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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40300 ***
+
+  DOROTHY
+
+  BY
+  EVELYN RAYMOND
+
+
+  NEW YORK
+  HURST & CO., INC.
+  PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+THE DOROTHY BOOKS
+
+By EVELYN RAYMOND
+
+
+These stories of an American girl by an American author have made
+"Dorothy" a household synonym for all that is fascinating. Truth and
+realism are stamped on every page. The interest never flags, and is
+ofttimes intense. No more happy choice can be made for gift books, so
+sure are they to win approval and please not only the young in years,
+but also "grown-ups" who are young in heart and spirit.
+
+  =Dorothy=
+  =Dorothy at Skyrie=
+  =Dorothy's Schooling=
+  =Dorothy's Travels=
+  =Dorothy's House Party=
+  =Dorothy in California=
+  =Dorothy on a Ranch=
+  =Dorothy's House Boat=
+  =Dorothy at Oak Knowe=
+  =Dorothy's Triumph=
+  =Dorothy's Tour=
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY
+THE PLATT & PECK CO.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                                   PAGE
+
+    I.  HOW DOROTHY CAME                     1
+
+   II.  A POSTAL SUBSTITUTE                 15
+
+  III.  AT JOHNS HOPKINS HOSPITAL           33
+
+   IV.  DOROTHY GAINS IN WISDOM             50
+
+    V.  DOROTHY ENTERTAINS                  68
+
+   VI.  DOROTHY GOES UPON AN ERRAND         88
+
+  VII.  AN OFFICE SEEKER AND A CLIENT      103
+
+ VIII.  TENANTS FOR NO. 77                 123
+
+   IX.  STRANGE EXPERIENCES                141
+
+    X.  THE FLITTING                       157
+
+   XI.  JIM BARLOW                         171
+
+  XII.  DOROTHY'S ILLNESS                  188
+
+ XIII.  THE PLUMBER AND HIS GOSSIP         202
+
+  XIV.  THE BITER BIT                      219
+
+   XV.  THE FLIGHT IN THE NIGHT            238
+
+  XVI.  A GOOD SAMARITAN                   257
+
+ XVII.  A SUNDAY DRIVE                     278
+
+XVIII.  CONCLUSION                         291
+
+
+
+
+DOROTHY
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+HOW DOROTHY CAME
+
+
+One spring morning Mrs. John Chester opened the front door of her little
+brick house and screamed. There, upon the marble step, stood a wicker
+baby-wagon with a baby in it; and, having received this peculiar
+greeting, the baby screamed, too. Then it laughed, Mrs. Chester laughed,
+and, hearing both the screams and the laughter, postman John Chester
+hurriedly set down his cup of coffee and ran to the doorway. In another
+instant he, also, was laughing. What childless, child-loving man could
+help doing so, beholding the pretty sight before him?
+
+For Martha, his wife, had caught the little creature out of the wagon
+and was ecstatically hugging it, cooing to it, mothering it, as
+naturally as if this little one she was tossing up and down were not
+almost the first child she had ever so fondled.
+
+"John! John! O John! _It's meant!_ It's for us! See, see? The little
+card on its coat says: 'My name is Dorothy C. I have come to be your
+daughter.' Our daughter, John Chester! Oh! what a blessed gift!
+Who--who--can have sent her?"
+
+Then John Chester stopped laughing and, laying his hand on his wife's
+shoulder with a protesting pressure, said:
+
+"There, little woman, don't go building hopes on such a thing as this.
+Doubtless, some of the neighbors have left the little one here for a
+joke. If the good Lord has sent us no babies of our own it's not likely
+He'd put it into the hearts of others to give us theirs. It'll be called
+for before I get in from my rounds. Well, good-bye. Wish I could stay
+and play with the kid, but I'm late already. Good-bye."
+
+As he stooped to kiss her, after his accustomed fashion, his cap touched
+the baby's cheek, pressed so close to Martha's, and with a frown and a
+twist Miss Dorothy C. put up her tiny hand and knocked it from his head.
+Then she wrinkled her funny little nose, laughed again, and from that
+instant the letter-carrier became her abject slave.
+
+As he sped down the street, to take a car for the post-office and the
+morning mail he must deliver, he saw old Mrs. Cecil's carriage drive
+slowly around the corner. She was not "Mrs. Cecil" exactly, for there
+was more of her name upon her visiting cards: "Mrs. Cecil Somerset
+Calvert," and she was one of the proudest of old Maryland dames. But she
+was called by the shorter title by all sorts and conditions of people.
+She was on John Chester's route and quite often addressed him as
+"Johnnie," though Mrs. Martha resented this as being too familiar. In
+her own eyes John was the wisest and best man in the world, far too good
+to be called "Johnnie" like any schoolboy. The postman himself did not
+resent it. He resented very little that befell and simply trotted
+through life as he did over his mail-route, with a cheery word and smile
+for everybody. Therefore, it was quite characteristic that he should
+good-naturedly obey Mrs. Cecil's summons to come to her carriage, that
+she had ordered stopped, even though he was just boarding a car and had
+no time to waste.
+
+"Johnnie, what was that I saw in your wife's arms, as I drove by?" she
+demanded as he came up.
+
+"A baby. The cutest ever was. Somebody's playing a joke on us, leaving
+it on our steps."
+
+"I shouldn't like that kind of a joke. Whose is it?"
+
+"I don't know. I'll tell you more when I get round with the mail. Beg
+pardon, please, there comes another car," he replied, still smiling,
+although he was edging away as fast as he dared, without giving offense
+to this quick-tempered old lady.
+
+"Shall you be fool enough to take the youngster in, if nobody calls for
+it? What salary do you get?" she continued, ignoring his evident
+reluctance to be further delayed.
+
+He answered hastily, raised his cap, and managed to catch the next car,
+springing up on the rear platform while it was already in motion and
+reckoning that he would have to run, instead of trot, if he made up time
+and got his morning letters to those who expected them along with their
+breakfast.
+
+As he disappeared Mrs. Cecil nodded her handsome white head a number of
+times, in satisfaction over something, and remarked to her poodle:
+
+"Made no mistake. He's a straight man. Well, well, well! The idea of
+anybody being simpleton enough to be glad of the care of a squalling
+baby!"
+
+Then she drove home to her own fine house, which stood at the junction
+of the broad avenue and the narrow street. As old Ephraim turned his
+horses into the spacious grounds a thrill of pride ran through his
+mistress's heart, while she shouted to her half-deaf coachman:
+
+"Bellevieu never looked finer that it does this spring, boy."
+
+To which the gray-headed "boy" echoed:
+
+"Fine this spring, Miss Betty."
+
+"Had another offer for the place yesterday, Ephraim."
+
+"Dat so, Miss Betty? Grandes' place in Baltimo'," responded the other,
+who had heard but little of what she had said, but guessed sufficiently
+near to answer sympathetically. Indeed, he was fully as proud of the
+ancient estate as its present owner, and of the fact that, while he
+dwelt in the very heart of the southern city, his stables and
+appointments were quite as roomy as if an open country lay all about
+them. His "Miss Betty" and he were the last of the "family"; he
+considered Bellevieu as much his as hers; and, from his throne upon the
+antiquated Calvert carriage, looked with charitable contempt upon the
+drivers of less aristocratic vehicles.
+
+The march of progress had left the mansion and its beautiful grounds
+untouched. Entrenched behind her pride and her comfortable bank account,
+Mrs. Betty Cecil Somerset-Calvert had withstood every assault upon the
+old place, whether made by private individual or, as yesterday, by the
+city authorities, who wished to turn Bellevieu into a park. She had
+replied to the committee that waited upon her:
+
+"No, gentlemen, thank you. This house was one of the first built in the
+town, though it was then what you call nowadays a 'suburban residence.'
+Each generation has received it intact from the preceding one, and
+intact it will descend to my heirs. What they will do with it remains to
+be seen. I have the honor to wish you good-bye," she concluded, with her
+grandest manner, yet the familiar local salutation of parting.
+
+The committee felt itself dismissed and bowed itself out; and the old
+lady summoned her house-girl to open all the windows and ventilate the
+rooms contaminated by commercial presence. Then she consoled herself and
+the poodle with the reflection:
+
+"We shall be free from any more 'offers' for at least two weeks. Let us
+enjoy our freedom."
+
+Yet Mrs. Cecil's pride did not prevent her taking the liveliest interest
+in her neighbors and their gossip. Having been born and passed all her
+life at Bellevieu she knew everything which went on anywhere near it.
+Ensconced upon her broad piazzas, behind the venerable oaks and
+evergreens which shaded them, her bright old eyes watched the outer
+world with the zest as of youth and utter loneliness. For alone she
+dwelt in the many-roomed house, that had once been filled by her now
+vanished "family," and sometimes found her solitude unbearable. Even
+postman "Johnnie's" thrice-daily visits were a most welcome diversion to
+her, and lest there should be no mail sufficient to bring him so often
+to her door, she subscribed for all sorts of publications that she
+seldom opened, in order to have something due at every delivery.
+
+This morning she was so anxious to see him again that she had her
+breakfast served on the piazza, sitting down to wait for it as Ephraim
+drove away toward the stable. It was brought to her by Dinah, grumbling
+as usual:
+
+"Laws, Miss Betty, you-all shuah do try a body's tempah. It am puffickly
+ridic'lous de way yo' ca'y on. Off drivin' from pillah to post 'fore
+breakfast done served, an' you-all not so young an' spry like yo' used
+to was. Yeah am dem scrambled aigs done gone hard an' tough, like a
+nigger's skin, an' fust off Ah knows Ah'll have yo' laid up wid dat same
+old misery in yo' chist. Why-all cayn't yo' eat yo' breakfast in de
+house, propah, like a Christian, Miss Betty?"
+
+"Because I don't wish to, Dinah," retorted Mrs. Cecil, exactly as a
+spoiled child might have done.
+
+"You-all know how old yo' be, Miss Betty?" demanded the ancient negress,
+who had been body-servant to her mistress from the earliest youth of
+both and who was still indulged beyond limit in her freedom of speech
+and action.
+
+"Yes, Dinah. I am just one year and a day younger than you are. Go tell
+cook to scramble me some more eggs; and if I prefer driving before to
+after breakfast, that doesn't concern you, girl."
+
+"Beg pahdon, Miss Betty, but it do concern. Didn't Ah done go promise
+yo' dyin' ma how't Ah't take ca' of you-all what'd nevah no sense to
+take ca' yo'self? Huh! Yo' put dat shawl closeter 'roun' dem purty
+shouldahs o' yo's, whilst I go shame dat cook for sendin' up such
+no-'count aigs to my young miss!" And away limped Dinah, the "misery"
+in her own limbs from her "roomaticals" being very severe.
+
+Meanwhile, in the little house around the corner, Mrs. John Chester was
+superintending another breakfast which had the delightful zest of
+novelty about it. No sooner had Dorothy C. been taken within doors than
+she espied the table which John-postman had so hastily quitted upon
+sound of her own laughter and, at once, began to kick and squirm in the
+house mistress's arms with such vigor that the good lady came near to
+dropping her, and exclaimed, in mingled fear and pride:
+
+"Why, you strong little thing! You're as hard to hold as--as a human
+eel! There, there, don't! You've slipped down so far all your clothes
+are over your head. Are you hungry? Well, well! You shall have all you
+want to eat, for once!"
+
+Then she placed the child on the floor while she filled a tumbler with
+milk and offered it; but this was met by disdain and such another swift
+toss of the baby arm that the glass flew out of the holder's hand, and
+its contents deluged the floor.
+
+Whereupon, Miss Dorothy C. threw herself backward with shrieks which
+might mean anger or delight, but were equally confusing to the
+order-loving Mrs. Chester, who cried, in reproof:
+
+"Oh! you naughty baby! Whoever you belong to should teach you better
+than that! Now, just see. All my nice clean matting splashed with milk,
+and milk-grease is hard to get out. Now you lie there till I get a pail
+and cloth--if you hurt yourself I can't help it. John said you were a
+joke, but you're no joke to me!"
+
+Having just finished her spring cleaning and having had, for economy's
+sake, to do it all herself, the housewife's tidy soul was doubly tried,
+and she had a momentary desire to put the baby and her wagon out upon
+the street again, to take its chances with somebody else. However, when
+she re-entered with her pail and cloths, she was instantly diverted by
+the sight that met her.
+
+Dorothy C. had managed to pull her coat over her head and in some
+unknown fashion twist the strings of her bonnet around her throat, in an
+effort to remove the objectionable headgear. The result was disaster.
+The more she pulled the tighter grew that band around her neck and her
+face was already blue from choking when Mrs. Chester uncovered it and
+rescued the child from strangling.
+
+As the lady afterward described the affair to her husband it appeared
+that:
+
+"Seeing that, and her so nigh death, as it were, gave me the terriblest
+turn! So that, all unknown, down sits I in that puddle of milk as
+careless as the little one herself. And I cuddled her up that close, as
+if I'd comforted lots of babies before, and me a green hand at the
+business. To see her sweet little lip go quiver-quiver, and her big
+brown eyes fill with tears--Bless you, John! I was crying myself in the
+jerk of a lamb's tail! Then I got up, slipped off my wet skirt and got
+her out of her outside things, and there pinned to her dress was this
+note. Read it out again, please, it so sort of puzzles me."
+
+So the postman read all that they were to learn, for many and many a
+day, concerning the baby which had come to their home; and this is a
+copy of that ill-spelled, rudely scrawled document:
+
+     "thee child Is wun Yere an too Munths old hur burthDay is aPrill
+     Furst. til firthur notis Thar will Bee a letur in The posOfis the
+     furst of Everi mounth with Ten doLurs. to Pay." Signed:
+
+     "dorothy's Gardeen
+     hur X mark."
+
+Now John Chester had been a postman for several years and he had learned
+to decipher all sorts of handwriting. Instantly, he recognized that this
+scrawl was in a disguised hand, wholly different from that upon the card
+pinned to the child's coat, and that the spelling was also incorrect
+from a set purpose. Laying the two bits of writing together he carefully
+studied them, and after a few moments' scrutiny declared:
+
+"The same person wrote both these papers. The first one in a natural,
+cultivated hand, and a woman's. The second in a would-be-ignorant one,
+to divert suspicion. But--the writer didn't think it out far enough;
+else she never would have given the same odd shape to her r's and that
+twist to the tails of her y's. It's somebody that knows us, too,
+likely, though I can't for the life of me guess who. What shall we do
+about her? Send her to an Orphanage, ourselves? Or turn her over to the
+police to care for, Martha dear?"
+
+His face was so grave that, for a moment, she believed him to be in
+earnest; then that sunny smile which was never long absent from his
+features broke over them and in that she read the answer to her own
+desire. To whomsoever Dorothy C. belonged, that heartless person had
+passed the innocent baby on to them and they might safely keep her for
+their own.
+
+Only, knowing the extreme tidiness of his energetic wife, John finally
+cautioned:
+
+"Don't settle it too hastily, Martha. By the snap of her brown eyes and
+the toss of her yellow head, I foresee there'll be a deal more spilled
+milk before we've done with her!"
+
+"I don't care!" recklessly answered the housewife, "_she's mine_!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A POSTAL SUBSTITUTE
+
+
+So long a time had passed that Dorothy C. had grown to be what father
+John called "a baker's dozen of years old"; and upon another spring
+morning, as fair as that when she first came to them, the girl was out
+upon the marble steps, scrubbing away most vigorously. The task was
+known locally as "doing her front," and if one wishes to be considerable
+respectable, in Baltimore, one's "front" must be done every day. On
+Saturdays the entire marble facing of the basement must also be
+polished; but "pernickity" Mrs. Chester was known to her neighbors as
+such a forehanded housekeeper that she had her Saturday's work done on
+Friday, if this were possible.
+
+Now this was Friday and chanced to be a school holiday; so Dorothy had
+been set to the week-end task, which she hated; and therefore she put
+all the more energy into it, the sooner to have done with it, meanwhile
+singing at the top of her voice. Then, when the postman came round the
+corner of the block, she paused in her singing to stare at him for one
+brief instant. The next she had pitched her voice a few notes higher
+still, and it was her song that greeted her father's ears and set him
+smiling in his old familiar fashion. Unfortunately, he had not been
+smiling when she first perceived him and there had been a little catch
+in her tones as she resumed her song. Each was trying to deceive the
+other and each pretending that nothing of the sort was happening.
+
+"Heigho, my child! At it again, giving the steps a more tombstone
+effect? Well, since it's the fashion--go ahead!"
+
+"I wish the man, or men, who first thought of putting scrubby-steps
+before people's houses had them all to clean himself! Hateful old
+thing!"
+
+With a comical gesture of despair she tossed the bit of sponge-stone,
+with which she had been polishing, into the gutter and calmly seated
+herself on the bottom step, "to get her breath." "To get yours, too,
+father dear," she added, reaching to the postman's hand and gently
+drawing him down beside her. Then, because her stock of patience was
+always small and she could not wait for his news, she demanded: "Well!
+Did you go? What did he say?"
+
+"Yes, darling, I went," he answered, in a low tone and casting an
+anxious glance backward over his shoulder toward the house where Martha
+might be near enough to hear. But having replied to one question he
+ignored the rest.
+
+However, the girl was not to be put off by silence and her whole heart
+was in her eyes as she leaned forward and peered into his. He still
+tried to evade her, but she was so closely bound up with his life, she
+understood him so quickly and naturally, that this was difficult; so
+when she commanded in her tender, peremptory way: "Out with it, father
+mine, body and bones!" he half-cried, half-groaned:
+
+"Worse than all the others! _I--am--doomed!_"
+
+Then he dropped his head on his hands and, regardless of the fact that
+they were on the street, conspicuous to every passer-by, he gave way to
+a mute despair. Now when a naturally light-hearted person breaks down
+the collapse is complete, but Dorothy did not know this nor that
+recovery is commonly very prompt. She was still staring in grieved
+amazement at her father's bowed head when he again lifted it and flashed
+a smile into her freshly astonished eyes. Then she laughed aloud, so
+great was her relief, and cried:
+
+"There, father John! You've been fooling me again! I should have known
+you were teasing and not believed you!"
+
+But he answered, though still smiling:
+
+"It's pretty hard to believe the fact, myself. Yet it's true, all the
+same. Five different doctors have agreed upon it--which is wonderful, in
+itself; and though I'd much rather not face this kind of a truth I
+reckon I'll have to; as well as the next question: What is to become of
+us?"
+
+Dorothy still retained her baby habit of wrinkling her nose when she was
+perplexed, and she did so now in an absurd earnestness that amused her
+father, even in the midst of his heartache. During her twelve years of
+life in the little brick house in Brown Street, she had made a deal of
+trouble for the generous couple which had given her a home there, but
+she had brought them so much more of happiness that they now believed
+they actually could not live without her. As the postman expressed it:
+
+"Her first act in this house was to spill her milk on its tidy floor.
+She's been spilling milk all along the route from then till now, and
+long may she spill! Martha'd be 'lost' if she didn't have all that care
+of the troublesome child."
+
+This sunshiny morning, for the first time since that far-back day when
+she arrived upon his doorstep, the good postman began to contemplate the
+possibility of their parting; and many schemes for her future welfare
+chased themselves through his troubled brain. If he could only spare
+Martha and Dorothy the unhappiness that had fallen upon himself he would
+ask no more of fortune. For a long time they sat there, pondering, till
+Martha's voice recalled them to the present:
+
+"For goodness sake, Dorothy C.! What are you idling like that for?
+Don't you know I've to go to market and you have the lunch to get? Then
+there's that class picnic of yours, and what on earth will Miss Georgia
+say if you don't go this time? Come, come! Get to work. I'm ashamed to
+have the neighbors see my marble the way it is, so late in the day. You
+there, too, John? Finished your beat already? Well, you come, too. I've
+a mind to take up that dining-room carpet and put down the matting this
+very day. I never was so late in my spring cleaning before, but every
+time I say 'carpet' to you, you have an excuse to put me off. I confess
+I don't understand you, who've always been so handy and kind with my
+heavy jobs. But come, Dorothy, you needn't laze any longer. It beats
+all, the lots of talk you and your father always must have whenever you
+happen to get alongside. Come."
+
+There was a hasty exchange of glances between father and child; then she
+sprang up, laughing, and as if it were part of her fun held out her hand
+to the postman and pulled him to his feet. But it was not fun; it was
+most painful, serious earnest. He could hardly have risen without her
+aid, and she had noticed, what his wife had not, that, for a long time
+now, he had never taken a seat without it was near a table, or some
+other firm object by which he could support himself in rising. Now, as
+he loosed her hand and climbed the steps, he kept his gaze fixed upon
+those same troublesome feet and caught hold of the brass hand-rail,
+which it was the housewife's pride and Dorothy's despair to keep
+polished to brilliancy.
+
+Once within the house, Martha returned to the subject of the carpet
+lifting and again he put her off; but this time her suspicion that all
+was not right had been aroused and, laying her hand upon his shoulder,
+she demanded in a tone sharpened by sudden anxiety:
+
+"John Chester, what is the matter with you?"
+
+He started, staggered by her touch, light as it was, and sank into a
+chair; then knowing that the truth must out sometime, almost hurled it
+at her--though smiling to think how little she would, at first,
+comprehend:
+
+"Oh! nothing but '_ataxy locomotor_.'"
+
+"But--_what_? Don't tease. I'm in earnest, and a hurry."
+
+"So am I. In deadly earnest. I'm afflicted with '_ataxy locomotor_,' or
+_locomotor ataxia_. It's come to stay. To change our whole lives."
+
+She hadn't the slightest idea what he meant, as he had surmised would be
+the case, but something in his tone frightened her, though she answered
+with a mirthful affectation:
+
+"Humph! I'm glad it's something so respectable!"
+
+Then she turned away, made ready to go to market, and soon left with her
+basket on her arm. But she carried a now heavy heart within her. She had
+seen that underneath her husband's jesting manner lay some tragic truth;
+and in her preoccupied state, she bought recklessly of things she should
+not and went home without those which were needful. So that once back
+there, she had to dispatch Dorothy marketward again, while she herself
+prepared the simple lunch that served till their evening dinner which
+all enjoyed the more in the leisure of the day's work done. And now, in
+the absence of the child they both so loved, husband and wife at length
+discussed the trouble that had befallen.
+
+"Do you mean, John, that you are losing the use of your feet? What in
+the world will a postman do without his sound feet and as sound a pair
+of legs above them?" demanded the anxious housemistress, still unable to
+accept the dreadful fact.
+
+"Nothing. I can't be a postman any longer. I must resign my position at
+once. I've kept it longer than I should. I haven't done justice to
+myself or the office in hanging on as I have. But----"
+
+"How long have you known about it?"
+
+"For several months I've noticed that my feet felt queer, but it's only
+been a few weeks since they became so uncontrollable. I've not been able
+to walk without keeping my eyes fixed on my toes. My legs have a wild
+desire to fly out at right angles to my body and--Face it, little woman,
+face it! You have a cripple on your hands for as long as he may live."
+
+"I haven't! You shan't be a--a cripple!" protested the impulsive
+housewife, whose greatest griefs, heretofore, had been simple domestic
+ones which shrank to nothingness before this real calamity. Then she
+bowed her head on her arms and let the tears fall fast. This served to
+relieve the tension of her nerves, and when she again lifted her head
+her face was calm as sad, while she made him tell her all the details of
+his trouble. He had been to the best specialists in the city. That very
+day he had consulted the last, whom he had hoped might possibly help him
+and whose fee had staggered him by its size.
+
+"How long has Dorothy known this?" asked Martha, with a tinge of
+jealousy.
+
+"Almost from the beginning. It was quite natural that she should, for
+she has so often run alongside me on my routes--going to and from
+school. Besides, you know, she has the very sharpest eyes in the world.
+Little escapes them. _Nothing_ escapes which concerns us whom she loves
+so dearly. It was her notion that you shouldn't be told till it was
+necessary, but it fell in with my own ideas. I--I think, though I never
+heard of anybody else doing such a thing, that I'll have her go along
+with me this afternoon, when I make my--my last rounds. I confess that
+since that doctor's word, to-day, I've lost all my courage and my power
+to walk half-decently. Decently? It hasn't been that for a long time, so
+if you can spare her I'll have her go."
+
+"Of course I can spare her. She was to go to a class picnic, anyway, but
+she'd rather go with you. Now, I'll to work; and, maybe, I can think a
+way out of our trouble. I--I can't bear it, John! You, a cripple for
+life! It can't be true--it shall not be true. But--if it has to
+be,--well, you've worked for me all these years and it's a pretty
+how-de-do if I can't work for you in turn. Now, lie down on the lounge
+till it's time to go to the office again, and I'll tackle my kitchen
+floor."
+
+For the first time he allowed her to help him across the room and to
+place him comfortably on the lounge, and she suddenly remembered how
+often, during the past few weeks, she had seen Dorothy do this very same
+thing. She had laughed at it as a foolish fondness in the girl, but now
+she offered the assistance with a bitter heartache.
+
+Dorothy came back and was overjoyed at the changed program for her
+holiday afternoon. All along she had longed to go with the postman, to
+help him, but had not been permitted. Now it was not only a relief that
+her mother knew their secret and that they could talk it over together,
+but she had formed a scheme by which she believed everything could go on
+very much as before.
+
+So with a cane in one hand and his other resting on her shoulder, John
+Chester made his last "delivery." Fortunately, the late mail of the day
+was always small and the stops, therefore, infrequent. Most of these,
+too, were at houses fronting directly on the street, so that the postman
+could support himself against the end of the steps while Dorothy ran up
+them and handed in the letters.
+
+It was different at Bellevieu, which chanced to be the end of that trip,
+and the long path from the gateway to the mansion looked so formidable
+to father John that he bade Dorothy go in alone with the pouch, emptied
+now of all matter save that addressed to Mrs. Cecil.
+
+She sped away, leaving him leaning against the stone pillar of the
+eagle-gate--so called because each column guarding the entrance was
+topped by a massive bronze eagle--and waved a smiling farewell to him as
+she disappeared beneath the trees bordering the driveway.
+
+As usual, Mrs. Cecil was on her piazza, wrapped in shawls and protected
+by her hooded beach-chair from any possible wind that might blow. Old
+though she was, her eyes were almost as brown and bright as Dorothy's
+own, and they opened in surprise at the appearance of this novel
+mail-carrier.
+
+"How-d'ye-do, Mrs. Cecil? Here's such a lot of letters and papers all
+for you!" cried Dorothy, bowing, as she swept her hand through the pouch
+which she had slung over her shoulder in the most official manner.
+"Where shall I put them? I reckon there are too many for your lap."
+
+"What--who--Where's Johnnie?" demanded the lady, leaning forward and
+first smiling, then frowning upon the girl.
+
+"Oh! he--he's at the gate," she answered, and was about to explain why
+he had not come himself. Then a sudden remembrance of how closely he had
+guarded his secret, even from her mother, closed her lips, leaving the
+other to infer what she chose; and who promptly exclaimed:
+
+"Well, of all things! Do you know, does he know, that between you the
+law is broken? Nobody, except a regularly sworn employee has a right to
+touch the United States mail. How dare he send you? Huh! If I do my duty
+as a good citizen I shall report him at once. This single breach of
+faith may cost him his place, even though he has been in the service so
+long."
+
+Mrs. Cecil's manner was harsher than her thought. For some time she had
+observed that "Johnnie" looked ill and was far less active than of old
+and she had intended that very afternoon to offer him a kindness. She
+would send him and his wife away on a long vacation, wherever they chose
+to go, till he could recover his health. She would pay all his expenses,
+including a substitute's salary. Even more generous than all, she would
+invite that girl, Dorothy C., whom they had so foolishly adopted, to
+pass the interval of their absence at Bellevieu. She dreaded the
+infliction of such a visit. She always had insisted that she hated
+children--but--Well, it was to be hoped the postman would have sense
+enough to speedily recuperate and take Dorothy off her hands. In any
+case, she must be gotten rid of before it was time for Mrs. Cecil
+herself to seek recreation at her summer home in the Hudson highlands.
+
+Now her mood suddenly changed. She had desired to befriend the postman
+but, if he had taken it into his hands to befriend himself, it was quite
+another matter. Let him! Why should she bother with anybody in such a
+different state of life? Disappointment, at having her prospective
+kindness returned upon her thus, made her sharply say:
+
+"It takes all kinds of fools to fill a world, and I'm sorry to find
+Johnnie one of them. Don't stare! It's rude, with such big eyes as
+yours. Drop the mail. Carriers shouldn't loiter--that's another crime.
+Your father must come himself next time, else----"
+
+She seemed to leave some dire threat unspoken and again Dorothy was just
+ready to tell this strange old lady, whom the postman had often called
+"wise," the truth of the trouble that had come to him; when around the
+corner of the house dashed Peter and Ponce, the two Great Dane dogs
+which Mrs. Cecil kept as a menace to intruders. They had just been
+loosed for their evening exercise and, wild with delight, were hurrying
+to their mistress on her broad porch.
+
+At the sight of their onrush Dorothy caught up the pouch she had dropped
+and started to retreat--too late! The animals were upon her, had knocked
+her downward and backward, striking her head against the boards and, for
+the moment, stunning her. But they had been more playful than vicious
+and were promptly restrained by Mrs. Cecil's own hand upon their
+collars; while the brief confusion of the girl's startled thoughts as
+quickly cleared and she leaped to her feet, furiously angry and
+indignant.
+
+"Oh! the horrid beasts! How dare you--anybody--keep such dangerous
+creatures? I'll tell my father! He'll--he'll--" tears choked her further
+speech and, still suspiciously eyeing the Danes, she was edging
+cautiously down the steps when she felt herself stopped.
+
+Mrs. Cecil had loosed her hold of Peter to lay her hand upon the girl's
+shoulder and she was saying, kindly but sternly:
+
+"They are not dangerous but playful. They attack nobody upon whom they
+are not 'set.' It was an accident; and if any further apology is
+necessary it is from a little girl to the old gentlewoman--for an
+insolent suspicion. Now go. The dogs will not follow you."
+
+Dorothy did not see how she had done wrong, yet she felt like a culprit
+dismissed as she lifted the pouch she had again dropped and started
+gateward, still keeping a wary eye upon the beautiful dogs, now lying
+beside their mistress in her beach-chair.
+
+As she neared the entrance she cried:
+
+"Here I am at last, father! I didn't mean to stay so long but that
+dreadful old woman--Why, father, father! Where are you, dearest father?"
+
+He was nowhere to be seen. Nor anybody, either on the broad avenue or
+the narrow street around the corner; and when she came breathlessly to
+the dear home in which she hoped to find him it was empty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+AT JOHNS HOPKINS HOSPITAL
+
+
+The door of No. 77 Brown Street stood wide open. Any of the burglars for
+whom its mistress was always on the watch might have raided the tiny
+parlor or made off with father John's Sunday overcoat, hanging upon the
+hat-rack. Now also, while Dorothy hurried from room to room of the six
+which were all the house contained, the wind of a rising thunderstorm
+whistled through them and their open windows. Nor was there any reply to
+her anxious calls:
+
+"Mother! Father! Anybody--somebody! Oh! where are you? What has
+happened? Mother--dearest mother Martha! Won't you answer?"
+
+Certainly, this was a strange, a terrifying state of things. It was
+amazing that so careful a housewife as Martha Chester should leave her
+home in this unprotected condition, but it was quite natural for the
+well-trained girl, even in the midst of her alarm, to close the sashes
+against the rain that now came dashing in.
+
+Then she hurried below and out into the little yard, or garden, that was
+her own special delight. Nobody there; but the pail and brush which Mrs.
+Chester had been using to clean her back kitchen were still upon its
+floor, the pail overturned and the water puddling its bricks, and the
+sight made Dorothy's heart sink lower yet.
+
+Hurrying back to the street, a neighbor shielded her own head from the
+downpour and called from a next-door window:
+
+"Something has happened to your father. A boy saw him picked up on the
+street and a policeman called a Johns Hopkins ambulance, that took him
+to the hospital. The boy knew him, told your mother, and she's hurried
+there. Don't worry. Probably it's nothing serious."
+
+"Not serious! Oh! you don't know what you're saying! And to think I left
+him only such a little while! If that hateful old woman--I must go to
+him, too, I must, I must!"
+
+With that Dorothy was retreating indoors, but again the neighbor's voice
+detained her:
+
+"'Tisn't likely you'd be admitted, even if you did go. You'd better stay
+here and be ready for your poor mother when she comes. It's worse
+trouble for her than for you."
+
+This might be so and the advice excellent, but the excited girl was in
+no mood to profit by it. Once, in her early childhood, she had answered
+to an inquiry: "I love my mother a _little_ the best, but I love my
+father the _biggest_ the best!" and it was so still. Her father, her
+cheery, indulgent, ever-tender father, would always be "the biggest the
+best" of her earthly friends, and to be absent from him now, not knowing
+what had befallen, was impossible.
+
+Glancing upward she observed that the neighbor had already withdrawn her
+head from the dashing rain and was glad of it. It left her free to bang
+the front door shut, to rush backward through the house and out at the
+alley gate, which she also shut, snapping its lock behind her. But she
+had caught up the key that opened it and, hanging this in a crevice of
+the fence known for a safe hiding place to each of the family, she
+started eastward for the great hospital.
+
+Though she had never entered the famous place, she had seen it once from
+a street-car, and love guided her flying feet. But it was a long, long
+way from Brown Street, and the present storm was one of those deluging
+"gusts" familiar to the locality. Within the first five minutes the
+gutters were filled, the muddy streams pushing outward toward the very
+middle of the narrower alleys and quite covering her shoe-tops as she
+splashed through. At one or two of the older thoroughfares she came to
+the old-time "stepping stones," provided for just such emergencies, and
+still left standing because of the city's pride in their antiquity. Over
+these she leaped and was glad of them, but alas! the storm was having
+its will of her. Her gingham frock was soaked and clung about her with a
+hindering obstinacy that vexed her, and her wet shoes grew intolerable.
+She did not remember that she had ever gone barefoot, as some of her
+mates had done, but at last she sat down on a doorstep and took off her
+shoes and stockings. After a moment's contemplation of their ruined
+state, she threw them far aside and stepped upon the brick pavement,
+just as a policeman in oilskins came up and laid his hand on her
+shoulder, asking:
+
+"Little girl, what are you doing?"
