Chapter 7

Not quite a year elapsed before Mr. Hawtry's genial co-trustee visited his little ward. The reading of the will had taken place in November, and on the last week of the following June, Mr. Debrett, chancing to be in New York, decided to cultivate the acquaintance of Cecelia Anne. Mrs. Hawtry and the twins were by this time settled in their country home in Westchester, and Debrett, driving up from the station in the evening with Mr. Hawtry, found it difficult to accept the freckled, barelegged, blue-jumpered form which he saw in the garden, polishing the spokes of a bicycle, as the ward who had lived all these months in his memory: a fragile little figure in funeral black. Never had he seen so altered a child, he assured Mrs. Hawtry with many congratulations. She seemed taller, heavier, more self-assured. But the smile with which she put a greasy little hand into his extended hand was misty and babyish still.

Presently, while the two men rested with long chairs and long glasses and Mrs. Hawtry ministered to them, Jimmie appeared on the scene and after exchanging proper greetings turned to inspect Cecelia Anne and her work. "I think you've got it bright enough," he said with kindly condescension. "You can go and get dressed for dinner now. And to-morrow morning if I'm not using the wheel maybe I'll let you use it awhile."

"Oh, fank you!" said Cecelia Anne who had never quite outgrown her babyhood's lisp, "and can I have the saddle lowered so's I can reach the pedals?"

"Oh, I s'pose so," said Jimmie grudgingly. "Sometimes you act just like a girl. You give 'em something and they always want, more. Now you run on and open the stable door. I'm goin' to try if I can ride right into the harness-room without getting off. Don't catch your foot in the door and don't get too near Dolly's hind legs."

When the children had vanished around the corner of the house, Mrs. Hawtry turned to Mr. Debrett.

"There's the explanation of Cecelia Anne's ruggedness," said she. "She and Jimmie are inseparable. He has taught her all kinds of boys' accomplishments. And she's as happy as a bird if she's only allowed to trot around after him. It doesn't seem to make her in the least ungentle or hoydenish and I feel that she's safer with him than with the gossipy little girls down at the hotel."

"Not a doubt of it," Debrett heartily endorsed. "She couldn't have a better adviser. Her grandmother, a very clever lady by the way, had a high opinion of your son's practical mind. A useful antidote, I should say, to his sister's extreme gentleness."

He found further confirmation of old Mrs. Hawtry's acumen when Mr. Hawtry proposed that they should look over Cecelia Anne's disbursement account, kept by herself, as the will had specified.

Cecelia Anne was delighted with the idea. Jimmie had wandered out to see about the sports that were going to be held on the Fourth of July, and so the burden of explanation fell upon the little heiress. She drew her account book from its drawer in her father's desk, settled herself comfortably in the hollow of his arm and proceeded to disclose the "trend of her inclinations" as is evidenced by her shopping list:

"One sloop yat _Jennie H_ swoped for hockey skates when it got cold.

One air riffle.

Three Tickets.

One riding skirt.

Two Tickets.

Six white rats two died.

Four Tickets.

Leather Stocking Tales. Three Books.

Three Tickets.

Four Boxing Gloves.

Eight Tickets.

One bull tarrier dog and collar he fought Len Fogerty's dog bit him all up and father sent him away."

"I remember him," said Mr. Hawtry, "a well-bred beast but a holy terror, go on dear."

"One Byccle.

Three Tickets.

Stanley's Darkest Africa two books but not very new.

One printing press.

Two Tickets.

Treasure Island. One Book."

"And that's all the big things," finished Cecelia Anne in evident relief. "Jimmie wrote down the prices, wouldn't you like to see them?"

And she crossed to Mr. Debrett and laid the open book on his knee.

Mr. Debrett, as Cecelia Anne teetered up and down on her heels and toes before him, read the list again, counted up the total expenditure and admitted that his ward had got remarkably good value for her money.

"But what are all these 'tickets,' my dear?" he asked her.

