Part 3

It was a rather heterogeneous assembly which met at the Hall that night, as Sylvia's parties were apt to be. The guests ranged from "Grandpa McIntosh," getting to be rather an old gentleman these days but still hale and a little crusty as became a good Scotchman, down to little Mary Lane, the youngest, shyest member of the "Hester house" family which continued to hold its hospitable doors open to those who needed a home "with some one to care" as Sylvia had stipulated from the beginning.

Marianna, still fairy-like, in spite of her eleven-year-old dignity, flitted happily among the guests feeling delightfully grown up and important, but Donald, younger and shyer, boyishly conscious of his hands and feet, slipped into unobtrusive corners save for the rare moments when he could squeeze into an empty space beside his mother.

Of course the Hill was all there, Miss Priscilla, and Miss Rosalie and Julietta feasted their eyes delightedly on Sylvia, telling every one who would listen what a very picture of her Aunt Eleanor Arden the child was, rapturously reminiscent of other days and other parties when they, too, like Arden Hall were younger than at present, and Doctor Tom and Lois were there also, rallying each other on being such old fogies that a party was an event and the new dances utterly beyond their ken.

"Hester house" was present too in full force, including Mrs. Lorrimer and all the family of girls who had the luck to be mothered by her skillful hands and warm heart. All kinds of girls they were, big and little, pretty and plain, stupid and clever, but all of the workaday world and all otherwise homeless, united by one common bond, a warm adoration for Sylvia through whom they felt themselves linked to the world of their rosiest dreams. Sylvia would no more have omitted them from her list of guests on this birthday celebration than she would have omitted the Byrds or Doctor Tom. To be of the Hill was open sesame to Sylvia's favor, and moreover these girls were every one of them her personal friends and she wanted them here for their own sakes.

Hope and Martha, too, had come up from the Oriole Inn, the former still a little inarticulate and somber but happily having lost the old-young, pinched look about the mouth and the bitterness about the eyes which had been hers that night in Sylvia's garden when she had charged the owner so sternly with possessing "Hundreds of roses when Hope hasn't even one;" a charge which Sylvia had never since been able to forget for long. It was to her a symbol of the mesh of inequality and injustice of the world in which she herself was caught and struggled. For Sylvia wanted to share her roses. She always had wanted to, as Martha had long since learned. Hope was even sweeter and lovelier at twenty than she had been at fifteen, still a little frail in appearance though perfectly well. This summer there was an added grace about her, a sort of suppressed joyousness, a glow which transformed her rather ethereal charm into an even more appealing human guise. During the sunny summer days past when Stephen Kinnard had been using her as the incarnation of gardens, Hope herself had bloomed from a shy bud of a rose into a half-blown flower, though perhaps only Martha's keen, devoted eyes saw what had happened.

Professor Lane and his wife, Sylvia's original "Christmas Mother," were unfortunately unable to be present, though they sent warm greetings and hearty congratulations from the Western university to which the professor had recently been called. With them, too, was Elizabeth, also of the original famous family, who had come of late to be almost like a daughter in their childless home.

Gus Nichols was here, however, a slim, dark youth, extremely quiet, though not in the least awkward; unobtrusive, grave, giving the impression somehow of banked fires behind those solemn dark eyes of his, which followed Sylvia Arden wherever she passed. Though Gus was thoroughly American in dress and manner and articulation, the trail of his Italian ancestry was upon him. Even after all these years he looked "different," an odd contrast to the grim conservative old man, Angus McIntosh, whose adopted son and idol he was. Gus had been studying abroad for several years, had indeed just returned to America, ready to start his career on the concert stage. If this profession elected by the boy were at all a bitter pill for the old Scotchman to swallow he made no protest about it and had even furthered the lad's ambition. Mr. McIntosh was not one to indulge in half-way measures and Sylvia had long since driven home her point that if he was to transform Gus Nichols, office boy, into Augustus Nichols, his adopted son, he had no right to change the currents of the boy's being in the process. He quite understood that if Gus "had to play the music that was in him," he _had_ to. That was the end of it. Angus McIntosh was enough of a predestinarian to perceive that. At any rate, Sylvia and her Christmas family had inoculated the fast hardening old man with a certain infusion of human tolerance and human understanding and he had all the reward for his kindness that he desired and more in the boy's usually silent but none the less deep gratitude and devotion.

