've never held the lines.--Whoa! get up, +sir!" She gave a gurgly cluck, and flapped the lines up and down on +Firefly's back, with her elbows high in air. Firefly started meekly off +on a jog trot. Mr. Collins looked after them. + +"Dumb brutes is got heap more sense than humans," he exclaimed. "They +understands women. Now, Miss Dorcas she's whoain' and geein' and hawin' +that horse at the same time, but somehow he knows what she wants him to +do and he's gwine to do it." + +Firefly followed the winding of the river-road mile after mile, along +meadows, fields, and wooded hills, fair in the hazy sunlight. How many +times Anne had travelled this road on visits to the numerous cousins! + +Firefly turned at last from the highway to a plantation road and stopped +at a log cabin. It was a neat, whitewashed little house, with rows of +zinnias and marigolds on each side of a walk leading from the road. Over +the door, hung a madeira vine covered with little spikes of fragrant +white blossoms. Charity, in a blue-and-white checked cotton gown, with a +bandanna around her head, was working in her garden beside the house. + +"Don't speak to her, Cousin Dorcas," whispered Anne. "Let me s'prise +her." She jumped lightly out of the buggy and ran to Aunt Charity. +"Boo!" she said. + +Charity dropped her hoe with a scream. "Lawd 'a' mercy!" she exclaimed, +backing toward the cabin. "My child's ghost in de broad daylight!" + +Anne laughed till tears ran down her cheeks. "There!" she said, pinching +Charity's fat arm. "Does that feel like a ghost, Aunt Charity?" + +Charity seized Anne in her arms and jumped up and down, exclaiming, "My +child in de flesh and blood! my child in de flesh and blood!" At last +she recovered herself enough to "mind her manners" and help Miss Dorcas +out of the buggy. + +"You all ain' gwine away a step till you eat a snack," she insisted. "I +got a chicken in dyar I done kilt to take to church to-morrow. Ain't I +glad it's ready for my baby child! And I'll mix some hoecakes and bake +some sweet taters and gi' you a pitcher o' cool sweet milk. My precious +baby, you set right dyar in de do'. I can't take my eyes off you any +more'n if dee was glued to you." + +A table was set under the great oak and Charity, beaming with joy, +waited on her guests. "Richard ain't gwi' forgive hisself for goin' to +mill to-day," she said. "Dunno huccome he went, anyway. He could 'a' put +it off till Monday. But if you gwi' be at de old place till Chewsday, me +an' him will sho hobble up to see you." + +As the afternoon shadows began to lengthen, Miss Dorcas and Anne started +on their homeward journey. Miss Dorcas clucked and jerked the lines, and +Firefly ambled homeward, now jog-trotting along the road, now pausing to +nibble grass on the wayside. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + +All too soon for Anne, came the day that was to take her to the city. +Generous Mrs. Collins insisted on slipping into Miss Dorcas's trunk a +liberal supply of Lizzie's clothes, and she gave Anne one of Lizzie's +best frocks to travel in and a muslin hat that flopped over her face. +Disguised in these, she was to be smuggled away on a night train to +prevent her being discovered and taken back to the asylum. They were the +more concerned about the matter because Mr. Collins heard at the +blacksmith shop new inquiries about the lost child. Miss Dorcas charged +Charity and Richard, who trudged the long eight miles to visit their +"precious baby child," not to mention having seen Anne. Richard brought +on his shoulder a great bag full of things "for Marse Will Watkins's +child"--apples, popcorn, potatoes. For days Mrs. Collins had been baking +cakes and pies and selecting sweetmeats, preserves, and pickles from her +store. The supplies were so liberal that after a barrel was packed and +repacked and re-repacked there were almost as many things left out as +were put in. Mrs. Collins wanted to put them in another barrel, but Miss +Dorcas said that the supply already packed would more than fill her tiny +pantry. + +Mrs. Collins consoled herself as best she could. "Christmas is coming," +she said; "it's slow but it's on the way. And when it do get here, I'll +send you a barrel packed to show you what a barrel can hold." + +The morning after Anne's regretful farewell to her old home and her new +friends, found her eagerly examining her cousin's small apartment in +Georgetown. The house was a red-brick mansion built for the residence of +an early Secretary of the Navy, and now made over into cheap flats. The +stately, old-fashioned place was surrounded by small shops and cheap, +dingy houses. "It makes me think," Miss Dorcas said with a sigh, "how +Jefferson would look to-day in a Democratic party meeting or Hamilton +among modern Republican politicians." + +Anne didn't know who Hamilton was but she thought Jefferson, whose +picture hung in the sitting-room, looked as if he might have lived here. +It was a place still full of charm. In the rear of the mansion was an +old-fashioned flower garden with box-bordered gravel walks dividing the +formal beds and leading here to a stone seat, there to a broken +fountain. In the centre of the garden, was a sun-dial which a century +before told the shining hours; now, its days went in shadow under the +crowding trees,--a coffee-tree from Arabia, a mulberry from Spain, and +other relics of the wanderings of the long-ago secretary. Anne felt +like a bird in a nest as she sat on the roomy, white-columned porch +overlooking the garden, catching glimpses through a leafy screen of the +broad Potomac and the wooded hills of Virginia. + +"Ah! when the leaves fall it is beautiful, beautiful," said her cousin; +but Anne was sure that it could never be more beautiful than now, in the +green-gold glory of a late summer afternoon. + +After a few idle days, Anne was enrolled in the city free school. Miss +Dorcas mourned over the fact that she was unable to send her small +cousin to a select private school, and urged her to study hard, behave +well, and, above all, never to have anything to do with 'the common +herd' of other children. Anne obeyed the last command very unwillingly. +It would be dreadful to be "contaminated,"--which she supposed to mean +infected with a bad kind of measles,--as Cousin Dorcas said she would be +if she played with her grade-mates; but it was hard to sit primly alone +instead of joining the recess games. + +At first some of the children tried to make friends with her but, being +met coolly, they left her to lonely dignity. + +"It's goot," wonderingly explained Albert Naumann, a sturdy, blond +little German, when she refused a bite of the crimson-cheeked winesap +apple that he offered. + +"Why not?" asked merry-faced Peggy Callahan, when Anne declined her dare +to a foot-race. "You're not sick, are you?" + +"No, indeed!" answered Anne. + +"Oh! you look sorter like I feel when I've a pain in my stomach," said +Peggy, running off in reply to a playmate's call. + +Anne looked after her longingly. Peggy was a bright, merry, friendly +child with whom she would have liked to play, but for being sure Cousin +Dorcas would object. Peggy was certainly one of the 'common herd'--her +clothes ragged or patched and her person rather dingy. + +Anne was lonely. + +"It's worse than being all by myself," she reflected soberly, "to see +the other children's good times and be out of them all." + +She consoled herself as best she could with Honey-Sweet, disagreeing +stoutly with Miss Dorcas who thought that she was too large a girl to +play with dolls. + +"Honey-Sweet isn't just a doll--not like those in shops," Anne +explained. "Dear Mrs. Patterson made her. And she's been everywhere with +me. And, Cousin Dorcas, she really is useful. I study all my lessons +with her. That's how I learn them so good--making believe I'm teaching +them to Honey-Sweet. And she helps me keep still. You know you do like +me to be quiet, Cousin Dorcas." + +"Yes. I don't want to seem severe, but I cannot bear a noise. I am so +worn out when I come from the office. It seems each day my head aches +worse than it did the day before." Miss Dorcas sighed. "And if it isn't +a downright ache when I come home, it begins to pound as soon as I look +at this book--" she eyed the account-book open before her--"I hoped you +could have some new shoes this month. Those are downright shabby. But +there isn't any money for them. I don't see how I am going to pay the +gas bill unless we stop eating. It costs so much to live!" + +"Perhaps Miss Santa Claus will give us something," suggested Anne. + +"Perhaps so," answered Miss Dorcas, absently, poising her pencil above a +column of figures in her account-book. + +'Miss Santa Claus' was the name that Anne had given to a gentlewoman in +the apartment below. Anne had a smiling acquaintance with her and was +deeply interested in glimpses of her visitors. Miss Santa Claus's real +name was Margery Hartman. Her fair hair was growing silvery, but her +cheeks were pink and soft with lingering girlhood and the spirit of +eternal youth looked from her clear blue eyes. She was the district +agent of the Associated Charities, and worked untiringly with kind heart +and clear head to aid and uplift the poor around her. + +One September afternoon, Anne, running up-stairs, bumped against the +Charities lady. + +"Oh! I beg your pardon, Miss Santa Claus," she exclaimed. + +The lady laughed. "That's a new name for me," she said. + +Anne reddened. "It just slipped out. I don't know