Part 2

"My dear little girl, Capt. Allan is going to leave you with us for a little while! And I have given him my promise that you shall be as safe and happy as it is possible for us to make you----" He wanted to say a great deal more to make Renee feel at home but Patricia interrupted him with a tempestuous hug that almost swept him from his feet.

"Oh, you dear, dear Daddy!" Then she threw her arms around Renee's neck. "Oh, I am so happy!" she was crying over and over, as though she had been the homeless one and Renee had taken her in.

"Don't forget me, Miss Everett," the soldier put in so comically that Patricia almost embraced him, too! Instead she shook both his hands delightedly. As Renee turned to Capt. Allan her lips trembled a little, for she had learned to love and trust him and already looked upon him as her guardian.

"Just you be brave and happy, little sister!" he said softly to her, "and as soon as I can I will come back!"

Then he shook hands with each one of them and Renee shyly kissed him. Mr. Everett went with him to the door. Patricia, knowing how hard the parting was for her little guest, seized her hand and dragged her toward a door at the end of the big hall.

"Let's go and find Melodia! I know something she's got!"

Only a few moments before Melodia had been telling the butler and the upstairs maid about "that Miss Pat's giving her orders so comical" and they were all laughing merrily over it when Miss Pat burst in upon them, leading Renee by the hand.

"Melodia, I have a guest only she's going to live with us! Please make lots of tarts, and can't Renee have just a little one now? Jasper, carry Miss Renee's trunk to my room--it's in the front hall! Maggie, please get a cot from the storeroom and put it right next to my bed." She turned toward the pantry. "I'll take some tarts now, Melodia, for Miss Renee is hungry! Don't all stand and stare like that, but please do as I tell you!" She helped herself as she spoke to two of the juiciest of the tempting tarts.

"Well, I never!" Jasper and Maggie and Melodia all exclaimed.

Patricia turned with dignity. "Miss Renee has come from France. She is a--a----" She was going to say "war-orphan" but suddenly it occurred to her that that might make Renee unhappy. So she finished: "Her brother has died for us in France and left her all alone!" Patricia used an expression she had heard often. "You three and Daddy and me have a debt to pay--and we are going to pay it!"

The three servants were deeply impressed by the grandness of Patricia's words and manner; and, too, Renee's sad little face won their hearts in an instant. Jasper coughed violently and hurried away to find the trunk. Melodia wiped her eye with the corner of her apron.

"The dear little thing! Well, we'll just make you happy and put flesh on your bones, bless your heart, missy!"

Patricia, satisfied that she had properly established Renee in the household, then led her upstairs to her own room. Renee, accustomed to the tiny chamber under the gable at St. Cloud, exclaimed with admiration when Patricia opened the door. Already Jasper had put down the queer old trunk and was busily engaged unfastening its buckles and straps. Maggie was watching, much disturbed.

"Miss Pat, I wish your mother was home! I know she wouldn't want me to bring a cot in here a-cluttering up the tidiness of your room when there's the blue room and the violet room empty and that room on the third floor----"

Alarmed that Maggie might separate them, Patricia exclaimed quickly: "I don't--_care_! We _won't_ make things untidy! I _want_ her in here!"

"What's all this about?" interrupted Mr. Everett, coming at that moment to the door.

Patricia, Renee, Jasper and Maggie all turned to him. But Patricia, catching his coat, pulled him to her so that, by reaching on tip-toe, she could whisper in his ear:

"You see, Daddy, I want her right in here! Maggie says that it will make things untidy but we can't let her get homesick or--or unhappy, and she might if she's left all alone in the blue room or the vi'let room----" Patricia rubbed her cheek coaxingly against her father's shoulder, then added solemnly: "I guess _I_ know what it is to be lonesome, for I have been lots and lots of times--just because everyone was so grownup and I hadn't anyone to be with like a little sister, and now--please, Daddy, we will keep the room as neat as can be!"

Renee's eyes echoed Patricia's pleadings.

"Well, well, Maggie, we'll have to let them decide things, I guess," he laughed, "at least until Miss Penelope comes!"