+
+Dorothy sprang aside, frightened, and wriggled herself free. She forgot
+that she had never been afraid of such officers; that, indeed, the one
+upon her own home beat was the friend of all the youngsters on the
+block, and that this one could give her the shortest direction to the
+place she sought. She had long ago been taught that, if she were ever
+lost or in any perplexity upon the street, she should call upon the
+nearest policeman for aid and that it was his sworn duty to assist her.
+She remembered only that it was a policeman who had summoned the
+ambulance that had carried her father to that horrible place--a
+hospital! Well, she, too, was bound for it, but only to snatch him
+thence; and stretching out her small, drenched arms, she wondered if
+they and mother Martha's together would have strength to lift and seize
+him.
+
+Then on and on and on! Could one city be so big as this? Did ever brick
+pavements hurt anybody else as they were hurting her? How many more
+blocks must she traverse before she came in sight of that wide Broadway
+with its pretty parks, on which the hospital stood?
+
+Everybody had retreated indoors. Nobody who could escape the fury of the
+storm endured it, and she had left the officer who could have guided her
+far behind. But, at last, a slackening of the downpour; and as if by
+magic, people reappeared upon the street; though of the first few whom
+she addressed none paused to listen. Yet, finally, a colored boy came
+hurrying by, his basket of groceries upon his arm, and another empty
+basket inverted over his head, by way of an umbrella. Him she clutched,
+demanding with what little of breath she had left:
+
+"The--way--to--Johns Hopkins'--hospital, please!"
+
+"Hey? Horspittle? Wha' for?"
+
+"To find my father, who's been taken there. Oh! tell me the shortest
+way, please--please--please! I am so tired! and I must be--I must be
+quick--quick!"
+
+A look of pity and consternation stole into the negro's face, and he
+drew in his breath with a sort of gasp as he answered:
+
+"Laws, honey, I reckon yo' _mus'_ be 'quick'! But de quickes' yo' is
+ain' half quick enough. Know wha' dem horspittles is for? Jus' to cut up
+folkses in. Fac'. Dey goes in alibe, dey comes out deaders. Yo' jus'
+done cal'late yo' ain' got no paw no mo'. He's had his haid, or his
+laig, or both his arms sawed off 'fore you-all more'n got started
+a-chasin' of him. Po' li'l gal! Pity yo' got so wet in de rain jus' fo'
+nottin'! Wheah yo' live at? Yo' bettah go right home an' tell yo' folks
+take dem cloes off, 'fore you-all done get de pneumony."
+
+Dorothy was shivering, partly from nervousness, partly from the chill of
+wet garments in the strong breeze. Though she had often heard the
+postman comment upon the superstitions of the negroes, who formed so
+large a part of the city's population, and knew that such ideas as this
+lad expressed were but superstition only, she could not help being
+impressed by his words. It was his honest belief that to enter a
+hospital meant giving himself up to death; and in this ignorance he
+reasoned that this forlorn child should be prevented from such
+self-destruction by any means whatever. So when she still pleaded to be
+directed, despite the fear he had raised in her, he whirled abruptly
+about and pointed his hand in a direction wholly different from that she
+had followed. Then he added with a most dramatic air:
+
+"Well, honey, if you-all done daid-set to go get yo' laigs sawed off,
+travel jus' dat-a-way till yo' come to de place. Mebbe, if dey gibs yo'
+dat stuff what makes yo' go asleep, you-all won't know nottin' erbout de
+job."
+
+With this cheerful assurance the grocer's boy went his way, musically
+whistling a popular tune, and Dorothy gazed after him in deep
+perplexity. Fortunately, the rain had almost ceased and the brief halt
+had restored her breath. Then came the reflection:
+
+"He wasn't telling the truth! I know that isn't the way at all, for
+Johns Hopkins is on the east of the city, and that's toward the north.
+I'll ask somebody else. There are plenty of people and wagons coming out
+now; and--Oh! my!"
+
+As if in answer to her thought, there came the clang of an electric
+bell, the hurrying delivery wagons drew out of the way, and past her,
+over the clear space thus given, dashed another ambulance, hastening to
+the relief of some poor sufferer within. On its side she saw the name of
+the hospital she sought and with frantic speed dashed after this
+trustworthy guide.
+
+Though she could by no means keep up with its speed she did keep it well
+in sight, to the very entrance of the wide grounds themselves, and there
+she lost it. But it didn't matter now. Her journey was almost done, and
+the building loomed before her, behind whose walls was hidden her
+beloved father John.
+
+From the gateway up the incline to the broad hospital steps she now
+dragged her strangely reluctant feet. How, after all, could she enter
+and learn some dreadful truth? But she must, she must! and with a final
+burst of courage she rushed into the great entrance hall, which was so
+silent, so beautiful after the storm outside; and there appeared before
+her half-blinded eyes a figure as of one coming to meet her.
+
+All alone the figure stood, with nothing near to detract from its
+majestic tenderness; so large and powerful looking; as if able to bear
+all the burdens of a troubled world and still smile peace upon it.
+Slowly, Dorothy crept now to the very feet of the statue and read that
+this was: "Christ the Healer."
+
+Ah! then! No hospital could be a wicked, murderous place in which He
+dwelt! and with a sigh of infinite relief, the exhausted child sank down
+and laid her head upon Him. And then all seemed to fade from view.
+
+The next Dorothy knew she was lying on a white cot; a blue-gowned,
+white-capped nurse was bending over her, and a pleasant voice was
+saying:
+
+"Well, now that's good! You've had a splendid rest and must be quite
+ready for your supper. Here's a fine bowl of broth, and some nice toast.
+Shall I help you to sit up?"
+
+"Why--why--what's the matter with me? Where am I? Have----" began the
+astonished child; then, suddenly remembering the colored boy's
+assertions concerning this dreadful place, she instinctively thrust her
+hands below the light bed covering and felt of her legs. They were still
+both there! So were her arms; and, for a matter of fact, she was
+delightfully rested and comfortable. Again lying back upon her pillow,
+she smiled into the nurse's face and asked:
+
+"What am I doing here, in a bed? Is this the hospital?"
+
+"Yes, dear, it is; and you are in bed because you fainted in the
+entrance hall, exhausted by exposure to the terrible storm. That is
+all--we trust. Now, drink your broth and take another nap if you can."
+
+There was authority, as well as gentleness, in the tone and the patient
+tried to obey; but this time there was a sharp pain at the back of her
+head and her neck seemed strangely stiff. With a little exclamation of
+distress, she put her hand on the painful spot, and the attendant
+quickly asked:
+
+"Does that hurt you? Can you remember to have had a blow, or a fall,
+lately?"
+
+"Why, yes. The big dogs knocked me down over at Bellevieu. It made me
+blind for a few minutes, but I was too mad to stay blind! If it hadn't
+been for that--Oh! please, where _is_ my father?" answered Dorothy.
+
+"Your father? I don't know. Have you lost, or missed, him, dear?"
+returned the other, understanding now why such a healthy child should
+have collapsed as she had, there at the feet of the beautiful statue.
+Excitement, exposure, and the blow; these accounted for the condition in
+which a house doctor had found her. Also, there was nothing to hinder
+prompt recovery if the excitement could be allayed; and to this end the
+nurse went on:
+
+"Tell me about him, little girl. Maybe I can help you, and don't worry
+about being here. It is the very loveliest place in the world for ailing
+people and nothing shall hurt you."
+
+So Dorothy told all she knew; of the long weeks past when the postman's
+active feet had become more and more troublesome; of his sudden
+disappearance; and of her now terrible fear that, since the poor feet
+were of so little use, these hospital surgeons would promptly "saw" them
+off and so be rid of them.
+
+Ripples of amusement chased themselves across the nurse's fair face as
+she listened, yet beneath them lay a sympathetic seriousness which kept
+down Dorothy's anger, half-roused by the fleeting smiles.
+
+"Well, my dear, neither he nor you could have come to a better place to
+get help. The very wisest doctors in the country are here, I believe.
+It's a disease with a long name, I fancy----"
+
+"Yes, yes! I know it! He told me. It's 'locomort'--'loco' something,
+'at'--'at' something else. It's perfectly horrible just to hear it, and
+what must it be to suffer it? But he never complains. My father John is
+the bravest, dearest, best man in the world!"
+
+"Indeed? Then you should be the 'bravest, dearest, best' little daughter
+as well. And we'll hope some help, some cure, can be found for him. Now,
+will you go to sleep?"
+
+"No. If you please I will go home. But I don't see my clothes anywhere.
+Funny they should take away a little girl's clothes just 'cause she
+forgot and went to sleep in the wrong place!"
+
+"In the very right-est place in all the world, dear child! At the
+Saviour's feet. Be sure nothing but goodness and kindness rule over the
+hospital whose entrance He guards. Your clothes are drying in the
+laundry. You will, doubtless, have them in the morning, and, so far as I
+can judge now, there'll be nothing to prevent your going home then,"
+comforted the nurse, gently stroking Dorothy's brow and by her touch
+soothing the pain in it. Oddly enough, though her head had ached
+intensely, ever since that tumble on Mrs. Cecil's piazza, she had not
+paid any attention to it while her anxious search continued. She was
+fast drowsing off again, but roused for an instant to ask:
+
+"Have you seen my father? Did he hurt himself when he fell? Did he fall?
+What did happen to him, anyway? Mayn't I see him just a minute, just one
+little minute, 'fore this--this queer sleepiness gets me?"
+
+"My dear, you can ask as many questions as a Yankee! I'll tell you what
+I think: Your father was probably taken to the emergency ward. I have
+nothing to do with that. My place is here, in the children's ward; and
+the first thing nurses--or children--learn in this pleasant room
+is--obedience. I have my orders to obey and one of them is to prevent
+talking after certain hours."
+
+"You--you a big, grown-up woman, have to 'obey'? How funny!" cried
+Dorothy, thinking that the face beneath the little white cap was almost
+the very sweetest she had ever seen. But to this the other merely
+nodded, then went softly away.
+
+Dorothy lay in a little room off from the general ward, into which the
+nurse had disappeared, and where there was the sound of low-toned
+conversation, with an occasional fretful cry from some unseen baby. The
+doctor, or interne as he was called, making his night rounds, seeing
+that all his little charges were comfortable for their long rest, and
+discussing with the blue-gowned assistant their needs and conditions. It
+was he who had found Dorothy, unconscious on the tiles, and had ordered
+her to bed; and it was of herself, had she known it, that he and the
+nurse had just been talking. As a result of this he merely looked in at
+the door of the little room, blinked a good-night from behind his
+spectacles, which, like two balls of fire, reflected the electric light
+above the door, and passed on.
+
+Dorothy intended to keep awake. For a long time her head had been full
+of various schemes by which she should rise to the support of her
+family, whenever that day foreseen by the postman should arrive when his
+own support should fail. The day had come! Very suddenly, after all, as
+even the best-prepared-for catastrophes have a way of doing; and now,
+despite her earnest desires--Dorothy was going to sleep! She was
+ashamed of herself. She must stay awake and think--think--think! She
+simply _must_--she----
+
+"Well, Dorothy C., good morning! A nice, dutiful daughter, you, to run
+away and leave mother Martha alone all night!"
+
+That was the next she knew! That was Mrs. Chester's voice, speaking in
+that familiar tone a reproof which was no reproof at all, but only a
+loving satisfaction. And there she sat, the tidy little woman, in her
+second-best hat and gown, smiling, smiling, as if there were no such
+thing as trouble in the world! as if both husband and child were not, at
+that very moment, lying in hospital beds!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+DOROTHY GAINS IN WISDOM
+
+
+"Why, mother! Why--why--_mother_!" cried the astonished Dorothy, sitting
+up in her cot and smiling back into the happy face before her, yet
+wondering at its happiness and her own heartlessness, in being glad
+while her father was so ill. Then she realized that her neck was very
+stiff and that when she tried to turn her head it moved with a painful
+wrench, so sank back again, but still gazed at Mrs. Chester with a
+grieved amazement.
+
+Seeing which, the lady bent over the cot and kissed the little girl,
+then promptly explained:
+
+"You needn't be troubled, dearie, this is the very best thing that could
+have happened to us. Your father tired of waiting for you, his head was
+dizzy, and when he tried to walk home he fell. They hurried him
+here--his uniform showed he was somebody important--and into that
+emergency place. There the doctors examined him and they say, O Dorothy
+C.! they say that there is a chance, a chance of his sometime _getting
+well_! Think of that! John may get well! All those other outside
+doctors, that he paid so much to, told him he never could. He'd just
+grow worse and worse till--till he died. These don't. They say he has a
+chance. He's to stay here and be built up on extra nourishments, for
+awhile, and then he's to go into the country and live. Oh! I'm the
+happiest woman in Baltimore, this day! And how is my little girl? Though
+the nurse tells me there's nothing much the matter with you, and that
+you'll be able to go home with me as soon as you have had your
+breakfast. Such a late breakfast, Dorothy C., for a schoolgirl! Lucky
+it's a Saturday!"
+
+Dorothy had never seen her mother like this. At home, when trifles went
+wrong, she was apt to be a bit sharp-tongued and to make life
+uncomfortable for father John and their daughter, but now, that this
+real trouble had befallen, she was so gay! For, even if there was hope
+that the postman might sometime recover, was he not still helpless in a
+hospital? And had she forgotten that they had no money except his
+salary? which would stop, of course, since he could no longer earn it.
+It was certainly strange; and seeing the gravity steal into the childish
+face which was so dear to her, mother Martha stooped above it and, now
+herself wholly grave, explained:
+
+"My dear, don't think I'm not realizing everything. But, since I've been
+once face to face with the possibility that death--_death_--was coming
+to our loved one and now learn that he will still live, as long as I do,
+maybe, I don't care about anything else. God never shuts one door but He
+opens another; and we'll manage. Some way we'll manage, sweetheart, to
+care for father John who has so long cared for us. Now, enough of talk.
+Here comes a maid with your breakfast; and see. There are your clothes,
+as fresh and clean as if I had laundered them myself. Maybe you should
+dress yourself before you eat. Then you are to see your father for a few
+minutes; and then we'll go home to pack up."
+
+It was long since Mrs. Chester had helped Dorothy to dress, except on
+some rare holiday occasion, but she did so now, as if the girl were
+still the baby she had found upon her doorstep. She, also, made such
+play of the business that the other became even more gay than herself,
+and chattered away of all that had befallen her, from her discovery of
+the deserted home till now.
+
+Then came the nice breakfast, so heartily enjoyed that the nurse smiled,
+knowing there could be nothing seriously amiss with so hungry a patient.
+Afterward, a quiet walk through long corridors and spacious halls, from
+which they caught glimpses of cots with patients in them, and passed by
+wheeled chairs in which convalescents were enjoying a change.
+
+"It's so still! Does nobody ever speak out loud?" whispered Dorothy to
+her mother, half-afraid of her own footfalls, though she now wore a pair
+of felt slippers in place of the shoes she had yesterday discarded.
+"It's the biggest, cleanest, quietest place I could even dream of!"
+
+But Mrs. Chester did not answer, save by a nod and a finger upon lip;
+and so following the guide assigned them, they came to one of the open
+bridges connecting two of the hospital buildings, and there was father
+John, in a rolling chair, wearing a spotless dressing-gown, and holding
+out both hands toward them, while his eyes fairly shone with delight. An
+orderly, in a white uniform, was pushing the chair along the bridge,
+which was so wide and looked down upon such beautiful grounds that it
+reminded Dorothy of Bellevieu, and he stopped short at their approach.
+He even stepped back a few paces, the better to leave them free for
+their interview.
+
+But if there was any emotion to be displayed at that meeting, it was not
+of a gloomy sort; and it was almost in his wife's very words that the
+postman exclaimed:
+
+"To think I should get impatient, lose my head, tumble down, and--up
+into this fine place! Where I've heard the best of news and live like a
+lord! Who wouldn't give his legs a rest, for a spell, if he could have
+such a chair as this to loll in while another man does his walking for
+him! Well, how's the girl? Why, since when have you taken to wearing
+slippers so much too big for you? I should think they'd bother you in
+walking as much as my limpsy feet did me."
+
+Nothing escaped this cheery hospital patient even now, and before Mrs.
+Chester could interpose, Dorothy had told her own tale and how she had
+been a hospital patient herself. How now she had been "discharged" and
+was ready to go home with all her legs and arms intact, a thing she had
+feared might not be the case when she had ventured thither.
+
+"To think I should have been so silly as to believe that poor boy! Or
+that, if I had followed his wrong directions, I shouldn't have gotten
+here at all. Oh! isn't it beautiful! What makes some of the women dress
+all in white and some in blue? When I grow up I believe I'll be a
+hospital nurse myself."
+
+"Good idea. Excellent. Stick to it. See if you can make that notion last
+as long as that other one about being a great artist; or, yes, the next
+scheme was to write books--books that didn't 'preach' but kept folks
+laughing all the way through."
+
+"Now, father! You needn't tease, and you haven't answered, about the
+different dresses. Do you know, already?" protested Dorothy, kissing his
+hand that rested on the arm of his chair.
+
+"Oh! yes, I know. The orderly explained, for I wasn't any wiser than you
+before he did. The blue girls are 'probationers,' or under-graduates.
+They have to study and take care of cranky sick folks for three whole
+years before they can wear those white clothes. Think of that, little
+Miss Impatience, before you decide on the business! Three years. That's
+a long time to be shut up with aches and pains and groans. But a noble
+life. One that needs patience; even more than the Peabody course!"
+
+They all laughed, even Dorothy who was being teased. After any new
+experience, it was her propensity immediately to desire to continue the
+delightful novelty. After a visit to a famous local picture gallery, she
+had returned home fully intent upon becoming an artist who should be,
+also, famous. To that end she had wasted any number of cheap pads and
+pencils, and had littered her mother's tidy rooms with "sketches"
+galore. When she had gone with a schoolmate to a Peabody recital, she
+had been seized with the spirit of music and had almost ruined a
+naturally sweet voice--as well as the hearers' nerves--by a
+self-instructed course of training, which her teasing father had
+sometimes likened to a cat concert on a roof. However, upon learning
+that it required many years of steady practise and that her life must be
+filled with music--music alone--if she ever hoped to graduate from the
+Institute, she abandoned the idea and aspired to literature.
+
+So from one ambition to another, her almost too active mind veered; but
+her wise guardians allowed it free scope, believing that, soon or late,
+it would find the right direction and that for which nature had really
+fitted her. The greatest disappointment the postman had felt, concerning
+these various experiments, was about the music. He was almost
+passionately fond of it, and rarely passed even a street organ without
+a brief pause to listen. Except, of course, when he had been upon his
+rounds. Then he forced himself past the alluring thing, even if he had
+himself to whistle to keep it out of mind. This habit of his had gained
+for him the nickname, along his beat, of the "whistling postman"; and,
+had he known it, there were many regrets among those who had responded
+to his whistle as promptly as to his ring of the bell that they should
+hear the cheerful sound no more.
+
+The news of his collapse had quickly spread, for a new postman was
+already on his route, and it was only at Bellevieu, where "Johnnie"
+would be most missed, that it was not known.
+
+The eagle-gate was shut. Ephraim was not to drive his fat horses through
+it that morning, nor for many more to come. During the night Mrs. Cecil
+had been taken ill with one of her periodical bronchial attacks, of
+which she made so light, but her physician and old Dinah so much. To
+them her life seemed invaluable; for they, better than anybody else,
+knew of her wide-spread yet half-hidden charities, and they would keep
+her safely in her room, as long as this were possible.
+
+After a time, the invalid would take matters into her own hands and
+return to her beloved piazza; for she was the only one not frightened by
+her own condition, and was wont to declare:
+
+"I shall live just as long, and have just as many aches, as the dear
+Lord decrees. When He's through with me here He'll let me know, and all
+your fussing, Dinah, won't avail. My father was ninety, my mother
+ninety-seven when they died. We're tough old Maryland stock, not easily
+killed."
+
+Indeed, frail though Mrs. Cecil looked, it was the fragility of extreme
+slenderness rather than health; and it was another pride of Dinah's that
+her Miss Betty had still almost the figure of a girl. Occasionally, even
+yet, the lady would sit to read with a board strapped across her
+shoulders, as she had been used when in her teens, to keep them erect;
+and it was her boast that she had kept her "fine shape" simply because
+never, in all her life, had she suffered whalebone or corset to
+interfere with nature.
+
+This Saturday morning, therefore, a colored boy waited beneath the
+eagles, to receive his mistress's mail and to prevent the ringing of the
+gate-bell, which might disturb her. In passing him, on her way home,
+Dorothy noticed the unusual circumstance and thought how much the
+gossip-loving dame would miss her ever-welcome "Johnnie." But she was
+now most fully engrossed by her own affairs and did not stop to
+enlighten him.
+
+After leaving the hospital, Mrs. Chester and she had gone downtown to
+replace the shoes and stockings so recklessly discarded the day before;
+Dorothy hobbling along in the felt slippers and declaring that she would
+suffer less if she were barefooted. But her mother had answered:
+
+"No, indeed! I'd be ashamed to be seen with such a big girl as you in
+that condition. Besides, I must get some new things for John. So, while
+I select the nightshirts and wrapper he needs, you go into the shoe
+department and buy for yourself."
+
+"Oh, mother! May I? I never bought any of my clothes alone. How nice
+and grown-up I feel! May I get just what I like?"
+
+"Yes. Only, at the outside, you must not pay more than two dollars for
+the shoes, nor above a quarter for the stockings. I could scold you for
+spoiling your old ones, if I were not too thankful about your father to
+scold anybody."
+
+So they parted by the elevator in the great store, and with even more
+than her native enthusiasm Dorothy plunged into these new delights of
+shopping. The clerk first displayed a substantial line of black shoes,
+as seemed most suitable to a young girl in the plainest of gingham
+frocks; but the small customer would have none of these. Said she:
+
+"No, I don't like that kind. Please show me the very prettiest ties you
+have for two dollars a pair," and she nodded her head suggestively
+toward a glass case wherein were displayed dainty slippers of varying
+hues. There were also white ones among them, and Dorothy remembered that
+her chum, Mabel Bruce, had appeared at Sunday school the week before,
+wearing such, and had looked "too lovely for words." But then, of
+course, Mabel's frock and hat were also white and her father was the
+plumber. When Dorothy had narrated the circumstance to father John, and
+had sighed that she was "just suffering for white shoes," he had laughed
+and declared that:
+
+"Plumbers were the only men rich enough to keep their daughters shod
+that way!"
+
+But she saw now that he was mistaken. These beauties which the rather
+supercilious clerk was showing her didn't cost a cent more than the
+limit she had been allowed. Indeed, they were even less. They were
+marked a "special sale," only one dollar ninety-seven cents. Why, she
+was saving three whole cents by taking them, as well as pleasing
+herself.
+
+The transaction was swiftly closed. White stockings were added to the
+purchase, on which, also, the shopper saved another two cents, so that
+she felt almost a millionaire as she stepped out of the shoe department
+and around to the elevator door, where she was to meet her mother. The
+lady promptly arrived but had not finished her own errands; nor, in the
+crowd, could she see her daughter's feet and the manner of their
+clothing. She simply held out her front-door key to the girl and bade
+her hurry home, to put the little house in order for the coming Sabbath.
+
+Thus Dorothy's fear that her mother might disapprove her choice was
+allayed for the time being. She would not be sent back to that clerk,
+who had jested about the felt slippers in a manner the young shopper
+felt was quite ill-bred, to ask him to exchange the white shoes for
+black ones. So she stepped briskly forth, keeping her own gaze fixed
+admiringly upon the snowy tips which peeped out from beneath her short
+skirts, and for a time all went well. She managed to avoid collision
+with the bargain-morning shoppers all about her and she wholly failed to
+see the amused faces of those who watched her.
+
+On the whole, Dorothy C. was as sensible a girl as she was a bright one;
+but there's nobody perfect, and she was rather unduly vain of her
+shapely hands and feet. They were exceedingly small and well-formed, and
+though the hands had not been spared in doing the rough tasks of life,
+which fall to the lot of humble bread-earners, her father John had
+insisted that his child's feet should be well cared for. He, more than
+Martha, had seen in their adopted daughter traces of more aristocratic
+origin than their own; and he had never forgotten the possibility that
+sometime she might be reclaimed.
+
+Usually Dorothy walked home from any downtown trip, to market or
+otherwise, and set out briskly to do so now. But, all at once, a
+horrible pain started in the toes of her right foot! She shook the toes,
+angrily, as if they were to blame for the condition of things; and thus
+resting all her weight upon her left foot that, likewise, mutinied and
+sent a thrill of torture through its entire length. Did white shoes
+always act that way?
+
+She stopped short and addressed the misbehaving members in her sternest
+tones:
+
+"What's the matter with you to make you hurt so? Never before has a new
+shoe done it; I've just put them on and walked out of the store as
+comfortably as if they were old ones. Hmm! I guess it's all imagination.
+They aren't quite, not _quite_ so big as my old ones were, but they fit
+ex-quis-ite-ly! Ouch!"
+
+"Excruciatingly" would have been the better word, as Dorothy presently
+realized; but, also, came the happy thought that she had "saved" enough
+money on her purchases to pay her car-fare home. She knew that mother
+Martha would consider her extravagant to ride when she had no market
+basket to carry but--Whew! Ride she must! That pain, it began to make
+her feel positively ill! Also, it rendered her entrance of the car a
+difficult matter; so that, instead of the light spring up the step she
+was accustomed to give, she tottered like an old woman and was most
+grateful for the conductor's help as he pulled her in. She sank into the
+corner seat with a look of agony on her pretty face and her aching toes
+thrust straight out before her, in a vain seeking for relief; nor did it
+add to her composure to see the glances of others in the car follow hers
+to the projecting feet while a smile touched more faces than one.
+
+Poor Dorothy never forgot her first purchase, "all alone"; and her
+vanity received a pretty severe lesson that day. So severe that as she
+finally limped to the steps of No. 77 she sat down on the bottom one,
+unable to ascend them till she had removed her shoes. The misery which
+followed this act was, at first, so overpowering that she closed her
+eyes, the better to endure it; and when she opened them again there
+stood a man before her, looking at her so sharply that she was
+frightened; and who, when she would have risen, stopped her by a gesture
+and a smile that were even more alarming than his stare.
+
+"Well, what is it?" demanded the little girl, suddenly realizing that in
+this broad daylight, upon an open street, nobody would dare to hurt her.
+
+The stranger's unlovely smile deepened into a gruff laughter, as he
+answered:
+
+"Humph! You don't appear to know me. But I know you. I know you better
+than the folks who've brought you up. I can help you to a great fortune
+if you'll let me. Hey?"
+
+"You--can? Oh! how!" cried Dorothy, springing up, and in her amazement
+at this statement forgetting her aching feet. "A fortune!" And that was
+the very thing that father John now needed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+DOROTHY ENTERTAINS
+
+
+Dorothy's punishment for her unwise purchase was to wear the white shoes
+continually. This was only possible by slitting their tops in various
+places, which not only spoiled their beauty but was a constant "lecture"
+to their wearer; who remarked:
+
+"One thing, mother Martha, I've learned by 'shopping'--the vanity of
+vanity! I've always longed for pretty things, but--call _them_ pretty?
+Doesn't matter though, does it? if we're really going to move and
+everything to be so changed. When we live in the country may I have all
+the flowers I want?"
+
+"Yes," answered the matron, absently. Although this was Sunday, a day on
+which she faithfully tried to keep her mind free from weekday cares, she
+could not banish them now. Instead of going to church she was to visit
+the hospital and spend the morning with her husband. Dorothy was to
+attend Sunday school, as usual, wearing the slitted shoes, for the
+simple reason that she now possessed no others. Afterward, she might
+invite Mabel Bruce to stay with her, and they were to keep house till
+its mistress's return.
+
+"I hope you'll have a very happy day, dear. After I leave John, though I
+shall stay with him as long as I am allowed, I must go to see Aunt
+Chloe. There'll be no time for visits during the week, and besides,
+she'll want to hear about everything at first hand. Poor old creature!
+It'll be hard for her to part with her 'boy' and I mustn't neglect her.
+You needn't cook any dinner, for there's a good, cold lunch. I made a
+nice custard pie for you, last night, after you were asleep. There's
+plenty of bread and butter, an extra bottle of milk, and you may cut a
+few thin slices of the boiled ham. Be sure to do it carefully, for we
+will have to live upon it for as long as possible. If you tell Mrs.
+Bruce that the invitation is from me I think she'll let Mabel come.
+Don't leave the house without locking up tight, and after you come back
+from Sunday school don't leave it at all. Have you learned your lesson?
+Already? My! but you are quick at your books! Good-bye. I hope you'll
+have a happy day, and you may expect me sometime in the afternoon."
+
+"But, mother, wait! There's a cluster of my fairy-roses out in bloom and
+I want to send them to father. A deep red sort that hasn't blossomed
+before and that we've been watching so long. I'll fill it with kisses,
+tell him, and almost want to get half-sick again, myself, to be back in
+hospital with him. Aren't you going to take him any of that nice ham?
+You know he loves it so."
+
+"No, dear. I was specially told not to bring food. The nurses will give
+him all he needs and that's better for him than anything we outside
+folks could fix. Afterwards--Well, let us hope we shall still have
+decent stuff to eat! Now I'm off. Good-bye. Be careful and don't get
+into any sort of foolishness. Good-bye."
+
+Dorothy gazed after her mother as she disappeared and felt a strange
+desire to call her back, or beg to go with her. The house was so empty
+and desolate without the cheerful presence of the postman. Their Sunday
+mornings had used to be so happy. Then he was at liberty to walk with
+her in the park near-by, if it were cold weather; or if the lovely
+season for gardening, as now they repaired to the little back yard which
+their united labors had made to "blossom like the rose."
+
+John Chester had bought No. 77 Brown Street. It was not yet much more
+than half paid for, but he considered it his. Martha was the most
+prudent of housekeepers and could make a little money go a long way; so
+that, even though his salary was small, they managed each month to lay
+aside a few dollars toward reducing the mortgage which still remained on
+the property. But he had not waited to be wholly out of debt to begin
+his improvements, and the first of these had been to turn the bare
+ground behind the house into a charming garden. Not an inch of the
+space, save that required for paths and a tiny shed for ash and garbage
+cans, was left untilled; and as Baltimore markets afford most beautiful
+plants at low rates he had gathered a fine collection. Better than
+that, there were stables at the rear, instead of the negro-alleys which
+intersect so many of the city blocks, and from these he not only
+obtained extra soil but stirred his stable friends to emulate his
+industry. Vines and ivies had been planted on the stable walls as well
+as on his own back fence, so that, instead of looking out upon ugly
+brick and whitewash, the neighbors felt that they possessed a sort of
+private park behind their dwellings, and all considered father John a
+public benefactor and rejoiced in the results of his efforts. Many of
+them, too, were stirred--like the stable-men--to attempt some gardening
+on their own account, and this was not only good for them but made the
+one-hundred-block of Brown Street quite famous in the town.
+
+Dorothy had visited the garden that morning before breakfast and had
+found the new roses which were the latest addition to their stock. She
+had also shed a few tears over them, realizing that he who had planted
+them would watch them no more.
+
+"Dear little 'fairies'! seems if you just blossom for nothing, now!"
+she had said to them, then had resolved that they should go to him since
+he could not come to them; and, having cut them, she fled the garden,
+missing him more there than anywhere.
+
+Once Dorothy C. would have been ashamed to appear among her classmates,
+in their Sunday attire, wearing her slitted shoes; but to-day her mind
+was full of other, far more important, matters. So she bore their
+raillery with good nature, laughed by way of answer, and was so
+impatient to be at home, where she could discuss all with her chum, that
+she could hardly wait to obtain Mrs. Bruce's consent to the visit. So,
+as soon as the two girls were cozily settled in the little parlor, she
+exclaimed:
+
+"Mabel Bruce! I've something perfectly wonderful to tell you. Do you
+know--_I'm an_--_heiress_!"
+
+"No. I don't know, nor you either," returned Mabel, coolly; rocking her
+plump body to and fro in the postman's own chair, and complacently
+smoothing her ruffles. Then she leaned forward, glanced from her own
+feet to Dorothy's, and carefully dusted her white shoes with her
+handkerchief.
+
+The little hostess laughed, but remarked, a trifle tartly:
+
+"That's what I call nasty-nice. Next time you'll be wiping your nose on
+that same thing and I'd rather have the dust on my shoes than in my
+nostrils. But no matter. I've so many things to tell you I don't know
+where to begin!"
+
+"Don't you? Well, then, you're such a terrible talker when you get
+started, s'pose we have our dinner first. I'm terrible hungry."
+
+"Hungry, Mabel Bruce? Already? Didn't you have your breakfast?"
+
+"Course, I did. But a girl can't eat once and make it last all day, can
+she?"
+
+"I reckon _you_ can't. You're the greatest eater I ever did see. All the
+girls say so. That's why you're always put on the refreshment committee
+at our picnics. Even Miss Georgia says: 'If you want to be sure of
+enough provision make Mabel chairman.' A chairman is the boss of any
+particular thing, if you don't know:" instructed this extremely frank
+hostess.
+
+"Oh! course I know. You just said I was one and folks most gen'ally know
+what they are themselves, I guess," answered the plumber's daughter,
+without resentment. What anybody _said_ didn't matter to phlegmatic
+Mabel so long as their _doing_ agreed with her desires. She was fond of
+Dorothy C. Oh! yes, she was sincerely fond as well as proud! The
+Chesters were bringing up their daughter very nicely, her mother
+declared, and that Dorothy had the prettiest manners of all the girls
+who came to their house. Mabel had her own opinion of those manners, of
+which she had just had a specimen, but she never contradicted her mother
+and not often her playmates. As a rule she was too lazy, and was only
+moved to dispute a statement when it was really beyond belief--like that
+of her chum's having suddenly become an "heiress." Heiresses were rich.
