CHAPTER VI

They soon got used to Mrs. Ladue's gentle presence among them. Uncle John got used to it more quickly than Sally did herself; much more quickly than Cousin Patty did. But then, her coming was none of Cousin Patty's doing, in spite of the fact that it was Cousin Patty who sent the invitation. It took Patty some time to get over that. The things that we are forced to do, however gentle the force may be, are seldom wholly acceptable to us. As for Sally, her happiness was too great to make it possible for her to get used to it immediately. She used to run in when she got home from school and hug her mother. She wanted to make sure that her presence was a "true fact," as she said. She wanted to touch; to be certain that she had not dreamed it.

Mrs. Ladue used to sit beside the table with its stained green cover, in that very homelike back parlor, in the long evenings, with Uncle John in his great chair before the bubbling fire. Miss Patty ran--or, no, she did not run, literally. That would have been most undignified besides being unnecessary; but it was probably unnecessary for Miss Patty to go out so often and stay so long about her household duties. The duties of the household rather oppressed Miss Patty and sat heavily upon her. Household duties? Better be about them, Miss Patty thought. So she flitted nervously in and out twenty times during an evening. She was out more than she was in and her chair on the other side of the fire from Uncle John's was usually empty. She went to glance into the kitchen, to see what Bridget or Mary _could_ be about, it was so quiet there. She hadn't heard a sound for the longest while. "Don't you think I'd better see, father?" And her father would smile quietly and tell her to do as she liked. Or she would wonder whether the maids had locked the cellar door; or there was that window in the pantry; or she had to see Charlie safely into bed, although one would think that Charlie was very nearly old enough to see himself safely into bed. There were things without end; anything that _might_ not be just as Patty thought it should be.

Uncle John and Mrs. Ladue sat quietly through it all, Mrs. Ladue with her sewing or her embroidery or her crochet work or her book. She was not much of an invalid, after all; not enough of an invalid to give any trouble. She had to be careful, that was all. She must not get too tired and she must have plenty of sleep. Those two things Doctor Galen had enjoined upon her at parting, with much impressiveness. And he thought that he might as well drop a line to Meriwether Beatty asking him to keep an eye on her and to let him know how she was getting along. "So you see, my lady, you are not out of my clutches yet," the doctor finished merrily. To which Mrs. Ladue had replied, almost tearfully, that she had no wish to get out of his clutches and that she never could repay him and she didn't want to and she shouldn't try. She _liked_ to feel that she owed her life to him--

"Tut, tut!" said the doctor, smiling. "Don't forget Fox."

And Mrs. Ladue protested that there was not the least danger of her forgetting Fox. She didn't know where they would all be if it had not been for Fox, and she was very fond of him, and she thought--Then Fox, himself, had appeared, and she said no more upon that subject, and they got into their train and presently they came away. But, whatever Mrs. Ladue's thoughts may have been, on that subject or on any other, she said little and seemed to invite confidence. There is no reason to believe that she wished confidences from anybody. It may have been only that she kept her thoughts to herself, for the most part, as Sally did, and that she was straightforward and truthful, as Sally was. That is not to imply that Sally was an exact counterpart of her mother. Probably Sally, in her mother's place, would have done very differently; almost certainly her relations with Professor Charles Ladue would have been different. Even as it was, it will be remembered that he seemed to have a certain fear of his little daughter. He had no fear of his wife. Mrs. Ladue's environment, to use a phrase that needs a deal of explaining before we know exactly what we mean, had been unsuited to her.

The new environment was not unsuited to her, at least as far as Uncle John was concerned. She helped to create an atmosphere of tranquillity; an atmosphere eminently suited to an old man and one to which that particular old man had not been accustomed. There was nothing tranquil or serene about Miss Patty. Uncle John, it is to be presumed, liked tranquillity and serenity. He succeeded in attaining to a surprising degree of it, in his own person, considering. Sally had been a help in the past four years; it was going on to five years now.

He was thinking upon these matters one evening as he sat reading. He was thinking more of them than of the page before him. He put the book down slowly, and looked up. Patty was upstairs with Charlie.

"Sarah," he remarked, "I find it very pleasant to have you with us."

Mrs. Ladue was surprised. There was no occasion for that remark unless Uncle John just wanted to make it. Sally, who had not yet gone upstairs, flushed with sudden pleasure and her eyes shone.

"There, mother!" she cried. "There now! You see. What did I tell--"

In Mrs. Ladue's face the faint color was coming and going. She spoke with some emotion.

"Thank you, Uncle John. It was kind of you to ask us. I find it very pleasant to be here. And that--it would be so easy not to make it pleasant. I haven't--I can't thank you suitably--"

"There is no question of thanks, Sarah," he replied, smiling gravely. "I hope you will put that out of your mind. You give more than you get--you and Sally."