In all the excitement Patricia had quite forgotten the approaching arrival of Aunt Pen.

"Aunty Pen, Aunty Pen," she cried, catching Renee's hands and, swinging her around. "I'd just clean forgotten she was coming! You'll _love_ her!"

Certainly little Renee had not time to be unhappy--each moment seemed to bring something new! While Patricia was explaining all about Aunty Pen and why she was coming, and her story had, of course, to include Celia and even the Lieut. Chauncey Meredith and his fall from his airplane, Maggie, scolding a little under her breath, was spreading snowy sheets over a bed-lounge which Patricia had drawn up close to her own little bed.

In the next moment, Aunt Pen again forgotten, Patricia was tumbling her own possessions from one of the drawers of the mahogany chest to make room for the contents of Renee's little trunk.

"We'll just share everything," she cried. "We'll have just the same halves! And let's hang up your dresses now!"

Poor Renee did not need the generous space of one-half of Patricia's wardrobe for her shabby dresses--they were only four in number and sadly worn! But she hung them away proudly, telling Patricia that no one in France now wore new things!

"Poor Susette used to spend hours mending my clothes, trying to make them hold together," laughed Renee, tenderly recalling her good old friend at St. Cloud.

"Tell me all about her!"

So, sitting cross-legged on the floor beside the almost empty trunk, Renee described Susette and the cottage at St. Cloud and the wonderful flowers that had used to sell so well before the war, and the school where she had gone after her mother had died; how she and Emile always talked in English because her mother had made them promise, and how in the long, anxious, lonely days after Emile had gone, she had used to teach simple English words to Susette as they sat together among the flowers that nobody wanted to buy!

From the bottom of the trunk Renee drew a box covered with worn leather, tooled and colored like the binding of a beautiful book. So old was it that the colors blended and looked all blue and gold and green. Renee lifted it tenderly, as though it was precious!

"Oh, how queer and how be-_ut_-iful!" cried Patricia, all admiration and curiosity. "What do you keep in it?"

Renee held the box very close to her.

"I don't know! It was my mother's and now it's Emile's and mine, or"--she carefully corrected herself--"I suppose it's just mine. But we don't know what is in it for we never had the key! My mother died before she could tell Emile where it was! And Emile made me promise before he went away that I would keep the box and never let anyone open it!"

"And you haven't even the teeniest idea what is in it? Didn't you ever just shake it?"

"Oh, lots of times!" confessed Renee. "But nothing makes any noise. And of course I would keep my promise to Emile."

Patricia rocked back and forth on her heels in joy.

"Oh, what a _spliffy_ mystery! I can't wait to write to the girls!" Then she laughed at Renee's bewilderment. "Spliffy is a word we learned at Miss Prindle's and it means scrumptious or delicious or grand! Don't you _love_ a mystery? And isn't it the lov-li-est box?"

"Emile said it must have been made by some Italian master years and years ago. I have this queer locket, too--it was my mother's," and from a little bag, wrapped in folds and folds of tissue paper, Renee drew a curious gold locket. "It is much too big to wear but I am very careful of it--it is all I have! I pretend that the box and the locket both once upon a time belonged to some royal prince in Venice! Once, when I was little, mother took Emile and me to Venice--she had been sick and she had to go where the sun was warm!"

Patricia, who had always considered herself an experienced and much traveled young lady, suddenly felt very small and young compared to Renee and all that she had done!

"Is Venice like the pictures--all colors like shells and funny boats and people singing?"

But Renee had no chance to answer. The doorbell clanged and in a moment they heard a cheery voice answering Mr. Everett's greeting.

"It's Aunt Pen--_come_ on!" cried Patricia, rushing headlong down the stairs.

*CHAPTER IV*

*GARDENS*

"I'm certainly very glad you've come, Penelope; my family, which has so suddenly increased, is going to need a guiding hand!"

