CHAPTER XIV

It was very early, as the habits of the Ladue family went, when the train pulled into the station at Whitby. For Professor Ladue had not been an early riser. College professors of certain types are not noted for their earliness. One of these types had been well represented by Professor Ladue. He had not, to be sure, ever met his classes clad in his evening clothes; but, no doubt, he would have done so, in time, if his career had not been cut short.

The train did not go beyond Whitby. One reason why it did not was that there was nothing beyond but water and no stations of permanence. There was plenty of time to get out of the train without feeling hurried. Fox got out and helped Charlie down the steps; and Sally got out, feeling as if she had already been up half the night. Indeed, she had, almost, for she had been so afraid of oversleeping that she had been only dozing since midnight.

"I wonder, Fox," she said as she came down the steps, "whether there will be any one here to meet us."

"Cast your eye over the crowd," Fox whispered, "and if you see a thin, haughty lady standing somewhat aloof from the common herd, I'll bet my hat that's Martha."

Sally chuckled involuntarily, and she cast her eye over the crowd as Fox had told her to do. There _was_ a lady, who seemed to be somewhat haughty, standing back by the wall of the station, aloof from the common herd, but she was not as thin as Sally had expected Cousin Martha to be. This lady was evidently expecting somebody--or somebodies--and was watching, with a shadow of anxiety on her face, as the crowd poured out of the doors and flowed down the steps. Then her gaze happened to alight upon Sally and her eyebrows lifted, quickly, and she smiled. Sally smiled as quickly in return and made up her mind, on the spot, that, if that was Cousin Martha, she should rather like Cousin Martha.

The lady had come forward at once, with a rapid, nervous walk, and met them as soon as the crowd would let her.

"Sarah Ladue?" she asked.

"Sally, Cousin Martha," Sally replied. "Everybody calls me Sally."

"Well, I am very glad to see you, Sally." Cousin Martha kissed her on the cheek; a quick, nervous peck. Sally tried to kiss Cousin Martha while she had the chance, but she succeeded in getting no more than a corner of a veil. "How did you know me?"

"I didn't. I only saw that you were looking for somebody, and I thought it might be me you were looking for."

"Oh, so that was it!" Miss Hazen smiled faintly and sighed. "I thought that perhaps you might have recognized me from the photograph I once gave your father. But I forgot that that was a great many years ago." She sighed again.

Sally tried in vain to remember any photograph of Miss Martha Hazen. She did remember something else.

"This is Fox Sanderson," she said, holding on to Fox's arm, "who has just come on to bring us. Fox is _very_ kind. And here is Charlie."

She dragged Charlie forward by the collar. He had been behind her, absorbed in the movements of the engine.

"Oh, what a pretty boy!" exclaimed Cousin Martha. "How do you do, Charlie?"

"Not a pretty boy!" cried Charlie.

Sally shook him. "Say very well, I thank you," she whispered.

"Very-well-I-thank-you," Charlie repeated sulkily. "I'm hungry."

Miss Hazen laughed. "Mercy on us!" she said. "We must be getting home to give you something to eat." She extended the tips of her fingers to Fox. "I'm very glad to see you, too, Mr. Sanderson. You will come home with us, too? The carriage is waiting."

"Thank you, Miss Hazen. I must see about the trunks, I suppose; Sally's and Charlie's. I didn't bring any, for I must go back to-night."

"Then, perhaps, you will spend the day with us?"

Fox thanked her again and Cousin Martha told him what to do about the trunks. There was one baggageman, in particular, whom the Hazens had employed for years when there had been trunks to go or to come. That that baggageman was now old and nearly as decrepit as his horse and wagon made no difference.

They were soon in Miss Hazen's stout carriage, behind a single stout horse. Sally had not noticed, before, that the water was so near. They went through some very dirty streets, past saloons and tenement-houses. Miss Hazen regarded them sadly.

"One gets a poor impression of Whitby from the entrance into it," she observed. "This part of the city has changed very much since my young days; changed much for the worse. It is a great pity that the railroad does not come in at some different place. On the hill, now, one would get a very different impression. But there are parts of the city which have not changed so very much. Although," she added thoughtfully, "all the change is for the worse, it seems to me."

There did not seem to be anything to be said that would be of any comfort. Fox murmured something, and then they drove up an extraordinarily steep hill. The horse had all he could do to drag them at a walk. But, looking up the hill, Sally saw a pleasant street with elms arching over it.

"Oh, how lovely!" she cried. "Do you live in this part of the city, Cousin Martha?"

"No," Cousin Martha replied, with rather more than a suspicion of pride in her voice. "Where we live, it is prettier than this."