your other-folks' +name. And I call you Miss Santa Claus to myself because you are always +giving people things. I don't mean to listen," she explained, "but I +can't help hearing them ask you for coal and shoes and grocery orders." + +"You are my little neighbor on the floor above, aren't you?" asked the +lady. + +Anne assented. + +"It's a nice name you've given me--very much nicer than my own real +name which happens to be Margery Hartman. I know your name. I heard +Albert Naumann call you Anne Lewis." + +"You gave Albert shoes to wear to school," said Anne. + +"Yes. That is my business--to give things to people who need them. Kind +people provide money for me to help the poor. Isn't that good of them?" + +"It's very good," said Anne, earnestly. "Do you give them--shoes, I +mean--to all the children that need them?" + +"Not all." Miss Hartman smiled and then she sighed. "I wish I could." + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + + +The new acquaintance soon ripened into friendship. Miss Hartman grew +very fond of the quaint, affectionate child and Anne said Miss Hartman +was "nice as a book." She would tell story after story about the +children she met in her Charity work and then she would sit at the piano +and sing old songs in a sweet, clear voice of the quality that reaches +the heart. + +Sometimes Anne went to the Charity office and sat mouse-like watching +the people who came and went. One Saturday afternoon, Peggy Callahan +hurried into the room, untidy as usual, her eyes shining with +excitement. + +"Are you the head lady of the Charity?" she asked the lady at the desk. + +Miss Margery answered that she was. + +"If you please, ma'am, we don't want to be put away," Peggy announced. + +"Who wants to put you away? Tell me about it," said Miss Margery. + +"The folks over there." The girl nodded her head vaguely. "They say as +how mommer can't take care of us--popper he's got to go to the work'ouse +again. He wa'n't so very drunk this time but the judge sent him +there--mean old thing! And they say mommer can't take care of us and +we'll have to be put away in 'sylums. And we don't want to go. She says +if the Charity folks will help with the rent, we can get on. Don't none +of us eat much and we can do with terrible little," Peggy concluded +breathlessly. + +"What is your name? where do you live? I shall have to see your mother +and talk to her," said Miss Margery. + +"My name's Peggy Callahan and we live out that way," waving her hand +northward. "There ain't no number to the house. You go down this street +till it turns to a road and you come to a gate marked 'No Thoroughfare' +and you go straight through it and follow the path and you come to a +little brown house with red roses on the porch. That's our house. Oh! +there's two with roses! One is a colored lady's. Ours is the one with +the so many children." + +"I know your mother. And I remember the place," said Miss Margery, +writing a few lines in her notebook. "I am going out that way this +afternoon and we will see what can be done." + +"Thank you, lady," said Peggy, and bounded away. + +"I'd better send you home, Anne," said Miss Margery, with a little sigh, +"and let you go with me some other time. This place is a long way off, +much farther than I had expected to go this afternoon." + +"Please, Miss Margery, let me go," pleaded Anne. "I never get tired. And +I do want to go through the 'No Thoroughfare' gate, and see the little +brown house with the red roses and the children." + +Miss Margery hesitated, then consented, and she and Anne trudged through +the dingy suburb of shabby, scattered houses. + +"P'rhaps I oughtn't to have come," said Anne, rather doubtfully. "It's +cobblestones. They skin shoes. Cousin Dorcas says she doesn't know where +money's coming from to buy another pair. I asked her if we couldn't get +you to give me some shoes, like you do Albert and those other children, +and it made her cry. She said that would be a disgrace. Why, Miss +Margery?" + +"Miss Dorcas does not like to have people give her things," said Miss +Margery. + +"But Mrs. Collins gave me a dress and a hat and ever so many things. And +I need shoes. I need them bad as Albert did. If I don't get some pretty +soon, I can't go to school. Why mustn't you give them to me?" + +Miss Margery did not undertake to explain. "Don't worry about shoes +to-day," she said. "Be careful where you walk and don't stump your toes. +Those shoes look pretty well still. Miss Dorcas crosses bridges +sometimes before she comes to them. Why, there's Albert Naumann. +Good-afternoon, Albert. Have you any pennies for the saving bank +to-day?" + +"No, madam, lady," answered Albert. "I have no time for to earn the +pennies to-day. I have for to pick up the coal for mine Mutter. It makes +the hands to be dirty"--looking at his blackened fingers--"but it saves +the to buy coal." + +"That is good, Albert," said Miss Margery, heartily, "better than +earning pennies for yourself. Can you show me where the Callahans live? +Anne tells me Peggy is your classmate." + +"Yes, madam, lady," answered Albert, "it's the second house on the path +back of those trees." + +"There's the house," exclaimed Anne, a few minutes later. "I know +that's it. It's little and it's brown and look at the roses--and the +children! It's like the old woman that lived in a shoe." + +Indeed, the little brown house was overflowing with children. Peggy, +with a baby in her arms, sat in a broken rocking-chair on the porch. Two +little girls were making mud-pies near by. A tow-headed boy, watched +from an up-stairs window by two admiring small boys, was walking around +the edge of the porch roof, balancing himself with outstretched arms. A +neat negro woman, emptying an ash-can in the adjoining yard, caught +sight of him and shrieked, "Uh, John Edward! is that you on the porch +roof? or is it Elmore? Whichever you be, if you don't go right in, I'll +tell yo' ma. You Bud and tother twin, you stop leanin' out of that +window. Peg, uh Peg! thar's a boy on the porch roof and two leanin' out +the window. They all goin' to fall and break their necks." + +The boy on the roof stuck out his tongue, and said, "Uh, you tell-tale!" +then walked on around the porch and climbed in the window. + +"I done it," he shouted to his twin brother. "You dared me to and I done +it. Now I double-dare you to climb the chimbley." + +Peggy came out to reprove the reckless climber, and then, seeing the +approaching visitors, came forward to greet them. She invited Miss +Margery and Anne into the front room where her mother sat at a +sewing-machine that was running like a race-horse. Mrs. Callahan shook +hands and then took a garment from her work-basket and began to make +buttonholes. + +"My machine makes such a racket," she explained, "I always keep finger +jobs for company work. There's so many fact'ries nowadays that +Keep-at-it is the only sewin'-woman that makes a livin'. You'd be +s'prised to see how much Peggy helps me. She can rattle off most as +many miles as me on that old machine in a day." + +"Peggy tells me you are in trouble, Mrs. Callahan," said Miss Margery, +coming directly to the cause of her visit. + +"Well, not exactly. Nobody ain't dead or sick," Mrs. Callahan answered +cheerfully. "I told Peggy to tell you we could do with a little help. +Pa--that's my old man--he's the best man that ever lived, ma'am. He'd +never do nothin' wrong. It's just the whiskey that gets in him. He's +kind and good-tempered and hard-workin'--long as he can let liquor +alone. It's made him lose his place." + +"Our books show that you had help from the Charity office last winter," +Miss Margery reminded her. + +"Yes'm," responded Mrs. Callahan, "that was after his Christmas spree. +The man might 'a' overlooked that. But he got mighty mad. Some bad boys, +they see pa couldn't take care of the dray and they stole some things +offn it. Pa he couldn't get a job right away and I couldn't keep up my +reg'lar sewin'--the baby just being come--and so pa was up before the +judge for non-support. And the judge made him sign the pledge for a +year. Pa tried to keep it, ma'am, but his old gang wouldn't let him. +They watched for him goin' to work and they watched for him comin' from +work. He'd dodge 'em and go and come diff'rent ways. But they'd lay for +him here and there, with schooners of beer in their hands. Next thing, +he was drunk. The cops didn't catch him that time. But the pledge bein' +broke, look like he give up heart. He kept on with the drink, and lost +his job. Then the policeman nabbed him." + +Mrs. Callahan did not tell that the drunken man had struck her and that +the children--seeing her fall to the floor as if dead--ran out +screaming, and that the frightened neighbors called a doctor and a +policeman. She made the tale as favorable to 'pa' as she could. She +went on to say that, having broken the pledge, he was sent to the +workhouse for sixty days and she was left without money, with seven +children to care for. + +"They want me to put the children away to the 'sylums, but we want to +stay together, ma'am. We can get on elegant with a little help with the +rent and a teenchy bit grocery order now and then. Mine is helpful +children, ma'am, and t'ain't as if they were all little. Peggy's near +'leven though she's small for her age. And even them twins, ma'am, they +pick up sticks for kindlin' and help in ways untold." + +"What have you to eat in the house?" asked Miss Margery. + +"There's some potatoes, ma'am. They're