Chapter 7

"If that child wants to kiss her ma agen, she shall do it," declared Mr. Tisbett; and throwing down the reins, he sprang to the ground, seized Phronsie, and swung her lightly over the window edge. "There you be--went through just like a bird." And there she was, sure enough, in Mrs. Pepper's lap.

"I should like to go with you," Phronsie was whispering under Mrs. Pepper's bonnet strings, "Mamsie, I should."

"Oh, no, Phronsie!" Mrs. Pepper made haste to whisper back. "You must stay with Polly. Why, what would she ever do without you? Be mother's good girl, Phronsie; you're all coming home, except Auntie and Dick, in a few days."

Phronsie cast one look at Polly. "Good-by," she said slowly. "Take me out now," holding her arms towards Mr. Tisbett.

"Here you be!" exclaimed Mr. Tisbett merrily, reversing the process, and setting her carefully on the ground. "Now, says I; up I goes," his foot on the wheel to spring to the box.

"Stay!" a peremptory hand was laid on his shaggy coat sleeve, and he turned to face old Mr. King.

"When I meet a man who can do such a kind thing, it is worth my while to say that I trust no words of mine gave offense. Bless you, man!" added the old gentleman, abruptly changing the tone of his address as well as its form, "it's my way; that's all."

John Tisbett had no words to offer, but remained, his foot on the wheel, stupidly staring up at the handsome old face.

"We shall be late for the train," called Jasper within the coach, "if you don't start."

"Get up, do!" cried Joel, who had seized the reins, "or I'll drive off without you, Mr. Tisbett," which had the effect to carry honest John briskly up to his place. When there, he took off his fur cap without a word, and bowed to Mr. King, cracked his whip and they were off, leaving the four on the little foot-path gazing after them, till the coach was only a speck in the distance.

"Mamma dear," said Dick, one afternoon three weeks later (the little brown house had been closed a fortnight, and all the rest of the party back in town), "when are we going home?"

"Next week," said Mrs. Whitney brightly; "the doctor thinks if all goes well, you can be moved from here."

Dick leaned back in the big chintz-covered chair. "Mamma," he said, "your cheeks aren't so pink, and not quite so round, but I think you are a great deal nicer mamma than you were."

"Do you, Dick?" she said, laughing. "Well, we have had a happy time together, haven't we? The fortnight hasn't been so long for you as I feared when the others all went away."

"It hasn't been long at all," said Dick promptly, and burrowing deeper into the chair-back; "it's just flown, mamma. I like Polly and Phronsie; but I'd rather have you than any girl I know; I had really, mamma."

"I'm very glad to hear it, Dick," said Mrs. Whitney, with another laugh.

"And when I grow up, I'm just going to live with you forever and ever. Do you suppose papa will be always going to Europe then?"

"I trust not," said Mrs. Whitney fervently. "Dicky, would you like to have a secret?" she asked suddenly.

The boy's eyes sparkled. "Wouldn't I mamma?" he cried, springing forward in the chair; "ugh!"

"Take care, darling," warned his mother. "You must remember the poor leg."

Dick made a grimace, but otherwise took the pain pluckily. "Tell me, do, mamma," he begged, "the secret."

"Yes, I thought it would be a pleasant thing for you to have it to think of, darling, while you are getting well. Dicky, papa is coming home soon."

"Right away?" shouted Dick so lustily that Mrs. Henderson popped her head in the door. "Oh! beg your pardon," she said; "I thought you wanted something."

"Isn't it lovely," cried Mrs. Whitney, "to have a boy who is beginning to find his lungs?"

"Indeed it is," cried the parson's wife, laughing; "I always picked up heart when my children were able to scream. It's good to hear you, Dicky," as she closed the door.

"Is he--is he--is he?" cried Dick in a spasm of excitement, "coming right straight away, mamma?"

"Next week," said mamma, with happy eyes, "he sails in the Servia. Next week, Dicky, my boy, we will see papa. And here is the best part of the secret. Listen; it has all been arranged that Mr. Duyckink shall live in Liverpool, so that papa will not have to go across any more, but he can stay at home with us. Oh, Dicky!"

That "Oh, Dicky!" told volumes to the boy's heart.

"Mamma," he said at last, "isn't it good that God didn't give boys and girls to Mr. Duyckink? Because you see if he had, why, then Mr. Duyckink wouldn't like to live over there."