+Mabel wasn't very wise but she knew that, and witness Dorothy's ragged
+shoes. Heiress? Huh! It was more sensible to return to the subject of
+dinner, for the visitor had sampled Mrs. Chester's cooking before now
+and knew it to be excellent. So she rose and started for the kitchen,
+and with an exclamation of regret the hostess followed the guest, though
+cautioning her:
+
+"If we eat our lunch now, at a little after eleven o'clock, you mustn't
+expect another dinner at one. My mother didn't say I could have two
+meals, so you better eat dreadful slow and make it last."
+
+"All right. I will. Maybe, too, I'll go home by our own dinner time.
+Sundays, that isn't till after two o'clock, 'cause my mother goes to
+church and has to cook it afterward. Sunday is the only day my father is
+home to dinner, so he wants a big one and mother gets it for him. Your
+father's home Sundays, too, isn't he?"
+
+"He--he was--He used----" began Dorothy, then with a sudden burst of
+tears turned away and hid her face in her hands.
+
+Warm-hearted, if always-hungry, Mabel instantly threw her arms about her
+friend's waist and tried to comfort her with loving kisses and the
+assurance:
+
+"He will be again, girlie. Don't you worry. Folks go to hospitals all
+the time and come back out of them. My father, he had the typhoid fever,
+last year, and he went. Don't you remember? and how nice all the
+neighbors were to me and ma. And now he's as strong--as strong! So'll
+your father be, too, and go whistling round the block just like he used
+to did. Don't cry, Dorothy C. It makes your eyes all funny and--and
+besides, if you don't stop I'll be crying myself, in a minute, and I
+don't want to. _I_ look perfectly horrid when I cry, I get so red and
+puffy, and I shouldn't like to cry on this dress. It's just been done up
+and ma says I've got to keep it clean enough to wear four Sundays, it's
+such a job to iron all the ruffles."
+
+Despite her loneliness Dorothy laughed. There was a deal of
+consideration for herself in Mabel's remarks, yet her sympathy was
+sincere as her affection long-proved. She had been the first playmate of
+the little foundling, and it was her belief--gathered from that of her
+parents--that the Chesters' adopted child would turn out to be of good
+birth, if ever the truth were known. In any case, she was the prettiest
+and cleverest girl in school, and Mabel was proud to be the one selected
+this morning as a companion.
+
+"O you funny Mabel!" cried Dorothy. "You're sorry for both of us, aren't
+you! Well, come along. We started to get lunch and to talk. You go to
+the ice-box and get the things, while I set the table. Wait! Put on my
+tie-before, to keep your dress clean. Good thing your sleeves are short.
+Arms'll wash easier than ruffles. Hurry up--you to eat and I to talk."
+
+Very shortly they were engaged in these congenial matters, though Mabel
+almost forgot that she was hungry in her astonishment at Dorothy's
+opening statement:
+
+"We're going to move. I guess this is about the last time you'll ever
+come to this house to dinner."
+
+"Going--to--move!" ejaculated Mabel, with her mouth so full of pie that
+she could hardly speak.
+
+"Yes. We've got to pack up this very week."
+
+"Where to? Who's going to live here? Who told you? Why?" demanded Mabel,
+hastening to get in as many questions as she could, during the interval
+of arranging a sandwich for herself.
+
+"I don't--know! Why I never thought to ask, but I know it's true because
+it was my mother told me. 'Into the country,' she said, 'cause the
+hospital folks say that's the only thing for my father to do if he wants
+to get well. And of course he wants. We all want, more than anything
+else in the world. So, that's why, and that's the first piece of news.
+And say, Mabel, maybe your folks'll let you come and see me sometimes.
+That is, if my folks ask you," she added, with cautious afterthought.
+
+"Maybe! Wouldn't that be just lovely? We'd go driving in a little
+T-cart, all by ourselves, with a dear little pony to haul us, and--and
+peaches and plums and strawberries and blackberries--Um!" exclaimed the
+prospective guest, compressing her lips as if she were already tasting
+these delights.
+
+"I--don't--know. Perhaps, we would. If we had the pony, and the cart,
+and were let. That's a lot of 'ifs' to settle first."
+
+"Why, of course. I was in the country once, two whole weeks. It was to a
+big house where my father was putting the plumbing in order for the
+family and the family had gone away while he was doing it. It was there
+he got the typhoid fever, and they went away because they didn't want to
+get it. They left some 'coons' to do the cooking and told my father he
+could bring me and ma, and we could have a vacation in a cottage on the
+place. So we did; and the man, the colored one, that took care of the
+horses used to hitch the pony up to the T-cart and me and ma rode out
+every day. Course, if you live in the country you'll have to have a
+pony. How else'd you go around? There wasn't any street cars to that
+country, 'at ever I saw, and folks can't walk all the roads there are.
+Pooh! You see, I've been and you haven't, and that's the difference."
+
+"Yes, you've been and I haven't, but, Mabel Bruce, I know more about
+things that grow than you do, for I know--even in Lexington Market--you
+don't get strawberries and peaches at the same time. So you needn't
+expect all those good things when you come. You'll have to put up with
+part at a time, with whatever happens to be in our garden. If we have a
+garden! And as for ponies, our house in the country won't be a big one,
+like yours was, that much I know, too. We haven't any money, hardly. My
+mother Martha was crying about that yesterday, though she didn't know I
+saw her till I asked and after I'd spent all those two dollars for these
+silly shoes. Mabel Bruce, don't you ever go buy shoes too small for you.
+Umm. I tell you if you do your feet'll hurt you worse than my head did
+after I banged it--the dog banged it--on Mrs. Cecil's stoop. Isn't she a
+funny old woman? My father thinks she is the wisest one he knows, but
+I--I--Well, it doesn't count what I think. Only if I was as rich as she,
+and I expect I will be sometime, I wouldn't keep Great Dane dogs to jump
+on little girls like she does. Have some more ham, Mabel?"
+
+The mere thought of her prospective wealth had increased Dorothy's
+hospitality--at her mother's expense: but to her surprise her guest
+replied:
+
+"No--I guess--I guess I can't. Not 'less you've got some mustard mixed
+somewhere, to eat on it. I've et----"
+
+"Eaten," corrected her classmate, who was considered an expert in
+grammar.
+
+"Et-ten about all I can hold without--without mustard, to sort of season
+it. Ma always has mustard to put on her ham; and yours is--is getting
+sort of--bitter," replied Mabel, leaning back in her chair. She always
+ate rapidly--"stuffed," as her father reproved her--and to-day she had
+outdone herself. The food was delicious. Mrs. Chester was too thrifty a
+housewife ever to "spoil" anything, no matter how inexpensive a dish,
+and in her judgment, boiled ham was a luxury, to be partaken of
+sparingly and with due appreciation, never "gobbled."
+
+Therefore it was with positive consternation that Dorothy's thoughts
+came back to practical things and to the joint which she had placed
+before her guest, allowing her to carve. Though she had herself barely
+tasted the morsel placed upon her own plate, being too much engaged in
+talking, she now perceived that Mabel had done more than justice to her
+lunch. So it was with a cry of real distress that she snatched the dish
+from the table, exclaiming:
+
+"Well, I guess you don't need mustard to sharpen your appetite, you
+greedy thing! Beg pardon. That was a nasty thing to say to--to company,
+and I'm sorry I said it. But mother told me we had to live on that ham
+most the week, she'd be so much too busy to cook and--Why, Mabel Bruce!
+You've eaten almost half that pie, too! Hmm. I guess you can stay
+contented the rest the day. You won't need to go home to your
+two-o'clock dinner!"
+
+No offense was intended or received. These two small maids had been
+accustomed, from infancy, to utter frankness with one another, and with
+perfect amiability the guest replied:
+
+"Maybe I do eat a little too much. Ma thinks I do, sometimes, and pa
+says that's the reason I'm so fat. I'd rather not be fat. I'd like to be
+as slim as you are, Dorothy C. Ma says you've got such a pretty figure
+'t you look nice in anything. Well, I guess since I've got to keep my
+dress so clean for so long, I won't offer to help do the dishes. I'll go
+sit in the parlor and take care of the front of the house."
+
+With that Miss Mabel took off her friend's "tie-before," a big gingham
+apron which covered all her skirts, and hung it on its nail, then
+retreated to the postman's rocker, at perfect peace with herself and all
+the world.
+
+Not so Dorothy C. She looked after her chum with a contempt that was as
+new as it was uncomfortable. She had promised herself a real treat in
+discussing her own affairs--for the first time in her life become
+important ones--with this reliable confidante, but now she was bitterly
+disappointed. "Mabel is selfish, but Mabel is truthful. She never speaks
+ill of another and she always keeps her word:" had been Miss Georgia's
+decision once, when some class matters had gone wrong and the plumber's
+daughter had been accused of "tattling." To this Dorothy now added: "And
+Mabel is a regular, gluttonous simpleton. She isn't really interested
+in anybody except--Mabel!"
+
+With this uncharitable sentiment, the little hostess proceeded to clear
+away; and did this with so much vim that she dropped a tumbler and broke
+it. This was sufficient to calm her anger and turn what was left of it
+against her own carelessness, anticipating her mother's reproof. She
+finished her task very quietly, now, and then repaired to the parlor,
+where she found Mabel had fallen asleep in the rocker.
+
+Also, at that moment, there sauntered past the windows a man who peered
+through them with considerable curiosity: and who at sight of Dorothy C.
+stopped sauntering, lifted his eyebrows questioningly, and, turning
+around, walked back to the steps.
+
+Dorothy's heart almost choked her, it so suddenly began to beat
+violently, while a chill ran through her whole body, and made her recall
+a saying of old Aunt Chloe that "when a body turns all goose-flesh it's
+a sign somebody is walking over her, or his, grave." Father John laughed
+at this superstition as he did at many another of the dear old aunt who
+had "raised" him, an orphan; and had he been present Dorothy would have
+laughed with him. But she didn't laugh now; though she was presently
+calm enough to review the situation and to decide that none could be
+better. Also, that she must, at once, get rid of Mabel Bruce. For this
+was the same man who had appeared before her, on the previous morning,
+and had, at first startled, then profoundly interested her. He had
+imposed secrecy upon her; at least secrecy as far as her parents were
+concerned, though she had meant to tell Mabel all that he had told her.
+She didn't like secrets. She hated them! Yet if they were to benefit
+those whom she loved better than herself she was willing to keep
+them--for a time.
+
+In another moment she had roused her visitor by a strong shake of the
+pretty, plump shoulder under the lace-trimmed frock, and had said,
+rather loudly:
+
+"Mabel, if you're going home to dinner, you'd better go now.
+Because--because I have some business to attend to, and I shall have to
+see the gentleman alone."
+
+She felt that though her words might be rude--she wouldn't like to be
+sent home, herself, from a visit--yet her manner was beautifully
+grown-up and dignified; and, as Mabel obediently vanished, "Miss
+Chester" bade the gentleman waiting outside to enter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+DOROTHY GOES UPON AN ERRAND
+
+
+When Mrs. Chester returned she was tired and found Dorothy so. The girl
+took her mother's hat and put it away in its box, brought her a fan, and
+asked if she should get her something to eat.
+
+"No, dear, thank you. I had dinner, all I wanted, with Aunt Chloe
+Chester. She takes this trouble of ours very hard, and declares that she
+will not live to see 'her boy' come back to Baltimore. She wishes she
+could die first, right away, so 'that he could go to my funeral while
+he's handy to it.'"
+
+"Horrors! I--I suppose I love Aunt Chloe, because she was so good to
+father John, but I hope I'll never grow into such a terrible old woman.
+Seems if she had always to be dragged up out of the gloom into the
+sunshine. It's always the worst things are going to happen--with her. I
+don't see how father ever grew up to be such a sunshiny man, always
+under her hand, so. You must have had a dreary visit."
+
+"It wasn't a restful one; but the reason for John's always looking on
+the bright side may be just that she always did the opposite. But you
+look sober, too, dearie. Wasn't Mabel's visit a pleasant one? How long
+has she been gone?"
+
+"Oh! a good while. She went home to dinner. I--she ate 'most all the
+ham. All the best big slices anyway, and full half the pie. Then she
+wanted mustard, so she could eat more. She said that sometimes when she
+couldn't eat a big lot and they had extra good things, she'd get up and
+walk around the table, so she could. She didn't say that, to-day,
+though, but did once at a school picnic. And I--I broke a tumbler. One
+of the best."
+
+"Why, Dorothy C.! How could you?" returned Mrs. Chester, but not at all
+as if she really heard or were in the least vexed. Then, as if forcing
+herself to an interest in small, home matters, she asked: "Were you
+very lonely after she went?"
+
+"No, indeed. I wasn't alone--I mean, I wasn't lonely. Did father like
+his roses?"
+
+"Yes, darling, and he fully appreciated your cutting them. He said he
+knew how you disliked it, for you'd never got over your baby notion that
+it hurt the plants, just as a cut finger hurt you. He said, too, that I
+was to tell you he'd found all the kisses, every one, but if you wanted
+any paid back you'd have to come to Johns Hopkins after them. It was a
+comfort to find him so happy and sure of getting well. I wish I were
+half as sure!"
+
+Dorothy opened her lips to say something which it seemed impossible to
+keep from this beloved little mother opposite, who already seemed so
+changed and worn; who had lost every bit of that gayety which had been
+so astonishing, yesterday. But not yet--not yet. Besides, she was fully
+as truthful as Mabel Bruce and had given her pledge to silence. Then she
+remembered that she did not know to what part of the "country" they were
+destined, and asked:
+
+"Mother Martha, can't you tell me something of your plans? Where we are
+going and when? And what is to become of this dear home?"
+
+There was so much earnestness and sympathy in the girl's tones that Mrs.
+Chester forgot how young she was, and now talked with her as she might
+have done with a much older person; almost, indeed, as she would have
+done with the postman himself.
+
+"We are going to a far-away state; to a place I haven't seen since I was
+a child, myself--the Hudson River highlands."
+
+"Why--the Hudson River is in New York and we're in Maryland!" cried
+Dorothy. "Why go so far, away from everybody we know and care for?
+Wouldn't it do just to go to some little spot right near Baltimore,
+where we could come into the city on the cars, at any time? Isn't that
+what the Johns Hopkins doctors call the 'country'?"
+
+"Oh! if we only might! But, my dear, there's an old saying about
+'beggars' being 'choosers.' We aren't beggars, of course, but we are too
+poor to be 'choosers.' Fortunately, or unfortunately, as time will
+prove, I have a little place in the country where I told you. It
+belonged to an old bachelor uncle who died long ago. It has stood empty
+for many years and may be badly out of order. He willed it to me, as my
+portion of his estate: and though some of his other heirs have once or
+twice offered to buy it from me, the price they offered was so small
+that John had me refuse it. He's said in jest: 'No telling how glad we
+may some time be of that rocky hill-farm, Martha. Better hold on to it,
+as long as we can pay the taxes and keep it.' The taxes were not heavy,
+and we've paid them. Now, it is the only place out of the city where we
+have a right to go; and in one sense there couldn't be a better. It's
+one of the healthiest spots on earth, I suppose: and there'll be plenty
+of room for John to live in 'the open,' as he's advised. So we must go;"
+and with a heavy sigh mother Martha ceased speaking and leaned her head
+back, closing her eyes as if she were about to sleep.
+
+But underneath all her calmness of tone had lain a profound sadness, and
+none but the absent John could have told how bitter to her was the
+coming severance from all she had ever held dear. Though born in New
+York State, she had come south with her parents when she was too small
+to remember any other home than their humble one in this same city. Here
+she had met and married John. Here they had together earned their cozy
+home. Here were all her church associations, and here the few whom she
+called friends.
+
+She had always leaned upon her husband's greater wisdom and strength in
+all the affairs of their quiet lives, and now that she needed them most
+she was deprived of them. Alone, she must pack up, or sell, their
+household goods, and not an article of them but was dear because of some
+sacrifice involved in its purchase. Alone, she must attend to the sale
+or rental of their house, for the doctors had told her that very morning
+that her patient must not be disturbed "for any cause whatever. There
+was a chance, one in a thousand, that he might get well. If this chance
+were to be his it depended upon his absolute freedom from care and
+responsibility."
+
+She had assured them that this should be so, and it had seemed easy to
+promise, in the face of the greater sorrow if he must remain an invalid
+or, possibly, die. But now, back in the security of her beloved home,
+her courage waned; and Dorothy, watching, saw tears steal from under the
+closed eyelids and chase one another down the pale cheek, which only
+yesterday, it seemed, had been so round and rosy.
+
+To a loving child there is no more piteous sight than a mother weeping.
+It was more than Dorothy could bear, and, with a little cry of distress,
+she threw herself at Mrs. Chester's knees and hid her own wet eyes upon
+them. Then she lifted her head and begged:
+
+"Don't cry, mother! Dearest mother Martha, please, please, don't cry!
+You've never done it, never; in all my life I haven't seen you, no
+matter what happened. If you cry we can't do anything, and I'm going to
+help you. Maybe we won't have to go away. Maybe something perfectly
+splendid will happen to prevent. Maybe darling father will get well,
+just resting from his mail route. Surely, nobody could fix him nicer
+nourishments than you can, if we can afford it. Maybe we shall be able
+to afford--Oh! if only I could tell you something! Something that would
+make you happy again!"
+
+Mother Martha ceased weeping and smiled into the tender eyes of the
+devoted child who had so well repaid her own generosity. Then she wiped
+both their faces and in quite a matter-of-fact way bade Dorothy sit
+down, quietly, while she told her some necessary things. One: that in
+the morning she should be sent to the post-office, to receive the
+envelope containing the ten dollars due for her own board. Mrs. Chester
+had arranged with the new postman about it and there would be no
+difficulty. There was never a word written with these payments. The
+postman's address was on the outside the envelope, which was never
+registered, had never gone astray, and had never held more than the
+solitary crisp ten-dollar bill expected.
+
+"We shall need all the money we can get in hand, for the expenses of our
+moving will be heavy--for us. I'm going to see some real-estate men and
+decide whether it is best to sell, or rent, this house. I shall be very
+busy. John isn't to stay at the hospital but a week, and so by the end
+of this coming one I want to be in our new home. I rather dread the
+journey, though we can easily make it in a day--or less. But your father
+thinks he can get along real well on crutches, that we'll have to buy,
+of course; and I've noticed that people on the street cars, even, are
+always kind and helpful to invalids. John believes that it's a good,
+jolly old world, and you and I must try to believe the same. He says
+there's lots of truth in the saying: 'He that would have friends must
+show himself friendly.' I reckon nobody ever turned a friendlier face
+toward others than John has, and that's why everybody loves him so.
+
+"Now, dearie, fetch me my Bible and I'll read awhile. I don't feel as if
+I'd had any real Sunday, yet. Then, by and by, you may make me a cup of
+tea and we'll get to bed early. Of course, there'll be no more school
+for you here, though I shall want you to step in and bid Miss Georgia
+good-bye. That's no more than polite, even if you don't love her as you
+should."
+
+Dorothy made a little mouth, which for once her mother did not reprove:
+and presently they both were reading. At least, Mrs. Chester really was,
+while the peace of the volume she studied stole into her troubled heart
+and shed its light upon her face. Dorothy, also, held her book in her
+hand and kept her eyes fixed on the printed pages; but, had her mother
+chanced to look up and observe, she would have seen no leaves turned;
+though gradually an expression of almost wild delight grew upon the
+mobile features till the girl looked as if she were just ready to sing.
+
+However, she said nothing of her happy thoughts and watched her mother
+fall asleep in the drowsy heat of the late afternoon, and from the
+fatigue of a sleepless night and a busy day. Then she crept on tiptoe
+out of the room, noiselessly removing her slitted shoes before she rose
+from her chair, and presently had gained the kitchen at the rear. Here
+she lighted a little gas stove and put on the kettle to boil. Then she
+did what seemed a strange thing for a girl as strictly reared as she,
+on a Sunday evening. She caught up her short skirts and, after the
+manner of pictured dancers upon wall-posters, began to whirl and
+pirouette around the little space, as if by such movements, only, could
+she express the rapture that thrilled her.
+
+"There, I reckon I've worked myself down to quiet!" she exclaimed, at
+length, to the cat which entered, stretching its legs in a sleepy
+fashion and ready for its supper. "Now, I'll feed you, Ma'am Puss,
+though you ought to feed yourself on the rats that bother our garden.
+Queer, isn't it? How everything 'feeds' on something else. I hate rats,
+and I hate to have them killed. Killing is horrible: and, I'm afraid
+that to have my roses killed by the creatures is worst of all."
+
+Ma'am Puss did not reply, except by rubbing herself against her
+mistress's legs, and, having filled a saucer with milk, Dorothy went out
+into the garden and stayed there a long time. There many thoughts came
+to her, and many, many regrets. Regrets for past negligencies, that had
+caused the drooping--therefore suffering--of some tender plant; for the
+knowledge of her coming separation from these treasures which both she
+and father John had loved almost as if they were human creatures; but
+keenest of all, regrets for the lost activity of the once so active
+postman. Mother Martha's griefs and her own might be hard to bear, but
+his was far, far worse. Nothing, not even the delightful surprises she
+felt she had in store for him, could give him back his lost health.
+
+She had no propensity to dance when she went indoors again. It was a
+very sober, thoughtful Dorothy C. who presently carried a little tray
+into the parlor and insisted upon the tired housemistress enjoying her
+supper there, where she could look out upon the cheerful street with its
+Sunday promenaders, "and just be waited on, nice and cozy."
+
+Both inmates of the little home slept soundly that night. Sleep is a
+close friend to the toilers of the world, though the idle rich seek it
+in vain: and the morning found them refreshed and courageous for the
+duties awaiting. There would be few tears and no repining on the part of
+either because of a home-breaking. Bitterer trials might come, but the
+depth of this one they had fathomed and put behind them.
+
+Moreover, it fell in with Dorothy's own desires that she was to make the
+post-office trip: and she started upon it with so much confidence that
+her mother was surprised and remarked:
+
+"Well, small daughter, for a child who knows so little of business and
+has never been further down town than the market, alone, you are
+behaving beautifully. I'm proud of you. So will your father be. Maybe,
+if any of the agents I'm going to telephone come here to-day and keep
+me, I'll let you go to pay the daily visit to John and tell him all the
+news. Take care of the street crossings. It's so crowded on the business
+streets and I should be forlorn, indeed, if harm befell my Dorothy C."
+
+Even when the child turned, half-way down the block, to toss a kiss
+backward to her mother in the doorway, that anxious woman felt a strange
+fear for her darling and recalled her for a final caution:
+
+"Be sure to take care of your car-fare, Dorothy; and be more than sure
+you don't lose the money-letter. When you board a car look to see
+another isn't coming on the other track, to knock you down."
+
+The little girl came back and clung to Mrs. Chester for a moment,
+laughing, yet feeling her own courage a trifle dashed by these
+suggestions of peril. But she slipped away again, determining to do her
+errands promptly, while, with a curious foreboding in her mind, the
+housemistress re-entered her deserted home, reflecting:
+
+"John always laughs at my 'presentiments,' yet I never had one as strong
+as this upon me now that I did not wish, afterward, I had yielded to it.
+I've half a mind to follow the child and overtake her before she gets
+into a car. I could snatch a little while to do those downtown errands
+and she'd be perfectly safe here. Pshaw! How silly I am! Dorothy is old
+enough to be trusted and can be. I'll put her out of mind till I hear
+her gay little call at the door, when she rings its bell: 'It's I,
+mother Martha! Please let me in!'"
+
+But alas! That familiar summons was never again to be heard at No. 77
+Brown Street.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+AN OFFICE SEEKER AND A CLIENT
+
+
+"Well, little girl, what are you doing here?"
+
+Dorothy had safely reached the big post-office, which seemed to be the
+busiest place she had ever entered; busier even than the department
+stores on a "bargain day;" and she had timidly slipped into the quietest
+corner she could find, to wait a moment while the crowd thinned. Then
+she would present her note, that asked for father John's letter to be
+given her, and which was in his own handwriting, to make sure. But the
+crowd did not thin! Besides the swarms and swarms of postmen, wearing
+just such gray uniforms as her father's, there were so many men. All
+were hastening to or from the various windows which partitioned a big
+inner room from this bigger outside one and behind which were other men
+in uniform--all so busy, busy, busy!
+
+"Why! I didn't dream there could ever be so many letter-carriers! and
+each one is so like father, that I'm all mixed up! I know I've got to go
+to one those windows, to give this letter and get the other one, but how
+will I ever get a chance to do it, between all those men?"
+
+Then while Dorothy thus wondered, growing half-frightened, there had
+come that question, put in a familiar tone, and looking up she saw
+another gray-uniformed person whom she recognized as her father's
+friend. Once he had been to their house to dinner, and how glad she now
+was for that.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Lathrop! How glad I am to see you! I've got to get a letter and
+I don't see how I'll ever have the chance. The people don't stop coming,
+not a minute."
+
+"That's so, little girl--Beg pardon, but I forget your name, though I
+know you belong to John Chester."
+
+"Dorothy it is, Mr. Lathrop. Could you--could you possibly spare time to
+help me?"
+
+"Well, I reckon there's nobody in this office but would spare any
+amount of time to help one of John Chester's folks. I was just starting
+on my rounds--second delivery--heavy mail--but come along with me and
+I'll fix you out all right."
+
+He turned, shifted his heavy pouch a little, and caught her hand. Then
+he threaded his way through the crowd with what seemed to his small
+companion a marvelous dexterity. It happened to be the "rush hour" of
+business, and at almost any other, Dorothy would not have found any
+difficulty in making her own way around, but there was also the
+confusion of a first visit. Presently, however, she found herself at the
+right window to secure the letter she sought, received it, and heard Mr.
+Lathrop say:
+
+"There. That's all right. I reckon you can find your way out all safe,
+and I'm in a hurry. Please make my regards to your mother and tell her
+we've heard where John is and some of us are going to see him, first
+chance we get. Too bad such a thing should happen to him! Don't let
+anybody snatch that letter from you, and good-bye."
+
+Then Dorothy found herself alone and no longer afraid. She had
+accomplished her mother's errand--now she must attend to a much more
+important one of her own. She gazed about her with keenest interest,
+trying to understand the entire postal business, as there represented
+before her, and assuring herself that after all it was extremely simple.
+
+"It's just because it's new. New things always puzzle folks. As soon as
+I've been once or twice I shan't mind it, no more than any of these
+people do. I wonder which way I must go? If he's the head man he ought
+to have the head room, I should think. Hmm. I'll have to ask,
+and--and--I sort of hate to. Never mind, Dorothy C.! You're doing it for
+father John and mother Martha; and if you plan to be grown-up, in your
+outsides, you must be inside, too. Father hates bold little girls. He
+says they're a--a--annemoly, or something. It belongs to girl children
+to be afraid of things. He thinks it's nice. Well, I'm all right nice
+enough inside, this minute, but--I'll do it!"
+
+After these reflections and this sudden resolution Dorothy darted
+forward and seized the arm of a negro who was cleaning the floor.
+
+"Please, boy, tell me the way to the head man's place. The real
+postmaster of all."
+
+"Hey? I dunno as he's in, yet. He don't come down soon, o' mornin's.
+What you want to see him for?"
+
+"On business of my own. The way, please," answered Dorothy, bracing her
+resolution by the fancied air of a grown person.
+
+The negro grinned and resumed his scrubbing, but nodded backward over
+his shoulder toward a tall gentleman just entering the building.
+
+"That's him. Now you got your chance, better take it."
+
+There was nothing to inspire fear in the face of this "head man of all,"
+nor was there anything left in Dorothy's mind but the desire to
+accomplish her "business" at once and, of course, successfully. Another
+instant, and the gentleman crossing the floor felt a detaining touch
+upon his sleeve and beheld a bonny little face looking earnestly up into
+his own. Also, a childish voice was saying:
+
+"I'm John Chester's little girl. May I ask you something?"
+
+"You seem already to be asking me something, but I'm happy to meet you,
+Miss Chester, and shall be very glad to hear all about your father. He
+was one of the very best men on the force, one of the most intelligent.
+I can give you five minutes. Come this way, please."
+
+Dorothy flashed him one of her beautiful smiles, and the postmaster, who
+happened to love all children, observed that this was a very handsome
+child with a pair of wonderful, appealing eyes. Though, of course, he
+did not express his admiration in words, Dorothy felt that she had
+pleased him and her last hesitation vanished.
+
+As soon as they were seated in a private apartment, she burst into the
+heart of the matter, saying:
+
+"Please, Mr. Postmaster, will you let me take my father's place?"
+
+"W-wh--at?" asked the gentleman, almost as if he whistled it in
+astonishment.
+
+Dorothy laughed. "I know I'm pretty small to carry big pouches,
+'specially the Christmas and Easter ones, but you always have 'extras'
+then, anyway. I know my father's whole beat. I know it from end to
+end--all the people's houses, the numbers to them, and lots of the folks
+that live around. What I don't know I can read on the envelopes. I'm a
+quick reader of handwriting, Miss Georgia says."
+
+The postmaster did not interrupt her by a word, but the twinkle in his
+eyes grew brighter and brighter and at the end he laughed. Not harshly
+nor in a manner to hurt her feelings, which he saw were deep and
+sincere, but because he found this one of the most refreshing
+experiences of his rather humdrum position. Here was a visitor, a
+petitioner, quite different from the numberless illiterate men who
+bothered him for office. He hated to disappoint her, just yet, so asked
+with interest:
+
+"And who is Miss Georgia?"
+
+"She's my teacher. She's the vice principal of our school. She's
+dreadful smart."
+
+"Indeed? But what, Miss Chester, put this notion into your head? By
+taking your father's 'place' I conclude that you are applying for his
+position as mail-carrier. Did you ever hear of a little girl postman?"
+
+"No, sir, I didn't, but there has to be a first time, a first one, to
+everything, doesn't there? So I could be the first girl postman. And why
+I want to is because I think I must support my parents."
+
+The applicant's reply was given with the serious importance due from a
+young lady whom such a fine gentleman called "Miss Chester"; and when he
+again desired to know whose idea it was that she should seek a place on
+"the force," she answered proudly:
+
+"All my own. Nobody's else. Not a single body--not even my mother
+Martha--ever suspects. I want it to be a surprise, a real, Christmassy
+surprise. Oh! She's feeling terrible bad about our leaving our home and
+not knowing what we'll have to live on. So I thought it all out and that
+I'd come right to you and ask, before any other substitute got
+appointed.
+
+"Well, maybe the notion came that last day my father carried the mail.
+His poor legs and feet got so terribly wobbly that he was afraid he'd
+fall down or something and couldn't finish his delivery. So I walked
+alongside of him and ran up the steps and handed in the letters and
+everybody was just as nice as nice to us, except old Mrs. Cecil, who
+lives at Bellevieu. She was mad. She was real mad. She said we were
+breaking the law, the two of us. Think of that! My father, John Chester,
+a law-breaker! Why, he couldn't break a law to save his life. He's too
+good."
+
+The postmaster smiled. He had, apparently, forgotten that he was to give
+only five minutes to this small maid, and he was really charmed by her
+simplicity and confidence.
+
+"Was that the day Mr. Chester was taken to the hospital? The boys have
+told me about him--some things. How is he doing? Will he be there long?
+You see, I can ask questions, too!" continued the gentleman, very
+socially.
+
+"My mother says there's a chance he may get well. He's to be there only
+this week that ever is. Then he's to be taken into the country, away,
+away to some mountains in New York State. He's got to live right
+outdoors all the time, and he mustn't worry, not a single worry. My
+mother daren't even talk with him about selling, or renting, our house,
+or the furniture, or--or anything. So she talks to me--some."
+
+"I hope you talk to her--more than 'some'; and I'm wondering if you had
+done so before you came to me whether I should ever have had the
+pleasure of your acquaintance."
+
+Was there a reproof in this? Dorothy's sensitive heart fancied so, yet
+she couldn't imagine in what she had done wrong. With a little waning of
+hope--the postmaster had been so delightful that she was already sure he
+would grant her request--she asked:
+
+"Is it bad? why shouldn't I want to earn the money for my parents? Same
+as they have for me and us all. If I had the place, they could go to the
+country, just the same, and the money could be sent to them to live on
+every month. Of course, I'd have to not go with them. I reckon Mrs.
+Bruce, the plumber's wife, would let me live with her, if my folks paid
+her board for me. Mabel and I could sleep together, and I'd help with
+the dishes and work, 'cause if I were a postman I couldn't go to school,
+of course. I'd have to study nights, same as father has. So, if I didn't
+make much trouble, maybe Mrs. Bruce wouldn't charge much. But, excuse
+me. My father John says I talk too much, and that when I go to do
+errands I should stick to business. He says it doesn't make any
+difference to the folks that hire you to work for them whether you're
+rich or poor, sick or well. All they want is to have the work done--and
+no talk about it. I'm sorry I've said so much. I didn't mean to,
+but----"
+
+"But," repeated the postmaster, suggestively; and Dorothy finished her
+sentence:
+
+"I haven't talked a single word to anybody else, and it seems so good to
+do it now. I never had a secret--secrets, for I've got another one yet,
+that I can't tell--before and I don't like them. I beg your pardon,
+and--May I have my father's position?" said Dorothy, rising, and seeing
+by the big clock on the wall that she had long overstayed the time
+allotted for this interview.
+
+The gentleman also rose, and laid his hand kindly upon her shoulder, but
+his face and voice were grave, as he answered:
+
+"No, my dear, I am sorry to disappoint you, but you ask the impossible.
+You could not--But there's no use in details of explanation. As your
+wise father has taught you, business should be reduced to its simplest
+terms. I cannot give you the place, but I can, and do, give you the best
+of advice--for one of your imaginative nature. Never cherish secrets!
+Never, even such delightful, surprising ones, as this of yours has been.
+Especially, never keep anything from your mother. When anything comes
+into your mind which you feel you cannot tell _her_ banish the idea at
+once and you'll stay on the safe side of things. Good-morning."