mighty filling when they're +cold." + +Miss Margery knit her brows and considered. There were many calls on the +limited fund at her command. "The money from the workhouse for your +husband's labor will pay the rent," she calculated. "I will give you a +small grocery order twice a week. You can manage with that?" + +"Oh, yessum, splendid, and thank you kindly, ma'am," said Mrs. Callahan. +"Don't put down meat--just a little piece onct a week so's not to forget +the taste. And a leetle mite coffee. Put in mostly fillin' things--rice +and beans and dried apples. You got to cram seven hearty children. +Thank'e, thank'e, ma'am. Peggy, give the little lady some roses, the +purtiest ones where the frost hasn't nipped 'em." + +While Miss Margery talked with Mrs. Callahan, Anne was getting +acquainted with the children. She chattered gleefully about them on her +homeward way. "Peggy says a lady her mother sews for gave them a lot of +clothes. Peggy has a pink velvet waist and a red skirt, and her mother +has a lace waist and a blue skirt with rows and rows of blue satin on +it. They're very int'resting children, Miss Margery, but do you think +they always tell just the very exact truth?" asked Anne. + +"I'm afraid they do not. I'm afraid their mother doesn't set them a very +good example," answered Miss Margery who knew the Callahans of old. + +"Peggy says it isn't harm to tell a fib that don't hurt anybody," said +Anne. + +"I hope you told her it was." + +"Yes, Miss Margery. I told her we thought it was low-down to tell +stories. And Peggy just laughed and said they wouldn't act so stiff as +to tell the truth all the time.--Miss Margery, when are you going there +again? I do want to go with you. The baby has a new tooth coming. You +can feel it. I want to see it when it comes through. May I go with you +another Saturday?" + +"Perhaps." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + + +Two weeks passed. Peggy or John Edward or Elmore came duly on Wednesdays +and Saturdays for the grocery orders and reported that the family was +getting on "elegant" or "splendid." One Friday afternoon, a neighbor of +the little brown house flounced into the office. + +"It's my dooty to come to you, lady," said Mrs. Flannagan, "and I does +my dooty when it's hard on other folks. You wouldn't give me a bit of +groceries last week, but they tell me you rain down grocery orders on +Mrs. Callahan, and she spendin' money like she was President Bill Taft +or Johnny Rockefeller." + +"What do you mean, Mrs. Flannagan? Please explain," said the +long-suffering Charity lady. + +"I mean this," said Mrs. Flannagan. "With my own two eyes I seen 'em +yestiddy afternoon--Mrs. Callahan and them four biggest children walkin' +down the street like a rainbow in silk and satin and lace, goin' past my +house 'thout lookin' at me any more'n I was one of them cobblestones. +'Good-day,' I says, and Mrs. Callahan says, says she, 'Good-day. It's +Mrs. Flannagan, ain't it?'--like she hain't been in and out of my house +these two years! 'Whar's the kittle-bilin' of you goin' to-day?' I +asked, and she tosses her head and says, says she, 'Oh, it don't agree +with the children's health to stay at home so clost. I'm takin' 'em on a +'scursion down the river to see the shows.' And they ain't come back +till dark, for I sat at my front window to see. There's where your +Charity money goes, ma'am." + +Miss Margery sighed as her informer flaunted away. She must look into +the matter before giving any more grocery orders, and if Mrs. Callahan +was really wasting money, as Mrs. Flannagan declared, the Charities' aid +must be withdrawn. + +The next morning, Peggy entered the office, her usually smiling face +very sober. Before Miss Margery had time to mention excursions and +grocery orders, Peggy made a request. + +"If you please'm, lady," she said, "mommer says won't you give us a help +with the rent? It's due to-day and we're three dollars short." + +"Didn't officer McFlaerty bring the money from your father on Monday?" + +"Yessum, lady," confessed Peggy. + +"Your mother told me she would put that aside for the rent--every cent +of it--and that it would leave her lacking only one dollar of the rent +money. Now you say she is three dollars short. Peggy, I am afraid your +family has been wasting money." The Charity lady spoke severely, mindful +of Mrs. Flannagan's tale. Peggy did not answer. She looked embarrassed, +and twisted her toe under a loose strip of matting. Miss Margery +continued, after a pause, "Mrs. Flannagan told me that you went on an +excursion Thursday." + +Peggy brightened and dimpled. "Yessum, lady. We told her we was a-goin'. +It made her so mad. I wisht you could 'a' seen her flirt in and slam her +door." Peggy's merry laugh pealed forth. "And we told her we was a-goin' +to the shows, too." + +"Peggy! do you think I ought to help you with the rent when you are +wasting money on excursions and shows?" Miss Margery frowned on Peggy's +mirth. + +"Oh! why, ma'am!" Peggy seemed amazed that it was necessary to explain. +"We didn't go to no shows or no 'scursions. We weren't thinkin' 'bout +goin'. That was a lie. It was just to make Mrs. Flannagan mad. She put +on so many airs 'bout goin' street-car-ridin' last Sunday." + +"You really didn't go?" Miss Margery asked. "But Mrs. Flannagan says +you passed her house--five of you--dressed for the excursion." + +"Yessum, lady," Peggy agreed, dimpling. "I wisht you could 'a' seen us. +It cert'ny is nice livin' when you can wear fussy-fixy velvet and silk +clothes and lacey waists. John Edward and Elmore, bein' boys, couldn't +get no good of them, so we give John Edward the little lace-flounced +umberill to carry and Elmore a painted open-and-shut fan.--Them's the +things the lady give us where mommer sews for," she explained, in answer +to Miss Margery's bewildered look. "We went to see her like she asked +us. 'Twas too far for the baby and Bud and Lois to walk, so we left them +with Mrs. Mooney--she's the nice colored lady next door. We wisht they +could 'a' gone. Mrs. Peckinbaugh gave us sandwiches and lemonade and +little icin' cakes and street-car tickets to ride home on. I never did +have such a good time. Oh," Peggy laughed merrily, "and when we came +back by Mrs. Flannagan's, I said out loud 'twas most too cool on the +boat up the river and John Edward he asked if the monkeys wa'n't cute!" + +"Peggy, Peggy, my child!" said Miss Margery. "Don't you know it's sinful +to tell lies?" + +"Yessum--lies that hurt folks. Them's little white lies. They don't do +no harm." + +"There aren't any white lies, Peggy. They are all black. It is wrong, it +is sinful, to tell a falsehood. Remember that, my child," Miss Margery +urged. "Always speak the truth." + +"Yessum, lady." Peggy's brow was unclouded and her clear blue eyes +looked straight into the clear blue eyes of the Charity lady. "Can I +tell mommer you'll come? or can't you give me the money? She's awful +worried." + +"I do not understand," said Miss Margery. "I know she had that money for +the rent." + +"Did she, ma'am?" Peggy looked surprised, then suggested, "I 'spect she +lost it. She keeps the rent money in a china mug on the mantel-piece, +and this might 'a' been paper money and blowed in the fire and got burnt +up." + +Miss Margery looked unconvinced. "Tell your mother I'll come there this +afternoon," she said. Peggy, with an engaging smile, tripped away. + +Anne was delighted to learn that another visit was to be paid to the +Callahans. She ran home to get Honey-Sweet. + +"I told them about her and they want to see her," she said. "I think +she's taller than the baby. Oh! I hope that cunning baby has another +tooth." + +Miss Margery paused a moment at the door of the Callahans' neighbor, the +'nice colored lady.' "Do you happen to know," she inquired, "where Mrs. +Callahan was last Thursday afternoon?" + +"She was visitin', lady," was the ready answer. "She took the biggest +children to see a lady she sews for that's give them a lot of things. I +had them three youngest children under my feet all afternoon. Not but +that I was glad to mind them for her to go visitin', for she's a +splendid lady and they're real lovely children. She's to home now. The +sewin'-machine's been rattlin' since daylight." + +"I cert'ny am glad to see you at last, lady," said Mrs. Callahan, with +rather an offended air, when Peggy and John Edward and Elmore and Susie +ushered in the visitors. "I been lookin' for you to bring me that +rent-money. I told the agent's young man he should have it early this +afternoon." + +"I did not promise to let you have any money, Mrs. Callahan." Miss +Margery's tone was crisp and firm. "On Monday you had all your +rent-money except one dollar. You said you expected to get that this +week for sewing." + +"I ain't got no sewin' money," said Mrs. Callahan. "The lady she +couldn't make the change and she told me to come back Monday. That's why +I had to send and ask you to lend me the loan of three dollars." + +"But it was one dollar you needed for the rent, Mrs. Callahan," said +Miss Margery, resolved to get to the bottom of the matter. + +"Well, I did have two dollars but I had to spend it," said Mrs. +Callahan. "I was thinkin' I could get it somehow. And I knew you could +let me have it. Ain't that what the Charity's for?" + +That was what many of the 'poor things' thought, Miss Margery knew to +her regret,--that the Charity was merely a reservoir for the wasteful +and the thriftless to draw from at will. Could it ever