Penelope Everett, called by some a "strong-minded woman" because she had, since her college days, worn low-heeled shoes, boyish coats, comfortable hats and simple dresses, was Thomas Everett's favorite sister. Though many years younger than he, there was a directness about her, a something in the way she carried her head, poised squarely, that made him feel he could put anything upon her shoulders.

She gave a cheery laugh now in response to the seriousness of his manner.

Patricia and Renee had long since gone to bed, side by side. Renee had cuddled down under the soft coverings with a little sigh of content. Very tired with long days of travel she had dropped off to sleep quickly, while Patricia's voice, pitched to a low tone, had gone on in an endless account of "what we'll do to-morrow!" Aunt Pen, tiptoeing in a little later, had found Patricia's hand clasping Renee's tightly under the covers.

She recalled that now as she sat with her brother before the library fire.

"Do you know, Thomas, you've done the most wonderful thing in the world for Pat?"

Pat's father stared at her. He had thought she meant to praise him for taking in the lonely little girl from France!

"Why--what do you mean?"

"Just this--Pat's going to have something now that she's never had before--true comradeship!"

Thomas Everett nodded his head. "That is so! Pat said something queer to me, about being lonely lots of times!"

"Of course she's been lonely--often! She's almost a stranger in her own home! You whisk her from school to the seashore or some such place and then back--to another school! And everything on earth is done for her, she doesn't have to think of anything for herself, let alone for anyone else!"

Pat's father laughed. "Why, I thought we were bringing her up along the most model lines! But perhaps you have some new fads now!" He liked to tease Penelope.

"Poor Pat has been the victim of too many fads already! I tell you, brother, this war has shown us a whole lot of silly mistakes we were making in our living!"

"Before you go one bit further, Penelope dear, do promise to speak in words of one syllable! I know all about steel but I must admit I'm very stupid about girls!"

"Thomas, you're not stupid--you just don't think about them and yet your two girls are more precious to you than the whole steel market! And what are you doing with them? Look at Celia--how has she stood the trials of this wartime? Goodness knows, you've spent enough money on her to have made a strong woman of her!"

"But she's young, Pen----"

"Celia's twenty-one--that's the age they've been drafting the boys to go and fight for us! She's a few years older than some who have died over in France. And now she's had a nervous breakdown! Why in the world should Celia have any nerves at all?"

"You're right, Pen, but----"

"This draft we have had in this country has been a wonderful thing; it has sorted out our manhood. But I'm sorry the women couldn't have had it, too, I wonder how many would have measured up to the standards, and why not? Because we older ones make mistakes with the girls--like Pat!"

Penelope was standing now, very straight, before the fire, her eyes bright in her earnestness.

"I tell you we've reached a wonderful day, brother--we can see things as we never saw them before! Silly old prejudices and habits and notions have been swept aside. Do you know one thing we've learned? That it is something even greater than love for one's country that has made men go out and fight--to victory; it's a love for right and justice! And in one of John Randolph's books he tells us that it is that love for right and justice that will make the real brotherhood of men and nations! Who is going to carry on this ideal as we have found it? Why, our boys and girls--girls like Pat!"

"Pen, your eloquence makes me feel as though I had never known the real meaning of the word duty!"

"Oh, it isn't half so much--duty, Tom, as it is plain common sense. I've often thought that raising girls and boys is something like a garden! If you were planning a garden and wanted to grow something beautiful--oh, say larkspur, for I don't think any garden is perfect without it and no flower is harder to get started--wouldn't you want to know that you were putting in seed that would grow into hardy blossoms, blooming year after year, keeping your garden lovely and the world richer for their beauty?"

Penelope paused long enough to draw a deep breath.

"There at Miss Prindle's Pat is learning to speak French and Latin and how to use her hands and feet and walk out of a room properly and a dinner-table-speaking acquaintance with art and the masters and ancient history--and that's all very well, but how much will she know of the problems she must face by and by unless she begins to mingle with the sort of people that make up this world? And above all else--unless you build up for her a strong body that will mean a brave heart and a clear head, what service, I ask you, can she give to her fellowmen and her country?"