"I am very glad," Mrs. Ladue murmured; "very glad and grateful. Sally is a good girl." Uncle John smiled at Sally. "She would not bother you--"

Mr. Hazen reached forth and patted Sally's hand as it lay on the table. "No. Sally doesn't bother me very much."

"But Charlie," Mrs. Ladue continued, somewhat anxiously,--"Charlie, I'm afraid, does. He has changed a good deal in these four years. He's hard to manage."

"Patty can't manage him, if you mean that," Mr. Hazen agreed. "She doesn't try very hard. But he's developed in the wrong direction, that's all, I think."

"No." There was a curious hardness in Mrs. Ladue's voice and manner. It did not seem possible that she could be speaking of her own little son. "I doubt if he could be developed in any other direction. He's very much like his father. His father was--" She stopped abruptly. "But there is no use in going over that," she added.

Mr. Hazen nodded. "I knew Charles before you did," he observed, "and--but, as you say, there is nothing to be gained by going into that. I may as well speak to Patty--again."

"I have absolutely no influence with Charlie now," Mrs. Ladue sighed. "It is natural enough that I should not have any."

Mr. Hazen's talk with Patty amounted to nothing, as was to be expected. No doubt he did expect it, for it is not to be supposed that he could have lived with Patty Havering for nearly forty years without knowing her traits. She had no real firmness. She had obstinacy enough; a quiet, mulish obstinacy which left her exactly where one found her. She was absolutely untouched by argument or persuasion, to which she made little reply, although she sometimes fretted and grew restive under it. Nothing short of her father's quiet "I wish it, Patty" was of the least avail. She gave in to that because she knew that it was a command, not because she knew that it was right. As to that, was not _she_ always right? She never had the least doubt of it. She sometimes doubted the expediency of an act; it was not expedient to disobey her father's implied commands. Not that she had ever tried it, but she did not think that it would be expedient. I don't think that it would have been either. It was just as well, perhaps, that she never tried it. But, in a matter like this one of Charlie, there was no command direct enough to enforce obedience. You know what I mean, as Miss Patty might have said; thereby implying that she hoped that you did, for she didn't. She was not quite clear about it in her own mind, but there seemed little risk in doing as she wanted to rather than as her father wanted her to. Her own ideas were rather hazy and the more she tried to think it out the more muddled she got. Anyway, she said to herself, as she gave it up, she wouldn't, and she got up from the rocking-chair which she permitted herself in her own room and went briskly about her duties. She had sat there for as much as half an hour. She had been watching Charlie chasing about Morton's lot, for she could see over the high wall as she sat. Most of the boys were tolerant chaps, as most boys are, after a certain age; but some of them were not and some others had not reached that age of tolerance apparently. Fortunately for Miss Patty's peace of mind she did not happen to see any of that.

Miss Patty, however, did not make public her decision, but Mrs. Ladue knew what it was just as well as if she had shouted it from the housetop. Where did a talk with Patty end but where it began? And Mrs. Ladue had been sitting at her own window--she shared Sally's room--she had been sitting at her own window while Patty sat at hers and looked at Charlie over the wall. But Mrs. Ladue watched longer than Patty and she saw several things which Patty was spared; to be sure, the wall was very high and cut off the view from a large part of the lot, but she saw Ollie Pilcher run after Charlie at last and chase him into that part of the lot which she could not see. Ollie was not noted for his patience, but Mrs. Ladue thought the loss of the remnants of it was excusable, in the circumstances. Then there was an outcry and it was not Ollie's voice that cried out.

Mrs. Ladue sighed and got out of her comfortable chair and went downstairs. She hoped she should be ahead of Patty when Charlie came in. She was not, but she and Patty waited together; and Charlie came. He was not crying, but the traces of tears were on his face. Miss Patty gave a little exclamation of horror.

"Charlie," began Mrs. Ladue hurriedly, before Patty could speak, "come up with me. I want to talk with you."

Charlie wanted to go with Cousin Patty; he didn't want to be talked to. He said so with much petulance.

"Let me take the poor child, Sarah," Patty began.

"After I have talked with him, Patty," said Mrs. Ladue patiently. Nobody should know how she dreaded this talk. "Come, Charlie."

She made Charlie mount the stairs ahead of her and she succeeded in steering him into her room. He washed his face with furious haste.

"Charlie, dear boy," she said at last, "I was watching you for a long time this afternoon. You know that I can see very well what goes on in the lot from this window."