be, she wondered, +what it ought to be,--a crutch to be cast aside with regained health, a +hand of brotherhood to lift the fallen and teach them to stand alone, to +steady the weak and make them strong? How hard it was to give help, and +at the same time to teach the poor to be self-helpful! Miss Margery +sighed, but she knew it was useless to argue the matter, so she only +answered reprovingly, "I fear you have wasted money, Mrs. Callahan. A +neighbor told me you had been off with the children on an excursion." + +When Mrs. Callahan dimpled and chuckled as she did now, she looked like +Peggy's older sister. "Peg told me Mrs. Flannagan went to you with that +tale. I cert'ny did fool her. Why, Miss Margery, I ain't been on no more +'scursions than this old machine settin' here. When I took Mrs. +Peckinbaugh's sewin' home, I carried the children with me, like she told +me, for her to see how I'd fixed the clothes she give me. She give us a +reception like the president's,--sandwiches and lemonade and iced cakes +and street-car fare back home. I laugh every time I think how I fooled +Mrs. Flannagan. I told her that bundle of sewin' was our lunch and +wraps. And she fool enough to believe me!" Mrs. Callahan laughed till +tears stood in her eyes. + +"Mrs. Callahan, aren't you ashamed to tell falsehoods--and before your +little children, too? How can you expect them to believe you? And how +can you expect them to tell the truth when you set them such an +example?" + +"Why, I wouldn't tell a lie to harm anybody for the world," said Mrs. +Callahan. "But there wouldn't be no fun in livin' if you didn't tell +white lies." + +Miss Margery saw that it was useless to protest. "I think I ought not to +give you any money, Mrs. Callahan," she said, rising to go. "You had it +in your hand and you spent it. If we give in such cases as this, we will +not have funds to meet real need." + +"If you must know," said Mrs. Callahan, "I lent them two dollars to the +colored lady next door. Her rent was due on Wednesday and she'll get the +money for her wash to-night. I told Peggy not to tell you, for you'd +told me so partic'lar not to spend a cent of that money--but if you must +know, you must. She was needin' it worse than me." + +"Is this the truth?" asked Miss Margery. + +"It's the gospel truth, ma'am," declared Mrs. Callahan. "You ask Mrs. +Mooney, ma'am." + +As the two women promised faithfully to repay it on Monday, Miss Margery +lent the lacking rent-money and then rose to go. + +Meanwhile, Anne and Honey-Sweet were the centre of an admiring group. +Anne allowed the little Callahans one by one to touch Honey-Sweet and +the older ones were even permitted to hold her for a minute. + +As Honey-Sweet made the rounds of the group, she was followed admiringly +by the beadlike, black eyes of Lois, the second from the baby. She put +out her chubby hand and solemnly touched the doll's dress with her +fingertip, saying over and over, "Pretty sweet Honey! pretty sweet +Honey!" When Miss Margery said they must go, Lois caught Anne's frock in +her little fat hands and lisped, "Don't go away, sweet Honey. Stay here +two, five minutes." + +Miss Margery smiled and patted the tangled curls. "It is getting late, +dearie, and we must hurry home," she said. + +But Lois followed them down the path, crying, "Wait, lady, wait." She +smiled up into Anne's face. "I dess want kiss sweet Honey one time," she +said. "I ain't done kiss her yet." Then she pressed her lips on the +lace-ruffled flounces and toddled back to the house. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + + +Several weeks passed during which Miss Margery saw nothing of the +Callahans. Mr. Callahan came back from the workhouse and, with fear of +another term before his eyes, he managed to keep away from his old +comrades and to provide for his family. Anne saw Peggy at school and, +with Cousin Dorcas's permission, talked to her sometimes in recess and +kept informed as to how many teeth the baby had and the new words Bud +could say. All the children had bad colds, Peggy said one day, "terrible +bad, and the doctor he says mommer must keep the windows open and she +lets 'em stay up while he's there to pleasure him and shuts 'em soon as +he goes away." + +The next day and for several days thereafter, Peggy was absent from +school. Anne looked eagerly forward to Saturday when she was to put on +her old shoes--she had new ones now--and go with Miss Margery to inquire +about the little Callahans. + +Friday afternoon, however, brought Peggy to the door, asking for Anne. +It was an anxious-faced Peggy. "I ain't been to school 'cause Lois is +sick," she explained. "She been sick all week and she gets no better all +the time. And she keeps on frettin' to see that doll of yours. She been +talkin' 'bout it ever since you was there. And she say if she can just +see that doll--she don't ask to touch it--she'll take her medicine. +That's why she's so bad off. She won't take her medicine. And mommer +sent word to know, won't you please come over and bring your doll for +her to see." + +"What is the matter with Lois?" asked Miss Dorcas. + +"Doctor says she's threatened with the pneumony and she's terrible bad +off," said Peggy. + +As Miss Margery was not at home, Miss Dorcas herself went with Anne and +Honey-Sweet to see the sick child. They walked down the dingy street, +took short cuts across vacant lots, passed through the 'No Thoroughfare' +gate, and followed the straggling path that led to the little brown +house. + +Their knock at the door was followed by a scrambling and scampering +within, and a hoarse wail from Lois. Then a window was raised, a little +face peeped out, and a relieved voice said: "'Tain't the doctor-man. +It's Honey-Sweet's girl and a lady." + +Peggy opened the door. "Come right in," she said. Then she explained: +"We was tryin' to get Lois back in bed. The doctor says she must stay in +bed and she hates it, so she will get up and have a pillow-pallet on the +floor." + +There the child was lying, tossing restlessly about, while Mrs. +Callahan's machine rattled away as usual. + +Lois gave a cry of delight when Anne came in with Honey-Sweet. "Pretty +sweet Honey!" she exclaimed. "Le' me kiss her one time." + +"You wait," said Mrs. Callahan. "That dolly ain't coming nigh you till +you take your dost of medicine. Then I'll ask the lady to let her lay on +the pillow." + +Lois looked inquiringly at Anne. + +"Take your medicine like a good girl," said Honey-Sweet's little mother, +"and I'll let you hold my baby doll in your own hands." + +Lois opened her mouth to receive the bitter draught and then stretched +out her arms for Honey-Sweet. She touched shoes and dress and hair with +light, admiring fingers. + +"Pretty sweet Honey," she murmured. + +Mrs. Callahan breathed a sigh of relief. "That's the first dost of +medicine we've got her to take to-day," she said. "We've all been tryin' +to worrit it down her. We've give her everything in the house she +fancied. Pa he paid her a bottle of beer to take a spoonful last night. +Bless you, no'm"--even in her distress she laughed at Miss Dorcas's +shocked look--"she didn't drink a drop of it. She likes to see it +sizzle, and she had him pull off the cap and let it foam and drizzle on +the floor." + +"I would whip her," said Miss Dorcas, drawing her mouth down at the +corners. + +"No'm, you wouldn't," said Mrs. Callahan, "not if you was her mother and +she sick. But it do worrit me awful. These two days I been pourin' out a +spoonful of her medicine every two hours--time she ought to take it--and +a-throwin' it away. It's a dreadful waste. But I got to do something to +make the doctor think she's took it. It makes him so mad when she +don't." + +Miss Dorcas exclaimed in dismay. "Aren't you afraid the child will die +if she doesn't take the medicine?" + +"Yessum, I am. But what can I do?" said Mrs. Callahan. "I try to get her +to take it every time she ought to have a dost. And what's the use of +worritin' the doctor if she won't? It makes him so mad." + +Lois, meanwhile, was having a happy time with Honey-Sweet. Anne showed +how her shoes came off and on and untied her cap to display her curls. +"Here's how she goes to sleep at night," she said. "I put her to bed by +me and I sing to her:-- + + 'Honey, honey! Sweet, sweet, sweet! + Honey, honey! Honey-Sweet!'" + +As she crooned the lullaby, Lois lisped it after her. + +It grew late and Miss Dorcas rose to go. + +"If you'll take your medicine to-night, like a little lady," said Anne, +"we will come back to see you to-morrow--Honey-Sweet and I. Mayn't we, +Cousin Dorcas?