"Mr. Duyckink might not have felt as your father does, Dicky dear, about having his children educated at home; and Mrs. Duyckink wants to go to England; she hasn't any father, as I have, Dicky dear, who clings to the old home."

"Only I wish God had made Mr. Duyckink and Mrs. Duyckink a little sooner," said Dick reflectively. "I mean, made them want to go to England sooner, don't you, mamma?"

"I suppose we ought not to wish that," said his mother with a smile, "for perhaps we needed to be taught to be patient. Only now, Dicky, just think, we can actually have papa live at home with us!"

"Your cheeks are pink now," observed Dick; "just the very pink they used to be, mamma."

Mrs. Whitney ran to the old-fashioned looking-glass hanging in its pine-stained frame, between the low windows, and peered in. "Do I look just as I did when papa went away six months ago, Dicky?" she asked, anxiously.

"Yes," said Dick, "just like that, only a great deal nicer," he added enthusiastically.

His mother laughed and pulled at a bright wave on her forehead, dodging a bit to avoid a long crack running across the looking-glass front.

"Here's Dr. Fisher!" shouted Dick suddenly. "Now, you old fellow, you," and shaking his small fist at his lame leg, "you've got to get well, I tell you. I won't wait much longer, sir!" And as the doctor came in, "I've a secret."

"Well, then, you would better keep it," said Dr. Fisher. "Good morning," to Mrs. Whitney. "Our young man here is getting ahead pretty fast, I should think. How's the leg, Dicky?" sitting down by him.

"The leg is all right," cried Dick; "I'm going to step on it," trying to get out of the chair.

"Dicky!" cried his mother in alarm.

"Softly--softly now, young man," said Dr. Fisher. "I suppose you want me to cure that leg of yours, and make it as good as the other one, don't you?"

"Why, of course," replied Dick; "that's what you are a doctor for."

"Well, I won't agree to do anything of the sort," said the little doctor coolly, "if you don't do your part. Do you know what patience means?"

"I've been patient," exclaimed Dick, in a dudgeon, "forever and ever so many weeks, and now papa is coming home, and I"--

And then he realized what he had done, and he turned quite pale, and looked at his mother.

Her face gave no sign, but he sank back in his chair, feeling disgraced for life, and ready to keep quiet forever. And he was so good while Dr. Fisher was attending to his leg that when he was through, the little doctor turned to him approvingly: "Well, sir, I think that I can promise that you can go home Saturday. You've improved beyond my expectation."

But Dick didn't "hurrah," nor even smile.

"Dicky," said Mrs. Whitney, smiling into his downcast face, "how glad we are to hear that; just think, good Dr. Fisher says we may go next Saturday."

"I'm glad," mumbled Dick, in a forlorn little voice, and till after the door closed on the retreating form of the doctor, it was all that could be gotten out of him. Then he turned and put out both arms to his mother.

"I didn't mean--I didn't mean--I truly didn't mean--to tell--mamma," he sobbed, as she clasped him closely.

"I know you didn't, dear," she soothed him. "It has really done no harm; papa didn't want the home people to know, as he wants to surprise them."

"But it was a secret," said Dick, between his tears, feeling as if he had lost a precious treasure entrusted to him. "Oh, mamma! I really didn't mean to let it go."

"Mamma feels quite sure of that," said Mrs. Whitney gently. "You are right, Dicky, in feeling sorry and ashamed, because anything given to you to keep is not your own but belongs to another; but, my boy, the next duty is to keep back those tears--all this is hurting your leg."

Dick struggled manfully, but still the tears rolled down his cheeks. At last he said, raising his head, "You would much better let me have my cry out, mamma; it's half-way, and it hurts to send it back."

"Well, I don't think so," said Mrs. Whitney, with a laugh. "I've often wanted to have a cry out, as you call it. But that's weak, Dicky, and should be stopped, for the more one cries, the more one wants to."

"You've often wanted to have a cry out?" repeated Dick, in such amazement that every tear just getting ready to show itself immediately rushed back again. "Why, you haven't anything to cry for, mamma."

"Indeed I have," she declared; "often and often, I do many things that I ought not to do"--

"Oh! never, never," cried Dick, clutching her around the neck, to the detriment of her lace-trimmed wrapper. "My sweetest, dearingest mamma is ever and always just right."