"You're certainly right, Pen! And now, if you've finished a very good sermon, let's get down to business. I take it you want to--raise larkspur! I don't know much about 'em, even in gardens! I've left these things to the children's mother!"

Penelope dropped into a chair with a little, ashamed laugh.

"My sermon does sound as though I was criticizing Caroline dreadfully! I know she is devoted to the girls. And so am I--and so are you. She's bringing them up just the way she was brought up!"

"Well, what shall _we_ do?" asked Pat's father with the tone of a conspirator.

"You've started doing right now the very best thing in the world--bringing that poor little girl into the family! Patricia loves her already and she'll learn for the first time to consider another child before herself. She's never had to do it before! Why, to-night I found her carefully dividing her clothes so that Renee might have just as many things as she had."

"Does Renee need clothes? I'll----"

"Now don't spoil it all by buying new things--let Patricia give up some of her own! It is making her very happy. Through Renee she is going to know something of the trials that come to others and she is going to learn to want to be helpful. She has gone to sleep now holding Renee's hand."

Both their minds turned to Renee.

"A curious tragedy--this, that has brought this child into our circle! Caroline might have made some other arrangement, but Pat's heart was set upon keeping her--and she _will_ have her own way!"

"Pat's mother is too absorbed now in Celia to think much about it and when she returns Renee will win her love with her little face! What a story the child's life makes with just what we know! The family must have been American--evidently exiled; they loved this country, else why would the mother have made the brother promise to come back? I hope sometime we will know more about them!"

"Capt. Allan has promised to look them up as soon as he can!"

"Captain Allan----" Penelope breathed, her face flaming, then turning white. When her brother had told her Renee's story, so intent had she been upon the tragedy of little Renee and the poor Emile that she had not heeded the name of the American officer.

"Can it be the same?" she thought now, a wild fluttering at her heart. Then she sternly admonished herself. "Of course not! Don't be silly! There are hundreds of Allans and I don't even know that he joined the army!"

She said aloud, very calmly: "Love has given to Renee what money couldn't--she has been well educated, I believe! Her mother taught her, she says, and after her mother's death she went to a communal school near St. Cloud. She will help our Pat a great deal!"

"Yes, I'm very glad we have her with us! And now, Pen, I'll put you in command--head gardener, or whatever you want to call yourself! Raise your larkspur--only let a mere father be of what help he can! Things are pressing pretty hard at the Works--I can't help but fear that the winter may bring serious problems of unemployment and we must be ready to solve them! A few weeks will see the end of this war--it is in sight now! By the way, we are just completing the formula for a new explosive--more powerful than any the world has ever known! If the enemy knew it the war would end to-morrow!"

Penelope shuddered. "Why do we need it?"

"My dear, that little formula alone, scrap of paper as it is, will be a safeguard against future wars! The government is sending on experts to go over the experiments and the formulas. And, if they are satisfied, it will be my gift--the gift of my men--to our country!"

Penelope listened with divided attention, her mind not so much upon the wonders of shot and shell as upon the problems of the two little girls upstairs. She stared into the crackling flames.

"Do you think Miss Pat will fall into your plans, sister? Remember she is sadly spoiled!"

Pen laughed. "She'll never know we're making plans--wait and see! The first thing we must do is to make Renee feel that this is home and then--well, we must fill their days with sunshine--flowers and children grow better with that, you know! And I promise you, Thomas, that after a few months--if I'm let alone that long--you'll agree that my hobbies are commonsense things after all!"

"You're generally right, sister--I've found that out from long, sad experience! Grow your larkspur and I'll help! And now I move that we call the plot finished and go to bed--you've worn me out!"

With two fingers he tipped her face toward him and kissed her good-night. Each was very fond of the other--it was this affection that bound Penelope's heart so closely to her brother's children.

Long after he had gone she sat alone before the fire, her elbows on her knees, her chin dropped into the palms of her hands. And as she mused over her plans, between her and the flames danced pictures of what she would like to do to help Pat, and now Renee, grow into "hardy blossoms, blooming year after year, keeping the garden lovely and the world richer for their beauty!"