+
+Other people were entering the private office and Dorothy was being
+courteously bowed out of it, before she fully realized that she had not
+obtained her desire, and never would. For a few seconds, her temper
+flamed, and she reflected, tartly:
+
+"Huh! I should make as good a postman as lots of them do. My father says
+some of them are too ignorant for their places. _I_'m not ignorant. I'm
+the best scholar in my class, and my class is the highest one in our
+Primary. I could do it. I could so. But--Well, he was real nice. He
+acted just as if he had little girls of his own and knew just how they
+felt. He laughed at me, but he didn't laugh hateful, like Miss Georgia
+does on her 'nervous days' when she mixes me all up in my lessons. And
+anyhow, maybe it's just as well. If I'd got to be a letter-girl I
+couldn't have gone to the country with father and mother, and I should
+have about died of lonesomeness without them. Maybe Mrs. Bruce wouldn't
+have had me, nor the minister's folks either. Anyway, I've got that
+other, more splendid secret, still. I _have_ to have that, because I
+have it already, and so can't help. Miss Georgia would say that there
+were two too many 'haves' in that sentence, and the 'two too' sounds
+funny, too. Now I must go home. I've got my money-letter all right and,
+after all, I'm glad mother Martha doesn't know that I wanted father's
+beat, she'd be so much disappointed to know how near we came to staying
+here and couldn't."
+
+With which philosophic acceptance of facts and a cheerful looking
+forward to the "next thing," the rejected seeker after public office ran
+up the hill leading from the post-office and straight against another
+opportunity, as it were.
+
+Just as she had signalled a car, the "gentleman" who had twice called
+upon her and who had told her that his name was "John Smith," appeared
+beside her on the sidewalk, raised his hat, and with an engaging air
+exclaimed:
+
+"Why, Miss Chester, how fortunate! I was just on the point of going to
+see you. Now, if you will go with me, instead, it will save time and
+answer just as well. We don't take this car, but another. My office is
+on Howard Street, and we'll walk till we meet a Linden Avenue car. This
+way, please. Allow me?"
+
+But Dorothy shrank back from this overly pleasant man. It was with the
+same feeling of repulsion that she had experienced on each of their
+previous meetings, and which she had tried to conquer because of the
+great benefit he claimed he had sought her to bestow upon her.
+
+Her next sensation was one of pride, remembering that this was the
+second time that morning for her to be called "Miss Chester." Each time
+it had been by a grown-up gentleman and the fact made her feel quite
+grown-up and important, also. Besides, this present person was able, he
+said, to more than compensate for any disappointment the postmaster had
+inflicted--though, of course, that affair was known only to "the head
+man of all" and herself. However, she couldn't accept Mr. Smith's
+invitation, for, she explained:
+
+"Thank you, but I can't go with you now. I'm doing an errand for my
+mother and she'll be expecting me home. She's very busy and needs me to
+help her. Nor do I want to make her worry, for she has all the trouble
+now she can bear. The first time I can come, if you'll tell me where,
+I'll try to do so. Are you sure, sure, Mr. Smith, that I am really an
+heiress and you will help me to get the money that belongs to me?"
+
+"Perfectly sure. A lawyer like me doesn't waste his time on any doubtful
+business. I have more cases on hand, this very minute, than I can attend
+to and ought not to stand idle here one moment. Don't, I beg of you,
+also stand in your own light, against your real interests and the
+interests of those who are dearer to you than yourself. It is very
+simple. As soon as you reach the office I'll give you paper and pen and
+you can send a message to your mother, explaining that you have been
+detained on business but will soon be with her. Ah, yes, the note by all
+means. It quite goes against my nature to cause anybody needless
+anxiety. Here's our car. Step in, please."
+
+As she obeyed Dorothy thought that she had never heard anybody talk as
+fast as the man did. Faster even than she did herself, and with an
+assured air of authority which could not fail to impress an obedient
+child, trained to accept the decisions of her elders without question.
+She still tightly clutched the envelope containing the precious
+ten-dollar bill, and had so nervously folded and unfolded it that, by
+the time they reached the place on North Howard Street, it was in such a
+state she was ashamed of it.
+
+"Right up stairs, Miss Chester. Sorry I haven't an elevator to assist
+you," remarked the lawyer, curiously regarding her feet in their poor
+shoes. "However, there are plenty willing to climb three flights of
+stairs for the sake of my advice. I've been in business right here in
+Baltimore longer than I care to remember--it makes me feel so old.
+Lawyers who have lovely young clients prefer to remain young themselves,
+you know."
+
+"No, I don't know. I know nothing about lawyers, anyway, and I don't
+like it in here. I was never in such a dark house before. I--I think I
+won't stay. I'll go home and tell my mother everything. That's what the
+other gentleman advised and I--I _liked him_. Good-bye," said the now
+frightened girl, and turned about on that flight to the third story.
+
+But Mr. Smith was right behind her. She'd have to brush past him to
+descend the narrow stairway, and he was again chattering away,
+pretending not to hear her objections, but glibly explaining:
+
+"The reason the house is so dark is because it is so old--one of the
+oldest in the city, I've been told. Besides, each floor has been turned
+into a flat, or suite of offices, and the tenants keep their doors
+closed. That's why I chose the top story for my own use--it's so much
+lighter, and--Here we are!"
+
+Here they were, indeed, but by no stretch of imagination could the
+apartment be called light. There was a skylight over the top of the
+stairs, but this was darkened by gray holland shades, and though there
+appeared to be three rooms on this floor, the doors of all were closed
+as the doors on the floors below.
+
+Dorothy was trembling visibly, as her guide opened the door of the
+middle room--the "dark one" of the peculiarly constructed city
+houses--and she faced absolute blackness. But her host seemed to know
+the way and to be surprised that nobody was present to receive them.
+With exclamations of annoyance he hurried to light a single gas jet and
+the small flame illumined a dingy, most untidy "office."
+
+Yet still with a grand flourish of manner the lawyer pushed a chair
+before a littered desk, rummaged till he found paper, ink, and pen, and
+waved his small client toward it. She was almost in tears, from her
+fright; yet still bolstered her courage with the thought: "For my father
+and mother!" and resolved to see the business through.
+
+Certainly no such gentlemanly appearing person could intend injury to an
+unprotected child. Why should she imagine it?
+
+Drawing the paper toward her she began to write and had quickly finished
+the brief note which told her mother as much, and no more than, her
+instructor had prescribed. He had kept his eyes rather closely fixed
+upon the wrinkled envelope she held, and now carelessly remarked:
+
+"You could send that letter home with your note, too, if you wish,
+though you'll be detained only a little while. I don't see why that
+witness I spoke of hasn't come. I do hate a dilatory client! Will she
+need it, do you think?"
+
+"She might. I will send it, I guess," answered poor Dorothy, and giving
+the folded envelope still another twist, enclosed and sealed it in her
+own note which she handed to her "lawyer."
+
+He took it, hastily, and informed her that he would "just trip down
+those troublesome stairs and find a messenger boy, then be back in a
+jiffy."
+
+As he reckoned time a "jiffy" must have meant several hours; for the
+whole day had passed and still he had not returned.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+TENANTS FOR NO. 77
+
+
+"Oh! do get out of the way, Ma'am Puss! What possesses you to be always
+under foot? If you're looking for your little mistress she's not here,
+She's gone away down town on business," cried Mrs. Chester to the cat,
+as she stumbled over the creature for the third time in about as many
+minutes.
+
+The animal's behavior annoyed her. For some time it had kept up an
+intermittent and most doleful mewing and, as if seeking some precious
+thing no longer to be found, it had wandered in and out of corners in a
+nerve-distracting way.
+
+The house mistress herself was almost as uneasy as the cat, and she had
+endured about all the mental strain she could without collapse; or, at
+least, venting her overtaxed patience upon somebody. Ma'am Puss happened
+to be the "somebody" most convenient, and with a fresh sinking of her
+spirits, Martha Chester recalled the many frolics her husband, as well
+as daughter, had had with their pet. Would anything in her life ever be
+again as it had been!
+
+Sitting down in the nearest chair, for a moment, the lonely woman took
+the sleek maltese into her arms and held it close, stroking its fur
+affectionately, and in a manner to surprise the recipient of this most
+unusual attention. For Martha didn't like cats; and the only reason
+Ma'am Puss was tolerated on her premises was because she liked rats and
+mice still less. But now she not only petted but confided to the purring
+feline the fact:
+
+"Dorothy has been gone four hours, and I'm dreadfully worried. At the
+longest she shouldn't have been gone more'n two, even if there was a
+hold-up on the car line. Besides, she wouldn't have waited for such a
+thing, anyway. She'd have started home on her own feet, first, for she's
+a loving child and knows I need her help. That money-letter! I'm afraid
+somebody's waylaid her and took it away. It wasn't so much--to some
+people--but ten dollars? Why, Puss, a man was murdered out Towson way
+for less than that, not so long ago! I wish she'd come. Oh! How I wish
+she'd come!"
+
+But Dorothy did not come. There was no sign of her on the street, no
+matter how many times the anxious watcher ran to the door and looked
+out; and the four hours were fast lengthening into five when the first
+change came to divert Mrs. Chester's thoughts, for the time being, from
+her terrible forebodings. As she gazed in one direction for the sight of
+a blue gingham frock a cheerful voice called to her from another:
+
+"Howdy, Mis' Chester? Now ain't I brought you the greatest luck? Here's
+my sister-in-law, without chick nor child to upset things, and only a
+husband that's night watchman--is going to be--come right here to
+Baltimore an' is looking for a house. Firm he's worked for is putting up
+a new factory, right over in them open lots beyond an' nothin' to do but
+he must take care of 'em. This is my sister-in-law, Mis' Jones, Mis'
+Chester. I was a Jones myself. Well, they're ready to rent or buy,
+reasonable, either one; and I reckon it's a chance you won't get in a
+hurry--no children, too! What you say?"
+
+For a moment Martha could say nothing, except to bid her callers enter
+the house and to place them comfortably in the cool parlor; and even her
+first remark bore little on the subject Mrs. Bruce had presented.
+Handing fans all round she ejaculated:
+
+"It's so terrible hot! I'm all beat out--picking up and--and worrying."
+
+"Well, to get your house off your hands so sudden'll be one worry less,"
+comforted Mrs. Bruce, fanning herself vigorously and looking as if such
+a thing as anxiety had never entered her own contented mind.
+
+"I--I just stepped 'round to the drug-store, a spell ago, and telephoned
+to three real-estate men to come up an' look things over. I--Why, it's
+only Monday morning, and I've got a whole week yet. I mean--It seems so
+sudden. I've got to see John--No, I haven't. It seems dreadful to take
+such steps, do business without him, which I never have, but the
+doctors--How much rent'd you be willing to pay, Mis' Jones?"
+
+Poor Mrs. Chester was strangely distraught. Her neighbor, the plumber's
+wife, had never seen her like this, but she understood some part of what
+the other was suffering, though, as yet, she was ignorant of Dorothy's
+prolonged absence; and she again tried to console:
+
+"I know just how you feel. Havin' slaved so long to pay for the house,
+out of a postman's salary, an' him an' you bein' such a happy contented
+couple--Don't doubt I'm feelin' for you an' wantin' to lend a hand, if
+so be I can. As to rent, there ain't never no houses on this one-hunderd
+block of Brown Street _to_ rent. We both know that, 'cause it's the
+nicest kept one, with the prettiest back yard anywhere's near. No negro
+houses in the alleys, neither. So, course, this is a splendid chance for
+Bill and Jane; but I asked Mr. Bruce an' he said twenty dollars a month
+was fair and the goin' rates."
+
+Mrs. Chester listened with still greater dismay. At the utmost she had
+expected the watchman would offer no more than fifteen dollars, but
+twenty! The highest rate she had looked to receive from anybody. Of
+course she wanted to rent--she had now fully decided not to sell--but to
+succeed so promptly, was almost like having the ground taken from
+beneath her feet.
+
+At last she forced herself to say:
+
+"I know it's a good chance. I'm not unmindful it's a neighborly thing in
+you, Mrs. Bruce, or that Mrs. Jones'd make a good tenant. I'm--Well,
+I'll try to give you your answer some time to-night. Will that do?"
+
+Mrs. Bruce rose and there was some asperity in her tone as she returned:
+
+"I s'pose it'll have to do, since you're the one to pass the word. But
+we'll look round, other houses, anyway. My folks have left their old
+place an' this week's the only idle one Bill'll have. He wants to help
+Jane settle--she ain't overly strong--and they'd like to move in
+a-Wednesday, or Thursday mornin' at the latest."
+
+"So--soon!" gasped the mistress of No. 77. Despite her will a tear
+stole down her cheek and her warm-hearted neighbor was instantly moved
+to greater sympathy. Laying her fat hand on Mrs. Chester's bowed head
+she urged:
+
+"Keep up your spirit, Martha. If you just rent, why you know you can
+come back any time. A month's notice, give an' take, that's all. I'm
+hopin' John'll get well right away, an' you'll all come flyin' back to
+Baltimore. By the way, where's Dorothy? Mabel said she wasn't goin' to
+school no more."
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Bruce, I don't know! I don't know!" and the anxious mother
+poured out her perplexities in the ear of this other mother, who
+promptly said:
+
+"Well, if I was you, Martha Chester, I'd put on my hat and go straight
+down to that post-office an' find out what had become of her. If 'twas
+Mabel, I should."
+
+"Oh! that's what I've been longing to do! But I thought the real-estate
+men might come, and I dared not leave. I'm getting so nervous I can't
+keep still, and as for going on with my packing, it's no use. I must go
+to see John, this afternoon, too, and----"
+
+"Martha Chester, have you had a bite to eat?" demanded Mrs. Bruce, in an
+accusing tone.
+
+Martha smiled, and reluctantly answered:
+
+"I don't believe I have. I didn't think, but--course, it's past lunch
+time."
+
+"Lunch! Hear her, Jane. She's one o' the fashionable women 't cooks her
+dinner at sundown!" cried the plumber's wife, with an attempt at
+raillery, but in her mind already deciding that hunger was half the
+matter with her neighbor's nerves. "Now, look here, the pair of you. Me
+an' him is more sensibler. We have our dinner at dinner time, and you
+know that was as nice a vegetable soup we had this noon, Jane Jones, as
+ever was made, an' you needn't deny it. You just stay here a minute an'
+Martha'll show you round the house, an' the garden--That garden'll
+tickle Bill 'most to death, he's that set on posies!--while I skip home
+and fetch a pail of it. 'Twon't take a minute to do it, an' it can be
+het up on the gas stove, even if the range fire's out. By that time
+Dorothy C. 'll have got back: an' me an' Jane'll help her keep house
+while you step across to Johns Hopkins. I reckon that's good plannin',
+so you begin while I skip."
+
+The idea of corpulent Mrs. Bruce "skipping" brought a smile to both the
+listeners' faces, but Martha was already greatly comforted and now
+realized that she was, indeed, faint from want of food. She had taken
+but little breakfast, being "too busy to eat," as she explained; but she
+now set out on a tour of the little house with much pride in it, and in
+the fact that taken unaware, even, it would be found in spotless order.
+Her washing was already drying in the sunny garden among the roses and
+Mrs. Jones's delight over that part of the premises was most flattering.
+
+Indeed, there was a dainty simplicity about the little country-woman
+which now quite won Mrs. Chester's heart, and after they had examined
+each of the rooms, and each had found Mrs. Jones more and more
+enthusiastic, the impulsive housemistress exclaimed:
+
+"Maybe you'll think I'm queer, but I believe the Lord just sent you!
+That you're the very one will love our home for us while we're away."
+
+"Oh! I'm glad to hear you say that. It's the way I feel about things. I
+ain't so glib a talker as _his_ folks is, but I think a good deal. I've
+always hankered to live in a city, where if _I_ wanted a bucket of
+water, all I'd have to do would be to turn a spigot, 'stead of tugging
+it up a hill from a spring or hauling it out a well. An' Bill, he's
+tidy. I've trained him. I begun right off, soon's we was married. The
+Joneses they--well, they ain't none of 'em too partic'lar, though
+warmer-hearted folks never lived. But, my man? Why, bless you, now he'd
+no more think o' comin' in from outdoors without takin' off his boots
+an' puttin' on his slippers 'an he'd think o' flyin'. I didn't have to
+scold him into it, neither. 'Twas just himself seein' me get down an'
+scrub up the mud he'd tracked in, without even wipin' his feet. But, my!
+I said I wasn't no talker, an' here I'm makin' myself out a
+story-teller. But, if so be you an' him come to a right agreement, I
+promise you one thing: I'll take just as good care, or better, of your
+prop'ty as if it was my own. Nobody couldn't do more than that, could
+they?"
+
+"No, indeed: and I'm glad I can have such good news to tell John when I
+go to him. After all, Mrs. Jones, property troubles don't compare with
+troubles of your heart. I feel so different, all in these few minutes,
+so glad you came. I reckon there won't be no difficulty about the
+agreement: and--look! There comes Mrs. Bruce already and a colored girl
+with her."
+
+The plumber's wife entered, panting from her efforts to carry a big pail
+of soup at sufficient distance from her fat sides to keep it from
+spilling, and announcing that the basket the little colored maid had in
+hand contained "a few other things I picked up, might come in nice."
+
+"An' I collared 'Mandy, here, on the street. She's the girl does my
+front, an' I thought she might do yours, to-day. She does it for a
+nickel and don't you pay her no more. Hear, 'Mandy? If you leave a speck
+on this lady's steps, I won't give you that baker's cake I promised.
+Where's your cleanin' things, Mis' Chester?"
+
+These were quickly produced and then the housemistress sat down to her
+meal, her guests declining to join her in it, though more than willing
+to sit beside her and talk while she ate. Moreover, Mrs. Bruce was
+extremely proud to show this other notable housekeeper a specimen of her
+own cooking, knowing that she was usually considered a failure in that
+line, but had succeeded well this time.
+
+Then said Mrs. Jones:
+
+"I've been thinkin' things over a mite, whilst you two talked. Bill's
+and my goods are to the depot here, ready packed an' waitin', and I've
+not a hand's turn to do, till I get a place to unpack them in. If you'll
+let me I'd admire to come help you get your stuff ready for movin'.
+Havin' just done mine I've sort of got my hand in, so to speak, an' can
+take hold capable. I'll look after the house, too, and learn the ways of
+it, while you're off on your errands or seeing your husband, or the
+like. What say, sister, to that notion?"
+
+"I call it first-rate: an' I'll be able to help some, 'tween times. Now,
+Martha Chester, if you've finished your dinner, be off with you. Jane
+an' me'll do everything all right, an' I'm getting as wild to have
+Dorothy back as you are. Don't suppose she's one to run away an' play
+with some the school children, do you?" said Mrs. Bruce.
+
+"No, I don't. I wish I did think she might, but Dorothy never ran away,
+not in all her life, except when she was a mite of a thing and followed
+her father on his route. Well, you can tell the real-estate men, if they
+come, 't the thing is settled already. I say it 'tis, but I reckon
+they'll be some put out, comin' up here for nothing. Good-bye. Do wish
+me good luck! and I'll hurry back."
+
+Late though she felt that she was for her hospital visit, Mrs. Chester
+hurried first to the post-office, her anxiety increasing all the way,
+and reached it just as Mr. Lathrop was leaving it for his last delivery.
+To her anxious inquiry he returned a discouraging:
+
+"No. I haven't seen Dorothy since early this morning, when I helped her
+a bit in getting her money-letter. But I'll ask if anybody else knows
+what became of her. Doubtless she'll turn up all right and with a
+simple explanation of her absence. She's a bright little girl, you'll
+find her all safe. I'll go back with you now."
+
+Thus for the second time that day, the busy postman delayed his own work
+to do kindness to a comrade's family, nor could he quite understand why
+his faith in his own words was less than he wished hers to be. It was
+rare to hear of a child being lost in that safe city, and it would be a
+bitter blow to the already afflicted John Chester if harm befell his
+adopted daughter. When no good news could be obtained here, he advised
+Martha to go on to the hospital but to say nothing to her husband of
+Dorothy. He would notify the police, and if she had met with any
+accident, or by some rare mischance lost her way, she would speedily be
+traced.
+
+Because she could do no better, Mrs. Chester followed his advice,
+boarded a car for the hospital, and was soon at her husband's side. But
+alas! She was to find no comfort in this interview. With a natural
+reaction from his first elation over the possibility of recovery he was
+now greatly depressed. Having lived so long on will-power, and having
+once given up, he had developed a great weakness of body, and, in a
+degree, of mind. Before his wife was admitted to his presence she was
+warned that nothing but the pleasantest topics must be discussed, and
+was told that the doctors now desired him to be removed to the country
+right away.
+
+"This terrible heat has injured him, as it has others. Get him out of
+town at once, Mrs. Chester, if you would save his life."
+
+So when he asked for Dorothy she ignored his question, but talked glibly
+of the fine chance that they had of letting the house: yet to her
+amazement he showed no interest in this matter.
+
+"Do whatever you think best, little woman. I don't care. I don't believe
+I'll ever care about anything in the world again."
+
+"Oh, John! Don't say that. You'll be better soon. But, good-bye till
+to-morrow:" and hastily bidding him expect her then, with some home
+flowers and "lots of good news," she hurried away.
+
+"No news?" she asked, as her own door opened to receive her, and the
+gentle little country-woman welcomed her.
+
+"Oh! no. Not yet. Ain't hardly time!" cheerfully responded Jane Jones,
+just as if she were imparting other tidings. "Mustn't look for miracles,
+nowadays. That child's off visitin', somewheres, you may depend. And you
+mustn't be hard on her when she comes back," advised this new friend.
+
+"Hard on her? Me? Why, I'd give ten years of my life to know she was
+safe, this minute! _Hard on her!_ All I ask is to hold her fast in my
+arms once more. But, course, you don't know Dorothy C. The little child
+that was _sent_, and that's made John an' me so happy all her life.
+Look. Here's her picture. We thought it was extravagant, but somehow we
+felt we had to have it. 'Twas taken this very spring, on the same day we
+found her on the steps."
+
+From a little secretary in the dining room Mrs. Chester produced the
+photograph, still carefully wrapped in its waxed paper covering, and
+displayed to her admiring guest the picture of a very lovely child. The
+shapely head was crowned by short brown curls, the big brown eyes looked
+eagerly forth, and the pretty red lips were curved in a half-smile that
+was altogether bewitching.
+
+"Why! She's a beauty! A regular beauty! She looks as if she belonged to
+high-up folks; I declare she does," commented Mrs. Jones.
+
+Mother Martha was touched by this sincere admiration, and lifting the
+picture to her lips lightly pressed a kiss upon it. Then she carefully
+put it away again, saying with a sigh:
+
+"We'd laid out to get it framed, soon, and hang it in the parlor. That's
+why we had but one taken. John thought one big one was better worth
+while than a dozen small ones. My! Hark! What's that? Such a ring--my
+heart's in my mouth--you open the door--please--I can't!" and so
+imploring, Mrs. Chester sank upon the lounge and covered her face with
+her hands.
+
+Even Mrs. Jones was all a-tremble and her hands fumbled so with the
+unfamiliar latch that the housemistress sprang to her feet and opened
+the door herself with the glad cry:
+
+"Dorothy! Dorothy, have you come?"
+
+"Not Dorothy, Mrs. Chester; just Lathrop, you know, with a detective,
+come to get some points."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+STRANGE EXPERIENCES
+
+
+"Why doesn't he come back! Oh! what will my mother think of my staying
+away like this? All the help she has now, too, and needing me so much.
+I'll wait just five minutes longer, then I'll go home, anyway, whether
+that 'witness' who's to tell me so much about myself and my real father
+and mother comes or not. No father or mother could be as dear to me as
+father John and mother Martha. I don't want any others. Let them keep
+their old fortune the rest of the time, since they've kept it so long
+and never sent for me," said Dorothy C. to herself, after she had waited
+with what slight patience she could for Mr. Smith's return, and more
+than an hour had already passed.
+
+Hitherto she had not deemed it polite to explore her present quarters,
+but now began to do so in an idle sort of way. If her "lawyer" left her
+so long alone he couldn't blame her if she amused herself in some
+manner; and first she examined the few books which were tossed in a heap
+on the untidy desk. They did not look like law-books, many of them,
+though one or two were bound in dirty calf-skin and showed much
+handling. In any case none of them interested her.
+
+Next she tried to open the window, that gave upon the hall from one side
+of the room as the door by which she had entered did upon another, but
+found it fast.
+
+"Why, that's funny! What would anybody want to nail an inside window
+tight for? Oh! maybe because this is an apartment house, he said, and
+other people might come in. My father says he wouldn't like to live in a
+flat, it's so mixed up with different families. He'd rather have a tiny
+house like ours and have it separate. Well! if I can't open the window,
+I reckon I can that door which must go into a back room."
+
+Immediately she proceeded to try this second door, which was opposite
+the nailed window, and, to her delight, found that it yielded easily to
+her touch. But the room thus disclosed was almost as dark as the
+"office" she had just quitted, although it had two windows at the back.
+The upper sashes of these had been lowered as far as possible, but
+behind them were wooden shutters and these were also nailed, or spiked
+fast. There were crescent-shaped holes in the tops of the shutters and
+through these a little air and light penetrated into the gloom of what,
+now that her eyes had become accustomed to the dimness, she perceived
+was a bedroom. From one side of this opened a bathroom, whose window was
+secured like those of the bedroom, but where was the cheerful sound of
+running water.
+
+Now terribly frightened by her strange surroundings, Dorothy's throat
+grew so dry and parched that she hastened to get a drink from the
+faucet, beneath which hung a rusty tin cup. Then she thought:
+
+"Maybe I can get out into the hall by this bathroom door!"
+
+It could not be opened, and now half-frantic with fear, the imprisoned
+girl ran from one door to another, only to find that while she had the
+freedom of the three apartments, every exit from these into the hall was
+securely bolted, or locked, upon the outside, and realized that it was
+with some evil intention she had been brought to this place.
+
+For hours she worked over doors, then windows, and back again to the
+doors--testing her puny strength against them, only to fail each time.
+The heat was intolerable in the rooms, for it was the top story of a
+small house with the sun beating against the roof. Even below, in the
+street, people mopped their faces and groaned beneath this unseasonable
+temperature. As for poor Dorothy, she felt herself growing faint, and
+remembered that she, as well as her mother, had taken but a light
+breakfast; but her eyes had now grown accustomed to the dim light of the
+rooms and the gas jet still flickered in the "office," so that, after a
+time, she threw herself on the bed, worn out with her efforts and hoping
+a few moments' rest might help her "to think a way out" of her prison.
+
+How long she slept, she never knew, for it was that of utter
+exhaustion, but she was suddenly roused by the sound of a bolt shot in
+its lock, and the opening of the "office" door. It was Mr. Smith
+returning, profuse with apologies which Dorothy scarcely heard and
+wholly disdained, as, darting past him, she made for the entrance with
+all her speed.
+
+"Why, Miss Chester! Don't, I beg, don't treat me so suspiciously.
+Indeed, it is quite as I tell you. I was--was detained against my will.
+I have only just now been able to come back here, and you must
+imagine--for I cannot describe them--what my sufferings have been on
+your account. I know that you'll think hardly of me, but, indeed, I mean
+you nothing but good. Wait, please; wait just a moment and taste these
+sandwiches I've brought and this bottle of milk. You must be famished.
+You can't? You won't? Why, my dear young lady, how am I ever to do you
+any good if you mistrust me so on such slight grounds?"
+
+"Slight grounds!" almost screamed Dorothy, struggling to free herself
+from the man's grasp, which, apparently gentle, was still far too firm
+for her to resist.
+
+At once, also, he began again to talk, so fast, so plausibly, that his
+words fairly tripped each other up, and still pressing upon her
+acceptance a paper of very dainty sandwiches and a glass of most
+innocent appearing milk.
+
+"Just take these first. I should be distressed beyond measure to have
+you return to your home in this condition. I have a carriage at the door
+to carry you there and we'll start immediately after you have eaten, or
+at least drank something. You needn't be so alarmed. Your mother
+received your note only a few moments after you sent it, with the
+envelope enclosed. She is now most anxious for you to hear all that my
+witness--witnesses, in fact--have to disclose as to your real parentage
+and possessions. It is such a grand thing for her and her husband, now
+that he has lost his health. Just five minutes, to keep yourself from
+fainting, then we'll be off. Indeed, I'm far more anxious to be on the
+road than you are, I so deeply regret this misadventure."
+
+At that moment there was the ring of sincerity in his words, and also
+just then there was the sound of footsteps on the stairs, followed by
+the appearance at the door of a hack-driver in the attire of his class.
+
+"Time's erbout up, suh, 't I was hired for, an' soon's you-all's ready,
+suh, I----"
+
+"All right, Jehu. I'll pay for overtime, but can't hurry a young lady,
+you know. Especially one that's been shut up by accident almost all day
+in my office." Then turning to Dorothy, who still refrained from
+touching the sandwiches which, however, began to look irresistibly
+tempting, he begged: "At least drink the milk. This good fellow seems to
+be in haste, though it's only a few minutes' drive to Brown Street and
+you can nibble the sandwiches in the carriage."
+
+She was not worldly-wise, she was very hungry, and the man seemed
+profoundly distressed that she had suffered such treatment at his hands.
+Moreover, it appeared that the shortest way to liberty was to obey him.
+She would drink the milk, she was fairly famishing for it, but once
+upon the street she would enter no carriage of his providing but trust
+rather to her own nimble feet to reach her home, and, if need be, to the
+protection of the first policeman she could summon.
+
+Wrapping the sandwiches once more in their paper, she hastily drank the
+milk and again started to leave. This time she was not prevented nor as
+they left the "office" did its proprietor use the precaution of the bolt
+which anybody from outside could unfasten--none from within! But he did
+turn out the gas, with a noteworthy prudence, and still retained his
+courteous support of Dorothy's arm.
+
+Released at last from the imprisonment which had so terrified her she
+was strangely dizzy. Her head felt very much as it had done when she had
+been knocked down by Mrs. Cecil's big dogs, and it was now of her own
+accord that she clutched Mr. Smith's arm, fearing she would fall.
+
+How far, far away sounded the hackman's footsteps, retreating before
+them to the street! How queerly her feet jogged up and down on the
+stairs, which seemed to spring upward into her very face as she
+descended! In all her life she had never, never felt so tired and
+curiously weak as now, when all the power to move her limbs seemed
+suddenly to leave her.
+
+"Ah! the carriage!" She could dimly see it, in the glare of an electric
+light, and now she welcomed it most eagerly. If ever she were to reach
+that blessed haven of home she would have to be carried there. So she
+made no remonstrance when she was bodily lifted into the coupé and
+placed upon its cushions, where, at once, she went to sleep.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Here girl. Time you woke up and took your breakfast."
+
+After that strange dizziness in descending the stairs of the house in
+Howard Street, Dorothy's first sensation was one of languid surprise. A
+big, coarse-looking woman stood beside the bed on which she lay, holding
+a plate in one hand, a cup in the other. Broad beams of sunlight
+streamed through an uncurtained window near, and a fresh breeze blew in
+from the fields beyond.
+
+"Why--the country! Have we come to it so soon and I not knowing? Mother!
+Where is my mother?" she asked, gaining in strength and rising upon her
+elbow. Then she saw that she had lain down without undressing and
+cautiously stepped to the floor, which was bare and not wholly clean.
+Her head felt light and dizzy still, so that she suddenly again sat down
+on the bed's edge to recover herself. Thereupon the woman dragged a
+wooden chair forward and, placing the breakfast on it, said:
+
+"I can't bother no more. Eat it or leave it. I've got my fruit to pick."
+
+Then she turned away, but Dorothy reached forward, caught the blue denim
+skirt, and demanded:
+
+"Tell me where my mother is? I want her. I want her right away."
+
+"Like enough. I don't know. I'm goin'. I'll be in to get your dinner.
+You can lie down again or do what you want, only stay inside. Orders."
+
+Dorothy was very hungry. The hunger of yesterday was nothing compared to
+the craving she felt now and, postponing all further questions till
+that was satisfied, she fell to eating the contents of the great plate
+with greed. Then she drank the bowl of coffee and, still strangely
+drowsy, lay back upon the pillow and again instantly dropped asleep.
+
+The clatter of dishes in the room beyond that one where she lay was what
+next roused her and her head was now nearly normal. Only a dull pain
+remained and her wits were clearing of the mist that had enveloped them.
+Memories of strange stories came to her, and she thought:
+
+"Something has happened to me, more than I dreamed. I've been kidnapped!
+I see it, understand it all now. But--why? _Why?_ An orphan foundling
+like me--what should anybody steal me away from my home for? Father and
+mother have no money to pay ransom--like that little boy father read
+about in the paper--who was stolen and not given back till thousands of
+dollars were sent. But I'm somewhere in the country now, and in a house
+that's all open, every side. It's easy to get away from _here_. I'll go.
+I'll go right away, soon as I wash my face and brush my hair--if I can
+find a brush. I'll go into that other room and act just as if I wasn't
+afraid and--that dinner smells good!"
+
+The big woman, whose denim skirt and blouse suggested the overalls of a
+day laborer, was bending over a small cooking stove whereon was frying
+some bacon and eggs. A great pot of boiled potatoes waited on the
+stove-hearth, and on an oilcloth-covered table were set out a few
+dishes. A boy was just entering the kitchen from the lean-to beyond and
+was carrying a wooden pail of water with a tin dipper. He was almost as
+tall as the woman but bore no further resemblance to her, being
+extremely thin and fair. Indeed, his hair was so nearly white that
+Dorothy stared at it, and his eyes were very blue, while the woman
+looked like a swarthy foreigner from some south country.
+
+Mother Martha had a saying, when anybody about her was inclined to
+sharpness of speech, that "you can catch more flies with molasses than
+with vinegar," and, oddly enough, the adage came to Dorothy's mind at
+that very instant. She had come into the kitchen prepared to demand her
+liberty and to be directed home, but she now spoke as politely as she
+would have done to the minister's wife:
+
+"Please, madam, will you show me where I can wash and freshen myself a
+little? I feel so dirty I'd like to do it before I eat my dinner or go
+home."
+
+The woman rose from above her frying pan with a face of astonishment.
+She was so tanned and burned by the sun as well as by the heat of
+cooking that the contrast between herself and her son--if he were her
+son--made him look fairly ghostlike. Furthermore, as the inwardly
+anxious, if outwardly suave, little girl perceived--her face was more
+stupid than vicious.