"Oh," said Sally. Then she recollected.

"There was a very nice man on the boat," she remarked. "He was some sort of an officer, but I don't know exactly what. He said he lived in Whitby, and he had several children. The youngest girl is about my age. Do you know them, Cousin Martha? Their name is Wills."

"Wills? Wills? I don't think I know any Willses."

"He seemed to know who you were," Sally prompted. "He knew right away, as soon as ever I told him where I was going."

"It is likely enough," said Miss Hazen, trying to speak simply. The attempt was not a conspicuous success. "Many people, whom we don't know, know who we are. The Willses are very worthy people, I have no doubt, but you are not likely to know them."

"He said that, too," Sally observed.

Miss Hazen looked as if she would have liked to commend Mr. Wills's discrimination; but she did not and they continued their drive in silence. The streets seemed all to be arched over with elms; all that they drove through, at all events. Presently they reached the top of the hill and turned into a street that was as crooked as it could be. It turned this way and that and went, gently, uphill and down; but, always, it seemed to be trying to keep on the top of the ridge. Sally remarked upon it.

"You might call this the Ridge Road," she said; "like Ridge Road in Philadelphia. I have never been on the Ridge Road in Philadelphia," she added hastily, fearing that Cousin Martha might think she was pretending to be what she was not, "but I have always imagined that it was something like this."

Fox and Miss Hazen laughed. "Not much like it, Sally," said Fox.

"Or," Sally resumed, "you might call it the Cow Path. It is crooked enough to be one."

"That is just what it used to be called," said Miss Hazen. "It was not a very poetical name, but we liked it. They changed the name, some years ago."

"What?" Sally asked. "What did they change it to?"

"Washington Street," answered Cousin Martha plaintively. "It seemed to us that it was not necessary to call it Washington Street. There is no individuality in the name."

Fox laughed again. "Not a great deal," he agreed.

Miss Hazen smiled and sighed.

"We cling to the old names," she continued. "We still call this street, among ourselves, the Cow Path, and Parker Street is still West India Lane, and Smith Street is Witch Lane. The old names are more picturesque and romantic. There seemed to be no sufficient reason for changing them. For us, they are not changed."

Washington Street--the Cow Path, as Miss Hazen preferred to call it--had upon it a great many handsome places. They were big houses, of stone, for the most part, or covered with stucco, although a few of them were of wood; and they were set well back from the street, behind well-kept lawns with clumps of shrubbery or of trees scattered at careful random. Sally did not see one of these old places with the rather formal garden, with its box hedges, in front of the house, but she saw a good many with gorgeous gardens at the side, and many with the gardens, apparently, at the back.

They were very different, these great places, from her own home. Her own home might have occupied a whole square, as many of these did, if it had been in a city. It was not in a city, but in what was scarcely more than a village and the trees were where nature had set them. The whole place--Sally's own place--had an atmosphere of wildness quite in keeping with coal trees and sauri. These places, if they had had no more care than the professor had been accustomed to give to his, would have a pathetic air of abandon and desolation. What would a poor little gynesaurus do here?

They turned off of the Cow Path and Miss Hazen brightened perceptibly.

"We are getting near home," she remarked. "Our house is on the next corner."

"Oh, is it?" Sally asked. "What street is this?"

"This is Box Elder and our house is on the corner of Apple Tree."

Sally laughed. "How funny!" she said. "And what pretty names!"

"We think they are pretty names. Now, here we are."

They were just turning in between granite gateposts that were green with dampness, and Sally looked up with a lively interest. She caught a glimpse of a wooden front fence of three octagonal rails; but it was only a glimpse, for the view was cut off, almost immediately, by the row of great evergreens which stood just back of the fence. There were two other evergreens in the middle of the plot of lawn, and the elms on the streets stretched their branches far over, nearly to the house. Altogether, it gave a depressing effect of gloom and decay, which the aspect of the house itself did not tend to relieve.

It was a wooden house, large and square, although not so large as those on the Cow Path. It had a deeply recessed doorway with four wooden columns extending up two stories to support the gable. The house was not clap-boarded, but was smooth and sanded and its surface was grooved to look like stone. It might once have been a fair imitation of granite, but the time was in the distant past when the old house would have fooled even the most casual observer. And it gave them no welcome; nobody opened the door at their approach, or, at least, nobody on the inside. The door did not open until Cousin Martha opened it herself, disclosing a dark and gloomy interior.

"Come in, Sally," she said; "and you, too, Mr. Sanderson, if you please. If you will wait in the parlor for a moment, I will see about some breakfast for you. I have no doubt you are both hungry as well as Charlie. We have had our breakfast."