Other friends there were of Greendale and the near-by city, assembled to do honor to the young mistress of Arden Hall who had at last come home to take her place among them no longer a half-fledged school girl, but a poised and very lovely young woman.

"I suppose you will be marrying her off next," observed Mr. McIntosh curtly, with bent brows, to Mrs. Emory who chanced to be standing near by as Sylvia sped past in Jack Amidon's arms.

"Not I," smiled Felicia. "I should be sorry to have her marry for a year or so yet. One is young such a very short time in this world at best. I should like to keep her just as she is for awhile if I could."

"You'll have some trouble doing it unless you muzzle that young man, I'm thinking." The speaker frowned thoughtfully at Jack Amidon's back. "I suppose that is what most people would call a suitable match, eh?" he wheeled on Felicia to ask.

"I suppose so," admitted Felicia.

"H-mp!" snorted her companion. "Most people are fools."

Whether fools or not there were plenty of people to note with interest, pleasure or alarm, according to their several viewpoints, when as the music ceased Sylvia stepped through the French window into the balcony beyond, followed by Jack Amidon. Perhaps more than one guest would have echoed Suzanne's verdict that Sylvia was spoiled indeed if Jack Amidon were not good enough for her; handsome, debonair, thoroughly charming as he was. Health, wealth, good looks and good old family on both sides. What more could be desired? Who but a canny old Scotchman would have "H-mped" in the face of such a very obviously appropriate combination? Yet Sylvia herself was still to be reckoned with; Sylvia who wore her heart on her sleeve as little now as in the old St. Anne days, Sylvia, who wanted to learn to live as broad and deep and quick as she could.

*CHAPTER IV*

*THE WAYS OF A MAID*

"You look mighty sweet and cool and moonshiny!"

Jack stooped to draw Sylvia's scarf about her bare shoulders with the protecting chivalrous touch which was characteristic of him. His ancestors had been cavaliers and none of them all knew better than he the art of little, tender, intimate, endearing ways which women--even new women--love. The ardently adoring expression in his eyes was also characteristic. Jack Amidon's eyes were accustomed to looking adoring. He could no more help making love to a pretty girl than he could have been rude to an ugly one. It was constitutional. To do him justice, however, this time the adoration came from rather deep. There had been girls and girls in his life but never but one Sylvia.

"Ah, but it's good to have you home for good and all." And he let his hands rest for a moment on her shoulders as he spoke and permitted the ardentness of his eyes to deepen.

But Sylvia slipped away from his hands and his too eloquent gaze. She turned to rest her hands on the railing and look down at the fountain which flashed and gurgled pleasantly below in the moonlight. Perhaps she knew that all the summer day playing had been leading up to this night, that a serious question was likely to "Boo" at her at any minute unless she could keep it at a safe distance, which as Jack's eyes just now betrayed was not going to be so easy.

"I am not sure I _am_ home--for good and all," she said, still with her eyes on the fountain. "I have to find something to do. Just being 'out' isn't going to satisfy me. I have to be in something or rather. I am looking for a Cause," she turned back to him with a smile to add.

Jack dropped on the railing by her side and bent his handsome head until it was very near the girl's.

"Won't I do--for a Cause?" he asked, unconsciously echoing Suzanne.

Sylvia smiled.

"Scarcely. I am afraid you are more like an effect."

"An effect!"

"You are a fearful example of what I don't want to be and what I am bound to be if I don't watch out."

"What?"

Sylvia paused for a word, then, "A derelict," she pronounced.

Jack's head went up quickly, his self-complacency shattered for the moment. Sylvia's word had stung.

"Do I honestly remind you of anything so--dilapidated, not to say rotten?" he asked.

Sylvia caught the hurt sound in his voice and looked up, taking in at a glance his wholesome, young vigor, his essential cleanness and fineness. Excellent things these in themselves as the girl knew, though she asked for more.