+
+Without the waste of a word the woman nodded over her shoulder toward
+the lean-to and proceeded to dish up her bacon, now cooked to her
+satisfaction. She placed it in the middle of a great yellow platter, the
+eggs around it, and a row of potatoes around them. Then she set the
+platter on the table, drew her own chair to it, filled a tin plate with
+the mixture, and proceeded with her dinner. She made no remark when the
+boy, also, sat down, and neither of them waited an instant for their
+girl guest.
+
+But Dorothy's spirit was now roused and she felt herself fully equal to
+dealing with these rustics: and it was with all the dignity she could
+summon that she drew a third chair to the table and herself sat down,
+saying:
+
+"Now, if you please, I wish to be told where I am and how I came here."
+
+The hostess paid no more heed than if a fly had touched her, but the lad
+paused in the act of shoveling food into his mouth and stared at
+Dorothy, as he might have done at the same fly, could it have spoken.
+Nor did he remove his gaze from her till she had repeated her question.
+Then he shifted it to the woman's face, who waited awhile longer, then
+said:
+
+"I tell nothing. Drink your milk."
+
+"Oh, indeed! Then I suppose I must find out for myself. I don't care for
+the milk, thank you. I rarely drink it at home, but I'm fond of bacon
+and eggs, and yours look nice. Please serve me some."
+
+The woman made no answer. She had finished her own meal and left the
+others to do the same. So, as the taciturn creature departed for the
+open fields, with a hoe over her shoulder, Dorothy drew the platter
+toward her, found a third empty tin plate, and helped herself.
+
+She had noticed one thing that the others had, apparently, not known she
+had: a sign of silence interchanged between the woman and the lanky lad.
+He had been bidden to hold his tongue and been left to clear up the
+dinner matters. He did this as deftly as a girl, though not after the
+manner in which Dorothy had been trained: and casting a look of contempt
+upon him, she finished her dinner, rose, and quietly left the room and
+the house.
+
+But she got no further than a few rods' distance when she felt a strong
+hand on her arm, herself turned rudely about, and led back to the
+cottage. There she was pushed upon the doorstep and a note thrust into
+her hand by this abnormally silent woman, who had returned from the
+field as suddenly as if she had sprung from the earth at the girl's very
+feet.
+
+The note was plainly enough written and to the point:
+
+     "Stay quiet where you are and you'll soon be set free. Try to run
+     away and you'll meet big trouble."
+
+There was no signature and the handwriting was unknown: and Dorothy was
+still blankly gazing at it when it was snatched from her hand, the woman
+had again disappeared, and a huge mastiff had come around the corner of
+the cottage, to seat himself upon the doorstep beside her. His
+attentions might have been friendly; but Dorothy was afraid of dogs, and
+shrank from this one into the smallest space possible, while there
+fluttered down over her shoulder the note that had been seized. There
+was now pinned to it a scrap of paper on which were scrawled three
+words:
+
+"Drink no milk."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE FLITTING
+
+
+Disappointed, Mrs. Chester had stepped back into her little hall, and
+the postman with the detective followed. Then they went further still
+and settled themselves in the parlor, as if come for a prolonged stay.
+To the detective's inquiry whether the missing Dorothy had recently met
+any strangers, made acquaintances who might be able to furnish some clew
+to her present whereabouts--as friends of longer standing had not been
+able--the mother answered: "No. She was always at home or in the
+immediate neighborhood."
+
+But conquering her timidity, the country-woman now interrupted:
+
+"Wait a minute. Mabel was here yesterday, wasn't she?"
+
+"Why, yes. She came home with my little girl from Sunday school and
+spent part of the day. Why she did not stay longer I don't know. What
+of it?" returned mother Martha, drearily.
+
+"She didn't stay longer because she was sent home. I was there and I
+noticed what a good-natured child she was not to get mad about it. She
+told her mother that Dorothy had a gentleman caller and had to see him
+on business. We both laughed over it, 'cause 'twas so grown-up an'
+old-fashioned like. An', sister, she said as how city children didn't
+scarce have any childhood, they begun to be beauin' each other round so
+early. We _laughed_, but still, I thought 'twas a pity, for I like
+little girls to stay such, long as they can."
+
+"Nonsense! My Dorothy is--was the simplest child in the world. A
+gentleman caller--the idea is ridiculous!" cried Mrs. Chester,
+indignantly, and poor Mrs. Jones felt herself snubbed and wished that
+she had held her tongue.
+
+Not so the detective, who quietly asked:
+
+"Who is this Mabel, and where can she be found?"
+
+"She's my niece an' likely she'll be found in bed, by now. No matter
+about that, though. If you'd like to see her I'll fetch her to once,"
+answered Mrs. Jones, promptly rising.
+
+"Do so, please," said the officer, and the woman hurried away.
+
+The postman friend employed the interval of her absence in telling the
+plans formed by "the boys" for the benefit of their ailing comrade.
+
+"You see, Mrs. Chester, John's about the best liked man on the force and
+we want he should be the best cared for. So, to-night, after I saw you I
+ran over to the hospital myself and saw one the doctors--the one that
+has most to say about John. He wants to get him into the country right
+away. Then back I hurried and got leave of absence, from Wednesday night
+till next Monday morning, and I'm going with you, to help you on the
+trip and see him settled all straight. No--Don't say a word yet! It'll
+be all right. It's settled. You can get ready."
+
+"Oh! but I can't, I can't!" protested Martha, deeply touched by this
+kindness, yet feeling as if she were being fairly hurled out of her old
+life into the new one. Besides, if this mystery of Dorothy's
+disappearance were not cleared she could never leave the city, never!
+and so she stoutly declared.
+
+"But--it's a case of adopted daughter _versus_ a husband's life, seems
+to me," put in the detective quietly. "Moreover, I'm told by Lathrop,
+here, that Chester isn't to be worried about anything. _Anything._ His
+chance of recovery depends on it."
+
+The tortured housemistress was vastly relieved to see not only Mabel,
+but the entire household of Bruce-and-Jones, coming swiftly toward the
+house and presently entering at the doorway, left open because of the
+great heat. Both the plumber and his wife were panting from their
+exertions; Mr. Jones was as excited as if he were going to a circus; his
+wife uncommonly proud of her part in the occasion; and the terrified
+Mabel weeping loudly:
+
+"I don't know a thing! I don't--I don't!"
+
+"Why, Miss Bruce, what a surprising statement from such a bright-looking
+young lady as you!" exclaimed the detective, suavely, and the girl
+stopped sobbing long enough to see that this was no formidable
+policeman in blue-and-brass but a very simple gentleman, in a business
+suit rather the worse for wear. In another moment he had gallantly
+placed this possibly important witness in the coziest corner of the
+sofa, and had placed himself beside her, as if to protect her from the
+inquisitiveness of her friends.
+
+Then in a tone so low that it effectually prevented their words being
+overheard, he deftly drew from the now reassured Mabel a much better
+description of Dorothy's caller than fear would have extorted. Indeed,
+she became inclined to enlarge upon facts, as she saw her statements
+recorded in a small notebook. But this finally held no more than the
+brief entry:
+
+"Tall. Light hair. Left eye squints. Eyebrows meet. Glib. Name not
+given."
+
+Then the notebook was closed and pocketed, the cross-examination was
+over, and all were free to take a part in a discussion--which they did
+so volubly, that the detective smiled and called a halt. Moreover, his
+words had the weight of one who knew, as he said:
+
+"We've gone into this business very promptly, and it must, for the
+present, be kept out of the newspapers, else the guilty party who is
+detaining Dorothy--if there is such a party--will be warned and may
+escape. It is but twelve hours since the child disappeared. At the end
+of another twenty-four will be time enough to publish. Meanwhile, Madam,
+rest assured that we shall keep steadily at work, trying to locate your
+missing daughter and--I wish you all good-evening."
+
+The gentleman's departure was a relief. It seemed to lessen the horror
+of Dorothy's absence, though her mother was glad to know that the
+efforts of the police were being made to trace her. But--Why, the
+darling might come walking in, at any moment, and how distressed she'd
+be to find herself an object of such unpleasant importance!
+
+"Now, Mrs. Chester," said Mr. Lathrop, "we 'boys' don't want you to
+worry one minute about this moving business. We've agreed to send a
+professional packer and his men here, the first thing to-morrow morning.
+You needn't touch one thing. It's better that you should not, for if
+all is left to this man he is responsible for everything. You just
+rest, visit John and get him braced up for his journey, and take it
+easy. If little Dorothy is back before Thursday morning, when we start,
+all right. She shall go with us and be the life of the party. If she
+isn't--why, as soon as she does come, some way will be found, somebody,
+to bring her safely to you."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Lathrop! You and the 'boys' are goodness itself, but I can't--I
+cannot go away in such uncertainty. If Dorothy isn't found--John will be
+the first one to say that we must wait until she is."
+
+This was a natural attitude of mind, and Mr. Lathrop, as well as all the
+other friends of the Chesters, anticipated it. But by slow degrees, the
+arguments of her pastor, the hospital doctors, and the honest neighbors
+who sympathized with the tortured mother, finally succeeded in bringing
+her to view the matter as they did.
+
+"Not an effort shall be relaxed, any more than if you were on the spot
+to direct us. We all feel as if we, too, had lost a beloved child and
+none of us will rest until this mystery is cleared. Trust the advice of
+all your best-wishers, Mrs. Chester, and take this fine chance offered
+your lame husband to make the long journey under the care of his postman
+friend," urged the minister, and his final argument procured her
+consent.
+
+"Oh! these last two days! Shall I ever forget them!" cried Mrs. Chester,
+when Wednesday evening had arrived and she sat in her dismantled home
+upon one of her incoming tenant's chairs. "To think that on Monday
+morning, when you came, Mrs. Jones, I hadn't touched a single thing to
+pack! and now--there isn't one left. All in boxes an' crates, over there
+to the station; me all alone; no Dorothy C.; no John--I'm just
+heart-broke!"
+
+Mrs. Jones's patience was tried. For these two busy days she and her
+"Bill" had stayed at No. 77, helping where help was needed, and keeping
+a careful eye to the "professional" packing which they more than half
+distrusted. The frail country-woman had just gone through the same sort
+of business, almost single-handed, and she felt that her new friend
+failed to realize the blessings of her lot and that a reproof was in
+order.
+
+"Well, Mis' Chester, you may be. I can't tell. I never had chick nor
+child to make me sad or glad, ary one. But if I'd adopted one, right out
+of the streets as you did, an' she'd seen fit to run away an' turn her
+back on a good home, after enjoyin' it so long, an' I'd still got my
+_man_ left, an' folks had been that generous to me, payin' for
+everything--Laws! I sh'd think I had some mercies left. _Some._"
+
+Mother Martha rose. She was not offended, but she was deeply hurt and
+she was glad the time had come to say good-bye. With a weary smile she
+held out her hand, saying:
+
+"Well, that's right, too, but you don't understand. Nobody can who
+hasn't lived with _Dorothy_. There was never a child like her. Never.
+I'll be going. I said good-bye to everybody--everything, this side the
+city, and I've fixed it to sleep at a boarding house right across the
+street from the Hospital. We've got to make an early start and I'll be
+close on hand. If she--O my darling!--Good-bye. I--I hope you'll be as
+happy here as I was before all this trouble came upon me. No. I don't
+want company. I want to be alone. It's the only way I can bear it
+and--good-bye, old home! Good-bye--good-bye!"
+
+The door opened and the mistress of the prettiest house on Brown Street
+vanished into the darkness of a somber, sultry night; and what her
+feelings were only those who have thus parted with a beloved home can
+understand; and what the hours of sleeplessness which followed only she
+herself knew.
+
+The morning found her sunshiny and bright, as if her whole heart were in
+this sudden flitting, and waiting in the carriage at the hospital door,
+while an orderly and Mr. Lathrop, superintended by a nurse and doctor,
+helped John Chester to make his first short journey upon crutches.
+
+The excitement of the event had sent a flush to his cheeks and a
+brightness to his eyes which made him look so like his old self that his
+wife rejoiced that, after all, there had been no delay in their removal.
+Yet, once in the carriage, with his useless legs stretched out before
+him, he suddenly demanded:
+
+"Why, where's my girl? Where's Dorothy C.?"
+
+He looked toward his wife, but it was Mr. Lathrop who answered:
+
+"Oh! she's coming later. We--we couldn't bother with a child, this
+trip."
+
+"Couldn't 'bother' with my Dorothy! Why, friend, you're the best I have,
+but you don't know Dorothy. Humph! She's more brains in her curly head
+than anybody in this party has in theirs. Beg pardon, all, but--but you
+see I'm rather daft on Dorothy. I simply cannot go without her. What's
+more, I shan't even try."
+
+This was worse than they had expected. Martha had felt that her husband
+should no longer be deceived as to the state of things; even in his
+weakened condition she believed that his good sense would support him
+under their dreadful trial, and that he would suffer less if the news
+were gently broken to him here than if he were left to learn it later,
+in some ruder way. But her judgment had been overruled even as now his
+decision was; for without an instant's delay Mr. Lathrop ordered the
+carriage to drive on and that memorable journey had begun.
+
+As he was lifted out of the vehicle at the station entrance, he turned
+upon his wife and for the first time in her memory of him spoke harshly
+to her:
+
+"Martha, you're deceiving me. Taking advantage of my helplessness.
+You've always been jealous of my love for little Dorothy, and now, I
+suppose, just because I can't work to support her you've got rid of her.
+Well, I shall have her back. I may be a cripple, but my brain isn't
+lame--it's only my legs--and I'll find some way to take care of her. She
+shall come back. Trust me. Now, go ahead!"
+
+He submitted to the porter and his friend Lathrop, and, the train just
+rolling in, he was carried through the gates and placed aboard it in the
+parlor car where seats had been procured. He had never before traveled
+in such luxury, but instead of the gay abandon with which he would once
+have accepted and enjoyed it, he seemed now not to notice anything
+about him. Except that, just as the train was moving out, he caught at a
+newsboy hurrying from it, seized a paper, tossed a nickel, and spread
+the sheet open on his knee.
+
+Alas! for all the over-wise precautions of his friends! The first words
+his eyes rested upon were the scare-head capitals of this sentence:
+
+     THE FATE OF POSTMAN JOHN CHESTER'S DAUGHTER DOROTHY STILL
+     UNKNOWN--KIDNAPPING AND MURDER THE PROBABLE SOLUTION OF THE
+     MYSTERY.
+
+He stared at the letters as if they had no significance. Then he read
+them singly, in pairs, in dozens--trying to make his shocked brain
+comprehend their meaning. The utmost he could do was to see them as
+letters of fire, printed on the air before him, and on the darkness of
+the tunnel they now entered. A darkness so suggestive of the misery that
+had shrouded a once happy household that poor Martha, burying her face
+in her hands, could only sob aloud.
+
+But from the stricken "father John" came neither sob nor groan, for
+there was still upon him the numbness of the shock he had received; and
+it was in that same silence that he made the long journey, with its
+several changes, and came at last to the farmhouse on the hilltop, which
+was to have been made glad by a child's presence and was now so
+desolate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+JIM BARLOW
+
+
+Dorothy reread the note. Then she took off the scrawl attached to it and
+tore it into bits, remarking to the mastiff, or whoever might hear:
+
+"Well, I don't want any milk. I shall never like it again. I believe
+that dreadful man put something in it last night--was it only last
+night?--that made me go to sleep and not know a thing was happening
+after I got into the carriage till I woke up here. Milk! Ugh!"
+
+With a shudder of repulsion she looked over her shoulder just as a
+sibilant, warning "S-Ssh!" came from the room behind. Then she stood up
+and screamed as the mastiff, likewise rising, grasped her skirt in his
+teeth.
+
+"Hush! you better not let her hear you!" was the second, whispered
+warning, and though she peered into the kitchen she could see nobody,
+till, after a moment, she discovered a pair of dirty bare feet
+protruding from under the bed that stood in one corner.
+
+Dorothy was afraid of the dog that held her, but she was not usually
+afraid of human beings; so she called quite loudly:
+
+"You long white boy, come out from that place. I want to talk to you!"
+
+The dog loosened its grip long enough to growl, then took a fresh hold,
+as the lad cautiously drew himself into full sight and noiselessly stood
+up. But he laid one grimy hand on his lips, again commanding silence,
+and snatching a big basket from the floor ran out of a rear door.
+
+The girl tried to follow. Of the two human beings she had seen in this
+isolated cottage the long boy seemed the gentler, and she was determined
+to make him, or somebody, tell her where she was. The mastiff still held
+her prisoner and she suspected he was acting upon orders. Her temper
+rose and with it her courage. It was absurd that she could not do as she
+pleased in a little bit of a country cottage like this, where there were
+no locks nor bolts to hinder! So for the third time she moved, and for
+the third time the dog's great teeth set themselves more firmly on her
+light clothing. Clenching her small hands in her impotent wrath, she
+began to screech and yell, at the top of her voice, incessantly,
+deafeningly, defiantly. Pausing only long enough to renew her breath,
+and wondering if that old woman she could see yonder, picking berries
+from a bed, could endure the noise as long as she could endure to make
+it.
+
+Apparently, the uproar had no further result than to tire her own
+throat; for, until she had finished gathering the strawberries from one
+long row of vines, the woman did not pause. But, having reached the
+limit of the bed and of the crate she moved along before her as she
+worked, she suddenly stood up, lifted the crate to her head, and strode
+back to the house. There she deposited her precious fruit in an outer
+shed and entered the kitchen. From the small clock-shelf she gathered a
+pad of writing paper, a bunch of envelopes, and a lead pencil; which
+with an air of pride, and the first semblance of a smile Dorothy had
+seen upon her grim features, she offered to the child.
+
+"Here. To write on. To your ma. He left 'em. Tige, let go!"
+
+Instantly, the mastiff loosened his hold of Dorothy's skirts and
+followed his mistress into the strawberry patch whither she had again
+gone, carrying another crate filled with empty baskets. Evidently, this
+was a truck-farm and the mistress of it was preparing for market. Just
+such crates and cups, or little baskets, were now plentiful at all the
+city shops where groceries were sold, and Dorothy's hopes rose at the
+thought that she might be taken thither with this woman when she went to
+sell her stuff.
+
+"Oh! that's what she'll let me do! So what's the use of writing? And how
+fine those berries look! I'd like to pick some myself. I'd rather do it
+than do nothing. I'll just go and offer to help."
+
+In better spirits than she would have thought possible, even a few
+moments before, the homesick girl ran across the garden and to the
+woman's side, who merely looked up and said nothing, till Dorothy
+lifted one of the wooden cups and began to pick fruit into it.
+
+For a brief space the other watched her closely, as the nimble little
+fingers plucked the beautiful berries; till by mischance Dorothy pulled
+off an entire stem, holding not only ripened fruit but several green and
+half-turned drupes. Whereupon her fingers were smartly tapped and by
+example, rather than speech, she was instructed in the art of berry
+picking.
+
+"Oh! I do love to learn things, and I see, I see!" cried the novice, and
+smiling up into the old face now so near her own, she began the task
+afresh. Already the market-woman had resumed her own work, and it seemed
+incredible that such coarse fingers as hers could so deftly strip the
+vines of perfect berries only, leaving all others intact for a future
+picking. Also, she had a swift way of packing them in the cups that left
+each berry showing its best side and filled the receptacle without
+crowding.
+
+"Ah! I see! I'm getting the trick of it! And that's what mother means
+by paying for a quart and not getting a quart, isn't it? Oh! how
+delicious they are!" and, without asking, Dorothy popped the plumpest
+berry she had yet found into her own mouth.
+
+That was a mistake, as the frown upon the woman's face promptly told
+her; and with a sudden sinking of her heart she realized again that she
+was, after all, a prisoner in an unknown place. She rose, apologized in
+a haughty manner, and would have retreated to the cottage again had she
+been permitted. But having proved herself of service, retreat was not so
+easy. Again she was pulled down to a stooping posture and her cup thrust
+back into her hand.
+
+"Work. Eat spoiled ones. Don't dally."
+
+Dorothy obeyed; but alas! her self-elected task grew very wearisome. The
+heat was still great and the afternoon sun shone full upon her back, and
+there seemed positively no end to the berries. There were rows upon rows
+of them, and the woman had only just begun when Dorothy joined her. Or
+so it seemed, though there were already several crates waiting in the
+little shed till the full day's crop should be garnered.
+
+At the end of one row of vines she stood up and protested:
+
+"I can't pick any more. I'm so tired. Please tell me where I am and what
+your name is. Tell me, too, when I can go home and the way."
+
+"No matter. Go. Write. I'll take it. Here;" and this big woman of small
+speech held out on the palm of her great hand a half-dozen over-ripe
+berries, which Dorothy hesitated to accept, yet found delicious when she
+did so.
+
+"Thank you! and if you won't tell me who you are or where I am, I shall
+call you Mrs. Denim, after the clothes you wear; and I shall find out
+where this farm is and run away from it at the first chance. I'd rather
+that horrid old dog would eat me up than be kept a prisoner this way. Is
+that long boy your son? May I go talk to him? May he show me the way
+home to Baltimore?"
+
+To none of these questions was any answer vouchsafed, and offended
+Dorothy was moved to remark:
+
+"Humph! You're the savingest woman I ever saw! You don't waste even a
+word, let alone a spoiled strawberry. Oh! I beg your pardon! I didn't
+mean to be quite so saucy, but I'm almost crazy to go home. I want to go
+home--_I want to go home_!"
+
+There was such misery in this wail that the long boy, weeding onions a
+few feet away, paused in his tedious task and raised his shock head with
+a look of pity on his face. But the woman seemed to know his every
+movement, even though her own head was bowed above the vines, and shot
+him such an angry glance that he returned to his weeding with no further
+expression of his sympathy.
+
+Poor Dorothy C.! Homesickness in its bitterest form had come upon her
+and her grief made her feel so ill that she dropped down just where she
+was, unable longer to stand upright. Instantly, she was snatched up
+again by "Mrs. Denim's" strong arms and violently shaken. That anybody,
+even an ignorant stranger, should lie down in a strawberry patch and
+thus ruin many valuable berries was the height of folly! So, without
+more ado, Dorothy was carried indoors, almost tossed upon the bed in the
+kitchen, and the paper and pencil thrown upon the patchwork quilt beside
+her. Then she was left to recover at her leisure, while whistling to
+Tige to watch the girl, "Mrs. Denim" returned to her outdoor labors; nor
+was she seen again till darkness had filled the narrow room.
+
+Then once again Dorothy was lifted and was now carried to a loft above
+the kitchen, where, by the dim light of a tallow candle, she was shown a
+rude bed on the floor and a plate of food. Also, there was a bowl of
+milk, but at this the girl looked with a shudder. She wasn't hungry, but
+she reflected that people grew faint and ill without food, so she forced
+herself to nibble at the brown bread, which had been dipped in molasses,
+instead of being spread with butter, and its sweetness gave her a great
+thirst. Slipping down the stairs, she found the pail and dipper and got
+her drink, and it was with some surprise that she did this unreproved.
+
+However, a snore from the bed explained why. "Mrs. Denim" was asleep
+and the "long boy" was invisible. At the foot of the stairs, Dorothy
+hesitated. Wasn't this a chance to steal away and start for home? Once
+out of this house and on some road, she would meet people who would
+direct her. She had heard her father say, time and time again, that the
+world was full of kindness; and, though her present circumstances seemed
+to contradict this statement, she was anxious to believe it true. But,
+as she stood there debating whether she dare run away in the darkness or
+wait until daylight, the sleepless Tiger gave a vicious growl and
+bounded in from the shed where he had lain.
+
+That settled it. With a leap as swift as his own Dorothy sped back over
+the stairs and flung herself on the "shake-down" where she had been told
+to sleep; and again silence, broken only by its mistress's snores, fell
+upon this lonely cottage in the fields.
+
+Dorothy's own sleep was fitful. This low room under the eaves was close
+and warm. Her head ached strangely, and her throat was sore. At times
+she seemed burning up with fever, and the next instant found herself
+shaking with the cold. She roused, at length, from one disturbed nap to
+hear the sound of wheels creaking heavily over rough ground, and to see
+the attic dimly lighted.
+
+"Can it be morning already? Is that woman going to market and not taking
+me, after all I begged her so?" cried the girl aloud and, hurrying from
+the bed to the low window, looked out.
+
+It was the light of a late-rising moon that brightened the scene and
+there was slowly disappearing in the distance one of those curious,
+schooner-shaped vehicles which truck-farmers use: and with a vain belief
+that she could overtake it, Dorothy again rushed down the stairs and
+plump upon the mastiff crouched on the floor below, and evidently on
+guard.
+
+But, yawning and stretching his long limbs, there just then entered the
+shock-headed youth; and his "Pshaw!" Dorothy's "O-Oh!" and Tiger's growl
+made a trio of sounds in the silent house: to which he promptly added
+his question:
+
+"Huh? you awake?"
+
+"Yes, yes! But I want to go with that woman! Call off the dog--I must
+go--I _must_!"
+
+The boy did call the dog to him and laid his hand upon the creature's
+collar; then he said:
+
+"I'm glad of it."
+
+"Glad that I'm left, you--horrid thing!" cried Dorothy, trying to run
+past him and out of the door.
+
+But she was not permitted, even had her own strength not suddenly
+forsaken her: for the lad put out his free hand and stopped her.
+
+"Glad you're awake. So's we can talk," he said; and now releasing the
+mastiff, whom he bade: "Lie down!" he led her to the doorstep and made
+her sit down, with him beside her.
+
+"So you _can_ talk, if you want to! I thought you were tongue-tied!" she
+remarked, now realizing that the wagon had passed beyond reach, but
+thankful to have speech with anybody, even this silly-looking fellow.
+"What's your name?"
+
+"Jim. Jim Barlow. I hain't got no folks. All dead. I work for her," he
+answered, readily enough, and she understood that it was only from fear
+he had been so silent until now.
+
+"Are you afraid of her? Do you mean 'her' to be that dreadful woman?"
+
+"Yep. She ain't so bad. She's only queer, and she's scared herself of
+_him_. What's yourn?"
+
+"My name, you mean? Dorothy Chester. Who's 'him'? Has 'she' gone to
+market? Does she go every market day? To Lexington, or Hollins, or
+Richmond--which? What's her name?"
+
+Jim gasped. His experience of girls was limited, and he didn't know
+which of these many questions to answer first. He began with the last:
+and now that he had the chance he seemed as willing to talk as Dorothy
+was to listen. Apparently, neither of them now thought of the hour and
+its fitness for sleep: though Tiger had lain down before them on the
+flat stone step and was himself snoring, his need of vigilance past for
+the time being. Said the boy:
+
+"Stott. Mirandy Stott. Her man died. _He_ was a baby. She brung him
+up--good. She earned this hull truck-farm. She makes money. All for him
+an' he keeps her close. She sent him to school an' made a man of him.
+She can't read nor write. She makes her 'mark,' but he can, the
+first-ratest ever was. I can, too, some. I'm learnin' myself. I'm goin'
+to school some time, myself, after I leave her."
+
+"If you're going to school, I should think it was time you began. You're
+a big boy," said Dorothy. "Why don't you leave her now?"
+
+"Well--'cause. She--I come here when my folks died an' I hadn't no other
+place. She treats me decent, only makes me hold my tongue. She hates
+folks that talk. _He_ talks fast enough, though. So I--I've just stayed
+on, a-waitin' my chance. I get good grub an' she don't lick me. She
+likes me, I guess, next to him. She likes him better even than she likes
+money. I don't. I'm scared of him. So's she. She does what he says every
+time. That's why I said 'no milk.'"
+
+"Who is 'he'? Does he live here? What is about the milk?"
+
+There was nobody anywhere near them except the dog. By no possibility
+could anybody besides Dorothy hear the information next imparted: yet
+Jim stood up, peered in every direction, and when he again sat down
+resumed in a whisper:
+
+"You ain't the first one. 'Tother was a boy, real little. He cried all
+the time, first off. Then 'he' fetched some white powders an' she put
+'em in the kid's milk. After that he didn't cry no more but he slept
+most all the time. I seen her. I watched. I seen her put one in yourn. I
+liked you. I thought if you stayed you'd be comp'ny, if you was awake.
+That's why."
+
+"What became of the little boy?" asked Dorothy, also whispering, and
+frightened.
+
+"He took him away. I studied out 't he gets money that way. He wouldn't
+do it, 'less he did, seems if. I guess that's what he's plannin' 'bout
+you. I'll watch. You watch. Don't mad her an' she'll treat you good
+enough. 'Less--'less he should tell her different. Then I don't know."
+
+Dorothy sat silent for a long time. She was horrified to find her own
+suspicions verified by this other person though he seemed to be
+friendly; and her mind formed plan after plan of escape, only to reject
+each as impossible. Finally she asked:
+
+"Where is this house? How far from Baltimore?"
+
+"'Bout a dozen mile, more or less. Ain't no town or village nigh. That's
+why she bought it cheap, the land laying away off that way. So fur is
+the reason she has to have four mules, 'stead of two, for the
+truck-wagon. She makes money! All for him. Him an' money--that's the
+hull of her."
+
+"Say, Jim, do you like me? Really, as you said?" demanded Dorothy, after
+another period of confused thought, her brain seeming strangely dull and
+stupid, and a desire to lie down and rest greater, for the present, than
+that for freedom.
+
+"Course. I said so," he responded, promptly.
+
+"Will you help me get away from here, back to my home? Listen. You told
+me about yourself, I'll tell about myself:" and as simply as possible
+she did so. Her story fell in exactly with his own ideas, that money was
+to be extorted for her restoration to her family, but his promise to
+help her was not forthcoming: and when he did not reply, she
+impatiently exclaimed: "You won't help me! You horrid, hateful wretch!"
+
+"Ain't nuther. Hark. One thing I know if I don't know another. I won't
+lie for nobody, even her or him. If I can--_if I can_--I'll help you,
+but I ain't promisin' nothin' more. I'll watch out. You watch, an' _if I
+can_, without makin' it worse for you, I will. Now I'm goin' to bed. You
+best, too. She's found out you can work an' you'll have to. I've got
+plowin' to do. I sleep out yonder, in the shed. Tige, you stay where you
+be."
+
+Without further words, Jim retreated to his bunk in the shed and Dorothy
+to her attic. She was now conscious only of utter weariness and a
+racking pain through her whole body. She was, in fact, a very sick
+girl.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+DOROTHY'S ILLNESS
+
+
+"Measles."
+
+This was the one-word-verdict announced by Mrs. Stott's lips, as a few
+hours later, she stood beside the bed in the kitchen and sternly
+regarded the girl whom she had just brought from the attic and laid
+there. She didn't look pleased, and poor Dorothy had never felt so
+guilty in her life--nor so wretched. Yet she plucked up spirit enough to
+retort:
+
+"I didn't get them on purpose!"
+
+Then she covered her eyes with her hands and fell to weeping,
+remembering mother Martha's tenderness whenever she had "come down" with
+any childish disease. Remembering, too, how father John had teased her
+about being such a "catcher." "Such a sympathetic child nobody must have
+chicken pox, scarlatina, or even mumps, but you must share them! Well,
+a good thing to get through all your childish complaints in your
+childhood, and have done with them!" Almost she could hear his dear
+voice saying those very words and see the tender smile that belied their
+jest. Oh! to feel herself lifted once more in his strong arms! and to
+know that, no matter what was amiss with her, he never shrank from
+fondling or comforting her.
+
+This woman did shrink, yet how could it be from fear of infection to
+herself? Besides, she made Jim stay wholly outside in the shed; and thus
+the acquaintance begun during the night was suddenly suspended. Still,
+though there was real consternation in her mind, the farm mistress was
+not unkind. It may be that she felt the shortest way to a recovery was,
+also, the least expensive one to herself; and immediately she went to
+work upon her patient, after one more question:
+
+"Know anybody had 'em?"
+
+"Yes. Lots. Half my class," answered Dorothy, defiantly.
+
+"Hmm. Yes. Measles," commented Mrs. Stott, as she put on her sunbonnet
+and went out to rummage in her sage bed for fresh sprigs with which to
+make a tea. This she forced Dorothy to drink, scalding hot; next she
+covered her up with the heavy quilt, fastened the windows down, and
+ordered Tige to take up his post beside the bed. Then she commanded:
+"Stay in that bed. Get out, take cold, die. Not on my hands."
+
+"Suppose she doesn't care if I do die on the hands of somebody else!"
+reflected the patient, but said nothing aloud. Yet she watched the woman
+do a strange thing--go to the door at the foot of the attic stairs, lock
+it, and put the key in her pocket. Then she went out of the cottage and
+took Jim with her.
+
+Left alone with the dog, Dorothy C. had many sad thoughts; but soon
+bodily discomfort banished her more serious anxieties and she became
+wholly absorbed in efforts to find some spot on that hard couch where
+she might rest.
+
+"I'll get up! I can't bear this heat!" she cried, at last, and tossed
+the heavy covers from her. But no sooner had she done so than a heavy
+chill succeeded and she crept back again, shivering. Thus passed the
+morning and nobody came near; but at noon when the farm woman re-entered
+the kitchen Dorothy's piteous plea was for "Water! Water!" and she had
+become oblivious to almost all else save the terrible thirst.
+
+With the ignorance of her class the now really alarmed Mrs. Stott
+refused the comforting drink, only to see her charge sink back in a
+state of utter collapse; and, thereafter, for several days, the child
+realized little that went on about her. On the few occasions when she
+did rouse, she was so weakly patient that even the hard-natured woman
+who nursed her felt her own heart softened to a sincere pity. Curiously,
+too, Tiger became devoted to her. He would stand beside the bed and lick
+the wan hand that lay on the quilt, as if trying to express his
+sympathy; and his black, cool nose was grateful in her hot palm.
+
+Miranda Stott smiled grimly over this new friendship and, for the
+present, did not interfere with it. Dorothy couldn't get away then, even
+with the mastiff's connivance; but her hostess most heartily regretted
+that the girl had ever come. She had perplexities of her own, now, which
+this enforced guest and her illness greatly increased; and, as she
+gradually returned to strength, Dorothy often observed a deep frown on
+the woman's face and, in her whole bearing, a strange attitude of
+listening and of fear.
+
+One afternoon, when Miranda and Jim were hard at work in the field
+beyond the house and Dorothy still lay upon the bed, though for the
+first time dressed in her own clothes, which her nurse had found time to
+launder, the girl fancied that she heard a groan from somewhere.