"Eden Musee," answered Cecelia Anne. And the very thought of it drew her to her mother's knee. "Jimmie and the boys used to take me there Saturday afternoons in the winter to try to get my nerve up. They say," she admitted dolefully, "that I haven't got much. So they used to take me to the Chamber of Horrors so's I'd get accustomed to life. That's what Jimmie thought I needed. They used to like it, and I expect I'd have liked it, too, if I could have kept my eyes open, but I never could. I couldn't even _get_ them open when the boys stood me right close to that gentleman having death throes on the ground after he'd been hung on a tree. You can hear him breathing!"

"I know him well," said Mr. Debrett. "He is rather awful I must admit. And now we'll talk about the books. Don't you care at all about 'Little Men' and 'Little Women' or the 'Elsie Books?'"

"Jimmie says," Cecelia Anne made reply, "that 'Darkest Africa' is better for me. It tells me just where to hit an elephant to give him the death throes. He says the 'Elsie Books' wouldn't be any help to us even with a buffalo. We're going to buy 'The Wild Huntress, or Love in the Wilderness' next month. Jimmie thinks that's sure to get my nerve up--being about a girl, you see--"

"And 'Treasure Island' now;" said her guardian, "did you enjoy that? It came rather late in my life, but I remember thinking it a great book."

"It's great for nerve. Jimmie often reads me parts of it after I go to bed at night. There's a poem in it--he taught me that by heart--and if I think to say it the last thing before I go to sleep he says I'll get so's _nothing_ can scare me."

"Recite it for Mr. Debrett," urged Mrs. Hawtry. And Cecelia Anne obediently began, with a jerk of a curtsey and a shake of her delicate embroideries and blue sash.

"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"

Mr. Debrett's astonishment at this lullaby held him silent for some seconds.

"You see, sir," Cecelia Anne explained, "if you _can_ go to sleep thinking about that it shows your nerve. I can't. Not yet. But it never makes me cry any more and Jimmie says that's something."

"I should say it was!" he congratulated her. "It's wonderful. And now in the matter of dolls," he went on referring to the list, "no rag babies, eh?"

"Oh, but she has beautiful dolls, Mr. Debrett," interposed her mother. "She'll show them to you to-morrow morning, won't you honey-child? But she did not buy them. They were given to her at Christmas and other times. But really, since we came out here for the summer they've been rather neglected. Their mother has been so busy."

"And Jimmie made me a house for them!" Cecelia Anne broke in. "And furniture! And a front yard stuck right on to the piazza! But I don't know, mother, whether I'd have time to show them to Mr. Debrett in the morning. I'm pretty busy now. It's getting so near the race. And I pace Jimmie _every_ morning."

"Ah! that reminds me," said her father, "Jimmie told me to send you to bed at eight o'clock--one of the rules of 'training', you know--so say good night to us all and put your little book back in the drawer. You've kept it very nicely. I am sure Mr. Debrett agrees with me."

When the elders were alone, Mrs. Hawtry crossed over into the light and addressed her guest.

"I can't have you thinking badly of Jimmie," she began, "or of us, for allowing him to practically spend the baby's income. Every one of the things on that list mark a stage in Cecelia Anne's progress away from priggishness and toward health. I don't know just how much she realizes her own power of veto in these purchases but I am sure she would never exercise it against Jimmie. She's absolutely wrapped up in him and he's wonderfully good and patient with her. Of course, you know, they're twins although no one ever guesses it. They've shared everything from the very first."

"In this combination," laughed Debrett, "the boy is 'father to the girl' and the girl is 'mother to the boy.'"

"Precisely so," Mr. Hawtry replied, "and the mother part comes out strong in this race and training affair. An old chap down at the hotel--one of those old white-whiskered 'Foxey Grandpas' that no summer resort should be without--has arranged a great race for his friends, the children, on Fourth of July morning. The prize is to be the privilege of setting off the fireworks in the evening."

"They'll run themselves to death," commented Debrett, who knew his young America, "and is Jimmie to be one of the contestants?"

"He is," replied Hawtry, "it's a 'free for all' event and even Cecelia Anne _may_ start if Jimmie allows it. She's not thinking much about that though. You see, Jimmie has gone into training and she's his trainer. I went out with them last Saturday morning to see how they manage. They marched me down to an untenanted little farm, back from the road. Jimmie carried the 'riffle' referred to in Cecelia Anne's text and a handful of blank cartridges. Cecelia Anne carried Jimmie's sweater, a bath towel, a large sponge, a small tin bucket and a long green bottle. I carried nothing. I was observing, not interfering."