--Oh, oh! if you cry, we can't come! Will you promise to +take your medicine?" + +"I take it now if pretty Honey stay," said Lois. + +"No, no! it isn't time now. But if you take it at the right time, we'll +come back, and Honey-Sweet may lie on the pillow beside you." + +The next afternoon, Anne brought Honey-Sweet, dressed in a blue muslin +frock and a new hat that Miss Margery had made of lace and rosebuds and +blue ribbon. + +Lois's face beamed when she saw this finery. "Can I kiss her dwess?" she +asked, gulping down the bitter draught. "Bad medicine gone now. Oh, the +pretty flowers!" and she counted on her fingers the rosebuds on +Honey-Sweet's hat: "One, two, free, five, seben, leben, hundred beauty +flowers." + +Mrs. Callahan was, as she said, 'flustered.' Her thread snarled and +snapped as she sewed on buttons. "Doctor was here after you left +yestiddy," she said. "You'd 'a' thought he'd been at that window peekin' +in. He didn't believe me at all when I told him Lois was takin' her +medicine reg'lar. He says she's gettin' worse every day since Choosday, +and if she don't take her medicine reg'lar, he can't do her no good. She +took it two--three times after you left with me a-tellin' her 'bout that +beauteous doll that was comin' to-morrow. But she's little and to-morrow +looked slow in comin', so after 'while when I'd hold out the spoon, +she'd just shake her head and say, 'No, no, no! Mammy tellin' story! +Sweet Honey ain't comin'.'" + +"It is as I told you it would be, Mrs. Callahan," said Miss Margery. +"Your child doesn't trust you. You have told her falsehoods and now she +doesn't believe you." + +"Ain't it smart of her to take that much notice and she so little!" said +Mrs. Callahan, admiringly. "Well, glory be, she's got one more dost down +her." + +When it was time for Anne to go, Lois wailed aloud. "I don't want sweet +Honey to go! I don't want sweet Honey to go!" + +"If you'll take your medicine, she'll come back to see you," promised +Anne. + +"Don't want her to come back--want her to stay," sobbed Lois. + +Anne tried to soothe her with promises that she would bring Honey-Sweet +back soon, dressed in a pink hat and a pink-flowered muslin. But Lois +would not be consoled and Anne left her at last in tears. + +Monday morning before school time, Peggy and John Edward and Elmore came +to Miss Dorcas's door and asked for Anne. Would she please lend them +Honey-Sweet that day? They'd be ever and ever so careful. + +"Lend Honey-Sweet!" exclaimed Anne. + +They hated to ask it but Lois would not take her medicine. She had +pushed aside and spilled dose after dose. "She says she won't take that +nasty old bitter old stuff. And her cheeks are so red and she breathes +so rattly. Mommer's scairt. And the doctor man'll be so mad. Mommer +asked her if she'd take her medicine for Honey-Sweet and she said +'Yes.' So mommer say for us to run and beg you do please lend us your +baby-doll to-day." + +"If Lois is so sick,--oh, I suppose I must," said Anne; "but--Peggy, +will you be careful of her every minute of the time and bring her back +this afternoon--sure and certain?" + +Peggy promised, and Peggy did. "Lois took her medicine fine," she said, +smiling and dimpling. "Mommer give her a dost a hour before time so's I +could bring your baby-doll and get home before dark. Here she is. See! I +ain't even mussed her curls." + +The next day, Lois was worse again. Her mother confessed that they had +"worrited half the night with her and not got a dost down her," but +Honey-Sweet brought her to terms. + +When Miss Margery rose to go, Anne hesitated a minute, then said, "Mrs. +Callahan, if I let Honey-Sweet stay here to-night with Lois, can you +take good, good care of her?" + +Mrs. Callahan's face beamed. "That I can, and that I will. I been +wantin' to ask you to let her stay and hatin' to do it, seein' how much +you set store by her. I'll take care of her good as if she was my own +baby." + +The next afternoon, Anne found Honey-Sweet sitting in state on the +mantel-piece beside the medicine bottle. + +"She comes down with it and she goes back with it," said Mrs. Callahan. +"The doctor was here this noon and he says she's better and if she takes +her medicine reg'lar and keeps on the mend till Sadday he thinks she'll +be all right. I hope she'll take it. She does every time for that doll." +And the worried mother looked anxiously at Anne. + +"I reckon I'll have to spare Honey-Sweet till Saturday," said Anne, with +an effort. She missed her pet and the Callahan family was so big and so +careless! "Please, Mrs. Callahan, be careful with her every minute. I +love her so very dearly." + +"Bless your heart, I wouldn't have harm come to her for the world. There +she sits like a queen on her throne, and ain't took down but by my own +hands with the medicine bottle. I've told the kids I'll skin 'em alive +if they put finger on her." + +Saturday morning brought Peggy to see Anne,--a sad Peggy with downcast +eyes and red nose and croaking voice. + +"You've a bad cold, Peggy, haven't you?" said Miss Dorcas. + +Peggy nodded. "Yessum, lady. Terrible bad. Maybe so I'll have the +pneumony, like Lois, and maybe so I'll die." + +"Oh, I hope not!" exclaimed Anne who had hastened out when she heard +Peggy. She hoped Honey-Sweet was in that bundle--though she knew it was +too small. + +"Mommer sent me," said the saddened Peggy with the downcast eyes, "to +ask you ladies, please'm, not to come home to-day." + +"Is Lois worse?" was Miss Dorcas's anxious question. + +"No'm. The doctor says she's lots better, but"--Peggy hesitated--"he +says she mustn't have no company and I think he says she mustn't have no +company till Monday. And here's something for you." She thrust into +Anne's hand a newspaper package which being opened revealed a gauze fan +spangled with silver, soiled and frayed, but the pride of Peggy's heart. +"And you won't come till Monday, ma'am?" she urged. + +Miss Dorcas agreed, but Miss Margery, when she heard the tale, shook her +head. + +"That's one of Peggy's tales that I'm going to look into," she said. "I +have to see a girl in that neighborhood and I'll go there this +afternoon." + +"And you'll let me go with you? Please," pleaded Anne. "I'm so homesick +for Honey-Sweet. She's never been away from me before. You can hand her +out the window and let me visit her, if I can't see Lois." + +It was a raw December day and none of the Callahan children were +playing, as usual, in front of the little brown house. The +sewing-machine was rattling away at such furious speed that Miss +Margery's knock at the door was unheard. The Charity lady hesitated a +moment. "If Lois can stand that rattle-ty-banging, she can stand sight +and sound of us. Let's go in," she said and she opened the door. + +Anne's eyes went straight to the mantel-piece. Honey-Sweet was not +there. Anne looked down at the pallet, where Lois lay asleep. No +Honey-Sweet there. The child's questioning, appealing eyes turned to +Lois's mother. + +Mrs. Callahan dropped her face in her apron. "I wouldn't 'a' had it +happen for the world!" she sobbed. "Not for all the world." + +"What is the matter, Mrs. Callahan?" inquired Miss Margery. + +"Where's Honey-Sweet?" asked Anne. + +"I wouldn't 'a' had that doll ruint for nothin'," wailed Mrs. Callahan. + +"Honey-Sweet? ruined?" stammered Anne. + +"What has happened to Anne's doll, Mrs. Callahan? Will you please +explain at once?" Miss Margery was at her sternest. + +"Peggy done it--and she's cried herself 'most sick. 'Twas yestiddy. I'd +gone to take home some sewin'. Peg she's been possessed to show that +doll to the Flannagan children. Bein' as I was gone and Lois 'sleep, she +slipped out. And while they were all mirationin' over the doll's shoes +and stockin's, that low-down Flannagan dog grabbed the doll and made off +with it. And they couldn't get it away from him--he tore it to pieces, +worritin' it like 'twas a cat. He ought to be skinned alive, I say. It's +low-down to keep such a dog." + +"If Peggy had obeyed--" began Miss Margery. + +"Yessum," interrupted Mrs. Callahan. "And nobody's got any business to +keep such a dog! We wouldn't 'a' had it happen for the world, ma'am. I +sent you that word 'bout Lois," she went on, addressing Anne, "so's you +wouldn't come. We didn't want you to know 'bout it till Monday. Pa he +draws his pay to-night and John Edward, too. John Edward he's errant boy +for a grocer down on M Street. They're going to take all their money and +buy you the finest doll in Washington, rent or no rent, victuals or no +victuals." + +"No, no, no," protested Anne. + +"Don't you look so white and pitiful," sobbed Mrs. Callahan. "I wouldn't +'a' had it happen for the world. You shall have the finest doll--" + +"I don't want a doll," Anne spoke with difficulty. "Tell them not to, +Miss Margery. It wouldn't be Honey-Sweet. Please, oh, please, let's go +home, Miss Margery." + +Poor little Anne! Miss Margery had her downstairs to tea that evening, +and gave her milk toast and pink iced cakes and candy in a Santa Claus +box that was to have waited till Christmas. Then she sang Anne's +favorite songs. But the shadow did not lift. Anne kissed her friend +good-night and crept away to bed before nine o'clock. An hour later, +Miss Dorcas and Miss Margery tiptoed into her room. There she lay, her +face swollen with weeping and her breath coming in sobbing gasps. She +stirred and crumpled a pillow in her arms, and crooned in her sleep the +old lullaby:-- + + "'Honey, honey! Sweet, sweet, sweet! + Honey, honey! Honey-Sweet!'" + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + + +All this time--so little is our big world--Miss Drayton was hardly a +stone's throw from Anne. She was keeping house for her brother-in-law +who was busy with office work in Washington. Pat was at home, having +entered classes to prepare for George Washington University. It was +strange that Anne and her old friends went to and fro, back and forth, +so near together and yet did not meet. They must have missed one another +sometimes by only a minute or two in a shop or on a street-car or at a +street corner. But week after week passed without bringing them +together. + +One morning, as Mr. Patterson was glancing over his newspaper at +breakfast, he uttered an exclamation of surprise. "This is something +you'll want to hear," he said to Miss Drayton--and then he read aloud +an article with these