"No," she admitted. "It wasn't a good figure after all. You are more like a freshly rigged, beautifully appointed yacht, without a rudder or a pilot, going nowhere--anywhere."

Jack settled back on the railing with a shrug.

"Same old Sylvia! You always did hit straight from the shoulder. What do you want me to do? There is more money in the family now than is good for us. What's the infernal use of my scrapping and scrambling for more? I'm a nincompoop at the business anyway."

"Then for goodness' sake find one you aren't a nincompoop at," retorted Sylvia.

"Easier said than done, young woman."

"Oh, I know," relented his mentor. "I haven't any right to preach till I find my own job."

"You! Girls don't need a job. Their job is to look pretty and get married."

Sylvia frowned at that.

"Heretic! That's not twentieth-century lingo. You are positively mediaeval. I shall set Barb on you."

Jack smiled.

"Barb knows it's true just as well as I do for all her theories. She would marry the right man in a minute if he turned up and forget the suffrage stuff. She's by all odds the most domestic of the three of you."

Sylvia looked thoughtful. She remembered Barb's opinion about the "loveliness" of having babies and wondered. For all his inconsequence Jack had a somewhat startling habit at times of getting beneath the surface of things. She suspected he had hit upon a truth now but would not give him the satisfaction of acknowledging the fact. Therefore she said nothing, and her silence gave her companion the opening he had been waiting for. He had not brought Sylvia out in the moonlight to talk "twentieth-century lingo."

"You didn't wear my orchids," he observed irrelevantly, at least irrelevantly to everything except his ardent eyes. From the beginning his eyes had been talking a language older than that of feminism.

"I didn't wear anybody's flowers. I had too many."

"And I am not different from just anybody?" There was a caressing, proprietary note in his voice. "Sylvia, sweetheart, you _know_ I am."

Sylvia faced him and the issue then, aware that she could fend no longer.

"Of course you are different, Jack. I've known you so much longer than the rest, but--I am afraid you are not different in the way you want me to say it. Please, Jack, don't spoil what we have by asking too much." Impulsively she put out her hand and let it rest on his. "Can't we keep on being--just friends?" She pleaded after the immemorial fashion of woman.

"I'm afraid not. You see, I don't want to be just friends. I want a whole lot more as it happens. I know I'm not much good, but I could be with you at the helm. You could do anything with me. You always could. Oh, Sylvia, wouldn't you try it? Couldn't you?" He stooped and lifted her hand to his lips. "Sylvia, isn't there any hope?" he implored, all his boy's heart in his eyes.

Sylvia couldn't help being stirred deeply. When one is loved it is not so hard to believe one loves in return and the call of youth and life is strong. But for both their sakes she steadied herself knowing the time was not ripe for yielding, if, indeed, it ever would be. This was one of the things among others that she was at sea about. She was not yet sure she knew herself, as she had told her friends.

"I am afraid there isn't--much," she said gently, apropos of his word _hope_.

His hand clinched.

"Sylvia, is there any one else?"

She shook her head hastily, but her eyes fell beneath his penetrating gaze.

"It isn't--Sylvia, it isn't Phil?"

Sylvia's head went up and there was a flash in her brown eyes, a deeper flush on her cheeks.

"It is nobody. Jack, you haven't any right to ask that," she rebuked him hotly.

"Sorry," he apologized. "Consider it unasked." "So it is old Phil," he thought.

"I don't want to marry anybody--not for a long, long time," Sylvia went on swiftly. "Anyway, I couldn't marry anybody who was just a boy. I've got to marry a _man_." In her confusion Sylvia hit hard again; harder perhaps than she really meant.

Jack rose and made one or two quick turns tip and down the balcony. Then he came to a halt before Sylvia.

"Maybe I deserve that," he said soberly. "No doubt I do. See here, Sylvia, if I can show you I am a man, will it help any?"

Sylvia hesitated. It would help a great deal and she knew it. And yet could she promise anything while she was still so uncertain of herself? Had she any right to hold out any hope?

"Sweetheart, wouldn't there be any chance for me?" he pleaded.