Sally wondered who the "we" might be. It had not occurred to her until that moment that there might be somebody else in that great gloomy house besides Cousin Martha.

"Sally," cried Charlie fretfully as they entered the dark parlor. "I want to go home. I want to go to my own home, Sally."

"Hush, Charlie," said Sally. "This is our home now. Hush. Cousin Martha may hear you."

Charlie would not hush. He was tired and hungry, although they had had an apology for a breakfast, the remains of their cold lunch, before six o'clock.

"Isn't my home. This old house isn't--"

The words died on his lips; for there was a sound behind the half-opened folding-doors at the end of the long room, and an old man appeared there. He seemed to Sally to be a very old man. He had a long white beard and stooped slightly as he made his way slowly toward them.

"Is this Sarah Ladue?" he asked as he came forward. He came near Sally and held out his hand.

"Yes, sir," answered Sally doubtfully, laying her hand in his. "It's Sally."

The old man must have detected the doubt. "Well, Sally," he said kindly, "I am your father's uncle, your Cousin Patty's father." So Cousin Martha and Cousin Patty were one.

"Oh!" returned Sally quickly. "I thought--that is, I'm very glad to see you."

The old gentleman smiled quietly. "And I'm very glad to see you. Don't you want to come into the back parlor? There's a fire in there. You, too, sir," turning to Fox.

"I forgot," interrupted Sally. "I am always forgetting to do it. This is Mr. Sanderson. He is a _very_ kind friend of ours. He came all the way with us just to see that we got here safely. And this is Charlie, sir."

"I am happy to meet a very kind friend of Sally's," the old gentleman said, shaking hands with Fox. "From what I hear, she is in need of kind friends." He held his hand out to Charlie. "Will this little boy shake hands with his Uncle John?"

That appeared to be the last thing that Charlie wished to do, but he did it, sulkily, without a word. Then the old gentleman led the way slowly into the back parlor.

Sally remembered, now, that she had heard her father speak of John Hazen--John Hazen, Junior--with that sneering laugh of his; that cold, mirthless laugh with which he managed to cast ridicule upon anything or anybody. This nice old gentleman must be John Hazen, Junior. But why should a stooping old man with a long white beard be called Junior? Why, on earth, Sally wondered. Surely, such an old man--she would speak to Cousin Martha about it. Perhaps Cousin Martha had a brother who was John, Junior. As for Cousin Martha's father, she had always taken it for granted that he was a disembodied spirit.

There was a coal fire bubbling in the grate in the back parlor. A great easy-chair was drawn up to the fire, and beside it, on the floor, lay the morning paper, where Uncle John had dropped it. There were other easy-chairs in the room, and books and magazines were scattered over the centre table. The centre table had a much-stained green cloth top, Sally noticed. Altogether, this room was cheerful, in its own way, as any room which is lived in must be; as the great front parlor was not. Its way was not the way Sally had been used to. It was too dark, to begin with, and the heavy curtains only half drawn back from the windows kept out most of the light which managed to straggle past the trees.

The old gentleman began to place other chairs, but Fox did it for him.

"Thank you," he said. "And now, as soon as Patty comes back, I shall have to leave you, if you will excuse me. I usually go downtown earlier than this, but I wished to see Sally before I went. I hope you will make yourselves quite at home."

Consideration of just this kind was a new thing for Sally.

"Oh, thank you," she cried, flushing with pleasure. "It was very nice of you to want to wait for me."

The old gentleman again smiled his quiet smile; but before he could say anything, Cousin Martha came in.

"I have some breakfast for you," she announced. "Will you go to your rooms first, or have something to eat first?"

There was no room for doubt as to Charlie's preference in the matter. Miss Hazen smiled.

"Very well, then," she said. "I think that will be better. Have your breakfast while it is hot. Then I can take you up and get you settled. The trunks will have got here by that time."

"I will go now, Patty," said her father, "if you will be good enough to help me with my overcoat."

So she stopped in the hall and held his coat and he bade good-bye to every one by name, and went out slowly.

"Does Uncle John go downtown every day?" Sally asked, soon after. She was busy with her breakfast.

"Oh, mercy, yes," Miss Hazen replied. "He is as well able to attend to his business as ever. And he always walks, unless it is very bad walking: icy or very muddy. I am afraid that he might slip and fall, and old bones, you know, do not mend easily."

"Is he--is he," Sally went on, hesitating, "John Hazen, Junior?"

"Yes," answered Cousin Martha. "He has kept the Junior."

Sally did not know just what she meant by that. "I've heard my father speak of John Hazen, Junior," she remarked, "and I didn't know but, perhaps, I might have a Cousin John."