+
+"Why, Tige, what's that?" she asked, half rising and listening intently.
+
+He answered by a thump of his tail on the boards and his head turned
+sidewise, with his ears pricked up. Evidently, he, too, had caught the
+sound, and was puzzled by it.
+
+A moment later, Dorothy was certain she heard a movement of somebody in
+the room overhead. There was but one, she knew, and it covered the
+entire width of the small house, for she had seen that during her brief
+occupation of it. Who could it be?
+
+Half-frightened and wholly curious she crossed from the bed to the door
+and looked out. Yes, the two other inmates of the cottage were still in
+the field, setting out celery plants, as she had heard them discussing
+at dinner.
+
+Tiger kept close beside her and, now that she was upon her feet again,
+seemed doubtful whether he were to remain her friend or again become her
+watchful enemy. She settled that question, however, by her loving pat on
+his head and the smile she gave him. His attentions to her, while she
+had lain so weak and helpless, had won her own affection and made her
+feel that she would never again be afraid of any dog.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Stott looked round and saw the girl in the doorway. Then
+she at once stood up, said something to Jim, and hurried to the house:
+demanding, as she reached it and with evident alarm:
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+Dorothy smiled. She had been so dependent on this woman that she had
+learned to really like her, and she answered brightly:
+
+"Nothing but fancies, I reckon! I thought, Tiger, too, thought, we heard
+somebody in the room upstairs. Then we came to the door and saw you were
+both outdoors, so there couldn't have been, could there? You never have
+burglars in this out-of-the-way place, do you? My darling mother Martha
+is always looking out for them and there's none ever came. Oh! I'm so
+glad to be well, almost well, once more. You'll let me go home to her,
+won't you? The very next time you go to market? I've been such a trouble
+I'm sure you'll be glad to be rid of me!" and Dorothy impulsively caught
+at the woman's hand and kissed it.
+
+For an instant Miranda Stott looked as if she could have been "knocked
+down with a feather." A kiss was as unknown and startling a thing to her
+as it was possible to imagine and it disconcerted her. But her answer
+was:
+
+"Yes, I'm glad too. I'll fetch a chair. Do you good."
+
+So she caught up a chair in one strong hand, leaving a muddy impress
+upon it; and, seeing this, covered her other hand with her apron, then
+thrust it under Dorothy's arm and so piloted her out to the celery
+patch. There were no trees allowed to grow in that utilitarian spot,
+except here and there a fruit tree; and under the sparse shade of a
+slender plum-sapling Dorothy was made to sit, while Jim went on with his
+dropping of tiny seedlings into holes filled with water. Mrs. Stott had
+gone again to the house and for a moment the boy and girl were free to
+talk, and all her own old interest in gardening returned. Besides, she
+wanted to learn all she could about it, so that she might be useful when
+she, at last, got to that home "in the country" where they were all
+going so soon.
+
+"Why do you do that, Jim?" she asked, intently watching his long fingers
+straighten the fine roots of the plants, then drop them into the
+prepared drill.
+
+"Why, to make 'em grow. 'Cause it's the way," he answered, surprised
+that anybody should ask such a foolish question.
+
+"Oh, I see. You drill a place with a wooden peg, then you pour water
+into it, then you plant the plant. Hmm. That's easy. I'll know how to
+make our celery grow, too."
+
+Jim looked up. "Where's your celery at?"
+
+"I reckon it's 'at' a seed store, yet. 'Cause we haven't got there. Say,
+Jim, were you afraid you'd 'catch' the measles? the reason why you
+didn't come into the kitchen at all."
+
+The lad laughed, slyly.
+
+"No, I wasn't. She was, though. 'Cause I've had 'em. She didn't know an'
+I didn't tell her. Stayin' out in the barn I had time to myself. I
+learned myself six more words. Hear me?"
+
+"Maybe I don't know them myself. Then I shouldn't know if you spelled
+them right or wrong," she cautiously answered. "If I had a book I'd hear
+them, gladly."
+
+Jim forgot that he was never expected to pause in any labor on hand and
+stood up: his thin body appearing to elongate indefinitely with surprise
+as he returned:
+
+"Why--but _you've_ been to school! Anybody could hear 'em off a book. I
+could hear 'em myself that way! Pshaw!" and into this mild expletive he
+put such a world of contempt that Dorothy's cheeks tingled.
+
+"Go ahead. Maybe I know them, but--you'd better work; Mrs. Stott is
+coming."
+
+The woman was, indeed, almost upon them and listening suspiciously to
+what they might be saying; and though there was scorn in her expression
+there was also relief. She couldn't understand what any farm hand needed
+of "book learning," but it sounded harmless enough when Jim pronounced
+the word: "Baker. B-a-k-e-r, baker," and the girl applauded with a clap
+of her hands and the exclamation: "Good! Right! Fine! Next!"
+
+Back on his knees again, the lad cast a sheepish glance toward his
+employer, as if asking her permission to continue. She did not forbid
+him, so he went on with: "Tinker. T-i-n, tin, k-e-r, ker, tinker."
+
+Again Dorothy commended him and was thankful that her own knowledge was
+sufficiently in advance of his that she should not be put to
+shame--"without a book." Also, by the time the ambitious youth had
+recited his new lesson of six words, in their entirety, both he and
+Dorothy were in a fine glow of enthusiasm. She, also, loved study and
+found it easy; and she longed with all her heart that she could put
+inside this Jim's head as much as she already learned.
+
+Then he was sent away to attend to the cattle for the night, to see that
+the market-wagon was again packed, and to put all utensils safely under
+cover. Because she could afford no waste, or thought she couldn't,
+Miranda Stott took better care of her farm implements than most farmers
+did; and if indoors there was much to be desired in the way of neatness,
+out-of-doors all was ship-shape and tidy. She finished the celery
+planting herself, and Dorothy wondered if there were people enough in
+the world to eat all those plants, after they were grown. Then Miranda
+took the chair from Dorothy and said:
+
+"Come, I want my bed again. I'll fix you outside." And as if some
+further explanation were needed, added: "It's healthier. You've got to
+get well, quick."
+
+"Oh! I want to. I am, almost, already. It is so good to be out of doors,
+and--are you going to take me home, to-night, when you drive in?"
+
+"No. Take letter. See?" answered this laconic woman, and led the girl
+into the barn and into what had been a small harness-room partitioned
+from one side. This had, evidently, been prepared for occupation and
+there was a suspicious air of wisdom on Jim's face, as Dorothy passed
+him, fastening the cattle-stanchions, betraying that this barn bedroom
+was a familiar place to him.
+
+"Why, it is a bedroom! If the bed is only a pile of hay! There are
+sheets on it and a pillow and a blanket. My! It smells so sweet and
+outdoor-sy!" cried Dorothy, thinking how much more restful such a couch
+would be than that hot feather bed in the kitchen, on which she had lain
+and tossed.
+
+"Yours. Stay here now. Jim'll bring your supper, and a chair. Fetch the
+paper, boy," she concluded, as he departed for the cellar under the
+cottage which was used for a dairy.
+
+Then Mrs. Stott went away, Tiger nestled up to her--as if offering his
+society--and the still weak girl dropped down on the sweet-smelling bed
+and felt almost happy, even though still refused a return home.
+
+"Well, it's something to be let to write to mother. I was so sick I
+haven't done it often; but if, as that Mr. Smith said, she knew I was
+safe she won't worry much. Not so very much. But, oh! How I want her,
+how I want her!"
+
+The farm-mistress herself brought back the chair and paper, and waited
+while Jim followed with the supper of bread and cold meat. He added a
+pitcher of water without bidding, and, supposing him to have finished,
+his mistress left the place. Indeed, she seemed so changed and
+preoccupied that Dorothy wondered and pitied. Her own sorrows were
+teaching her the divine gift of compassion, and though she was this
+woman's prisoner she longed to share and soothe the distress she was so
+evidently suffering.
+
+But she dared not. With a gesture of despair, Mrs. Stott suddenly threw
+both hands outward, then hurried away into the cottage, leaving the boy
+and girl staring after her. Even Jim did not tarry, though he longed to
+do so; yet he managed to whisper, in his own mysterious fashion:
+
+"It's _him_. He's got 'em. They're goin' hard--he's old."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE PLUMBER AND HIS GOSSIP
+
+
+The eagle-gate was open again. Mrs. Cecil had recovered from her
+illness, and was once more upon her broad piazza. This time she was not
+awaiting the arrival of the postman but of the plumber. The sudden heat
+of the southern city reminded her of her northern home in the highlands
+and she was anxious to remove there as soon as possible. But, with true
+Maryland housewifery, she must personally see to all the details of the
+annual flitting.
+
+In every room of the house pictures were being swathed in tarletan,
+chandeliers wrapped in the same stuff, carpets lifted, furniture put
+into freshly starched slips, and the entire interior protected to the
+utmost against the summer's dust and fading. Only one matter did not
+progress as rapidly as this impatient little mistress of the mansion
+felt it should. Nobody came at her instant command to examine the
+plumbing and see that it was in order for the season.
+
+"And water makes more trouble than even flies. Dinah, girl! Are you sure
+a message was sent to that man how I was waiting?"
+
+"Posi_tive_-ly sho, Miss Betty. Laws, honey, don't go worritin' yo'se'f
+an' you-all jus' done gettin' ovah yo' misery. He'll be comin' erlong,
+bime-by," comforted the maid, officiously folding a shawl about Mrs.
+Cecil's shoulders, and having the shawl instantly tossed aside, with a
+gesture of disgust.
+
+"O you girl! Do stop fussing about me. I'm nearly suffocated, already,
+in this awful heat, and I won't--I won't be wrapped up in flannel, like
+a mummy. You never had any sense, Dinah!"
+
+"Yas'm. I 'low dat's so, Miss Betty. Mebbe on account you-all nevah done
+beaten me ernough. Yas'm, but I doan 'pear to be acquainted wid er
+mummy, Miss Betty. What-all be dey like?" And with imperturbable good
+nature, Dinah picked up the shawl and again placed it around her lady,
+who permitted it to remain without further protest.
+
+"Hmm. No matter what they're like, Dinah. But you know, girl, you know
+as well as I do what trouble it made for us last year, when we went away
+and forgot to have the water turned off from the fountain, yonder. That
+care-taker we left--Oh! dear! Is there anybody in this world fit to be
+trusted!"
+
+Mrs. Cecil was not yet as strong as she professed to be, but her
+weakened nerves seemed to add strength to her temper. A red spot was
+already coming out upon her pale cheeks when there sauntered through the
+gateway a corpulent man, with a kit of plumber's tools over his
+shoulder. He slowly advanced to the steps, lifted his hat, and, bowing
+courteously, said:
+
+"Good-morning, Mrs. Cecil. Glad to see you able to enjoy the fine
+weather."
+
+"Fine weather! Morning! I should think it was afternoon--by the way
+you've kept me waiting. Didn't you get my message?"
+
+"Oh! yes, I did. A pickaninny about as big as a button brought it.
+What's to be done? The usual shutting-off, Ma'am?"
+
+"Everything's to be done, this year, and thoroughly. The water made no
+end of trouble last season, for half the faucets weren't looked after.
+As soon as we got home in the fall and turned it on in the bathroom, the
+whole place was flooded."
+
+"So, so? That was a pity. Yes, I remember. Well, it shall be gone over
+now, and I promise you nothing shall happen. By the way, all my men were
+out. Can one of your 'boys' wait on me and hand me my tools? I'm kind of
+stout and stooping bothers----"
+
+She didn't wait for him to finish his sentence. A small black boy was
+throwing stones at the sparrows on the lawn, and him she summoned by the
+absurd title of:
+
+"Methuselah Bonaparte Washington, come wait on this man!"
+
+The poor little wizened specimen of humanity, whose mighty name seemed
+to have stunted his growth, timidly approached. His great dark eyes
+were appealingly lifted, as if protesting against a forthcoming blow,
+and his face was as sad as that of a weary old man. The sight of him
+amused the plumber and called forth from his mistress the question:
+
+"Did anybody ever see such a woe-begone infant? He acts as if he had
+been thrashed within an inch of his life and on every day of it, but I
+know he's never been struck once. Been better for him if he had been,
+likely. He's Ephraim's grandchild and petted to death. His grandfather
+gave him his first name, Dinah his second, and as a graceful finish I
+tucked on the last. In real fact he's simply Brown."
+
+Mrs. Cecil had now quite recovered her usual cheerfulness, which nothing
+greatly affected except the failure of other people to instantly obey
+her commands. Besides, she was lonely. She didn't like the postman who
+had taken "Johnnie's" place, and was never on hand when he appeared,
+indeed had not been able until now. Almost all her personal friends were
+already out of town: and with her old desire to hear about her
+neighbors, as well as a determination to look after the plumber's work
+this time, she rose and followed him into the house and to the upper
+floor where his examination of the spigots began.
+
+Mr. Bruce had worked at Bellevieu ever since he was an apprentice and
+had not done so without learning something of its mistress's character.
+So, to please her love of gossip, he turned to where she had taken a
+chair to watch him and remarked:
+
+"Terrible sad thing about John Chester's girl."
+
+"'Girl'? Servant, do you mean?" instantly interested by the name of
+"Chester."
+
+"Servant? Oh! no. That's a luxury my neighbor never had, nor any of us
+in Brown Street, except when somebody was sick. We're work-a-day folks
+on my block, Mrs. Cecil."
+
+"Humph. What do you mean, then, by 'girl'?"
+
+"His adopted daughter, Dorothy C. Haven't you seen about her in the
+paper?" he continued, well pleased that he had found some topic
+interesting to his employer.
+
+"No. I've seen no papers. I've been ill, or that foolish doctor said I
+was, which amounts to the same thing. Anyway, I hardly ever do read the
+papers in the summer time. There's never anything in them--with
+everybody out of town, so."
+
+The plumber laughed, a trifle grimly; answering with some spirit:
+
+"Well, _everybody_ isn't away, when there are several hundred people
+swelter all the hot season right here in Baltimore."
+
+"Why don't they go away? Why do they 'swelter'--such a horrid word that
+is!" returned the lady, more to calm a strangely rising flutter of her
+own spirits than because there was sense in the words; which sounded so
+foolish to herself even, that she laughed. But her laugh was a nervous
+one and was instantly followed by the inquiry:
+
+"What--what happened to the child?"
+
+"Nobody knows. Kidnapped, I suppose, or murdered. All _is_ known--she
+was sent to the post-office to get a letter of her father's. He couldn't
+go himself, being lame and off to a hospital. Letter was one like the
+rest that came every month, and had come ever since Dorothy was left on
+the Chesters' doorstep. There was ten dollars in it, likely. She got the
+letter, was seen to go out of the office, and has never been seen since.
+No trace of her, either, though the post-office 'boys' clubbed together
+and offered a reward. A hundred dollars for any information sent,
+whether dead or alive. Do you want both these spigots to have new
+washers on? They need it, I think."
+
+"Spigots? Spigots?" repeated Mrs. Cecil, as if she did not comprehend;
+and, looking up, the plumber saw to his surprise and alarm that the lady
+was trembling and had turned very pale. He went to her and asked:
+
+"Feeling bad, Ma'am? Shall I call somebody?"
+
+She put her white hand to her head in a confused way and returned:
+
+"Bad? It's horrible! Horrible! A--_hundred_--_dollars_!"
+
+Mr. Bruce fancied she imagined the sum to be too large and was
+indignant. He reflected, also, that this was a childless old woman, and
+a rich one. In his experience he had found the wealthy also the most
+miserly, and nobody who had not a daughter of her own could understand
+what the loss of one might mean to a parent. His own beloved Mabel, ill
+at that moment with the measles, then epidemic--what would life be worth
+without her? Yet he knew, as well as anybody, that dear as his child
+was, Dorothy had been infinitely her superior in way of appearance,
+intelligence, even in affection. So much greater her loss then! and with
+a crispness that might easily hurt his business, he demanded:
+
+"Do you think a hundred dollars too much to pay for the life of a
+child?"
+
+"Too much? _Too--much!_"
+
+Again she was repeating his words, in that peculiar manner which might
+mean either contempt or admiration. In any case she was acting
+strangely. She had evidently lost all interest in the business on hand,
+yet there was no suggestion of feebleness in the step with which she now
+hurried out of the room, and the plumber looked after her in fresh
+amazement. These idle people! How hard they were to be understood! But,
+in any case, he was glad to be rid of the lady's presence. He could work
+so much faster and better by himself, and if there were any harm to
+Bellevieu, that coming season of its owner's absence, it should not be
+his fault. There shouldn't be an inch of water-pipe, nor a single
+faucet, that didn't have his critical inspection--and bill according!
+
+Mrs. Cecil's bell rang sharply, and Dinah hurried to answer it, that is,
+she fancied she was hurrying, though her mistress knew she really
+"dawdled" on the way and so informed "the creature" as she appeared.
+
+"Oh, you lazy thing! I must get a younger woman--I certainly must!
+Didn't you hear me ring?"
+
+"Yas'm, I sho done did. An' I come, ain't I? What's wantin', Miss Betty?
+Is yo' feelin' po'ly again, honey?"
+
+"Tell Ephraim to have the carriage round within five minutes--not one
+instant later. Then come back and get me my outdoor things."
+
+"Yas'm. Dat's so. I ain't no younger 'n I was yestiddy. But what for
+you-all done want Ephraim fotch de kerridge? Yo' know, Miss Betty, I
+ain't gwine let yo' out ridin', yet a spell. Yas'm."
+
+"Will _you_ tell him or must _I_? Between you and that wretched doctor
+I've been kept in this terrible ignorance. I'll never forgive you,
+never, for shutting me up in my bedroom, unknowing all these days, until
+now it's too late! Too late!" cried Mrs. Cecil, strangely excited and
+hastily tossing off her morning gown to replace it by another fit for
+the street.
+
+Dinah was unperturbed. She understood that her mistress would have her
+will, but felt that it was a foolish one and should not be encouraged by
+any enthusiasm on her own part. With an exasperating calmness she lifted
+the discarded garment and carried it to a closet. From this with equal
+calmness, and an annoying deliberation, she brought her mistress's
+outside wraps and a black silk gown, such as she usually wore when
+driving out. But she purposely made the mistake of offering a winter
+one, heavily lined. She hoped that the "fuss" of dressing would change
+Mrs. Cecil's plans, for it was really far too warm to go out then. Later
+in the day, after the sun had set, she would help the scheme most
+willingly.
+
+But the gentlewoman was now gaining control of her nerves and fully
+understood that it was over-affection, rather than disobedience, which
+made Dinah act so provokingly. With one of her kindest smiles, she took
+the heavy gown back to the closet herself, and secured the lighter one
+suitable to the day. Then she explained:
+
+"It's no silly whim, my girl, that sends me down town on such a hot
+morning. Something serious has happened. Something which has just come
+to my knowledge and that I must try to set right at once. If you love
+me--help me, not hinder. You are to go with me, also. So, hurry and put
+on a fresh apron and cap. I can finish by myself."
+
+"Yas'm. But yo' knows, honey, you-all only done lef yo' bed a speck o'
+time. Cayn't yo' business be put off, Miss Betty?"
+
+"Not a minute. Not one single minute longer than necessary to take me to
+Baltimore Street. Hurry. Fix your own self. Don't bother about me."
+
+"Yes'm. I'se gwine hu'y. But dat yere plumber gempleman--what erbout
+leabin' him, to go rummagin' 'round, puttin' new fixin's in whe' ol'
+ones do? Ain't you-all done bettah wait a little spell, an' 'tend to
+him, yo'se'f? Hey, Miss Betty?"
+
+Dinah had touched upon her mistress's own regret, but a regret swallowed
+by so much of a calamity that she put it aside and merely pointed to the
+door, as if further speech were useless.
+
+It was more than five minutes before Ephraim drove his well-groomed
+horses out of the eagle-gate, but it was in a very short time for one
+who moved as slowly as he, and he turned his head for orders, with
+expectation of: "The Park."
+
+Quite to the contrary the word was:
+
+"Baltimore Street. Kidder & Kidder's."
+
+"Hey? 'D you say Eutaw Place, er Moun' Ver'n Avenoo?" he inquired.
+
+"There, boy. You're not half so deaf as you pretend. Drive to Kidder &
+Kidder's, and do it at once," she repeated with decision.
+
+"Yas'm. But does yo' know, Miss Betty, erbout a man was sunstroke
+yestiddy, Baltimo' Street way? It sutenly is pow'ful wa'm."
+
+Mrs. Cecil vouchsafed no further parley with her too devoted coachman,
+though Dinah took it upon herself to administer one reproof which her
+fellow servant coolly ignored.
+
+However, he had seen that in Mrs. Cecil's eye which brooked no
+disobedience, and so he guided his bays southward through the city, by
+wide thoroughfares and narrow, past crowding wagons and jangling street
+cars, till he turned into the densely packed street his lady had
+designated.
+
+"Kidder & Kidder" were her men of business. He knew that. There had been
+no time, for years upon years, when a firm of this same name had not
+served the owners of Bellevieu. The first lawyer of that race had handed
+down the business to his heirs, as the first tenant of the rich estate
+had willed that to his. But it was now more common for the lady of the
+mansion to send for her advisers to visit her, than for her to visit
+them; and that there was something unusual in her present business both
+her old servitors realized.
+
+It was something worth while to see how the elder Mr. Kidder, himself an
+octogenarian, retaining an almost youthful vigor, rose and salaamed, as
+this beautiful old gentlewoman, followed by her gray-haired maid in
+spotless attire, entered his rather dingy office. How the old-time
+courtesies were exchanged between these remnants of an earlier society,
+when brusqueness was considered ill-bred and suavity the mark of good
+blood.
+
+A few such greetings past, and the old lawyer conducted his
+distinguished client into an inner room, exclusively his own, leaving
+Dinah to wait without, and whence the pair soon emerged; the lady
+urging: "You will kindly attend to it at once, please;" and he
+answering, with equal earnestness: "Immediately, Madam."
+
+Then he escorted her to her carriage and stood bareheaded while she
+entered it: each courteously saluting the other as it rolled away, and
+he returning to his office with a look of anxiety on his fine face, as
+there was one of relief on hers.
+
+"Well, I've done the best I could--now!" she exclaimed, after a time.
+"I've never entrusted any matter to Kidder & Kidder that did not end
+satisfactorily. That old firm is a rock in the midst of this shifting
+modernity!"
+
+To which Dinah, not comprehending, replied with her usual:
+
+"Yas'm. I spec' dat's so, honey, Miss Betty."
+
+That evening both Ephraim and the maid, sitting under their own back
+porch, exchanged speculations concerning their lady's morning trip, and
+her subsequent quietude during the whole day.
+
+"I 'low 'twas anudder will, our Miss Betty, she done get made. Dat's
+what dem lawyer gentlemen is most inginerally for. How many dem wills
+has she had writ, a'ready, Dinah?" queried Ephraim.
+
+"Huh! I doan' know. Erbout fifty sixty, I reckon. She will her prop'ty
+off so many times, dey won' be nottin lef to will, bimeby. 'Twas dat,
+though, Ephraim, I 'low, too. Mebbe--Does dey put erbout makin' wills in
+de papahs, boy?"
+
+"I doan' know. Likely. Why, Dinah?"
+
+"Cayse, warn't no res' twel Miss Betty done sent yo' Methusalem out to
+de drug-sto' fo' to buy de ebenin' one. Spec' she was lookin' had Massa
+Kiddah done got it printed right. Doan' know what she want o' papahs,
+when she ain't looked at one this long spell, scusin 'twas to find out
+dat."
+
+But neither of them guessed that Mrs. Cecil's interest lay in a
+large-typed advertisement, offering five hundred dollars reward for the
+return of the lost, humble little Dorothy C. Nor that this sum would
+have been twice as great, had not the worldly wisdom of Kidder & Kidder
+been larger than that of their aristocratic client.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE BITER BIT
+
+
+Even healthy Dorothy had rarely slept as soundly as she did that night,
+there in the airy barn on her bed of hay; and she had lain down as soon
+as she had finished her brief letter to her mother--which like those
+that had gone before it would travel no further than Mrs. Stott's range
+fire.
+
+She woke in the morning to find it much later than usual when she was
+roused and that it was only Jim who was calling her. He did so softly,
+yet with evident excitement; and as soon as possible the girl got out of
+her hostess's too big nightgown and into her own clothes, still fresh
+from yesterday's laundering. Then she opened the door and ran to the
+trough of water, used for the cattle; and after a liberal ducking of her
+curly head, shook herself dry--for want of a better towel. Afterwards,
+to the barnyard, calling eagerly:
+
+"Jim! O Jim!"
+
+"Here I be. Don't holler. I'll come, soon's I take the milk in. I
+thought you'd sleep till doomsday!" he replied, still in a low tone, yet
+with less caution than he usually displayed.
+
+She sat down on the barn door sill and waited. She had a strong
+reluctance to enter the cottage which was tightly closed and where she
+had so greatly suffered. So that it was with real delight she saw the
+lad was bringing a plate with him, as he returned, and guessed it to be
+her breakfast.
+
+"Oh! how nice! I'll love to picnic out here, but how does it happen?
+and, Jim, what makes you so sober? Is--is she sick? Didn't she go to
+market last night? Tell--talk--why can't you? I want to hear everything,
+every single thing. I didn't know--I went to sleep--What a funny wagon
+it is, anyway!"
+
+The big vehicle stood in the yard before them, its shafts resting on the
+ground; and the four mules used to draw it were feeding in the pasture
+beyond. Dorothy thought it wonderful how anybody, most of all a woman,
+could drive four mules, as Miranda did, without reins to guide them, yet
+make them so obedient to her will. The wagon, also, was a curiosity to
+her, though she had often seen similar ones on the streets at home.
+
+It was a large affair, rising several feet upwards from its box, its
+ends projecting; forward over the dashboard and, at the rear, backward
+beyond a step and a row of chicken crates. The top was of canvas, that
+had once been white, and the tall sides were half of a brick-red, half
+of bright blue. Its capacity was enormous, and so prolific was the
+truck-farm that it was always well filled when it made its city trips.
+
+"Have you had your breakfast, too, Jim?" asked Dorothy, rather
+critically inspecting hers, which did not at all suggest the dainty
+cooking of mother Martha.
+
+"Yep. All I wanted. He--I reckon he's powerful sick."
+
+"Can't you sit down by me for company? I feel so good this morning. I'd
+like somebody to talk to."
+
+"A minute, maybe. I can make it up later."
+
+"Jim Barlow, I think you're a splendid boy. I never saw anybody so
+faithful to such a horrid old woman. You never waste a bit of time, you
+only study when you ought to sleep, and yet--yet I didn't like you at
+all when I first saw you. When I get home and my father gets well, I'm
+going to tell him or the minister all about you, and ask them to get you
+a better place. To send you to school, or do anything you like."
+
+The lad flushed with pleasure, and vainly tried to keep the bare feet of
+which he was so conscious out of sight in the hay upon the barn floor,
+where, for this brief moment, he dared to linger. Dorothy saw the
+movement and laughingly thrust forth her own pink toes, fresh from an
+ablution in the trough, and from which she had had to permanently
+discard her ragged ties.
+
+"That's nothing. We're both the same. Anyway, a barefooted boy came to
+be president! Think of that. President James Barlow, of the United
+States! I salute you, Excellency, and request the honor of your sharing
+my brown-bread-and-treacle!"
+
+Then she laughed, as she had not done for many days; from the sheer
+delight of life and the beautiful world around her. For it was
+beautiful, that first June day, despite the ugly cottage which blotted
+the landscape and the sordid implements of labor all about.
+
+To his own amazement, the orphan farm boy laughed with her, as he did
+not know he could, as he surely never had before. This girl's coming had
+opened a new world to him. She had commended his ambition and made light
+of the difficulties in way of its achievement. She had assured him that
+"learning is easy as easy!" and she knew such a lot! She didn't scorn
+him because he was uncouth and ill-clad; and--Well, at that moment he
+was distinctly glad that she was barefooted like himself.
+
+Recklessly forgetting that he was "using the time I was hired for"--the
+hire being board and lodging, only--he dropped down on the step and
+watched as she ate, so daintily that he could think of nothing but the
+sparrows on the ground. And as she ate she also talked; which in itself
+was wonderful. For he--Well, he couldn't talk and eat at the same time.
+It was an accomplishment far beyond him, one that had never been taught
+at the table of Miranda Stott. She not only chattered away but she made
+him chatter, too, now, in this unwonted freedom from his mistress's eye.
+
+"Who's 'him'? Why, he's _hern_," he explained. "Her son, you know."
+
+"No, I don't know. I know nothing--except that I'm a stolen little girl
+who's lost everybody, everything in the world she loves!" cried poor
+Dorothy, suddenly overcome in the midst of her gayety by the thought of
+her own sorrows.
+
+Jim had never known girls and their ways, but he had the innate
+masculine dread of tears, and by the look of Dorothy's brown eyes he saw
+that tears portended. To change the subject, he answered her question
+definitely:
+
+"He's the man what brought you here. _That's_ him. He's _hern_."
+
+"That man--_Smith_? He here? In the cottage yonder? Then--_good-bye_!"
+
+Reckless of the sharp stones and stubble of the barnyard that so cruelly
+hurt her tender feet, the girl was up and away; only to find herself
+rudely pulled back again and to hear Jim's familiar:
+
+"Pshaw! He can't harm you none. He's dreadful sick. He come----"
+
+Here the lad paused for some time, pondering in his too honest heart how
+much of his employer's affairs he had the right to make known, even to
+this Dorothy. Then having decided that she already knew so much there
+could be no danger in her learning more, he went on:
+
+"He come one night whilst you was so sick. She fetched him in the wagon
+an', 'cause you was in her bed, she put him up-attic, in yourn. Ain't
+but them two rooms, you know, an' the shed where I did sleep but don't
+now. I don't know what he'd done but--somethin' 't made him scared of
+stayin' in the city. He's been that way afore an' come out here, 'to
+rest' he called it. 'To hide,' seems if, to me. 'Cause he'd never go out
+door, till me or his ma'd look round to see if anybody was comin'.
+Nobody does come. Never did, only them he fetched, or her did."
+
+Again a shudder of fear and repulsion swept over Dorothy, and again she
+would have run away but Jim's next words detained her.
+
+"He can't move, hair ner hide. He's ketched them measles offen you an'
+he's terrible bad. She thinks he's goin' to die an', queer, but now she
+don't care for nothin' else. Her sun's riz an' sot in him, an' he's
+treated her mean. Leastways, _I_ call it mean. She don't. She'd 'bout
+lie down on the floor an' let him tramp all over her, if he'd wanted to.
+She's goin' round, doin' things inside there, but she's clean forgot how
+it's berry-day agin an' the crop wastin'.
+
+"So 'm _I_ wastin' time, an' she claims that's money. I didn't know,
+afore, whuther 'twas him er money she liked best, but now I guess it's
+him. If you was a mind you could help pick berries for her. _If you was
+a mind_," said Jim, rising and shouldering a crate of cups, then
+starting for the strawberry patch.
+
+Dorothy C. looked after him with some contempt. He seemed a lad of
+mighty little spirit. To work like a slave even when there was nobody to
+domineer over him! Indeed, she fancied that he was even more diligent in
+business now than he had been before. It was very strange.
+
+"It's all strange. Life's so strange, too. They say 'Providence leads.'
+Well, it seems a queer sort of leading that I should be sent to do an
+errand and then that I should be so silly as to go with a man my folks
+didn't know--and get stolen. That's what I am, now: just a stolen child,
+of no use to anybody. Why? Why, too, should my father John be let to get
+an 'ataxious' something in his legs, so he had to lose his place? And
+mother Martha have to give up her pretty house she loves so, and go away
+off to the country where she doesn't know anybody? Why should I come
+here to this old truck-farm and a horrid woman and a horrider man and
+get the measles and give them to him? Was it just to learn how to plant
+things? I wondered about that the time I watched them do the celery.
+Well, I could learn so much out of books. I needn't be kidnapped to do
+it! And why on earth should I feel so sorry now for that woman in there?
+Just 'cause she loves her son, who's the wickedest man I ever heard of.
+And that Jim boy! I--I believe I'm going to hate him! Just positively
+hate. He makes me feel so--so little and mean. Just as if I hadn't a
+right to sit on this old barn door sill and do nothing but eat my
+breakfast. A horrid breakfast, too, to match the horrid woman and the
+horrid house and the horrider man, and the horridest-of-all-boys, Jim!"
+
+With that Dorothy's cogitations came to a sudden end. No poor
+insignificant farm lad should put her to shame, in the matter of
+conscience, or generosity, or honor, or any other of those disagreeable
+high-sounding things! She'd show him! and she'd pick those old
+strawberries, if her back did get hot and the sun make her head ache! No
+such creature as that Jim Barlow should make her "feel all
+wiggley-woggley inside," as she had used to feel when she had been real
+small and disobeyed mother Martha.
+
+Why she shouldn't run away and try to find her home, now that Mrs. Stott
+was out of sight, puzzled even herself. Yet, for some reason, she dared
+not. She had no idea of the direction in which that home lay, and there
+was no house visible anywhere, strain her eyes as she might to discover
+one at which she might ask protection.
+
+The truck-farm seemed to be away off, "in the middle of nowhere." A
+crooked lane ran northward from it and Dorothy knew that this must
+strike a road--somewhere. But dear old Baltimore must be miles and miles
+distant; since Mrs. Stott spent so many hours in going to and from it
+with her produce, and in her bare feet the child felt she couldn't make
+the journey and endure. More than that, down deep in her heart was a
+keen resentment of the fact that, despite her own letters written and
+sent by the farm-woman, mother Martha had made no response beyond that
+verbal one conveyed by "Mr. Smith," that everything was "all right" and
+that, in the prospect of gaining her "fortune" Dorothy was wise to
+submit to some unpleasant things for the present.
+
+Then would arise that alternate belief that she had been "kidnapped,"
+and instantly following would come the conviction that she might be much
+worse dealt with if she attempted escape. If "Mr. Smith" was wicked
+enough to steal her, as she in this mood believed, he would stop at
+nothing which would save himself from discovery and punishment.