"Oh, that dear baby!" broke in Mrs. Hawtry, "such a heavy load!"

"She's thriving under it, my dear." Well, presently we arrived at our destination, and I saw that those kids had worn a little path, not very deep of course, all round what used to be rather a spacious 'door yard.' The winning-post was the pump. By its side Cecelia Anne disposed her burden like a theatrical 'dresser' getting things ready for his principal. She hung her tin pail on the pump's snout and pumped it full of water, laid it beside the bath towel, threw the sponge into it, gave a final testing jerk to her tight little braids and divested herself of her jumpers and the dress she wore under them. Then she resumed the jumpers, took the rifle and crossed the 'track.' Jimmie, meanwhile, had stripped to trousers and the upper part of his bathing-suit, had donned his running shoes, set his feet in holes kicked in the ground for that purpose and bent forward, his back professionally hunched and in his hands the essential pieces of cork. Cecelia Anne gabbled the words of starting, shut her eyes tightly, fired the rifle into the air, threw it on the ground and set off after the swiftly moving Jimmie. Early in his first lap she was up to him. As they passed the pump, she was ahead. In the succeeding laps she kept a comfortable distance in the lead, until the end of the third when she sprinted for 'home,' grabbed the towel and, as Jimmie came bounding up, wrapped him in it, rubbed him down, fanned him with it, moistened his brow with vinegar from the long bottle, tied the sweater around his neck by its red sleeves and held the dripping sponge to his lips. Then she found time for me.

"Oh, father," she cried, "did you _ever_ see _any_body who could run as fast as Jimmie? Don't you just know he'll win that race?"

"There's but one chance against it," said I. "And really, Mr. Debrett, that boy can run. He's a little bit heavy maybe, but he holds himself well together and keeps up a pretty good pace. I timed him and measured up the distance roughly afterward. It was pretty good going for a little chap. Cecelia Anne is so much smaller that we often forget what a little fellow he is after all. But that baby--whew--I wish you'd seen her fly. It wasn't running. She just blew over the ground and arrived at the pump as cool as a cucumber although Jimmie was puffing like an automobile of the vintage of 1890."

"You see," said Jimmie to me as he lay magnificently on the grass waiting to grow cool while Cecelia still fanned him with the towel, "you see it don't hurt her to pace me round the track."

"Apparently not," said I, and although he's my own boy and I know him pretty well, I couldn't for the life of me decide whether he, as well as Cecelia Anne, had really failed to grasp the fact that she beats him to a standstill every morning. I suppose we'll know on the Fourth. If she runs, then he does not know. But if he refuses to let her run; it will be because he does know."

"I'm not so sure of that," said Mrs. Hawtry.

* * * * *

Cecelia Anne _was_ allowed to run. First, in a girl's race among the giggling, amateurish, self-conscious girls whom she outdistanced by a lap or two and, later, in the race for all winners, where she had to compete with Charlie Anderson, the beau of the hotel, Len Fogarty, the milkman's son, and her own incomparable Jimmie.

The master of ceremonies gave the signal and the event of the day was on. First to collapse was Charlie Anderson. Jimmie was then in the lead with Len Fogarty a close second, and Cecelia Anne beside him. So they went for a lap. Then Jimmie, missing perhaps the blue little figure of his pacemaker, wavered a little, only a little, but enough to allow Len Fogarty to forge past him. Len Fogarty! The blatant, hated Len Fogarty, always shouting defiance from his father's milk-wagon! Then forward sprang Cecelia Anne. Not for all the riches of the earth would she have beaten Jimmie, but not for all the glory of heaven would she allow any one else to beat him. And so by an easy spectacular ten seconds, she outran Len Fogarty.

Then wild was the enthusiasm of the audience and black was the brow of Len Fogarty. A chorus of: "Let a girl lick you," "Call yourself a runner," "Come up to the house an' race me baby brother," has not a soothing effect when added to the disappointment of being forever shut off from the business end of rockets and Roman candles. These things Cecelia Anne knew and so accepted, sadly and resignedly, the glare with which Len turned away from her little attempts at explanations.

