CHAPTER XII

To tell the truth, the question of money had been troubling Fox somewhat, for he did not have an "awful lot," to use Sally's words. There was enough for him and Henrietta to live upon in great comfort; but when the amount which will support two people in comfort has to take care of five, it needs to be spread pretty thin. To be sure, there was no particular reason why Fox should have felt obliged to look out for the Ladues. One wonders why he did it. That question had occurred to him, naturally, but only to be dismissed at once, unanswered. He could not leave that little family in their misfortunes without visible means of support, and that was the end of it.

These considerations will serve to explain Fox's state of mind: why he felt it to be necessary to provide for Sally's future; to see to it that she should have a future of any kind. They may also explain his inquiries about rich relatives. Not that he had, at the moment, any definite idea as to his course of action in the event that she had such desirable and convenient appendages. In fact, it remained to be seen whether they were either desirable or convenient. And he wished very much that it might be considered no impropriety for him and Henrietta to live at the Ladues'. It would simplify many matters.

Doctor Galen, to whom he spoke, with some hesitation, of this wish of his, reassured him.

"I should say that it would be a very wise move," said the doctor, smiling. "Where is the impropriety?"

Fox murmured something about Professor Ladue and about his seeming to take the management of his family out of the professor's hands. He felt a little delicate about making any further move in the same direction.

"Pouf!" the doctor exclaimed scornfully. "Ladue has relinquished all right to management, and it's a very fortunate thing that he has. Mrs. Ladue will be very much of an invalid for a number of years, unless all signs fail. There may be some prying people--but there are always. You had better tell Sally that you will come at once. I think it most necessary."

Fox was distinctly relieved. He went on to tell the doctor of his conversation with Sally. "And the other children--except Henrietta--have fought shy of coming to see her since that day of the party," he continued. "I suppose they were frightened. They have scarcely been near her. Not that Sally seems to care. I think she is glad when she thinks of them at all. But she has too much care. She takes life too seriously. Why, that party was on her eleventh birthday, and she wants to go out scrubbing or selling papers. Anything to earn money. We can't let her feel so, Doctor; we just can't."

"Bless her!" said the doctor; "of course we can't. She needn't worry about my bill, and you needn't. Between us, Sanderson, we must look out for these three babes in the wood."

"Thank you, Doctor."

"And, Sanderson," the doctor pursued confidentially, "if you find yourself short of money,--you might, you know,--just let me know. But don't tell anybody, or the Assyrians will be upon me, like the wolf on the fold; and their cohorts won't be gleaming with purple and gold. Not of mine, they won't."

Fox laughed. "Thank you again, Doctor. Thank you very much. But I think I shall be able to carry my end, on that basis."

Fox did carry his end. He and Henrietta moved to the Ladues' as soon as they could, Fox into the professor's old room, with the skeleton of the professor's little lizard on the floor, under the window, and with the professor's desk to work at. He seemed to have been pushed by chance into the professor's shoes, and he did not like it, altogether. He made a faint-hearted protest at the room.

Sally's eyes filled. "Why, Fox," she said, "it's the best room we've got. Isn't it good enough?"

"It's much too good, Sally. I don't expect or want such a good room."

"Oh, is that all!" Sally was smiling now. "If it's good enough, I guess you'll have to be satisfied. It's ever so much convenienter to give you father's room."

So Fox had to be satisfied. Henrietta had the room next Sally's own. That arrangement was "convenienter," too.

One of the first things he did at the professor's desk was to write a letter to Miss Martha Havering Hazen. Sally had succeeded in finding her address.

"She lives in Whitby, Massachusetts," she announced. "I don't know the name of the street, and I don't know how rich she is."

With this, the affairs of Miss Martha Havering Hazen passed from Sally's mind. She had other things to attend to. Fox wrote Miss Hazen a letter in which he set forth, in a very business-like way, the plight in which the Ladue family found themselves, his desire, and Sally's, that Sally's future should be provided for, and the manner in which it was proposed to provide for the aforesaid future. He finished with the statement that the funds at his command were insufficient for all the purposes which it was desired to accomplish, and he inquired whether she were disposed to give any aid and comfort. Then, having posted this, he waited for the answer.