He was wiping his face and he exposed his eyes for a moment, gazing at his mother over the edge of the towel. They were handsome eyes and they were filled now with a calculating thoughtfulness, which his mother noted. It did not make her feel any easier.

Charlie considered it worth risking. "Then you saw," he said, still with that petulant note in his voice, "how the boys picked on me. Why, they--"

"I saw, Charlie," Mrs. Ladue interrupted, smiling wearily, "not how the boys picked on you, but how you bothered them. I thought Ollie was very patient and I didn't blame him a bit."

"But he _hurt_ me," Charlie cried in astonishment. It was the most heinous sin that he knew of. Patty would think so.

"You deserved to be hurt. You are eleven, Charlie, and I'm surprised that you don't see that your actions will leave you without friends, absolutely without friends within a few years. Where should we be now, Charlie," continued Mrs. Ladue gently, "if we had had no friends?"

"Guess Cousin Patty'd be my friend," Charlie grumbled. "Guess she would."

"You will wear out even her doting affection if you keep on," replied his mother almost sharply. It was difficult to imagine her speaking with real sharpness. She regretted it instantly. "My dear little son, why won't you do differently? Why do you prefer to make the boys all dislike you? It's for your own good that I have talked to you, and I haven't said so very much. You don't please Uncle John, Charlie. You would be _so_ much happier if you would only do as Sally does and--"

"Huh!" said Charlie, throwing down the towel. "Cousin Patty wants me, mother." And he bolted out of the door.

Tears came to Mrs. Ladue's eyes. Her eyes were still wet when Doctor Beatty came in. He could not help seeing.

"Not crying?" he asked. "That will never do."

Mrs. Ladue smiled. "I have been talking to Charlie," she said, as if that were a sufficient explanation.

Indeed, it seemed to be. That, in itself, was cause for grief. "Ah!" said the doctor. "Charlie didn't receive it with meekness, I judge."

She did not answer directly. "It seems hopeless," she returned at last. "I have been away from him so long that I am virtually a stranger. And Patty--" She did not finish.

Doctor Beatty laughed. "I know Patty. I think I may say that I know her very well. Why, there was one period--" He remembered in time and his tone changed. "Yes, there was one period when I thought I knew her very well. Ancient history," he went on with a wave of his hand,--"ancient history."

Mrs. Ladue said nothing, but she looked sympathetic and she smiled. Doctor Beatty sat down conveniently near her, but yet far enough away to be able to watch her closely.

Meanwhile the doctor talked. It was of little consequence what he talked about, and he rambled along from one subject to another, talking of anything that came into his head; of anything but Mrs. Ladue's health. And the strange thing about it was that she had no inkling as to what the doctor was about. She had no idea that she was under observation. She only thought it queer that he had so much time to devote to talking to her. He couldn't be very busy; but she liked it and would have been sorry to have him give up his visits.

Presently, in his rambling talk, the doctor was once more speaking of the period of ancient history to which he had already thoughtlessly alluded.

"There was a time," he said, regarding Mrs. Ladue thoughtfully, "when I thought I knew Patty pretty well. I used to be here pretty often, you know. She has spoken of it, perhaps?" Mrs. Ladue smiled and shook her head. "Ah, what a blow to vanity! I used to think--but my thoughts were of scarcely more value then than they are now, so it's no matter what I thought. It's a great while--fifteen or twenty years--struggling young doctor in the first flush of youth and a growing practice. Practice like an incubator baby; very, very frail. I suppose I must have been a sentimental young chap; but not so young either. Must have been nearly thirty, both of us. Then the baby got out of the incubator and I couldn't come so often."

He was speaking reminiscently. Then, suddenly, he realized what he was saying and roused himself with a start.

"Patty was charming, of course, charming," he went on, smiling across at Mrs. Ladue. "Yes, much as she is now, with the same charm; the same charm, in moderation."

His eyes were very merry as he finished, and Mrs. Ladue laughed gently.

"Oh, Doctor," she said, "I ought not to laugh--at Patty. It's your fault."

Doctor Beatty looked horror-struck. "Laugh at Patty!" he exclaimed. "Never! Nothing further from my intention. I only run on, like a babbling brook. I'm really not responsible for what I say. No significance to be attached to any observations I may make. You won't mind, will you?"

"I won't mind," Mrs. Ladue agreed. "I don't."

"Thank you. I knew you wouldn't." Doctor Beatty rose and stood for a moment with his hand on the knob of the door. "You're all right for a couple of weeks anyway, or I'd warn you to keep your liver on the job. I always give that advice to Patty, partly because she needs it and partly because it is amusing to witness the starting of a certain train of emotions. Good-bye."

And the doctor went out, leaving Mrs. Ladue smiling to herself. She had forgotten about Charlie.