+
+Jim Barlow was tormented by none of these shifting moods. His nature was
+simple and held to belief in but two things--right and wrong. He must do
+the one and avoid the other. This necessity was born in him and he could
+not have discussed it in words, or even thoughts, as did the imaginative
+Dorothy C. the questions that perplexed her.
+
+At that particular moment he knew that the "right" for him was to save
+his employer's berries from decay, even though this meant no reward for
+him save a tired back and a crust of bread for dinner. But rewards
+didn't matter. Jim _had_ to do his duty. He couldn't help it.
+
+Now Dorothy watching from the barn doorway saw this and thought that
+"duty" was "the hatefullest word in the English language. It always
+means something a body dislikes!" Yet, so strong is example, that almost
+before she knew it the little girl had picked her gingerly way over the
+rough ground to the lad's side and had petulantly exclaimed:
+
+"Give me some cups then! I hate it! I hate here! I--I want to go home!
+But--_give me some cups_!"
+
+Jim didn't even notice her petulance. He handed her a pile of "empties"
+and went on swiftly gathering the berries without even raising his head,
+though one long hand pointed to the row upon which she should begin. He
+was pondering how these same berries were to be marketed; whether the
+anxious woman in the cottage loved money so well she would leave a
+possibly dying son to sell them for herself; or if she would trust the
+business to him. The last possibility sent a thrill of pride through
+him. If she would! If she only would, he would drive the hardest
+bargains for her, he would bring home more of the beloved cash than she
+expected, he would prove himself altogether worthy of trust. He knew the
+way, she had taken him with her once, at a Christmas time, when she
+needed his help in the extra handling. It had been a revelation to
+him--that wonderful Christmas market; with all its southern richness and
+plenitude, its beautifully decorated stalls, its forests of trees and
+mountains of red-berried holly, and over and above all the gay good
+nature of every human creature thronging the merry place.
+
+That had been Jim's one glimpse, one bit of knowledge what Christmas
+meant, and though he knew that this was a far different season, the
+glamour of his first "marketing" still hung over the place where he had
+been so briefly happy. Why, even Miranda Stott, moved by the universal
+good will of that day, had spent a whole cent, a fresh, new, good cent,
+upon a tin whistle, and given it to her helper. She had done more; she
+had allowed him to blow upon it, on their long ride home, to the
+astonishment of the mules and his own intense, if silly, delight.
+Suddenly, into these happy memories and hopes, broke Dorothy's voice:
+
+"A 'penny for your thoughts,' Sobersides! And see? since you made me
+pick berries I made up my mind to beat you. I have. I've filled five
+cups while you've been filling three. Your hands are so big, I s'pose,
+you can't help being slow!"
+
+Unmoved by her gibes, which he quite failed to understand, he rose and
+took her cups from her. He had reached the end of his row and must pass
+to another, else he might not have wasted so much time! But he was glad
+of her swiftness and felt that she would almost make up for Mrs. Stott's
+absence from the field; and encouragingly remarked:
+
+"Take the next row, beyond mine, when you get that one done."
+
+"Huh! A case of 'virtue' and its 'own reward'! The more I work the
+longer I may work, eh? Generous soul! But, I don't work for nothing, as
+you do. Behold, I take my pay as I go!" and so saying, Dorothy plumped a
+magnificent berry into her mouth--as far as it would go! For the fruit
+was so large it easily made more than the proverbial "two bites."
+
+Jim laughed. He couldn't help it. She looked so pretty and so innocent,
+though he--well, he wouldn't eat a single berry that was not given to
+him. He didn't even warn her not to eat more, yet, somehow, she no
+longer cared to do so.
+
+Dorothy never forgot that busy day. Miranda did not appear, except at
+rare intervals, to give some advice but not once to reprove. Her coarse,
+masculine face was so sad, so empty of that greed which had been its
+chief blemish, that tender-hearted Dorothy was moved to lay her hand on
+the mother's arm and say:
+
+"I'm so sorry for you. Sorry I gave anybody you love the measles."
+
+The market-woman looked at the child half-seeing, half-comforted by this
+sympathy, till the last words, apparently just penetrating to her
+consciousness, she rudely shook off the little hand with a look of
+bitter hatred. Then she went back into the house, and for the rest of
+that day the boy and girl were left to themselves.
+
+At noon, which he told by the sun, Jim made a little fire in one corner
+of the field and roasted some potatoes under it. Then he fixed a
+crotched stick above the blaze, hung on a tin pail and boiled some eggs;
+and these with some bread made their dinner. Their supper was the same,
+and both had appetites to give the food a relish.
+
+At dusk Miranda came out, ordered Dorothy into the harness room and to
+bed, and this time she closed the door upon her, turning the wooden
+button which fastened it upon the outside. Indignation made no
+difference--Dorothy's wishes were ignored as if they had not been
+expressed, and the farm-woman's manner was far harsher than it had been
+at any time. So harsh, indeed, that the girl was terribly frightened and
+wondered if she were going to be punished in some dreadful way for her
+unconscious infection of "Mr. Smith."
+
+The hope that Jim might be sent to market in place of his mistress and
+that he would take her with him died in her heart. She did not realize,
+till she heard her prison door slam shut, how deeply she had cherished
+this hope; even this belief that she was passing her last day on the
+truck-farm; and when the climax of her disappointment was reached by
+hearing Tiger ordered to lie down outside her door and "Watch!" she
+threw herself on the hay-bed and sobbed herself to sleep.
+
+"H-hsst!"
+
+Dorothy sat up, freshly alarmed by this warning sound.
+
+"Why! It's daylight! I must have slept all night! That's Jim--and
+nothing's happened! I'm alive, I'm well, I feel fine!"
+
+Delighted surprise at this state of things promptly succeeded her first
+alarm, and when to the "H-hsst!" there followed the fumbling of somebody
+with the door's button, she sprang to her feet and asked:
+
+"That you, Jim? Time to get up, already?"
+
+She had not undressed, and hurried to push the door open, but could not
+imagine what was the matter with the "long boy." He had a newspaper in
+his hand which he wildly waved above his head, then held at arm's length
+the better to study, while between times, he executed a crazy dance, his
+bare feet making no sound upon the hay-littered floor.
+
+A second later, Dorothy had rushed at him, seized the paper from his
+hand, recognized that it was father John's favorite daily, and found her
+own gaze startled by the sentence that had caught his:
+
+FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS REWARD!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE FLIGHT IN THE NIGHT
+
+
+"What does it mean? What does it mean!" cried the astonished girl,
+scarcely believing the words that were printed so plainly yet seemed so
+impossible. "It's my own name. I'm Dorothy Chester, called Dorothy C.
+It's about me--I see it's about me--there couldn't be another right here
+in Baltimore--and money--all that money--who? Where? What? O long boy,
+talk, talk, tell!"
+
+He was really as excited as she. For once he forgot caution and was
+indifferent to the opinion of his mistress, whether that were good or
+ill. He could not read very well. He had had to study that advertisement
+slowly before he could make out even its sentences, and to do a deal of
+thinking before he could actually comprehend their meaning. But he knew
+that it concerned his new friend even more than himself, and laying his
+hand upon her shoulder to steady her while he answered, began:
+
+"I did go to market. She went, too. She had to get some things for him,
+an' soon's the stores was open. I sold the stuff. Some of the things she
+bought was wrapped up and a pair o' shoes was in this here. I ain't got
+books. I want 'em. I keep every scrap o' paper ever gets this way, an' I
+learn out o' them. She fired _this_ away, for cattle-beddin'--'cause she
+can't read herself--an' 'twould save a speck of straw. I called it
+wicked waste, myself, so I hid it. Then whilst I was milkin' I begun to
+study it out. Thinks I, mebbe I can learn a hull new word afore I get
+through; an' I hit fust off on that there 'Dorothy,' 'cause 'twas yourn
+an' had so many 'O's' it looked easy. I read that, then I read the
+next--some more--I forgot to milk--I thought you'd never wake
+up--an'--Pshaw! Pshaw--_pshaw_--PSHAW!!"
+
+Only by that word could the excited lad begin to express his fierce
+emotions; while for a brief time Dorothy was silent, trying to
+understand. Finally, and almost calmly, she said:
+
+"I don't know a thing about this printed stuff except that it must mean
+me. I can't guess who would pay money for me, for just a little girl;
+though maybe father John would if he had it. But he hadn't. He was poor,
+he said, real poor; even if we did live so nice and cozy. He hadn't
+anything but what he earned and out of that he had to buy the food
+and clothes and pay on the house. I don't believe he ever had
+five hundred dollars in all his life, at one time. Think of it!
+Five--whole--hundred--dollars! Fifty--thousand--cents! My!"
+
+Jim regarded her with awe. Such erudition as this almost took away his
+breath. That anybody, a little girl so much younger than himself, could
+"reckon" figures at such lightning speed was away beyond his dreams.
+More than that it convinced him that now she must be saved, restored to
+people who valued her at such enormous price. His simple rule of "right
+or wrong" resolved itself into two questions: Should he be loyal to his
+employer and help to keep this valuable Dorothy on the truck-farm, and
+show its owner how to get all that money? Because it wasn't she
+herself, who had brought the girl here, and if she took Dorothy back the
+reward would be hers. He reasoned that out to the end.
+
+On the other hand: If Dorothy belonged to somebody who wanted her so
+much, shouldn't he help to restore her to that person and save them--or
+him--the money?
+
+It was a knotty problem; one almost too profound for the mind of this
+honest farm-boy. He would do right, he must; but--which was "the
+rightest right of them two"?
+
+Dorothy settled it. Dorothy who was the most concerned in the affair and
+had so much more wisdom than he. She had ceased to wonder at the strange
+advertisement and had now decided how to turn it to the best account.
+She was almost positively glad for all her misadventures and suffering
+since it could result in infinite good to another; and that other none
+but the "long boy" she had laughed at in the beginning. With a little
+joyful clap of her hands, she exclaimed:
+
+"I know how! I know how! You have _been_--you can find the way--you
+must help me back to Baltimore, to my folks, to these Kidder-Kiddery men
+that offer all that money. I never heard of them. I can't imagine why
+they want to pay so many good dollars for a girl, just a girl they can't
+even know. I wouldn't trust them. I wouldn't go into anybody's 'office'
+again for all the world. But you take me, show me the way to the city
+and I'll show you the way to Baltimore Street. I know it. I know it
+quite well. I've been there on a street car. Then I'll stand outside
+while you go in and ask for the money. If they won't give it to you,
+bring them to the street and show them--ME! I ought to call myself in
+capital letters, same as I'm printed there, if I'm so expensive as that!
+Think of it, Jim Barlow! If you get that five hundred dollars you can
+live somewhere else and study all the time and go to college and be
+President, just exactly as I told you! Oh! Oh! O--Oh! Let's start now,
+this minute! I can't wait, I cannot!"
+
+Jim listened intently. With a slowly growing wonder and delight on his
+homely features, with a widening of his blue eyes, and--at last with a
+burst of tears. He was ashamed of them, instantly, but he couldn't have
+helped shedding them at that supreme moment any more than he could have
+helped breathing. It was as if the girl's words had opened wide the
+gates of Paradise--the Paradise of Knowledge--and let him look within.
+
+Then the cottage door opened and Miranda Stott looked forth. The sight
+of her restored him to the present and the practical side of life. The
+five hundred dollars wouldn't be his, of course. That notion of
+Dorothy's was as wild as--as the flight of that chicken-hawk sailing
+over the barnyard. Nor could he start at once, as she demanded. He had
+lived here for years and he still owed his employer allegiance--to a
+certain extent. Less than ever would he leave her alone with all this
+farm work on hand as well as a sick son. He must find somebody to take
+his place. Then he would help Dorothy back to town, but they'd have to
+be careful.
+
+Dorothy, also, had seen Mrs. Stott at the door, but now had a strange
+indifference to her. How could anybody hurt a girl who was worth five
+hundred dollars to somebody? She stopped Jim as he was moving away and
+demanded:
+
+"Are you ready? Can we start now--when she's shut the door?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+Her face saddened and he hastened to add:
+
+"S-ssh! Don't say nothin'. We'll go. I've got to think it over--how. An'
+to hunt somebody to work. But--we'll go--_we'll go_!"
+
+He hastily turned away from the sight of her reproachful eyes nor did he
+blame her for the angry: "You mean boy!" which she hurled after him as
+he went into the house. But he made a chance soon to talk with her,
+unheard by Miranda, and to lay his plans before her.
+
+"I know a feller'll come, I guess. He was in the county-farm an' jobs
+round, somewheres. He don't live nowheres. I seen him loafin' round them
+woods, yonder, yesterday, an' I'll try find him. If I do I'll coax him
+to stay an' help whilst I'm gone. Noonin' I'll leave you get the grub,
+whilst I seek him. Go 'long, just's if nothin' was different an' I'll
+help you."
+
+Dorothy had made sundry "starts" already, but had feared to go all
+alone. If Jim would only go with her and knew the way it would be all
+right, but the day seemed interminable; and when her friend disappeared
+at noon she was so frightened that she retreated to her barn bedroom and
+shut the door upon herself. She could not lock it, for its one fastening
+was on the outside; but she called Tiger to come inside with her and
+felt a sort of protection in his company, sharing her chunk of brown
+bread with him, even giving him by far the larger portion.
+
+Then Jim came back and, missing her, guessed where to find her.
+
+"Open the door a minute. Lemme in."
+
+"Oh! I'm so glad you've come! It seems--awful. That house so tight shut;
+that man in it; that dreadful woman that looked at me so--so angry! I
+want to get away, I must--_I must_!"
+
+Tired with his breathless run to the woods and back, the youth dropped
+down on the floor to recover himself; then informed her:
+
+"I found him. He was fishin' in the run. He'll fish all day if he's let.
+He'll come. He ain't got all his buttons----"
+
+"Wh-a-t?"
+
+"His buttons. His wits. He ain't so smart as some of us, but he can hoe
+an' 'tend cattle first-rate. We'll go, to-night, soon's it's dark. I'll
+tie some rags on your feet so's they won't get sore an' give out. I'll
+have to muzzle Tige, or, if I can, I'll give him some them powders in
+his milk she'd ha' used to make you dopy, if you'd give trouble. She
+won't miss us first off, an' when she does--Why, we'll be gone. Be you a
+good, free traveler?"
+
+"Why, I don't know. I never traveled," answered Dorothy, perplexed. If
+they were going to walk, or run, as his talk about trying on rags
+suggested, how could they travel? To her "travel" meant a journey by
+boat or rail, and surely neither of these conveniences were visible.
+
+"Pshaw! Fer a smart girl you're the biggest fool!" returned the
+farm-boy testily. He was tired, body and brain; he was trying to make
+safe plans for her comfort, yet she couldn't understand plain English.
+"What I mean is--can you walk, hoof it, good? Course, we can't go no
+other way. If you can we'll strike 'cross lots--the nighest. If you
+can't we'll have to take to the road, on the chance of bein' took up."
+
+"Oh! I'll walk, I'll travel, I'll 'hoof' it, fast as you want me to.
+Till I die and give out; but don't, don't go anywhere near the danger of
+being took up!" cried Dorothy, pleading meekly.
+
+Again these two young Americans had failed to understand each other's
+speech. To the city-reared girl, being "taken up" meant being arrested
+by the police; to the country-grown boy it was giving a ride to a
+pedestrian by some passing vehicle. He looked at her a moment and let
+the matter drop. Then he rose, advising:
+
+"You better go to work an' not waste time. To-morrow's Sunday. We
+gen'ally pick all day, so's to be ready for Monday mornin' market. Stuff
+fetches the best prices a-Monday. I'd like to leave her in good shape
+agin I didn't get back. But I'll take you. You can trust me."
+
+And as she saw him return to that endless weeding in the garden, Dorothy
+knew that she could do so; and that it was his simple devotion to the
+"duty" she disliked that made him so reliable.
+
+"But oh! what a day this is! Will it never, never end? Do you know, Jim
+Barlow, that it seems longer than all the days put together since I saw
+my mother?"
+
+"Yep. I know. I've been that way. Once--once I went to--a--circus! Once
+I got to go!" answered the lad, carefully storing the baskets of early
+pease he had picked in the depths of the schooner. He made the statement
+with bated breath, remembering the supreme felicity of the event. "She
+went. She'd had big prices an' felt good. She told me 'twas a-comin' an'
+I could; and--Pshaw! I never seen a week so long in all my born days,
+never! An' when it got to the last one of all--time just natchally drug!
+I know. But we'll go. An' say, Dorothy. The faster you pick an' pack an'
+pull weeds, the shorter the day'll be. That's the onliest way I ever
+lived through that last one afore that circus," comforted Jim, himself
+toiling almost breathlessly, in order to leave Miranda in "as good
+shape" as he could. He knew how she would miss him, and that she had
+depended upon him as firmly as upon herself.
+
+But all days come to an end, even ones weighted with expectations such
+as Dorothy's; and at nightfall Jim announced that they might stop work.
+Leaving the girl to wait in the harness-room he went to the house,
+secured a whole loaf of bread and two of the sleeping powders he had
+seen administered to the crying boy, and a bundle of rags, with some
+string. In carrying the milk to the dairy he had reserved a basin full;
+and into this his first business it was to drop the powders. Then he
+called Tige to drink the milk, and the always hungry animal greedily
+obeyed.
+
+"That seems dreadful, Jim! Suppose the stuff kills him? He isn't to
+blame and I should hate terribly to really hurt him," cried Dorothy,
+frightened by the deed to which she had eagerly consented but now
+regretted--too late.
+
+Jim sniffed. He supposed that all girls must be changeable. This one
+veered from one opinion to another in a most trying way and the only
+thing he could do was to pay no attention to her whimsies. He had
+carefully explained the action of these powders and their harmlessness
+and wasn't going to do it the second time. Besides, he was delighted to
+find them promptly affecting the mastiff, who might have hindered their
+flight. So he merely motioned Dorothy to sit down on the door sill, at
+the rear of the barn and out of sight from the cottage, then bade her:
+
+"Hold up your foot. I'll fix 'em. Then we'll go. We can eat on the road.
+Ain't so dark as I wish it was but she's asleep--right on the kitchen
+floor--an' it's our chance. She's slept that way ever since he was so
+bad. He don't 'pear to know nothin' now. I'm sorry for her."
+
+"Why, that's real ingenious! That's almost like a regular shoe! And a
+good deal better than a shoe too small!" laughed the girl, wild with
+pleasure that her helper had, at last, begun to do something toward
+their trip. She found, too, that with these rude sandals tied on she
+could walk much faster than in her tender bare feet, although Jim
+cautioned:
+
+"Ain't nothin' but rags an' paper. Remember that. Ain't no call to go
+scuffin' 'em out, needless."
+
+Whereupon Dorothy ceased to dance and prance, as she had been doing to
+work off some of her excitement, and became quite as sober as he could
+desire. Also, though she had been so anxious to start, it came with
+suddenness when he said:
+
+"Ready. Come!"
+
+She glanced at Tiger, who very closely resembled a dead dog as he lay
+beside the basin on the floor, then toward the house. Utter silence
+everywhere; save for the fretful fussing of some hens, settling to
+roost, and a low rumble of thunder from the west where it now looked
+quite dark enough to satisfy even Jim Barlow.
+
+They struck off across lots, past the teeming garden which the active
+young farmer really loved and which he felt that he would never see
+again. He held Dorothy's hand in one of his, while the other carried a
+stick and bundle thrown over his shoulder. The bundle was a bit of old
+cloth, containing his beloved spelling book, the newspaper with the
+alluring advertisement, and their loaf of bread. Nothing else; and thus
+equipped, this uncouth, modern knight errant turned his back on all he
+had ever known for the sake of a helpless girl, and with as true a
+chivalry as ever filled the breast of ancient man-at-arms.
+
+For some distance neither spoke. The hearts of both were beating high
+with excitement and some fear; but after a time, when no call had
+followed them and they had reached the little run where Jim had sought
+the half-wit, the farm-boy said:
+
+"Best eat our grub, now. Can't travel fast on empty stummicks. Mebbe
+your feet need fixin' over, too. I brung some more rags in my jumper,
+case them give out. Here's a good place to set. We can get a drink out
+the brook."
+
+"I'd rather go on. I'm not a bit hungry!" pleaded Dorothy, who already
+felt as if her mother's arms were folding about her and who longed to
+make this fancy prove the dear reality.
+
+"I be, then. I didn't eat no noonin', recollec'?" returned Jim, and
+dropped down on the bank with a sigh.
+
+"Oh! I'm sorry I forgot. Of course we'll stop--just as long as you
+want," returned the girl, with keen self-reproach, and sat down beside
+him. As she did so, there came a fresh rumble from the west and the pale
+light which had guided them so far was suddenly obscured, so that she
+cried out in fear: "There's going to be a fearful gust! We shall be wet
+through!"
+
+"Reckon we will; here's a chunk o' bread," answered the matter-of-fact
+youth, reaching through the gloom to place the "chunk" on her lap, and,
+to his surprise, to find her wringing her hands as if in fright or pain.
+"Why, tell me what ails you now."
+
+"No-nothing--only--ouch! Don't--don't worry--it's--Ooo-oh!"
+
+Despite her fierce will to the contrary Dorothy could not restrain a
+bitter groan. She had not meant to hinder their flight by any breakdown
+on her own part. She had intended to "travel," to "hoof it" just as
+rapidly and as "freely" as her guide could; but something had happened
+just now, though her feet had hurt her almost from the first moment of
+their walk; but this was worse, and reaching down she felt what she
+could not see--one end of a great thorn or splinter projecting from the
+ball of her foot.
+
+"What's the matter, I say?" demanded Jim, quite fiercely for him. He had
+no fear but that her pluck would be equal to any strain put upon it, but
+of her physical endurance he wasn't so sure.
+
+"It's a thorn--or a splinter--and oh! it hurts! put your hand
+here--feel!" Yet as she guided his fingers to that queer thing sticking
+from her wonderful "sandals" she winced and almost screamed. "I guess
+you mustn't touch it. I can't bear it. I've run something in and I
+daren't pull it out--I can't--it's awful!"
+
+Indeed the agony was making her feel faint and queer and the boy felt,
+rather than saw, that she swayed where she sat as if she were about to
+sink down on the ground.
+
+Here was plainly another case of "duty" and an unpleasant one, from
+which the lad shrank. He would much rather have borne any amount of pain
+himself than have inflicted more on this forlorn little girl who
+depended upon him; but all he said was: "Pshaw!" as setting his teeth,
+he suddenly gripped her foot and--in an instant the great bramble was
+out!
+
+It was heroic treatment and Dorothy screamed; then promptly fainted
+away. When she came to herself she was dripping with water from the
+brook, with which Jim had drenched her--not knowing what better to do;
+and from a sudden downpour of rain which came almost unhindered through
+the branches overhead.
+
+"Pshaw! I'd oughter 'a' took to the road. I hadn't no business to try
+this way, though 'tis nigher!"
+
+That was the first thing Dorothy realized; the next that her foot was
+aching horribly, but not in that sickening way it had before; and lastly
+that, as the only means of keeping it dry, Jim had thrust their loaf
+back into the bundle and was sitting upon that! A lightning flash
+revealed this to her, but did not prepare her for her companion's next
+words:
+
+"We got to go back!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+A GOOD SAMARITAN
+
+
+"Never! Never! I'd rather die right here in the woods!" cried Dorothy,
+aghast. "Dead or alive that man shall never get me in his power again.
+But I'm not afraid. God is good to orphan children--He will take care of
+me--He will, He will!"
+
+In some way she managed to get upon her knees and the next flash of
+lightning showed her thus, with her face uplifted and her hands clasped,
+while an agony of supplication was in her wide brown eyes.
+
+Religion was an unknown thing to poor Jim Barlow, whose simple integrity
+was of nature, not culture. His Sundays had been merely days on which to
+toil a little harder against the morrow's market, nor had he ever been
+inside a church. But something in the sight of this child kneeling
+there in the night and the storm touched an unknown chord of his soul,
+and before he knew it he was kneeling beside her. Not to pray, as she
+did, but to hold her firmly, to comfort her by his human touch for this
+fresh terror he did not understand.
+
+After a moment she turned and sat down again and said just as firmly as
+before, but quite calmly now:
+
+"If you want to go back you may. I shall not. God will take care of me,
+even if you leave me all alone. I've asked Him."
+
+"Leave you alone? I hadn't thunk of it. What you mean?"
+
+"You said we must go back. I shall not."
+
+"_Pshaw!_" It was several seconds before honest Jim could say anything
+more, but those five letters held a world of meaning. Finally, he was
+able to add to them and to help her seat herself again on the ground,
+and he is scarcely to be blamed if he did this with some force. From his
+point of view Dorothy was stupid. She should have known that he never
+gave up doing that to which he had set his hand. He had promised to get
+her back to Baltimore, some way, and he would keep his promise. With
+another, rather milder "Pshaw!" he explained:
+
+"Go back an' try the road, silly! These cross-cuts are dreadful
+onsartain. Full o' blackberry bushes an' thorny stuff would hurt a
+tougher foot 'an yourn. More'n that: shoes made out o' rags an' paper
+ain't much good in a rain storm. We'll get back to the road. Even that's
+a long way off, but it's over open medders an' it's so dark nobody won't
+see us er stop us. It ain't rainin' nigh so hard now. You eat a bite,
+then we'll try agin."
+
+"Oh! forgive me, Jim Barlow, for thinking you would be so mean. I'll
+trust you now, no matter what happens, but I don't want to eat. I
+can't--yet."
+
+"Does your foot hurt bad?"
+
+"Not--not--so very!"
+
+"Well, hold on. I'll break that there sapling off an' make you a stick
+to help walk on. 'Tother hand you can lean on my shoulder. Now, soon's
+you say the word we'll go. Not the way we come, but another, slatin'er.
+Try?"
+
+They stood up: Dorothy with more pain than she would acknowledge, but
+putting a brave face on the matter, and Jim more anxious than he had
+ever been about anybody in his life. He didn't speculate as to why all
+these strange things had come into his life, as Dorothy had done, but he
+accepted them as simple facts of which he must make the best. The best
+he could make of this present situation was to get this lamed girl to a
+public highway as soon as he could. Even that might be deserted now, on
+a rainy Saturday night, but he hoped for some help there.
+
+"Now--come."
+
+Dorothy made a valiant effort and managed to get ahead a few inches.
+Then, half-laughing, half-crying, she explained:
+
+"I can't manage it. I can't walk on one foot and drag the other.
+I--Can't you hide me here, somewhere, and go on by yourself, then send
+somebody back after me? Would it be safe, do you think?"
+
+"No, 'twouldn't, an' I shan't. If you can't walk--then hop!"
+
+So, resting one hand on his shoulder and the other upon the stick he had
+broken, the girl--hopped! It was very awkward, very painful, and very
+slow; but it was only the slowness that mattered. This was exasperating
+to one whose blood was in a ferment of anxiety to be at her journey's
+end. Even Jim lost patience after they had gone some distance and
+stopped short, saying, with a sigh:
+
+"This won't do. I'll have to haul you. You're limpin' worse all the
+time, an' it'd take a month o' Sundays to travel a mile this gait. Now,
+whilst I stoop down, you reach up an' put your arms 'round my neck. Make
+yourself light's you can, an' we'll try it that way a spell. When I gin
+out we'll wait an' rest. Now ketch hold!"
+
+He took her staff in one hand, stooped his back like a bow, and Dorothy
+clasped her arms about his shoulders. Then he straightened himself and
+her feet swung clear of the ground. Fortunately, she was slight and he
+strong, and for another little while they proceeded quite rapidly. Also,
+he knew perfectly well the direction he ought to take, even in this
+darkness of night; and he was accustomed to walking in the fields. Then,
+suddenly, he had to stop.
+
+"Guess we better rest a spell. 'Twon't do to get _all_ tuckered out
+first off;" and with that he dumped her on the wet grass, very much as
+he might a sack of meal. Then he sat down himself, while she merrily
+cried:
+
+"That's the first time I've been carried pick-a-back since I was ever so
+little! How splendid and strong you are! Do you suppose we have come
+half-way yet?"
+
+"Half-way? Pshaw! We ain't got no furder 'an the first half-mile, if so
+fur. My sake, girls are orful silly, ain't they?"
+
+Dorothy's temper flamed. She felt she had been very brave, for her foot
+had swollen rapidly and pained her greatly, yet she had suppressed every
+groan and had made "herself as light as she could," according to Jim's
+command. Now she would have none of his help. No matter what she
+suffered she would go on by herself. Then some evil thing tempted her to
+ask:
+
+"Do you know where you're going, Jim Barlow, anyway?"
+
+And he retorted with equal spirit:
+
+"D' you s'pose I'd haul such a heavy creatur' 's you so fur on a wrong
+road?"
+
+After which little interchange of amenities, the pair crawled forward
+again and came at last to a hedge of honeysuckle bordering a wide lane.
+The fragrance brought back to Dorothy's memory her own one, carefully
+tended vine in the little garden on Brown Street, and sent a desolate
+feeling through her heart. Sent repentant tears, also, to her eyes and
+made her reach her hand out toward her companion, with a fresh apology:
+
+"Jim, I've got to say 'forgive me,' again and--I do say it--yet I hate
+it. You've been so good and--Smell the honeysuckle! My darling father
+John told me there were quantities of it growing wild all through
+Maryland, but I never half-believed it before. It makes me cry!"
+
+"Set down an' cry, then, if you want to. I just as lief's you would. I'm
+tired."
+
+This concession had the remarkable effect of banishing tears from
+Dorothy's eyes. She had tottered along on one foot and the tips of the
+toes of the other, till the injured one had become seriously strained
+and pained her so that rest she must, whether he were willing or not. It
+was comparatively dry on the further side the hedge, and the vines
+themselves, so closely interwoven, made a comfortable support for their
+tired backs. As she leaned against it, the girl's sense of humor made
+her exclaim:
+
+"That's the funniest thing! I felt I must cry my eyes out, yet when you
+said 'go ahead and do it,' every tear dried up! But, I'm sleepy. Do you
+suppose we dare go to sleep for a few minutes."
+
+"Pshaw! I'm sleepy, too. An' I'm goin'--s'posin' er no s'posin'."
+
+After that, there was a long silence under the honeysuckle hedge. A
+second shower, longer and more violent than the first, arose, and dashed
+its cool drops on the faces of these young sleepers, but they knew
+nothing of that. The storm cleared and the late moon came out and shone
+upon them, yet still they did not stir. It was not until the sun itself
+sent its hot, summer rays across their closed lids that Jim awoke and
+saw a man standing beside them in the lane and staring at Dorothy with
+the keenest attention.
+
+Instantly the lad's fear was alert. He had not spoken of it to Dorothy,
+but he knew that many others besides himself must have seen that
+wonderful advertisement in the daily paper; and though he was not wise
+enough to also know that every wandering child would suggest to somebody
+the chance of earning that five hundred, he had made up his mind that
+nobody should earn it. Dorothy should be restored without price, and he
+had promised her his should be the task. There was that about this
+staring stranger which made him throw a protecting arm over the still
+sleeping Dorothy and say:
+
+"Well! Think you'll know us when you see us agin?"
+
+"Come, come, boy! keep a civil tongue in your head. Who is that little
+girl?"
+
+"None o' your business."
+
+"Hold on. I'll make it my business, and lively, too, if you don't look
+out. Where'd you two come from?"
+
+"Where we was last at."
+
+"You scallawag! Your very impudence proves you're up to some mischief,
+but I'll ask you once more, and don't you dare give me a lying answer:
+Where did you two come from?"
+
+"Norphan asylum," said Jim, patting Dorothy's hand to quiet her alarm;
+for she had, also, waked and was frightened by the stranger, as well as
+by that strange numbness all through her body and the terrible pain in
+her foot.
+
+"Girl, what's your name?"
+
+Dorothy did not answer. She did not appear even to hear, but with a
+stupid expression turned her head about on the honeysuckle branches and
+again closed her eyes. Part of this dullness was real, part was feigned.
+She felt very ill and, anyway, there was Jim. Let him do what talking
+was necessary.
+
+Again the stranger demanded:
+
+"Who is that girl? Where did you get her? Is she deaf and dumb--or just
+a plain everyday fool?"
+
+"Dunno, stranger. Give it up," said Jim, at the same time managing to
+nudge Dorothy unperceived, by way of hint that that suggested
+deaf-and-dumbness might serve them well.
+
+The man who was quizzing them so sharply had been riding a spirited
+horse, which now began to prance about the lane in a dangerous way, and
+for the moment distracted his attention from the children. Indeed, in
+order to quiet the animal he had to mount and race it up and down for a
+time, though he by no means intended to leave that place until he had
+satisfied himself whether this were or were not the missing little girl,
+of whose disappearance all the papers were now so full. If it were and
+five hundred dollars depended on her rescue from that country
+bumpkin--he was the man for the rescue! Being none other than a suburban
+"constable" with a small salary, as well as a local horse jockey,
+exercising a rich gentleman's new hunter--also for hire.
+
+As he galloped past them, to and fro, Dorothy grew more and more
+frightened and ill. Her long sleep in her water-soaked clothing, added
+to the pain in her foot and her lack of food, affected her seriously;
+and a bed with warm blankets and hot drinks was what she needed just
+then. Finally, when to the thud of the racer's feet there also sounded
+the rumble of approaching wheels, she felt that her doom was sealed and
+let her tears stream freely over her wan, dirt-streaked cheeks.
+
+Jim, also, felt a shiver of fear steal through his long limbs, and
+instinctively drew his young charge closer to him, resolved to protect
+her to the last. But, as the wheels drew nearer, there was mingled with
+their rumble the notes of a good old hymn, and presently both wheels and
+music came to an abrupt halt before the hedge and the forlorn pair
+half-hidden in it.
+
+"Why, bless my heart! Younkers, where'd you hail from? and why should a
+pretty little girl be crying on the first Sunday morning in June? When
+everything else in God's dear world is fairly laughing with joy! Why,
+honey, little one--what--what--what!"
+
+It was a tiny, very rickety gig from which the singer had leaped with
+the agility of youth, though his head was almost white, and green
+goggles covered his faded old eyes; and he had not finished speaking
+before he had climbed upon the bank to the hedge and had put his
+fatherly arms around the sobbing Dorothy.