"I don't know," said Sylvia honestly. "I'm sorry, Jack. I'm all in a muddle myself. I do care a lot. How could I help it? You are always so dear and nice to me, and you are so twisted up with so many of the happiest times I've ever had I couldn't help caring. But it isn't enough at present, and I am not at all sure it ever could be enough of the right kind. We are awfully good playmates, but there is more ahead for both of us than play. At least I hope there is. Anyway, I don't want to belong to anybody but myself for awhile."

"I'll wait. I'll work like the devil. I'll do anything if you'll only say there is the slightest shadow of a chance."

Sylvia couldn't help smiling at the boyishness of his protestations, earnest as they were and touching in their unwonted humility. She shook her head.

"That is all there is--just a shadow of a chance. I'm sorry it isn't more. Truly I am. And don't--please, don't--hope too much," she begged.

"I'll hope all there is," he retorted grimly.

"Well, here you are! My word! Your partners are tearing their hair and rushing round like mad dogs. Pretty way for a hostess to behave, vanishing like the original Cheshire puss! Amidon, your life isn't worth a nickle if you go in there." Thus challenged a blond young medical student from the near-by University suddenly appearing in the window, blithely unconscious that he had interrupted anything more than a moonlight interlude.

"Then I'll stay out," announced Jack coolly as Sylvia rose with apologies and followed her captor.

Left alone, Jack lit a cigarette and strode to and fro in the little balcony thinking as hard as perhaps he had ever thought in his twenty-six rather heedless happy-go-lucky years. If ever a man takes square account of himself it is at the moment when he desires with all his heart and soul to win a woman. As young men go, Jack Amidon was as clean and fine as most, considerably more so than might have been expected, in fact, considering his easy-going temperament and unlimited income. But being merely negatively decent was not enough to offer Sylvia Arden. Not even shrewd old Angus McIntosh knew that better than Jack himself.

"Man indeed!" he muttered in the course of his march. "I suppose if I had studied like sin and turned into a saw bones like old Phil she would have had some use for me." The thought of Phil Lorrimer sent his thoughts on a different tangent. For with that uncanny perceptive power which Sylvia herself granted him he knew far better than Sylvia knew that if it had been Phil instead of himself who had been besieging the Princess of the hill top that evening for the boon of her hand and heart a different answer might have been forthcoming. Phil, at least, fulfilled the initial requirement. He was a man, every inch of him. Jack vouchsafed him that just as he had admitted the other lad deserved Sylvia's favor even at his own expense back in the days of the Christmas family.

It was odd how history repeated itself. Just as in that old time, Sylvia had set himself a task to "mend his fences" as she had whimsically expressed it, so she was again bidding him gird on his armor if he would win her respect without which her love was an impossibility. As if it were yesterday Jack remembered that night among the snow-laden pines, out under the stars, when Sylvia had gravely and simply without any preaching, Sylvia fashion, turned him aside from paths already beginning to be dangerous to safer, cleaner ways. Come to think of it, it had always been Sylvia who had pointed him starward, Sylvia only who believed in him enough to swear him into knighthood. Now that they were no longer boy and girl it was the prize of her love which would send him into the fray. Already he had experienced his accolade.

"Poor old Lorry!" he thought. "Why didn't he cut his blooming operations and come down here and speak for himself to-night? Thank the Lord he didn't though or yours truly would be ditched and done for. I never had a show with Lorry in the foreground. Well, here's to the breach. Sylvia will never forgive me if I omit to dance with one of her precious orphans."

So it happened that a few moments later shy little Mary Lane watching the dancers with longing eyes from a corner caught her breath with astonishment and delight as Jack Amidon stood before her, his eyes smiling encouragement and friendliness, his lips begging the boon of a dance quite as earnestly as if she had been one of the belles of the ball. So it happened also that Sylvia, being whirled past the two, smiled happy gratitude at Jack over her partner's shoulder, and he knew that his careless kindness to her little guest had scored him a high mark in her favor.

"Jack is such a dear," thought Sylvia. "He is a real knight. I wonder if I am all wrong to try to turn him into a plain workaday person. He is so thoroughly delightful as he is. When men get too much absorbed in their work you can't count on them for the little things, and, after all, the little things mean a whole lot."