headlines:-- + + Truth Stranger than Fiction + + "Felon Gives himself up + + "Returns to take his Punishment." + +Mr. Carey Mayo of New York City, who had used funds of the Stuyvesant +Trust Company and had disappeared two years before just as he was about +to be arrested, had surrendered himself to the officers of the law. His +trial was set for an early day. As he had given himself up of his own +free will, it was thought that his sentence would be light. + +Fuller explanation came in a letter to Miss Drayton, forwarded by the +consul at Nantes. Mr. Mayo thanked her for her care and goodness to +Anne--the words smote her heart. He had spent these two years at work in +South Africa and had laid aside every possible penny of his earnings in +order to keep his niece from being a burden on strangers. This money he +was putting in a certain New York banking-house for Miss Drayton in +trust for Anne. He requested her to use it to educate Anne and to buy +back the child's old home. It would be better, when Anne was old enough +to understand the matter, to tell her the truth about him. He asked Miss +Drayton to say that his regret, his repentance, were as great as his +sin. He had come to realize that the disgrace was in the deed he had +done and not in its punishment. So, having righted affairs for Anne as +well as he could, he was going to surrender himself to the officers of +the law. He was tired of being followed everywhere by fear of discovery, +tired of being an outcast from his own land and people. The worst hurt +was to think that Anne must some day know that he was in a felon's cell. + +Only one course lay open to Miss Drayton, and how painful that was! She +must inform Anne's uncle that she had not taken care of Anne, as he +thought, and that the child had been sent to an orphan asylum, from +which she had wandered away, no one knew where. If only he need not be +told! But he must. + +Miss Drayton and Mr. Patterson resolved to go to see Mr. Mayo. But the +proposed journey was never made. A day or two before they were to start, +the newspapers announced that Mr. Carey Mayo had died in the prison to +which he had been committed to await trial. He had heart disease, and +strain and excitement had brought on a fatal attack. + +What was to be done about the property left to Miss Drayton in trust for +Anne? Mr. Patterson advised his sister-in-law to let the matter rest for +the present. Anne might be found. Mrs. Marshall wrote that they had a +clew which they were following. A little girl, answering in general the +description of Anne, had been seen near Westcot with a gypsy band. They +would continue the search and never give up hope. + +Christmas was now at hand and Miss Drayton, always ready for deeds of +charity, resolved to send holiday gifts and dinners to several poor +families. + +Telephoning to the district agent of the Associated Charities, she +obtained the names of some 'deserving poor,' and a crisp, clear December +morning found her driving from one home to another, talking with mothers +and receiving children's messages to Santa Claus. On the ragged edge of +the city, her coachman halted before a little brown house from the porch +of which hung a leafless rose-bush. Miss Drayton consulted the card in +her hand: "John Edward Callahan, wife, and seven children." Two or three +smiling children, not yet of school age, were peeping out of the window +and a woman left her sewing-machine to open the door. + +Miss Drayton explained the purpose of her visit. "I understand you have +several children," she said. + +"Only seven, lady," said Mrs. Callahan. "Peggy and John Edward and +Elmore and Susie and Lois and Bud and the baby." + +"Ah! Only seven! And their ages?" + +"Peggy she's near on 'leven and the baby's a year old this last gone +November and the others are scattered 'long between," explained Mrs. +Callahan. + +"And what--" Miss Drayton smiled back at Lois and Bud and the +baby--"must I tell Santa Claus to bring you for Christmas, if I happen +to see him?" + +"A doll, lady, please," answered Mrs. Callahan, eagerly, "a gre't big +doll--big as that baby--pretty as a picture--open-and-shut eyes--real +hair and curly. Lady, they'd rather have a real elegant doll than +anything in the world." + +"Oh, but not the boys," protested Miss Drayton. + +"Yessum--boys and girls and pa and me--all of us," insisted Mrs. +Callahan. "Lump us so as to make it splendiferous. Oh, bless you, +'tain't for us. It's for the little girl that lent us the loan of her +doll to get Lois to take her medicine. And the doll got ruint. Miss +Margery--that's the Charity lady--she's awful cross sometimes--said we +shouldn't buy a doll with the wages. But she couldn't fault a present. I +never see a child love a doll like she did that Honey-Sweet." + +"Honey-Sweet!" exclaimed Miss Drayton. + +"Yessum, lady. Wasn't that a funny name for a doll? It was the purtiest +rag baby I ever see." + +"A rag baby, named Honey-Sweet!" repeated Miss Drayton. "Was the little +girl--what was her name?" + +"Anne. Anne Hartman. She's niece to Miss Hartman, the head lady of the +Charity." + +"Oh!" Could this be her little Anne? Or was there another child named +Anne with another rag doll named Honey-Sweet? Anne Hartman? And her +Anne had no aunt Miss Hartman. It was queer, very queer, and puzzling. +"What kind of looking child is Anne Hartman?" Miss Drayton asked. + +"She's a little girl," answered Mrs. Callahan. "Tall as my Peggy, but +slimmer. Not pretty.--Well, I dunno. She's beautiful, times when she's +happy-looking. She's got a perky little nose and long, twinkly eyes. +Molasses-candy-colored hair. And her mouth--Peggy says it's like one of +our red rosebuds when they begin to open." + +Ah! Whatever name and kinswoman she had now, that was Anne. + +"Where does she live?" inquired Miss Drayton, eagerly. + +"At the corner of Fairview Avenue, in the big old house that's turned +into flats. Was the doll too much to ask, lady?" asked Mrs. Callahan, as +Miss Drayton rose to go. + +"No, oh, no, indeed! You shall have the doll, and things for all the +children besides," said Miss Drayton. "Good-morning, Mrs. Callahan. +George, drive down Fairview Avenue. Drive fast. I'll tell you where to +stop." + +There was no one named Anne Hartman in that building, the janitor +informed her. A little girl named Anne? Perhaps she meant Anne Lewis, +that lived here with her cousin, Miss Dorcas Read. The top apartment. +She was not at home now, he knew. She came from school about two +o'clock. No, her cousin was not at home either. She was a government +clerk and never came in before five. + +Miss Drayton would wait. She wished to see the little girl the very +minute that she came in. The janitor invited the lady into his dingy +office but she shook her head. She would wait, if he pleased, in the +pleasant old garden, of which she caught a glimpse through the open +door. + +Up and down, down and up, the gravelled walks she paced, restless and +impatient. Suppose there was some mistake. Suppose this Anne Lewis was +not her little Anne. Surely it was time for the child to come from +school. Only one o'clock? Her watch must be wrong. No, it had not +stopped. And the old dial, catching the sunlight through leafless trees, +told the same hour. Drawing her furs about her, Miss Drayton sat down on +a stone bench. + +From below, came the street noises,--jangle of cars, rumble of wagons, +clatter and clamor of passers-by. In the old garden, withered leaves +drifted down on the still air or rustled underfoot, bare branches +wavered against the clear blue sky, and purple shadows flickered on the +leaf-strewn walk. How quiet it was! how peaceful! By degrees, the quiet +and the peace crept into Miss Drayton's heart. She was content to wait. +In this good world of ours, everything is sure to come out right in the +end. + +And then, in the mellow sunlight, down the box-bordered walk, past the +sun-dial, toward the stone bench, came a little figure. + +"Mr. Brown said that a lady--oh! oh! it's you!" + +"Dear little Anne! dear little Anne!" She was clasped in the arms--dear, +cuddly arms!