"Indeed, Dick," said Mrs. Whitney earnestly, "the longer I live, I find that every day I have something to be sorry for in myself. But God, you know, is good," she whispered softly.

Dick was silent.

"And then when papa goes," continued Mrs. Whitney, "why, then, my boy, it is very hard not to cry."

Here was something that the boy could grasp; and he seized it with avidity.

"And you stop crying for us," he cried; "I know now why you always put on your prettiest gown, and play games with us the evening after papa goes. I know now."

"Here are three letters," cried the parson, hurrying in, and tossing them over to the boy. "And Polly Pepper has written to me, too."

Dick screamed with delight. "Two for me; one from Ben, and one from Grandpapa!"

"And mine is from Phronsie," said Mrs. Whitney, seizing an epistle carefully printed in blue crayon.

But although there were three letters from home, none of them carried the news of what was going on there. None of them breathed a syllable that Cousin Eunice Chatterton was ill with a low fever, aggravated by nervous prostration; and that Mrs. Pepper and Polly were having a pretty hard time of it. On the contrary, every bit of news was of the cheeriest nature; Jasper tucked on a postscript to his father's letter, in which he gave the latest bulletin of his school life. And Polly did the same thing to Ben's letter. Even Phronsie went into a long detail concerning the new developments of a wonderful kitten she had left at home, to take her visit to Badgertown, so the two recipients never missed the lack of information in regard to the household life, from which they were shut out.

Only once Mrs. Whitney said thoughtfully, as she folded her letter and slipped it back into its envelope, "They don't speak of Mrs. Chatterton. I presume she has changed her plans, and is going to remain longer at her nephew's."

"I hope she'll live there always," declared Dick, looking up savagely from Ben's letter. "What an old guy she is, mamma!"

"Dick, Dick," said his mother reprovingly, "she is our guest, you know."

"Not if she is at her nephew's," said Dick triumphantly, turning back to his letter.

Polly at this identical minute was slowly ascending the stairs, a tray in one hand, the contents of which she was anxiously regarding on the way.

"I do hope it is right now," she said, and presently knocked at Mrs. Chatterton's door.

"Come in," said that lady's voice fretfully. And "Do close the door," before Polly and her tray were well within.

Polly shut the door gently, and approached the bedside.

"I am so faint I do not know that I can take any," said Mrs. Chatterton. Whether it was her white cashmere dressing-robe, and her delicate lace cap that made her face against the pillows seem wan and white, Polly did not know. But it struck her that she looked more ill than usual, and she said earnestly, "I am so sorry I wasn't quicker."

"There is no call for an apology from you," said Mrs. Chatterton coldly. "Set the tray down on the table, and get a basin of water; I need to be bathed."

Polly stood quite still, even forgetting to deposit the tray.

"Set the tray down, I told you," repeated Mrs. Chatterton sharply, "and then get the basin of water."

"I will call Hortense," said Polly quietly, placing the tray as desired.

"Hortense has gone to the apothecary's," said Mrs. Chatterton, "and I will not have one of the other maids; they are too insufferable."

And indeed Polly knew that it would be small use to summon one of them, as Martha, the most obliging, had airily tossed her head when asked to do some little service for the sick woman that very morning, declaring, "I will never lift another finger for that Madame Chatterton."

"My neck aches, and my side, and my head," said Mrs. Chatterton irritably; "why do you not do as I bid you?"

For one long instant, Polly hesitated; then she turned to rush from the room, a flood of angry, bitter feelings surging through her heart, more at the insufferable tone and manner, than at what she was bidden to do. Only turned; and she was back by the side of the bed, and looking down into the fretful, dictatorial old face.

"I will bathe you, Mrs. Chatterton," she said gently; "I'll bring the water in a minute."

XI

POOR POLLY!

"You are very awkward, child," observed Mrs. Chatterton to Polly on her knees, "and abrupt. Move the sponge more slowly; there, that is better."

Polly shifted her position from one aching knee to another, set her lips closer together, and bent all her young energies to gentler effects. But Mrs. Chatterton cried out irritably:

"Have you never taken care of a sick person, pray tell, or is it all your back-country training that makes you so heavy-handed?"

"I helped mother take care of Phronsie when she had the measles, and Ben and Joel," said Polly, "five years ago; we haven't been sick lately."