*CHAPTER V*

*FIRST AID*

Renee wakened to find the sun streaming through the pink-flowered curtains and Patricia sitting bolt upright in bed, staring at her. She had been dreaming of Susette and Gabriel; she had to rub her eyes once or twice before she could remember that this was America and her new home!

"I thought you'd _never_ wake up! I was just sitting here thinking how nice it is to have you here. Miss Prindle would never let any of us have a room-mate. Let's dress fast--there's _so_ much I want to show you! I'll ring for Maggie."

As she spoke Patricia sprang from her bed and ran barefooted across the floor to the bell. With the sunshine and Pat's enthusiasm, the little homesick feeling that had begun to ache its way into Renee's heart disappeared in an instant.

Aunt Pen answered the bell instead of Maggie.

"Lazy girlies!" she cried cheerily. "I have been waiting an hour to eat breakfast with you! Melodia has a touch of her "rheumtics" and I've told Maggie that she may stay downstairs and help her. You and Renee can put away your things and make your beds." She was throwing back the bedclothes as she spoke and did not notice the surprise that flashed across Pat's face. Pat did not guess that this was one of Aunt Pen's "plans" because she did not know, yet, that Aunt Pen was "planning"; she had never made a bed in her life, nor had she ever had to hang away her clothes! But already Renee was neatly tucking into a corner of the wardrobe her warm, comfy slippers and was hanging her nightgown upon a hook, so, although Patricia had opened her lips to utter a protest, she closed them, suddenly ashamed.

Over their breakfast Aunt Pen and Pat made the plans for the day. It must be like a holiday to celebrate Renee's coming! She must be taken about the city and shown every spot of interest.

"It will seem stupid to you after Paris," declared Pat.

Renee smiled. "Oh, it couldn't! Paris is beautiful but--this is America! Always my mother told us stories of America. She loved it and she wanted us to love it, too! She used to say that America was like a splendid, growing boy! I think she meant that everything here is young and over there in France it is so old! But I love France!" The child's eyes grew dark with feeling. "Only I feel so sorry for France! She's like poor Susette and her flowers!"

"It's Susette's cheery, brave soul that you love, my dear--as we love the cheery, brave soul of France," finished Aunt Pen.

"Well, maybe France has a soul but does she have pancakes like these?" put in Pat, for she felt that Renee and Aunt Pen were growing far too serious for such a glorious morning.

The day was full of interest for them both; for Patricia, because she suddenly found a new pride in showing to her little guest the various things in her home city of which she was justly proud. Then Aunt Pen gave bits of historical information that added to everything they saw. Pat had not known that over the stretch of pretty park near her home the early settlers had once fought with the Indians; that the huge boulder in the park, shadowed by old elms, marked the grave where some unknown soldiers, who had given their lives in the war of 1812, were buried. Aunt Pen also pointed out the street, thronged now with trucks, wagons and street-cars, that had once been the trail through the forest over which, when the Indians had burned the village, Patricia's great-great grandmother had escaped, hidden under sacking and straw in the back of the old farm wagon, drawn by oxen.

"Oh, how thrilling!" cried Pat with a little shiver of delight. "What fun it would be to have to escape now! Only we'd just go in this car with Watkins driving about fifty miles an hour!"

Later in the day Patricia begged that she might take Renee again along the river road, past the old fort that had once leveled its wooden cannon toward the shore of Canada, past the huge factories with their countless chimneys belching forth flame and smoke. Aunt Pen had let them go alone and the ride had been one of endless interest. They were returning swiftly along the maple-shaded street that led toward home when the car swerved sideways, Watkins gave a quick laugh, and the air was pierced by the sharp cry of a dog in pain.

"Watkins--it was a dog!" cried Patricia.

"I know it. He'll be more careful next time!"

Renee had covered her eyes. Pat sprang from her seat and leaned toward the chauffeur.

"_Stop!_" she cried so commandingly that he ground on the brake. "I think you're--you're _awful_ to go on and leave the poor dog!" Tears threatened her voice. She opened the door and sprang out, followed by Renee.