Possibly this sage conclusion had some vague connection with the fact that a certain very much "absorbed in work" young doctor way off in a distant city had permitted Sylvia's birthday to come and almost go with no word or sign. If so certainly Sylvia would have been the last to admit the connection even to herself.

"Please, Miss Sylvia, there's some one downstairs in the hall asking for you," whispered a maid in Sylvia's ears as her partner brought her to a chair. "He didn't give any name."

Sylvia excused herself and slipped away wondering as to the identity of her late arriving guest. At the foot of the stairs was an extraordinarily tall, blond young man, with the bluest and friendliest of eyes and the biggest, most crushing hand grip in the world.

"Why, Phil!" gasped Sylvia. "I had no idea you could come." This as soon as she was able to regain her wits and the possession of her hands.

"Nor I. As a matter of fact, I couldn't. I just did," grinned Phil Lorrimer, cheerfully. "Here I am, B. and O. grime and all. May I come to the party just as I am without one plea?"

"You surely may. I'm so glad." And Sylvia's face corroborated her words.

"Here's a nosegay for you," and Phil's fingers fumbled with the string on the box he had deposited in a convenient chair while he had used both hands greeting Sylvia. In a moment a charming bouquet of cream yellow roses, shell pink at the heart, was disclosed.

"How lovely!" Sylvia buried her face in the nosegay. "I just have to wear them. Oh, dear, I haven't a pin."

"Here you are!" And the young doctor solemnly produced the needful article.

"Trust you!" laughed Sylvia. "There, aren't they perfect? Come on, quick. Let's not waste the music."

"Ditto my sentiments. Is this my dance?"

"It's Doctor Tom's, but he won't care. Hurry."

And in a moment the onlookers had something new to think of as Sylvia's white and silverness flashed back into the ballroom with a tall figure in plain traveling clothes by her side.

"Another country heard from," grunted Angus McIntosh as he watched the two swing into step.

Perhaps in the whole room there was no one who had more cause for a sudden reaction of feeling than Jack Amidon, whose quick eye took in even at the length of the hall that Sylvia was at last wearing somebody's flowers. But it was with apparent nonchalance and entire good will that he came to offer Phil Lorrimer a cordial greeting a few moments later, though even as he chatted with the other young man it did not escape him that there was an added radiance to Sylvia's "moonshininess," as if she had tasted some magic draught of youth and joy during those few moments in which she had been out of the room. As has been observed, Jack Amidon was a rather unexpectedly perspicuous person at times.

*CHAPTER V*

*SEPTEMBER AFTERNOON*

"Oh, me! Just think! By to-morrow afternoon at this time we'll all be scattered to the four winds," sighed Barbara. "Don't you hate to have things get different?"

"Can't say I do. The differenter the better so far as I am concerned as I have hitherto remarked," put in Suzanne. "I hate staying still, physically, mentally, or morally. I'm ready for new pricks every minute. I feel like saying to life every morning 'Come on. Do your worst. I'm ready. Give me anything--everything--except stagnation.'"

"You don't look as if you were going to stagnate just this minute," laughed Sylvia, surveying her friend, who, indeed, from the tip of her impatiently tapping shoe to the crown of her rebellious blue-black, wavy hair, appeared sufficiently dynamic for any purpose.

"I don't intend to. That is why I am transferring my spiritual and bodily allegiance from Norton, Pa., to New York City. I'd rather live on a crust in that blessed city of enchantment than fare on nectar and ambrosia elsewhere. I wish you would change your mind and come along, Sylvia. I know you are going to be discontented here or even contented, which is worse. Arden Hall is a perfect dream of a place, and I've loved every minute of this week with you, but it would swamp me with its placidity if I settled down in it, and that's the truth."

"Oh, Suzanne!" Thus Barb, always sensitive to the possibility that some one's feelings might be going to be hurt.

"Don't mind her, Barb. I know what she means precisely, and it is all more or less true. Arden Hall is placid and remote. I have to find a way to link it somehow with big moving things outside--below--or the very thing Suzanne threatens me with will happen."

"You'll find a way," prophesied Barb earnestly.