"Humph!" ejaculated Mrs. Chatterton, not very elegantly. But what was the use of a fine manner when there was nobody but a little back-country maiden to see it?

"I shall have to endure it till Hortense returns," she said with a sigh; "besides, it is my duty to give you something useful to do in this house. You should be thankful that I allow you to bathe me."

Polly's eyes flashed, and the hand holding the sponge trembled. Nothing but the fear of troubling Mamsie, and dear old Mr. King whose forbearance was worn to the finest of threads, kept her at her post.

"Now get the violet water," said Mrs. Chatterton, with an air she would never have dared employ towards Hortense; "it is the bottle in the lower left-hand corner of the case."

Polly got up from her knees, and stiffly stumbled across the room to the case of silver-mounted toilet articles: in her tumult bringing away the upper right-hand corner vial.

"Stupide!" exclaimed Mrs. Chatterton among her pillows. "Go back, and do as I bid you, girl; the lower left-hand corner bottle!"

Without a word Polly returned, and bringing the right vial set about its use as directed, in a rapidly growing dismay at the evil feelings surging through her, warning her it would not be safe to stay in the room much longer.

"Do you understand," presently began Mrs. Chatterton, fastening her cold blue eyes upon her, "what your position is in this house? Everybody else appears to be blind and idiotic to the last degree; you seem to have a little quickness to catch an idea."

As Polly did not answer, the question was repeated very sharply: "Do you understand what your position is in this house?"

"Yes," said Polly, in a low voice, and dashing out the violet water with a reckless hand, "I do."

"Take care," impatiently cried Mrs. Chatterton. Then she pushed her pillow into a better position, and returned to the charge.

"What is it, pray, since you understand it so well?"

"I understand that I am here in this house," said Polly, quite cold and white, "because dear Mr. King wants me to be here."

"DEAR Mr. King!" echoed Mrs. Chatterton, in shrill disdain. "Stuff and nonsense," and she put her head back for an unpleasant cackle; it could hardly be called a laugh. "What an idiot the man is to have the wool pulled over his eyes in this fashion. I'll tell you, Polly"--and she raised herself up on her elbow, the soft lace falling away from the white, and yet shapely arm. This member had been one of her strongest claims to beauty, and even in her rage, Mrs. Chatterton paused a second to glance complacently at it in its new position--"you are, when all is said about your dear Mr. King, and your absurd assumption of equality with refined people who frequent this house, exactly the same underbred country girl as you were in your old brown house, goodness knows wherever that is."

"I'm glad I am," declared Polly. And she actually laughed merrily, while she squared her sturdy shoulders. Nothing could be sweeter than to hear it said she was worthy of the dear little old brown house, and didn't disgrace Mamsie's bringing up.

The laugh was the last feather that overthrew Mrs. Chatterton's restraint. She was actually furious now that she, widow of Algernon Chatterton, who was own cousin to Jasper Horatio King, should be faced by such presumption, and her words put aside with girlish amusement.

"And I'll tell you more," she went on, sitting quite erect now on the bed, "your mother thinks she is doing a fine thing to get all her family wormed in here in this style, but she'll"--

Polly Pepper, the girlish gladness gone from heart and face, waited for no more. "OUR MOTHER!" she cried stormily, unable to utter another word--"oh--oh!" Her breath came in quick, short gasps, the hot indignant blood mounting to the brown waves of hair on her brow, while she clasped her hands so tightly together, the pain at any other time would have made her scream.

Mrs. Chatterton, aghast at the effect of her words, leaned back once more against her pillows. "Don't try to work up a scene," she endeavored to say carelessly. But she might as well have remonstrated with the north wind. The little country maiden had a temper as well as her own, and all the more for its long restraint, now on breaking bounds, it rushed at the one who had provoked it, utterly regardless that it was the great Mrs. Algernon Chatterton.

For two minutes, so breathlessly did Polly hurl the stinging sentences at the figure on the bed, Cousin Eunice was obliged to let her have her own way. Then as suddenly, the torrent ceased. Polly grew quite white. "What have I done--oh! what have I done?" she cried, and rushed out of the room.