But she was not prepared, nothing in her short life could ever have prepared her, to find the same expression on Jimmie's face when she broke through a shower of congratulations and followed him up the road; to expect praise and to meet _such_ a rebuff would have been sufficient to make even stiffer laurels than Cecelia Anne's trail in the dust.

"Why Jimmie," she whimpered contrary to his most stringent rule. "Why Jimmie what's the matter?"

"You're a sneak," said Jimmie darkly and vouchsafed no more. There was indeed no more to say. It was the last word of opprobrium.

They pattered on in silence for a short but dusty distance, Cecelia Anne struggling with the temptation to lie down and die; Jimmie upborne by furious temper.

"Who taught you how to run?" he at last broke out. "Wasn't it me? Didn't I give you lessons every morning in the old lot? And then didn't you go and beat me when Len Fogarty, Charlie Anderson, Billy Van Derwater, and all the other fellows were there?"

Cecelia Anne returned his angry gaze with her blue and loyal eyes.

"I didn't beat you 't all," she answered. "I didn't beat anybody but Len Fogarty."

Her mentor studied her for a while and then a grin overspread his once more placid features.

"I guess it'll be all right," he condescended. "Maybe you didn't mean it the way it looked. But say, Cecelia Anne, if you're afraid of fire-crackers what are you going to do about the rockets and the Roman candles? You know sparks fly out of them like rain. And if the smell of old cartridge shells makes you sick, I don't know just how you'll get along to-night."

The victor stopped short under the weight of this overwhelming spoil.

"I forgot all about it," she whispered. "Oh, Jimmie, I guess I ought to have let Len Fogarty win that race. He could set off rockets and Roman candles and Catherine wheels. I guess it'll kill me when the sparks and the smoke come out. Maybe I'd better go and see Mr. Anstell and ask to be excused."

"Aw, I wouldn't do that," Jimmie advised her, "you don't want everyone to know about your nerve. You just tell him your dress is too light and that you want me to attend to the fireworks for you."

In the transports of gratitude to which this knightly offer reduced her, Cecelia Anne fared on by Jimmie's side until they reached the house and their enquiring parents. Mrs. Hawtry was on the steps as they came up and she gathered Cecelia Anne into her arms. For a moment no one spoke. Then Jimmie made his declaration.

"Cecelia Anne beat Len Fogarty all to nothing. You ought to have been there to see her."

"Was there any one else in the race?" queried Mr. Hawtry in what his son considered most questionable taste.

"Oh, yes," he was constrained to answer. "Charlie Anderson was in it. She beat him, too. And I _started_ with them but I thought it would do those boys more good to be licked by a little girl than to have me 'tend to them myself." And Jimmie proceeded leisurely into the house.

"But I don't have to set off the fireworks," Cecelia Anne explained happily. "Jimmie says I don't have to if I don't want to. He's going to do it for me."

"Kind brother," ejaculated Mr. Hawtry. And across the bright gold braids of her little Atalanta, Mrs. Hawtry looked at her husband.

"_Did_ he know?" she questioned, "or did he not? You thought we could be sure if he let her start."

"Well," was Mr. Hawtry's cryptic utterance, "he knows now."

THEODORA, GIFT OF GOD

"And then," cried Mary breathlessly, "what did they do then?"

"And then," her father obediently continued, "the two doughty knights smote lustily with their swords. And each smote the other on the helmet and clove him to the middle. It was a fair battle and sightly."

But Mary's interest was unabated. "And then," she urged, "what did they do then?"

"Not much, I think. Even a knight of the Table Round stops fighting for a while when that happens to him."

"Didn't they do anything 'tall?" the audience insisted. "You aren't leaving it out, are you? Didn't they bleed nor nothing?"

"Oh, yes, they bled."

"Then tell me that part."

"Well, they bled. They never stinteth bleeding for three days and three nights until they were pale as the very earth for bleeding. And they made a great dole."

"And then, when they couldn't bleed any more nor make any more dole, what did they do?"

"They died."

"And then--"

"That's the end of the story," said the narrator definitely.

"Then tell me another," she pleaded, "and don't let them die so soon."