He waited for the answer so long that he began to fear that his letter might not have reached Miss Hazen; then he waited until, at last, he was convinced that she never received it, and he had begun to think that she must be a myth. When he reached this conclusion, he was sitting on the piazza and Sally and Henrietta and Doctor Galen were coming up the path together. Sally had her hands behind her. She came and stood before Fox, her eyes twinkling.

"Well," she began.

But Fox would not wait. "Sally," he said, interrupting her, "what makes you think that Miss Martha Hazen is in existence at all. You've never seen her. I'll bet there's no such a person and never was. She's a myth."

"What'll you bet?" she asked promptly.

"Anything you like."

"No, I won't bet, for it wouldn't be fair." This settled it for Sally. In that respect she was different from her father. She was different from her father in some other important respects, too. "Which hand will you have, Fox?"

"I guess I'd better have both."

So Sally brought both hands around into view and cast a letter into his lap. Her eyes danced. "There!" she said. "Now, what'll you bet?"

Doctor Galen was leaning against the railing and Henrietta could not keep still.

"Oh, Fox," she cried, "open it and let's hear what she says. Sally showed it to us and we know about it."

"Open it, Sanderson," the doctor put in; "don't keep us all in the dark. It's suspense that kills."

So Sanderson opened it and read it. It was not a long letter.

The others grew impatient. "Come, come," said the doctor, "tell us. It doesn't matter what you wrote to her. What does she say?"

"She says," said Fox, smiling, "that, as of course she didn't know me, she has been obliged to have all my statements investigated. That accounts for the delay. She has found them all to be true. Gratifying, isn't it? But the important thing is that she offers to take Sally to live with her and agrees to educate her properly--if Sally will go."

They were all very sober and nobody spoke. Sally was solemn and the tears came slowly. None of them had contemplated this, Sally least of all. She felt as if there had been an earthquake or some such convulsion of nature.

"Well, Sally," Fox went on at last, in a low voice, "it seems to be up to you. Will you go?"

"Oh, I don't know," Sally's eyes were wide with anxiety and with doubt, and the tears dropped slowly, one by one. "How can I, all of a sudden? It's a tremendous surprise. I don't want to, but if it will help more than staying at home, I'll go." Suddenly an idea seemed to have struck her. It must have given her great relief, for the tears stopped and she looked happy once more. "But," she said eagerly, "how can I? Who will take care of mother? And what would we do with Charlie? Really, Fox, I don't see how I can go."

Strangely enough, Fox seemed to be relieved, too. At any rate, he smiled as though he were.

"Sure enough," he replied, "how can you? We might possibly manage about your mother," he added, with a glance at the doctor, "but Charlie is a problem."

Doctor Galen had nodded, in answer to that glance of Fox's. "You needn't worry about your mother, Sally," he said then. "We would take good care of her. Do you know that I have a sanitarium for just such patients? There are nurses and everything to make it convenient. And there are no bothering children--with their brothers--always underfoot." As he said that, the doctor smiled and rested his hand, for a moment, on Henrietta's shoulder. Henrietta turned and laughed up at him.

"A base libel," Fox remarked. "But all that doesn't take care of Charlie."

"Might farm him out," the doctor suggested. "What do you think of that idea, Sally?"

"I don't believe I know what you mean," she answered. "Charlie wouldn't be much good on a farm, although I suppose a farm would be a good place for him. Some farms would," she added.

"It depends on the farm, doesn't it?" said Fox. "It generally does. But don't you care what the doctor meant, Sally. He didn't mean anything, probably. We aren't going to farm Charlie out anyway. What shall I say to Martha? That's the immediate point."

Sally chuckled. "I'll write to Martha," she said, as soon as she could speak; "that is, if you'll let me. I'll thank her ever so much for offering to take me, and I'll tell her why I can't come. May I, Fox?"

"All right." Fox tossed her the letter. "And, Sally," he called softly, for she had started into the house, meaning to write her letter at once. "Sally, if Martha answers your letter, you tell me what she says."