+
+She opened her own eyes long enough to see that benignant, grizzled
+countenance close to her, and--in an instant her arms had clasped about
+the stranger's neck! With the unerring instinct of childhood she knew a
+friend at first glance, and she clung to this man as if she would never
+let him go, while the astonished Jim looked on, fairly gasping for the
+breath that he at last emitted in the one word: "P-S-H-A-W!!" Here was
+another phase of that changeable creature--girl! To cry her eyes out at
+sight of one stranger and to fling herself headlong into the arms of
+another--not half so good looking!
+
+Leaning back among the vines and coolly folding his arms, the farm-boy
+resigned himself to whatever might come next. He had most carefully
+planned all their trip "home" and not a single detail of it had followed
+his plan. "Give it up!" he remarked for the second time, and was
+immediately answered by the old man:
+
+"No, you don't. Nobody decent ever does give up in this sunshiny world
+of God's. That isn't what He put us in it for, but to keep right on
+jogging along, shedding happiness, loving Him, being content. How did
+this poor little darling ever hurt her tiny foot like that?"
+
+Already the old fellow had Dorothy on his lap and was examining with
+careful tenderness the angry-looking wound she had received, while her
+curly head rested as contentedly against his breast as if it had been
+that of father John himself.
+
+She opened her lips to tell, but she was too tired. Indeed, if she had
+felt equal to the labor of it she would have poured forth her whole
+story then and there. But it is doubtful if he would have tarried to
+hear it, for he rose at once, carrying the girl in his arms so gently,
+so lovingly, that a great wave of happiness swept over her, and she
+flashed her own old beautiful smile into his goggles:
+
+"Oh! you good man. God sent you, didn't He?"
+
+"Sure, sure! To you, one of His lambs! Come, son. We'll be going! This
+poor little foot must be attended to right away, and this is my 'busy
+day.' On my way to preach at an early service, for the poor colored folk
+who can't come later. Then to another one for scattered white folks--the
+rest of the day at the hospitals--Why, bless my heart! If my Sundays
+were fifty times as long I could fill every minute of them with the
+Master's work!"
+
+More nimbly than Jim could have done, the happy old man scrambled back
+into the gig, never once releasing his hold of Dorothy, gathered up his
+reins, bade the lad "Hang on behind, some way!" chirruped to his sleepy
+nag, and drove on singing out of the lane.
+
+    "Bringing in the sheaves! Bringing in the sheaves!
+     We will come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves!"
+
+Once, in a pause of his song, Dorothy reached up and stroked his cheek,
+saying:
+
+"You're taking me home, aren't you!"
+
+"Sure, sure! To my home, first, to your home next--if I can;--to your
+heavenly home, when the Master wills."
+
+His home came soon; a tiny, one-storied building with but two rooms, a
+kitchen and bedroom; smaller, even, than the cottage of Miranda Stott,
+but far neater and cozier. At its door the old minister sprang from the
+gig and directed Jim to leave it where it stood.
+
+"Old Nan won't move unless she's bid. I'll fix up this little one's
+wound while you get breakfast. Happens I haven't had my own, yet, and I
+know you haven't had yours. The coffee's in that canister on the shelf.
+The fire's ready to the match--and the match right here! There's boiled
+ham in that cupboard, potatoes to fry, in the ice-box in the shed, bread
+and butter in the cellar, as well as a pail of milk. Show yourself a man
+by setting the table, my boy. How glad I am to have company! I try to
+have somebody most the time; but I don't often get them so easily as
+I've gotten you two. Young folks, besides; you ought to eat lots! which
+will give me extra appetite--not that I need it, oh no! A fine
+digestion is another of my Father's good gifts to me; and do you know,
+laddie, that I rarely have to buy the food to feed my guests? Always
+comes in of its own accord, seem's if. Of the Lord's accord, more truly.
+He's not the One to bid you feed the hungry and give drink to the
+thirsty without providing the means. 'Old St. John's' is known as a free
+'hotel' in all this countryside, and my children--In His Name I bid you
+welcome to it this glorious Sunday morning!"
+
+Dorothy was on the bed in the inner room, and all the time he was
+talking her jolly host was also attending to her as well as to Jim. She
+was better already, simply from the cheer of his speech, and that sense
+of perfect security that had come to her so promptly. Such a well-stored
+little house as that was! From somewhere, out came a bundle of bandages
+already prepared, a box of soothing ointment, and a basin of soft warm
+water to bathe the jagged wound.
+
+"Learned to be a sort of doctor, too, you see. Never know when a body
+may come limping up, needing care--just as you have. Tear my bandages
+evenings when it rains. Never have to buy the muslin or linen--neighbors
+all save it for me. Boy--what's your name?--just turn those potatoes
+again. The secret of nice fried potatoes is to keep them stirred till
+every bit is yellow-browned, even and tasty. It's a sin, the way some
+people cook; spoiling the good gifts of the Lord by their own
+carelessness. Put into everything you do--milking, plowing, cooking,
+preaching, praying, the very best that's in you! That's the way to get
+at the core of life, at its deepest-down happiness and content. That's
+good! I reckon you're the right sort, only want a little training. The
+way you slice that ham shows you're thorough. Now, watch me settle this
+coffee and then--for all Thy Mercies, Lord, we humbly thank Thee."
+
+Such a breakfast as that had never been spread before Jim Barlow.
+Dorothy had enjoyed many fine ones in her own happy home, but even she
+found this something out of common; and from the chair of state in which
+she had been placed at the head of the little table, beamed satisfaction
+on the others while she poured their coffee, as deftly as if she were,
+indeed, the "little woman" the old man called her.
+
+When the meal was over, said he:
+
+"Lad, I'm a busy man, you seem to be an idle fellow. I'll leave you to
+wash the dishes and put away the food. Carefully, as you found it,
+against the need of the next comer. My name is Daniel St. John. My pride
+it is to bear the name of that disciple Jesus loved. Good-bye. Tarry
+here as long or as short a time as you will. I never lock the door.
+Good-bye. If we do not meet again on earth, I shall look for you in
+Heaven."
+
+He was already passing out into the sunshine but Dorothy cried after
+him:
+
+"One moment, please. You have told us your name, but we haven't told you
+ours. Yes, Jim, I shall tell! It's right and this dear man will help us,
+not hinder. So you needn't hold up your finger that way. Mr. St. John, I
+thank you, we both thank you, more than we can say. That boy's name is
+James Barlow. He's an orphan. I'm an orphan, too. My name is----"
+
+"Thank you for confidence. If my day didn't belong to the Master, not to
+myself, I'd drive you home in the gig. If you stay here till to-morrow I
+will do so, anyway. Now, I am late about His business, and must be off
+at once!"
+
+With that he jumped into his gig, shook the reins over old Nan's back,
+who went ambling down the road to the music of "Throw out the life
+line!" sung to the surrounding hills and dales as only old Daniel St.
+John could sing it.
+
+For some hours the two wanderers rested in that sunny little home, both
+most reluctant to leave it, and Dorothy's own wish now being to remain
+until the Monday when, as he said, their new acquaintance would be at
+liberty to take them to the city. Jim was not so anxious to remain. It
+was not until his companion's entreaties grew more persistent, that he
+told her the truth:
+
+"Dorothy, we _can't_ stay. We mustn't. I dassent. You was scared o' that
+feller on horseback. Well, he's been ridin' by here two, three times,
+an' he's fetched another feller along. Them men mean bad to us. I've
+studied out 't they ain't sure the old man ain't to home. If they was
+they wouldn't wait to ketch us long. The first man, he seen us come with
+St. John. He must. He couldn't have rid so fur he didn't. Well, I feel's
+if _he_ ketched us, 'twould be out the fryin'-pan into the fire. We
+couldn't get shet o' him--till he got that five hundred dollars. We've
+got to go on, someway, somewheres. An'--go _now_, whilst they've rid
+back agin, out o' sight."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+A SUNDAY DRIVE
+
+
+Mrs. Cecil was extremely restless. She had been so ever since her visit
+to Kidder & Kidder. She would roam from room to room of her great house,
+staying long in none, finding fault with everybody and everything, in a
+manner most unusual. For though she was sharp of speech, at times, the
+times were fortunately at intervals, not incessant; but now she had
+altered and her dependents felt it to be for the worse.
+
+"I declar' my soul, Ephraim, looks lak ouah Miss Betty done got somepin'
+on her min', de way she ca'y on erbout nottin er tall. Jus' cayse cook,
+she done put sallyratus in dem biscuits, stidder raisin' 'em yeas' cake
+way, she done 'most flung 'em offen de table. All de time fussin' wid
+some us boys an' girls, erbout some fault er nother; an' I lay out it's
+her own min' is all corrodin' wid wickedness. What's yo' 'pinion now,
+Ephraim, boy?"
+
+The old colored man pushed away his plate and scratched his white wool.
+He was loyalty itself to his Miss Betty, but in his heart he agreed with
+Dinah that the house of Calvert had fallen upon uncomfortable times.
+Fortunately, he was saved the trouble of a reply, by the sharp ringing
+of the stable bell.
+
+"What now!" cried Dinah, hurrying away.
+
+Dinner had been served as usual. As usual Mrs. Cecil had attended
+service at old St. Paul's, but had felt herself defrauded because the
+rector had invited a stranger to occupy the pulpit: "when he knows as
+well as I do that this is my last Sunday in Baltimore, before the
+autumn, and should have paid me the respect of preaching himself," she
+had confided to her next-pew neighbor. Whereupon that other old member
+had felt herself also aggrieved, and had left the edifice for her
+carriage in a most unchristian state of mind. As usual, the one
+church-going and the stately dinner over, the household had settled into
+a Sunday somnolence. Ephraim had a comfortable lounge in the
+carriage-house loft and was ready for his afternoon nap. Cook was
+already asleep, in her kitchen rocker; and having finished her own
+grumble, Dinah was about to follow the universal custom, and seek repose
+in the little waiting-room beyond her mistress's boudoir, while that
+lady enjoyed the same within. For that stable bell to ring at this
+unwonted hour was enough to startle both old servants, and to send Dinah
+speeding to answer it.
+
+"Bless yo' heart, Miss Betty, did you-all done ring dat bell? Or did dat
+Methusalem done it, fo' mischievousness?"
+
+"I rang it, Dinah. Tell Ephraim to harness his horses. I'm going out for
+a drive."
+
+Dinah delayed to obey. Drive on Sunday? Such a thing was unheard of,
+except on the rare occasion of some intimate friend being desperately
+ill. Instantly the maid's thought ran over the list of her mistress's
+intimates, but could find none who was ailing, or hardly one who was
+still in town.
+
+"Lawd, honey, Miss Betty, who-all's sick?"
+
+"Nobody, you foolish girl. Can't I stir off these grounds unless somebody
+is ill? I'm going to drive. I've no need to tell you, you've no right to
+ask me--but one must humor imbecility! _I--am--going--to--drive!_ I--I'm
+not sleeping as well as usual, and I need the air. Now, get my things, and
+don't stare."
+
+"Yas'm. Co'se. Yas'm. But year me, Miss Betty Somerset, if yo' po' maw
+was er libin' you-all wouldn't get to go no ridin' on a Sunday ebenin',
+jus' if yo' didn' know no diff'rent. Lak dem po' no-'count folks what
+doan' b'long to good famblies. You-all may go, whuther er no, cayse yo'
+does most inginerally take yo' own way. But I owes it to yo' maw to
+recommind you-all o' yo' plain, Christian duty."
+
+With that Dinah felt she had relieved herself of all obligation either
+to duty or tradition, and proceeded with great dignity to bring out her
+lady's handsome wrap and hat: while down deep in that old gentlewoman's
+breast fluttered a feeling of actual guilt. It was a lifelong habit she
+was about to break; a habit that had been the law of her parents in the
+days of her youth. When one was a privileged person of leisure, who
+could take her outings on any week-day, she should pay strictest honor
+to the Sabbath.
+
+However, Miss Betty had made up her mind to go and Miss Betty went. Not
+only thus endangering her own soul but those of Dinah and Ephraim as
+well; and once well out of city limits and the possible observation of
+friends, the affair began to have for all three the sweet flavor of
+stolen fruit.
+
+"It's delightful. It's such a perfect day. 'Twould be more sinful to
+waste it indoors, asleep, than to be out here on the highway, passing
+through such loveliness. We'll--_We'll come again_, some other Sunday,
+Dinah," observed Mrs. Cecil, when they had already traveled some few
+miles.
+
+But it was Dinah's hour for sleep, and having been prevented from
+indulging herself at home in a proper place and condition, she saw no
+reason why she shouldn't nod here and now. The carriage was full as
+comfortable as her own easy-chair, and she had been ordered to ride, not
+to stay awake.
+
+So, finding her remarks unheeded, Mrs. Cecil set herself to studying the
+landscape; and she found this so soothing to her tired nerves that when
+the coachman asked if he should turn about, she indignantly answered:
+
+"No. Time for that when I give the order. It's my carriage, as I often
+have to remind you, Ephraim."
+
+"Yas'm. Dat's so, Miss Betty. But dese yere hosses, dey ain' much usen
+to trabelin' so fur, cos' erspecially not inginerally on a _Sunday_."
+
+"Do them good, boy, do them good. They're so fat they can hardly trot a
+rod before they're winded. When we get into the country, and they have
+to climb up and down those hills of the highlands, they'll lose some of
+their bulk. They're a sight now. I'm fairly ashamed of them. Touch them
+up, boy, touch them up. See if they can travel at all. They had a good
+deal of spirit when I bought them, but you'd ruin any team you shook
+the reins over, Ephraim. Touch them up!"
+
+Ephraim groaned, but obeyed; and, for a brief distance, the bays did
+trot fairly well, as if there had come to their equine minds a memory of
+that past when they had been young and frisky. Then they settled down
+again to their ordinary jog, quite unlike their mistress's mood, which
+grew more and more excited and gay the longer she trespassed upon her
+old-time habits.
+
+Nobody, who loved nature at all, could resist the influence of that
+golden summer afternoon--"evening" as southerners call it. To Mrs. Cecil
+as to little Dorothy, hours before, came the sweet, suggestive odor of
+honeysuckle; that brought back old memories, touched to tenderness her
+heart, and to an undefinable longing for something and somebody on which
+to expend all that stored-up affection.
+
+"Tu'n yet, Miss Betty? Dat off hoss done gettin' badly breathed,"
+suggested Ephraim, rudely breaking in upon Mrs. Cecil's reflections.
+
+"Oh, you tiresome boy! One-half mile more, then turn if you will and
+must. For me--I haven't enjoyed myself nor felt so at peace in--in
+several days. Not since that wretched plumber came to Bellevieu and
+stirred me all up with his--gossip. I could drive on forever! but, of
+course, I'm human, and I'll remember you, Ephraim, as well as my poor,
+abused horses! One mile--did I say a half? Well, drive on, anyway."
+
+It was at the very turn of the road that she saw them.
+
+A long, lanky lad, far worse winded than her fat bays, skulking along
+behind the honeysuckle hedge-rows, as if in hiding from somebody. As
+they approached each other--she in her roomy carriage, he on his bruised
+and aching feet--she saw that he was almost spent; that he carried a
+girl on his back; and that the desperation of fear was on both their
+young faces. Then looking forward along her side of the hedge, down the
+road that stretched so smooth and even, she saw two men on horseback.
+They were riding swiftly, and now and then one would rise in his
+stirrups and peer over the hedge, as if to keep in sight the struggling
+children, then settle back again into that easy lope that was certain of
+speedy victory.
+
+Mrs. Cecil's nerves tingled with a new--an old--sensation. In the days
+of her girlhood she had followed the hounds over many a well-contested
+field. Behold here again was a fox-hunt--with two human children for
+foxes! Whatever they might have done, how deserved re-capture, she
+didn't pause to inquire. All her old sporting blood rose in her, but--on
+the side of the foxes!
+
+"Drive, drive, Ephraim, drive! Kill the horses--save those children!"
+
+Ephraim had once been young, too, and he caught his lady's spirit with a
+readiness that delighted her. In a moment the carriage was abreast the
+fleeing children on that further side the hedge, and Mrs. Cecil's voice
+was excitedly calling:
+
+"Come through! Come through the hedge! We'll befriend you!"
+
+It had been a weary, weary race. Although her foot had been so carefully
+bandaged by Daniel St. John, it was not fit to be used and Dorothy's
+suffering could not be told in words. Jim had done his best. He had
+comforted, encouraged, carried her; at times, incessantly, but with a
+now fast-dying hope that they could succeed in evading these pursuers,
+so relentlessly intent upon their capture.
+
+"It's the money, Dorothy, they want. They mustn't get it. That's your
+folkses'--do try--you _must_ keep on! I'll--they shan't--Oh, pshaw!"
+
+Wheels again! again added to that thump, thump, thump of steel-shod
+hoofs along the hard road! and the youth felt that the race was
+over--himself beaten.
+
+Then he peered through a break in the honeysuckle and saw a wonderful
+old lady with snow-white hair and a beautiful face, standing up in a
+finer vehicle than he had known could be constructed, and eagerly
+beckoning him to: "Come! Come!"
+
+He stood still, panting for breath, and Dorothy lifted her face which
+she had hidden on his shoulder and--what was that the child was calling?
+
+"Mrs. Cecil! Mrs. Cecil! Don't you know me? John Chester's little girl?
+'Johnnie'--postman 'Johnnie'--you know him--take me home!"
+
+The two horsemen came riding up and reined in shortly. There was
+bewilderment on their faces and disappointment in their hearts; for
+behold! here were five hundred dollars being swept out of their very
+grasp by a wealthy old woman who didn't need a cent!
+
+And what was that happy old creature answering to the fugitive's appeal
+but an equally joyful:
+
+"Dorothy C.! You poor lost darling--Dorothy C.! Thank God you're found!
+Thank Him I took this ride this day!"
+
+Another moment and not only Dorothy but poor Jim Barlow, mud-stained,
+unkempt, as awkward a lad as ever lived and as humble, was riding toward
+Baltimore city in state, on a velvet-covered cushion beside one of its
+most aristocratic dames!
+
+This was a turn in affairs, indeed; and the discomfited horsemen, who
+had felt a goodly sum already within their pockets, followed the
+equipage into town to learn the outcome of the matter.
+
+Dorothy was on Mrs. Cecil's own lap; who minded nothing of the soiled
+little garments but held the child close with a pitying maternity,
+pathetic in so old and childless a woman.
+
+But, oddly enough, she permitted no talk or explanation. There would be
+time enough for that when the safe shelter of Bellevieu was reached and
+there were no following interlopers to overhear. Even Dinah could only
+sit and stare, wondering if her beloved "honey" had suddenly lost her
+wits; but Ephraim comprehended that his mistress now meant it when she
+urged "Speed! speed!" and put his fat bays to a run such as they had not
+taken since their earliest youth.
+
+Through the eagle-gateway, into the beautiful grounds, around to that
+broad piazza where Dorothy had made disastrous acquaintance with the two
+Great Danes, and on quite into the house. But there Jim would have
+retreated, and even Dorothy looked and wondered: saying, as she was
+gently taken in old Dinah's arms and laid upon the mistress's own
+lounge:
+
+"Thank you, but I won't lie down here, if you please. I love you so much
+for bringing me back, but home--home's just around the corner, and I
+can't wait! Jim and I will go now--please--and thank you! thank you!"
+
+Yet now, back in her own home, it was a very calm and courteous old
+gentlewoman--no longer an impulsive one--who answered:
+
+"For the present, Dorothy C., you will have to be content with
+Bellevieu. John Chester and his wife have gone to the country. To a
+far-away state, and to a little property she owns. Fortunately, I am
+going to that same place very soon and will take you to them. I am sorry
+for your disappointment, but you are safe with me till then."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+Mr. Kidder, of Kidder & Kidder, had by request waited upon the lady of
+Bellevieu. He was prepared to explain some uncertain matters to her and
+had delayed his own removal to his country place for that purpose. The
+heat which had made Baltimore so uncomfortable had, for the time being,
+passed; and there was now blowing through the big east-parlor, a breeze,
+redolent of the perfumes of sweet brier and lily-of-the-valley;
+old-fashioned flowers which grew in rank luxuriance outside the wide
+bay-window.
+
+Presently there entered the mistress of the mansion, looking almost
+youthful in a white gown and with a calm serenity upon her handsome
+features. She walked with that graceful, undulating movement--a sort of
+quiet gliding--which had been the most approved mode of her girlhood,
+and the mere sight of that was restful to the old attorney, who detested
+the modern, jerky carriage of most maidens.
+
+Dorothy attended her hostess and she, too, was in white. Indeed Mrs.
+Cecil considered that to be the only suitable home-wear for either maid
+or matron, after the spring days came; and looking critically upon the
+pair, the old lawyer fancied he saw a faint resemblance.
+
+Each had large brown and most expressive eyes; each had a hand and foot,
+fit subject for feminine pride, and each bore herself with the same air
+of composed self-sufficiency. Well, it was a fine experiment his client
+was trying; he could but hope it would not end in disappointment.
+
+She seemed to know his thoughts without his expressing them; and as she
+sat down, she bade Dorothy lay aside her cane and sit beside her. The
+injured foot had received the best of medical treatment since the
+child's arrival at Bellevieu and was now almost well, though some
+support had still to be used as a safeguard against strain.
+
+"This is the child, Mr. Kidder. I think she has intelligence. A fine
+intelligence," began the lady, as if Dorothy had not ears to hear. Then
+feeling the girl's eyes raised inquiringly, added rather hastily: "It's
+on account of 'Johnnie,' you understand, Mr. Kidder. He was one of the
+most faithful persons I ever knew. That was why he was selected. Why I
+am going to take his little Dorothy C. back to him as fast as
+to-morrow's train will carry us. Have you learned anything?"
+
+"Yes, Madam. I came prepared--but----" He paused again and glanced at
+the girl, whom her hostess promptly sent away. Then he proceeded:
+
+"It is the same man I suspected in the beginning. He was a clerk in my
+office some years ago, at the time, indeed, when I first saw your ward.
+He listened at a keyhole and heard all arrangements made, but--did not
+see who was closeted with me and never learned your identity until
+recently. That is why you have escaped blackmail so long; and he is the
+author of the letters you sent me--unopened. He had his eye upon Dorothy
+C. for years, but could use her to no advantage till he traced--I don't
+yet know how, and it doesn't matter--the connection between yourself and
+the monthly letters. He has been in scrapes innumerable. I discharged
+him almost immediately after I hired him, and he has owed me a grudge
+ever since. But--he'll trouble Baltimore people no more. If he recovers
+from the dangerous illness he is suffering now he will be offered the
+choice of exile from the state or a residence in the prison. By the way,
+isn't it a case of poetic justice, that he should be thus innocently
+punished by the child he stole?"
+
+"It is, indeed. As to the boy, James. 'Jim,' Dorothy calls him. He seems
+to be without friends, a fine, uncouth, most manly fellow, with an
+overpowering ambition 'to know things'! To see him look at a book, as if
+he adored it but dared not touch it, is enough--to make me long to throw
+it at him, almost! He is to be tested. I want to go slow with him. So
+many of my protégés have disappointed me. But, if he's worth it, I want
+to help him make a man of himself."
+
+"The right word. Just the right, exact word, Madam. 'Help _him_ to make
+a man of himself.' Because if he doesn't take a hand in the business
+himself, all the extraneous help in the world will be useless. Well,
+then I think we understand each other. I have all your latest advices in
+my safe, with duplicate copies in that of my son.
+
+"You leave to-morrow? From Union Station? I wish you, Madam, a safe
+journey, a pleasant summer, and an early return. Good-morning."
+
+On the very evening of Dorothy's arrival at Bellevieu, now some days
+past, she had begged so to "go home," and so failed to comprehend how
+her parents could have left it without her, that Mrs. Cecil sent for the
+plumber and his wife to come to her and to bring Mabel with them.
+
+"Why, husband! I fair believe the world must be comin' to an end!
+Dorothy found, alive, and that rich woman the one to find her! Go!
+Course we'll go--right off."
+
+Mr. Bruce was just as eager to pay the visit as his wife, but he prided
+himself on being a "free-born American" citizen and resented being
+ordered to the mansion, "on a Sunday just as if it were a work-day. If
+the lady has business with us, it's her place to come to Brown Street,
+herself."
+
+"Fiddle-de-diddle-de-dee! Since when have we got so top-lofty?" demanded
+his better half with a laugh. "On with your best duds, man alive, and
+we'll be off! Why, I--I myself am all of a flutter, I can't wait! Do
+hurry an' step 'round to 77 an' get Mabel. She's been to supper with her
+aunt, an' Jane'll be wild to hear the news, too. Tell everybody you see
+on the block--Dorothy C. is found! Dorothy C. is found! An' whilst
+you're after Mabel, I'll just whisk Dorothy's clothes, 'at her mother
+left with me for her, into a satchel an' take 'em along. Stands to
+reason that folks wicked enough to steal a child wouldn't be decent
+enough to give her a change of clothing; and if she's wore one set ever
+sence she's been gone--My! I reckon Martha Chester'd fair squirm--just
+to think of it!"
+
+Now, as has been stated, in his heart the honest plumber was fully as
+eager to see Dorothy C., as his wife was, and long before she had
+finished speaking he was on his way to number 77. It was such a lovely
+evening that all his neighbors were sitting out upon their doorsteps, in
+true Baltimore fashion, so it was easy as delightful to spread the
+tidings; and never, never, had the one-hundred-block of cleanly Brown
+Street risen in such an uproar. An uproar of joy that was almost
+hilarious; and all uninvited, everybody who had ever known Dorothy C.
+set off for Bellevieu, so that even before the Bruce-Jones party had
+arrived the lovely grounds were full to overflowing and the aristocratic
+silence of the place was broken by cries of:
+
+"Dorothy! Dorothy Chester! Show us little Dorothy, and we'll believe our
+ears. Seeing is believing--Show us little Dorothy!"
+
+These, and similar, outcries bombarded the hearing of Mrs. Cecil and,
+for a moment, frightened her. Glancing out of the window she beheld the
+throng and called to Ephraim:
+
+"Boy! Telephone--the police! It's a riot of some sort! We're being
+mobbed!"
+
+But Dinah knew better. She didn't yet understand why her mistress should
+bother with a couple of runaway young folks, but since she had done so
+it was her own part to share in that bother. So she promptly lifted the
+girl in her strong arms and carried her out to the broad piazza, so
+crowded with people in Sunday attire, and quietly explained to
+whomsoever would listen:
+
+"Heah she is! Yas'm. Dis yere's de pos'man's li'l gal what's gone away
+wid de misery in his laigs. Yas'm. It sho'ly am. An' my Miss Betty,
+she's done foun' out how where he's gone at is right erjinin' ouah own
+prop'ty o' Deerhurst-on-de-Heights, where we-all's gwine in a right
+smart li'l while. Won't nottin' more bad happen dis li'l one, now my
+Miss Betty done got de care ob her. Yas'm, ladies an' gemplemen; an' so,
+bein's it Sunday, an' my folks mos' tuckered out, if you-all'd be so
+perlite as to go back to yo' housen an' done leab us res', we-all done
+be much obleeged. Yas'm. Good-bye."
+
+Dinah's good-natured speech, added to the one glimpse of the rescued
+child, acted more powerfully than the police whom her mistress would
+have summoned; and soon the crowd drifted away, pausing only here and
+there to admire the beautiful grounds which, hitherto, most of these
+visitors had seen only from outside the gates.
+
+But the Bruce family remained; and oh! the pride and importance which
+attached to them, thus distinguished! Or of that glad reunion with these
+old friends and neighbors, when Dorothy was once more in their arms, who
+could fitly tell? Then while Mabel and her restored playmate chattered
+of all that had happened to either since their parting, Mrs. Cecil drew
+the plumber aside and consulted him upon the very prosaic matter of
+clothes--clothes for now ill-clad Jim Barlow.
+
+"I've decided to take him with us to New York State when we go, in a
+very few days. I shall employ him as a gardener on my property there,
+but he isn't fit to travel--as he's fixed now. Will you, at regular
+wages for your time, take him down town to-morrow morning and fit him
+out with suitable clothing, plain and serviceable but ample in quantity,
+and bring the bill to me? I'd rather you'd not let him out of your
+sight, for now that Dorothy is safe, the boy has ridiculous notions
+about his 'duty' to that dreadful old truck-farming woman who has let
+him work for her during several years at--nothing a year! And anybody
+who's so saturated with 'duty,' is just the man I want at Deerhurst, be
+he old or young."
+
+To which the plumber answered:
+
+"Indeed, Mrs. Cecil, I'm a proud man to be selected for the job and as
+to pay for my time--just you settle with me when I ask you for that.
+Pay? For such a neighborly turn? Well, I guess not. Not till I'm a good
+deal poorer than I am now. And if there's anything needed for Dorothy
+C., my wife'll tend to that, too, and be proud."
+
+So with that matter settled, these good friends of the rescued children
+departed to their home and to what sleep they might find after so much
+delightful excitement.
+
+Next day, too, because the doctor called in said that Dorothy must
+attempt no more walking until the end of the week, Mrs. Cecil had a pony
+cart sent for, and Ephraim with Dinah took the child upon a round of
+calls to all whom she had ever known in that friendly neighborhood.
+Mabel was invited to accompany her, and did so--the proudest little
+maiden in Baltimore. They even went to their school, and Miss Georgia
+left her class for full five minutes to go out and congratulate her late
+pupil upon this happy turn of affairs. But at number 77 Dorothy would
+not stop; would not even look. She felt she could not bear its changed
+condition, for underneath all this present joy her heart ached with
+longing for those beloved ones who had made that little house a home.
+
+Also, now that it was drawing certainly near, it seemed as if the day of
+their reunion would never come; and when some time before, old Ephraim
+was sent on ahead with the horses and carriages, and the great heap of
+luggage which his lady found necessary to this annual removal, the child
+pleaded piteously to go with him.
+
+"No, my dear, not yet. Two days more and you shall. You may count the
+hours. I sometimes think that helps time to pass, when one is impatient.
+They've been telegraphed to, have known all about you ever since Sunday
+night. They'll have time to make ready for you--and that's all. But,
+Brown Eyes, a 'penny for your thoughts!' What are they, pray, to make
+you look so serious?"
+
+"I was thinking you're like a fairy godmother. You seem so able to do
+everything you want for everybody. I was wondering, too, what makes you
+so kind to--to me, after that day when I was saucy to you."
+
+It came to the lady's mind to answer: "Darling, who could be aught but
+kind to you!" but flattery was not one of her failings and she had begun
+to fear that all the attention of these past days was turning her
+charge's head. So she merely suggested:
+
+"I suppose I might be doing it for 'Johnnie.' I am very fond of him."
+
+Thus Dorothy's vanity received a possibly needful snub; for a girl who
+was well treated because of her father couldn't be so much of a heroine
+after all!
+
+The railway journey from Baltimore to New York was like a passage
+through fairyland to Dorothy C. and the farm-boy Jim. The wonders of
+their luxurious parlor-car surroundings kept them almost speechless with
+delight; but when at the latter great city they embarked upon a Hudson
+river steamer and they were free to roam about the palatial vessel,
+their tongues were loosened. Thereafter they talked so fast and so much
+that they hardly realized what was happening as Dinah called them to
+listen and obey the boat-officer's command:
+
+"All ashore what's goin'! Aft' gangway fo' Cornwall!
+A-L-L--A-S-H-O-O-R-E!"
+
+Over the gangplank, into the midst of a waiting crowd, and there was
+Ephraim with the carriage and the bays; and into the roomy vehicle
+bundled everybody, glad to be so near the end of that famous journey,
+and Dorothy quite unable to keep still for two consecutive moments.
+
+"Up, up, up! How high we are going! Straight into the skies it seems!"
+cried the girl to Jim Barlow, whom nobody who had known him on the
+truck-farm would have recognized as the same lad, so neat and trim he
+now appeared.
+
+But he had no words to answer. The wonderful upland country through
+which their course lay impressed him to silence, and the strength of
+those everlasting hills entered his ambitious soul--making him believe
+that to him who dared all high achievements were possible.
+
+"Will--we never--_never_ get there?" almost gasped Dorothy, in the
+breathless eagerness of these last few moments of separation from her
+loved ones. But Mrs. Cecil answered:
+
+"Yes, my child. Round this turn of the road and behold! we are arrived!
+See, that big place yonder whose gates stand wide open is Deerhurst, my
+home, to which I hope you will often come. And, look this way--there is
+Skyrie! The little stone cottage on a rock, half-hidden in vines, empty
+for years, and now--Who is that upon its threshold? That man in the
+wheeled chair, risking his neck to hasten your meeting? Who that dainty
+little woman flying down the path to clasp you in her arms? Ah! Dorothy
+C.! Father and mother, indeed, they have proved to you and glad am I to
+restore you to them, safe and sound!"
+
+Happy, happy Dorothy! At last, at last she was in the arms whose care
+had sheltered her through all her life; and there, for the time being,
+we must leave her. Of her life at Skyrie, of its haps and mishaps, of
+the mystery which still surrounded her birth and parentage, another book
+must tell.
+
+Or how beautiful Mrs. Cecil, gay and satisfied as that veritable fairy
+godmother to which Dorothy had likened her, drove briskly home to
+Deerhurst and its accustomed stateliness, with humble Jim Barlow too
+grateful for speech, already beginning his new and richer life.
+
+All these things and more belong with Dorothy Chester at Skyrie, and of
+them you shall hear by and by. Till then we leave her, well content.
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
+
+Obvious printer and typographical errors have been corrected without
+comment. In addition to obvious errors, the following changes have been
+made:
+
+   Page 218: "t'was" was changed to "'twas" in the phrase, "... t'was
+     to find out dat."
+
+   Page 251: "need less" was changed to "needless" in the phrase, "...
+     scuffin' 'em out, needless."
+
+   Page 297: "the" was added to the phrase, "Glancing out of the
+     window...."
+
+With the exception of the above corrections, the author's original
+spelling, punctuation, use of grammar, etc., is retained as it appears
+in the original publication.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Dorothy, by Evelyn Raymond
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40300 ***