"There wouldn't be time for another long one," he pointed out as he encouraged his horse into an ambling trot. "We are nearly there now."

"After supper will you tell me one?"

"Yes," he promised.

"One about Lancelot and Elaine?"

"Yes," he repeated. "Anything you choose."

"I choose Lancelot," she declared.

"A great many ladies did," commented her father as the horse sedately stopped before the office of the Arcady _Herald-Journal_, of which he was day and night editor, sporting editor, proprietor, society editor, chief of the advertising department, and occasionally type-setter and printer and printer's devil.

Mary held the horse, which stood in need of no such restraint, while this composite of newspaper secured his mail, and then they jogged off through the spring sunshine, side by side, in the ramshackle old buggy on a leisurely canvass of outlying districts in search of news or advertisements, or suggestions for the forthcoming issue.

In the wide-set, round, opened eyes of his small daughter, Herbert Buckley was the most wonderful person in the world. No stories were so enthralling as his. No songs so tuneful, no invention so fertile, no temper so sweet, no companionship so precious. And her nine happy years of life had shown her no better way of spending summer days or winter evenings than in journeying, led by his hand and guided by his voice, through the pleasant ways of Camelot and the shining times of chivalry.

Upon a morning later in this ninth summer of her life Mary was perched high up in an apple tree enjoying the day, the green apples, and herself. The day was a glorious one in mid July, the apples were of a wondrous greenness and hardness, and Mary, for the first time in many weeks, was free to enjoy her own society. A month ago a grandmother and a maiden aunt had descended out of the land which had until then given forth only letters, birthday presents, and Christmas cards. And they had proved to be not at all the idyllic creatures which these manifestations had seemed to prophesy, but a pair of very interfering old ladies with a manner of over-ruling Mary's gentle mother, brow-beating her genial father and cloistering herself.

This morning had contributed another female assuming airs of instant intimacy. She had gone up to the last remaining spare chamber, donned a costume all of crackling white linen, and had introduced herself, entirely uninvited, into the dim privacy of Mary's mother's room, whence Mary had been sternly banished.

"Another aunt!" was the outcast's instant inference, as in a moment of accountable preoccupation on the part of the elders she had escaped to her own happy and familiar country--the world of out-of-doors--where female relatives seldom intruded, and where the lovely things of life were waiting.

When she had consumed all the green apples her constitution would accept, and they seemed pitifully few to her more robust mind, she descended from the source of her refreshment and set out upon a comprehensive tour of her domain. She liked living upon the road to Camelot. It made life interesting to be within measurable distance of the knights and ladies who lived and played and loved in the many-towered city of which one could gain so clear a view from the topmost branches of the hickory tree in the upper pasture. She liked to crouch in the elder bushes where a lane, winding and green-arched, crossed a corner of the cornfield, and to wait, through the long, still summer mornings for Lancelot or Galahad or Tristram or some other of her friends to come pricking his way through the sunshine. She could hear the clinking of his golden armor, the whinnying of his steed, the soft brushing of the branches as they parted before his helmet or his spear; the rustling of the daisies against his great white charger's feet. And then there was the river "where the aspens dusk and quiver," and where barges laden with sweet ladies passed and left ripples of foam on the water and ripples of light laughter in the air as, brilliant and fair bedight, they went winding down to Camelot.

This morning she revisited all these hallowed spots. She thrilled on the very verge of the river and quivered amid the waving corn. She scaled the sentinel hickory and turned her eyes upon the Southern city. It was nearly a week since she had been allowed to wander so far afield, and Camelot seemed more than ever wonderful as it lay in the shimmering distance gleaming and glistening beyond the hills. Trails of smoke waved above all the towers, showing where Sir Beaumanis still served his kitchen apprenticeship for his knighthood and his place at the Table Round. Thousands of windows flashed back the light.

"I could get there," pondered Mary, "if God would send me that goat and wagon. I guess there's quite a demand for goats and wagons. I could dress my goat all up in skirts like the ladies dressed their palfreys, an' I'd wear my hair loose on my shoulders--it's real goldy when it's loose--an' my best hat. I guess Queen Guinevere would be real glad to see me. Oh, dear," she fretted as these visions came thronging back to her, "I wish Heaven would hurry up."