So Sally wrote to Martha. It took her a long time and she used up several sheets of her mother's best note-paper before she got a letter written that she was satisfied to send. Miss Hazen was longer in replying, although she was not so long as she had been in replying to Fox. Sally did not care. Indeed, she did not give the matter a thought. She considered the question settled.

It was not. Miss Hazen must have liked Sally's letter, for she grudgingly consented to have Charlie come, too, if that was all that stood in the way of Sally's acceptance of her offer. This was a surprise to everybody; to none of them more than to Miss Hazen herself. She had no liking for young children. But she did it. There seemed to be no escape for Sally now, and she put the letter in Fox's hand without a word.

"What's the matter, Sally?" he asked, shocked at her tragic face. "Has the bottom dropped out?"

Sally smiled, but her chin quivered. "It seems to me that it has. You read it, Fox."

So Fox read it. He was very sober when he looked up and it was a long time before he spoke.

"Well," he said at last, whimsically, "Martha's put her foot in it this time, hasn't she? What do you think you're going to do?"

"I don't see how I can refuse any longer," Sally answered, her voice quivering as well as her chin. "Charlie was the only objection that I could think of; the only real objection. I s'pose I'll have to go now, and take Charlie."

Fox did not reply immediately.

Sally's chin quivered more and more, and her tears overflowed. "Oh, Fox," she wailed, "I don't want to. I don't want to leave mother and home and--and everybody."

Fox drew her toward him and patted her shoulder. "There, there, Sally," he said gently. "You shan't go if you don't want to. We'll manage somehow. Don't feel so badly, Sally. Don't."

Sally's fit of crying was already over. Her tears ceased and she felt for her handkerchief.

"I won't," she said, with a pitiful little attempt at a smile. "I'm not going to cry any more. Have--have you got a handkerchief, Fox?"

Fox wiped her eyes. "We'll call a council of war," he said; "you and Doctor Galen and I will talk it over and decide what shall be done. Not about Martha," he added hastily. "That's settled, Sally, if you don't want to go. I'll write to her and tell her that you can't come."

"No," Sally protested earnestly, "it's not settled; at least, not that way. I'll go if--if that's the best thing for us. I was only crying because--because I hate to think of leaving. I can't help that, you know, Fox."

"I know, Sally. I've been through it all."

"And so our council of war," Sally continued, "will decide about that, too."

The council of war held a long and earnest session and eventually decided that it was best for Sally to accept Miss Hazen's offer and to go to Whitby. Sally acquiesced in the decision, but it seemed to Fox necessary to do a little explaining.

"You know, Sally," he said, "your mother is likely to be a long time in getting back her health. She won't be herself for a number of years. It would only be painful to you--"

"I know all that, Fox," Sally interrupted, a little impatiently. She had had it pretty thoroughly drummed into her. "I know all that, and it doesn't make any difference whether I think so or not. I see that it's the best thing for us all that Charlie and I should go, and we will go. That's settled. But you will write to me often, and let me know how mother gets along--and tell me the news, won't you?"

"Why, of course I am going to," Fox cried with emphasis. "What did you think--that we were going to let you slip away from us suddenly, altogether? Not much. I'm going to write you every blessed week. And see that you answer my letters every week, too."

Sally felt comparatively cheerful once more. "I will," she answered, smiling.

"Bless your heart!" said Fox.

Doctor Galen looked aggrieved.

"And where do I come in?" he asked. "Aren't you going to promise to write me, too? Your mother will be at my sanitarium and I have a good mind to give orders that Fox Sanderson is to be told nothing about her. Then you would have to get your information from me."

"I didn't s'pose you'd care to have me, you're so busy." Sally was pleased. "But I'd love to, Doctor, I'd love to. Do you really want me to?"

"If you don't, I'll never forgive you. I'm a very cruel man, and that is the only way to insure good treatment for your mother. You'd better, Sally." And the doctor wagged his head in a threatening manner.

Sally laughed. "It'll be your own fault if you get too many letters. But you needn't answer them, if you don't have time."

"We'll see. We'll see. I guess I shall manage to find a few minutes, now and then, to write to Miss Sally Ladue."