--of her friend. + +What laughter, tears, and chatter there were! + +"But we must go home," said Miss Drayton, presently. "Pat will be there +now. We'll come back to see your cousin." + +As they entered the hall, they heard from above the click-click of +dumb-bells. Miss Drayton put her finger on Anne's lips, and they tiptoed +into the cozy sitting-room. + +Then Miss Drayton called in an offhand way: "Pat, oh, Pat! There's a +child in the sitting-room that wants to see you." + +"Who is he?" + +His aunt did not seem to hear. Anyway, she did not answer. Pat, +whistling ragtime, sauntered into the sitting-room. + +Anne flew into his arms. + +"Why, what--" and then he realized that it was Anne. Anne! He gave her a +bear's hug and danced about the room, holding her high in his arms. Miss +Drayton laughed till tears came. + +"Where did you come from? How did you get here? Did Aunt Sarah find you? +Does dad know you've come? When--" + +"There, there, Pat! Not more than three questions at a time, please," +interrupted his aunt. "And you're not leaving Anne breath to answer +one." + +How much there was to ask and to tell! Anne gave an account of her +wanderings. Pat told how they had searched for her, how grieved the +asylum people and the Marshall family were at not being able to find +her. "Why, there's that little chap Dunlop. He asked if you had any jam +for your supper--and I told him 'No'--and he wouldn't touch it--said he +didn't want it, if Anne didn't have any." + +"Dunlop! Dunlop did that!" + +"He and his small brother weep a little weep every time your name is +mentioned." + +"Oh, Pat! Why, I never thought they'd care so much," said Anne. "I miss +them. But I was afraid to write to them. I didn't want to go back there. +Can they make me go back, if I write and tell them where I am?" + +"No, indeed," answered Miss Drayton. + +"Bet your life they can't," said Pat. "You're coming to live with us. +Isn't she, Aunt Sarah?" + +"I'm so glad! I'm so glad!" Anne was radiant. "I love Cousin Dorcas," +she hastened to explain. "She's just as kind to me as can be and she's +awful good. But--she's one of the good people you don't want to live +with. She has nerves, you know, and so many troubles. And her arms +aren't cuddly. Not like yours, Miss Drayton. I think she likes me--a +cousin-like, you know,--but I'm sure she'll be glad not to have me live +with her. She hasn't much money and I cost so much. Shoes are the worst. +I wear them out so fast." + +"You can wear out all you want to now,--shoes and everything. And give +Cousin Dorcas some, too," said Pat. + +While they were chattering away, a measured step was heard in the hall. +"There's father," said Pat. "Oh, dad, we've found Anne," he called. +"Here she is." + +Mr. Patterson hurried into the room. Anne rose timidly to shake hands, +and was caught in a hearty embrace. "Welcome, little one! Welcome home," +said Mr. Patterson. + +"Hooray! hooray for the star-spangled banner!" Pat shouted so loud that +the cook and both the maid-servants came running to see what was the +matter. Whereupon Mr. Patterson told them that they were to have the +Christmas turkey that day and the best dinner they could prepare on +such short notice, to celebrate Miss Anne's coming home. + +"We want your cousin to join us," said Miss Drayton. "Has she a +telephone?" + +"We use Miss Margery's," replied Anne. "Please, do you mind--would you +ask Miss Margery, too?" + +"Of course, dear. We shall be happy to have her. Before dinner let's +write some little letters--really we ought--to let your other friends +know that we've found you." + +"Bully Mrs. Collins," said Pat. + +"And poor Miss Farlow," added Miss Drayton. + +"Don't forget our friend 'Lop," suggested Mr. Patterson. + +"And--it's far away and long ago--" said Anne, "but I want Mademoiselle +Duroc to know and to tell the girls, if any of the old ones are there, +that you know about the jewels and it's all right." + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + + +"Time you youngsters were doing your Christmas shopping," said Mr. +Patterson the next morning, laying a generous banknote by Pat's plate +and two crisp notes by Anne's. "She has to have a double portion," he +explained, "because she's a girl--and little--and has to make up lost +time." + +"Yep, dad," said Pat, nodding agreement to each of these reasons and +adding another, "and she has such gangs of people to send things to. +You'll have to go to the ten-cent shop, Nancy Anne, or borrow from my +bank. Wherever you've been, you've picked up friends, like--like a +little woolly lambie gathers burs." + +They all laughed at Pat's speech; they were in the joyous frame of mind +when laughter comes easily. + +"I want to join you in Christmas remembrances to the people who have +been so good to you," said Miss Drayton. + +"I'll send Jake Collins a ball and Peter a pocket-knife," said Pat, "or +would Jake rather have a knife, too?" + +"Mrs. Collins shall have a silk dress," said Miss Drayton. + +"Oo-ee! That will be glorious," exclaimed Anne. "Let it be the rustly +kind. And red. She loves red." + +"Mr. Collins shall have an umbrella with a gorgeous silver handle," said +Mr. Patterson. "That will be silk. Must it be rustly and red, too?" + +Anne laughed. "Lizzie would just love a pink parasol," she said. "And I +know what Aunt Charity would like--a pair of big, gold-rimmed +spectacles. I heard her say she'd rather have them than anything else in +the world." + +"Is her eyesight very bad?" asked Miss Drayton. + +"Why--I don't know. I reckon not." Anne looked puzzled. "Oh! she just +wants them for dress-up. She has a pair of steel-rimmed ones now. She +pulls them down on her nose so she can see over them, you know." + +Mr. Patterson threw back his head and laughed till he was red in the +face. "She shall have them," he said, as soon as he could speak. "She +shall have the very biggest pair of gold-rimmed spectacles with plain +glass lens that Claflin's shop affords. May I live to see her wear them! +And we'll send her a good warm shawl besides and Uncle Richard shall +have--shall have a blue overcoat with brass buttons." + +"Goody, goody, goody!" cried Anne, clapping her hands. "Oh, please, I +just must kiss you." + +"Good pay--and in advance," said Mr. Patterson. "But I charge two +kisses," which he proceeded to take. + +"What would Miss Farlow like?" inquired Miss Drayton. + +"I know," said Anne. "Gloves. You just ought to see her shoe-polishing +her rusty finger-tips. And she looks like she likes herself so much +better when she has a new pair." + +"She shall have a boxful," Miss Drayton declared; "and the girls--would +they be allowed to wear red hair-ribbons and embroidered collars?" + +"Oh, please, Miss Drayton--Aunt Sarah, I mean," said Anne, "don't let's +send them a single useful thing. Just a box full of games and +story-books and a box of candy for each one, with a ribbon round it and +little silver tongs inside." + +"Good! That's the thing," agreed Mr. Patterson, consulting his watch and +jumping up from the table. "Here! can't you all join me in the Boston +House to-day at twelve-thirty to select a gift for 'Lop? I want the +noisiest mechanical toy there is." + +"Poor Mrs. Marshall!" laughed Miss Drayton. + +We may not follow the merry party on that shopping trip. But let me +assure you that boxes were sent to all the Virginia friends and that +there were generous gifts for Cousin Dorcas and Miss Margery. They were +certainly well selected, for each person said that his or her gift was +just exactly what was most desired. + +The maid who opened the door that afternoon to the weary, happy, +home-coming party of Christmas shoppers said, "Please, Miss Drayton, +there's a lady and two little boys in the back parlor to see Miss Anne. +They've been waiting an hour. The biggest boy's dreadful impatient and +he stamped and screamed awful because I couldn't go and bring her home." + +"Why, it must be 'Lop," exclaimed Anne. + +Dunlop it was, with his mother and Arthur. + +"He would come," said Mrs. Marshall. "He clamored to start as soon as we +read the letter this morning. I feared he'd worry himself sick. He's so +nervous and high-strung," she explained to Miss Drayton. + +"Papa promised me a little automobile if I'd stay at home," said Dunlop, +hanging to Anne's hand. "I told him I'd rather see Anne." + +"Oh!" Anne kissed him. + +"'Spect I'll get the automobile anyway," reflected Dunlop. "And, Anne, I +know now 'bout Santa Claus," with a cautious glance at Arthur who was +cuddled in her arms. + +Mrs. Marshall produced a packet which Miss Farlow had asked her to +deliver,--Anne's gold beads and coral pins, and the rings, locket, and +purse given by her uncle. Miss Drayton looked thoughtfully at the +jewels. + +"These were your mother's, you know, Anne," she said. "You must keep and +prize them always, dear. And I have a story to tell you some day, little +Anne--some far-off, 'most-grown-up day." + +The next morning was Christmas. When Anne awakened, she found around her +wrist a red ribbon on which was a card bearing these words: + + "Follow, follow where I wind, + Christmas tokens you will find." + +After many wanderings about the chairs and tables, the ribbon led to the +top shelf of the closet, where there was a box of games, "With love from +brother Pat." Then it conducted Anne back to the bed and when she +stooped to unwind it from the bed-post she touched a soft, furry thing +and gave a squeal, thinking it was a live creature; she gave another +squeal of delight when she found that it was a muff and a little fur +coat from Mr. Patterson. From the bed, the ribbon guided Anne to the +window-seat, and there "from Aunt Sarah" was a book-shelf with _Little +Lord Fauntleroy_ first in a row of beautiful books. Anne clapped her +hands and danced and ran to hug and kiss Miss Drayton who was standing +in the doorway, enjoying the gift-hunt. The red ribbon led to other +nooks and corners where there were various other presents, including a +silver toilet-set from Mrs. Marshall, a box of candy from Dunlop, a cup +and saucer from Arthur, and a pair of pink and red slippers knit by +Mollie, the cook at the Home. + +Downstairs, Anne found a box which had been left at the door by Peggy +and John Edward and Elmore and Susie. It contained a gorgeous big doll +and a slip of paper on which was written: "For Miss Anne, with all our +loves from her respectful friends, Mr. and Mrs. Callahan, Peggy, John +Edward, Elmore, Susie, Lois, Bud, and Baby." + +Anne was very grateful but very sure that she did not want a doll and +that she would like Susie and Lois to have it. So Christmas afternoon, +she and Pat, accompanied by Miss Drayton and Mr. Patterson, went to +re-present the doll. The sewing-machine was silent for once, and the +Callahan family was seated around a table spread with turkey, cranberry +sauce, ham, pickles, mashed potatoes, baked sweet