"Polly--Polly!" called Jasper's voice below. She knew he wanted her to try a new duet he had gone down town to purchase; but how could she play with such a storm in her heart? and, worse than all else, was the consciousness that she had spoken to one whose gray hairs should have made her forget the provocation received, words that now plunged her into a hot shame to recall.

She flew over the stairs--up, away from every one's sight, to a long, dark lumber room, partially filled with trunks, and a few articles of furniture, prized as heirlooms, but no longer admissible in the family apartments. Polly closed the door behind her, and sank down in the shadow of a packing box half filled with old pictures, in a distress that would not even let her think. She covered her face with her hands, too angry with herself to cry; too aghast at the mischief she had done, to even remember the dreadful words Mrs. Chatterton had said to her.

"For of course, now she will complain to Mamsie, and I'm really afraid Mr. King will find it out; and it only needs a little thing to make him send her off. He said yesterday Dr. Valentine told him there was nothing really the matter with her--and--dear! I don't know what will happen."

To poor Polly, crouching there on the floor in the dim and dusty corner, it seemed as if her wretchedness held no hope. Turn whichever way she might, the dreadful words she had uttered rang through her heart. They could not be unsaid; they were never to be forgotten but must always stay and rankle there.

"Oh--oh!" she moaned, clasping her knees with distressed little palms, and swaying back and forth, "why didn't I remember what Mamsie has always told us--that no insult can do us harm if only we do not say or do anything in return. Why--why couldn't I have remembered it?"

How long she stayed there she never knew. But at last, realizing that every moment there was only making matters worse, she dragged herself up from the little heap on the floor, and trying to put a bit of cheerfulness into a face she knew must frighten Mamsie, she went slowly out, and down the stairs.

But no one looked long enough at her face to notice its change of expression. Polly, the moment she turned towards the household life again, could feel that the air was charged with some intense excitement. Hortense met her on the lower stairs; the maid was startled out of her usual nonchalance, and was actually in a hurry.

"What is the matter?" cried Polly.

"Oh! the Madame is eel," said the maid; "the doctaire says it is not a lie dees time," and she swept past Polly.

Polly clung to the stair-railing, her face whitening, and her gaze fastened upon Mrs. Chatterton's door, where Hortense was now disappearing. Inside, was a sound of voices, and that subdued stir that gives token of a sick room.

"I have killed her!" cried Polly's heart. For one wild moment she was impelled to flight; anywhere, she did not care where, to shake off by motion in the free air this paralysis of fear. But the next she started and, rushing down the stairs and into Mr. King's room, cried out, "Oh! dear Grandpapa, will Mrs. Chatterton die?"

"No, no, I think not," replied the old gentleman, surprised at her feeling. "Cousin Eunice never did show much self-control; but then, I don't believe this piece of bad news will kill her."

"Bad news?" gasped Polly, hanging to the table where Mr. King was writing letters. "Oh, Grandpapa! what do you mean?"

"Bless me! where have you been, Polly Pepper," said Mr. King, settling his eyeglass to regard her closely, "not to hear the uproar in this house? Yes, Mrs. Chatterton received a telegram a half-hour since that her nephew, the only one that she was very fond of among her relatives, was drowned at sea, and she has been perfectly prostrated by it, till she really is quite ill."

Polly waited to hear no more, but on the wings of the wind, flew out and up the stairs once more.

"Where have you been, Polly?" cried Jasper, coming out of a side passage in time to catch a dissolving view of her flying figure. "Polly--Polly!" and he took three steps to her one, and gained her side.

"Oh! don't stop me," begged Polly, flying on, "don't, Jasper."

He took a good look at her face. "Anything I can help you about?" he asked quickly.

She suddenly stopped, her foot on the stair above. "Oh, Jasper!" she cried, with clasped hands, "you don't know--she may die, and I said horribly cruel things to her."

"Who--Mrs. Chatterton?" said the boy, opening his dark eyes; "why, you couldn't have said cruel things to her, Polly. Don't be foolish, child." He spoke as he would to Phronsie's terror, and smiled into her face. But it did not reassure Polly.

"Jasper, you don't know; you can't guess what dreadful things I said," cried poor overwhelmed Polly, clasping her hands tightly together at the mere thought of the words she had uttered.

"Then she must have said dreadful things to you," said the boy.

"She--but, oh, Jasper! that doesn't make it any better for me," said Polly. "Don't stop me; I am going to see if they won't let me do something for her."