potatoes, cabbage, +cake, mince pie, ice-cream, apples, and oranges. + +"They say some folks put things on the table one by one, but we likes to +have them where we can see them all one time," remarked Mrs. Callahan +who was feeding the baby with turkey and pickle. + +"We'se eated two dinners a'ready," said Lois. + +"Mommer told all the ladies that asked us as how we wanted a Christmas +dinner and we got three," explained Peggy. + +"And et 'em, too," Mrs. Callahan declared. "The Charity lady told me +just to ask for one--stingy old thing! I knowed my children's stomachs +and I got 'em filled up good. Run around the table again now, you John +Edward and Elmore, so's to jostle your victuals down and make room for +the cake and ice-cream." + +Miss Drayton presently heard a great smacking of lips from the corner +where the twins sat. They had put their ice-cream together on one plate +and were feeding each other. Elmore put a generous spoonful in John +Edward's mouth. + +"Smack your lips--loud--so I can taste it," he said. "Now it's your turn +to give me a spoonful." + +"M-m-m! ain't it good?" exclaimed John Edward. "I smacked my lips +loudest--didn't I, Peggy?" + +But Peggy, talking aside with Anne, did not heed him. + +"It was very, very, very good of you all to send me the doll," said +Anne; "but truly, I'd rather you'd keep it for Susie and Lois. I'm +getting too big to play dolls, anyway." + +Skipping homeward with her hands snuggled in her new muff, Anne confided +to Miss Drayton, "I don't hate it near so bad about Honey-Sweet now. I +love her just the same most dearly. And, just think! it was her being +lost that made you find me. Peggy says they had a be-yu-tiful funeral +for her. Mrs. Callahan covered the coffin with white paper and they +shovelled in the dirt and put on the grave some real roses that John +Edward found in an ash barrel. Wasn't that nice? Oh! this is such a nice +world!" + + + + * * * * * + + + + +The following pages are advertisements of + +The Macmillan Standard Library +The Macmillan Fiction Library +The Macmillan Juvenile Library + +THE MACMILLAN STANDARD LIBRARY + +This series has taken its place as one of the most important +popular-priced editions. The "Library" includes only those books which +have been put to the test of public opinion and have not been found +wanting,--books, in other words, which have come to be regarded as +standards in the fields of knowledge,--literature, religion, biography, +history, politics, art, economics, sports, sociology, and belles +lettres. 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By James Lane Allen. + +"A narrative, told with naive simplicity, of how a man who was devoted +to his fruits and flowers and birds came to fall in love with a fair +neighbor."--_New York Tribune._ + + +Allen--The Reign of Law. A Tale of the Kentucky Hempfields. By +James Lane Allen. + +"Mr. Allen has style as original and almost as perfectly finished as +Hawthorne's.... And rich in the qualities that are lacking in so many +novels of the period."--_San Francisco Chronicle._ + + +Atherton--Patience Sparhawk. By Gertrude Atherton. + +"One of the most interesting works of the foremost American novelist." + + +Child--Jim Hands. By Richard Washburn Child. + +"A big, simple, leisurely moving chronicle of life. Commands the +profoundest respect and admiration. Jim is a real man, sound and +fine."--_Daily News._ + + +Crawford--The Heart of Rome. By Marion Crawford. + +"A story of underground mystery." + + +Crawford--Fair Margaret: A Portrait. By Marion Crawford. + +"A story of modern life in Italy, visualizing the country and its +people, and warm with the red blood of romance and melodrama."--_Boston +Transcript._ + + +Davis--A Friend of Caesar. By William Stearns Davis. + +"There are many incidents so vivid, so brilliant, that they fix +themselves in the memory."--Nancy Huston Banks in _The Bookman._ + + +Drummond--The Justice of the King. By Hamilton Drummond. + +"Read the story for the sake of the living, breathing people, the +adventures, but most for the sake of the boy who served love and the +King."--_Chicago Record-Herald._ + +Elizabeth and Her German Garden. + +"It is full of nature in many phases--of breeze and sunshine, of the +glory of the land, and the sheer joy of living."--_New York Times._ + + +Gale--Loves of Pelleas and Etarre. By Zona Gale. + +" ... full of fresh feeling and grace of style, a draught from the +fountain of youth."--_Outlook._ + + +Herrick--The Common Lot. By Robert Herrick. + +"A story of present-day life, intensely real in its picture of a young +architect whose ideals in the beginning were, at their highest, aesthetic +rather than spiritual. It is an unusual novel of great interest." + + +London--Adventure. By Jack London. + +"No reader of Jack London's stories need be told that this abounds with +romantic and dramatic incident."--_Los Angeles Tribune._ + + +London--Burning Daylight. By Jack London. + +"Jack London has outdone himself in 'Burning Daylight.'"--_The +Springfield Union._ + + +Loti--Disenchanted. By Pierre Loti. + +"It gives a more graphic picture of the life of the rich Turkish women +of to-day than anything that has ever been written."--_Brooklyn Daily +Eagle._ + + +Lucas--Mr. Ingleside. By E.V. Lucas. + +"He displays himself as an intellectual and amusing observer of life's +foibles with a hero characterized by inimitable kindness and +humor."--_The Independent._ + + +Mason--The Four Feathers. By A.E.W. Mason. + +"'The Four Feathers' is a first-rate story, with more legitimate thrills +than any novel we have read in a long time."--_New York Press._ + + +Norris--Mother. By Kathleen Norris. + +"Worth its weight in gold."--_Catholic Columbian._ + + +Oxenham--The Long Road. By John Oxenham. + +"'The Long Road' is a tragic, heart-gripping story of Russian political +and social conditions."--_The Craftsman._ + + +Pryor--The Colonel's Story. By Mrs. Roger A. Pryor. + +"The story is one in which the spirit of the Old South figures largely; +adventure and romance have their play and carry the plot to a satisfying +end." + +Remington--Ermine of the Yellowstone. By John Remington. + +"A very original and remarkable novel wonderful in its vigor and +freshness." + + +Roberts--Kings in Exile. By Charles G.D. Roberts. + +"The author catches the spirit of forest and sea life, and the reader +comes to have a personal love and knowledge of our animal +friends."--_Boston Globe._ + + +Robins--The Convert. By Elizabeth Robins. + +"'The Convert' devotes itself to the exploitation of the recent +suffragist movement in England. It is a book not easily forgotten by any +thoughtful reader."--_Chicago Evening Post._ + + +Robins--A Dark Lantern. By Elizabeth Robins. + +A powerful and striking novel, English in scene, which takes an +essentially modern view of society and of certain dramatic situations. + + +Ward--The History of David Grieve. By Mrs. Humphrey Ward. + +"A perfect picture of life, remarkable for its humor and extraordinary +success at character analysis." + + * * * * * + +THE MACMILLAN JUVENILE LIBRARY + + * * * * * + +This collection of juvenile books contains works of standard quality, on +a variety of subjects--history, biography, fiction, science, and +poetry--carefully chosen to meet the needs and interests of both boys +and girls. + + * * * * * + +_Each volume, cloth, 12mo, 50 cents net; postage, 10 cents extra_ + + * * * * * + + +Altsheler--The Horsemen of the Plains. By Joseph A. +Altsheler. + +"A story of the West, of Indians, of scouts, trappers, fur traders, and, +in short, of everything that is dear to the imagination of a healthy +American boy."--_New York Sun_. + + +Bacon--While Caroline Was Growing. By Josephine Daskam +Bacon. + +"Only a genuine lover of children, and a keenly sympathetic observer of +human nature, could have given us this book."--_Boston Herald._ + +Carroll--Alice's Adventures, and Through the Looking Glass. By +Lewis Carroll. + +"One of the immortal books for children." + + +Dix--A Little Captive Lad. By Marie Beulah Dix. + +"The human interest is strong, and children are sure to like +it."--_Washington Times._ + + +Greene--Pickett's Gap. By Homer Greene. + +"The story presents a picture of truth and honor that cannot fail to +have a vivid impression upon the reader."--_Toledo Blade._ + + +Lucas--Slowcoach. By E.V. Lucas. + +"The record of an English family's coaching tour in a great +old-fashioned wagon. A charming narrative, as quaint and original as its +name."--_Booknews Monthly._ + + +Mabie--Book of Christmas. By H.W. Mabie. + +"A beautiful collection of Christmas verse and prose in which all the +old favorites will be found in an artistic setting."--_The St. Louis +Mirror._ + + +Major--The Bears of Blue River. By Charles Major. + +"An exciting story with all the thrills the title implies." + + +Major--Uncle Tom Andy Bill. By Charles Major. + +"A stirring story full of bears, Indians, and hidden +treasures."--_Cleveland Leader._ + + +Nesbit--The Railway Children. By E. Nesbit. + +"A delightful story revealing the author's intimate knowledge of +juvenile ways."--_The Nation._ + + +Whyte--The Story Book Girls. By Christina G. Whyte. + +"A book that all girls will read with delight--a sweet, wholesome story +of girl life." + + +Wright--Dream Fox Story Book. By Mabel Osgood Wright. + +"The whole book is delicious with its wise and kindly humor, its just +perspective of the true value of things." + + +Wright--Aunt Jimmy's Will. 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