CHAPTER I.

HOW IT BEGAN.

IT was wonderful that any one could have a bright idea on such a dark day. It had rained in torrents all of the night before and throughout the forenoon, and now that the rain had ceased, the sodden earth sent up clouds of steaming dampness to mingle with the thick fog descending, and they blended together like two gray ghosts of pleasant weather. The lilacs drooped in discouragement, and a draggle-tailed robin sat with hanging wings on the fence, uttering an occasional chirp of protest in such vehement disgust that every time he made the remark it tilted him forward, and agitated him to the tip of his tail. A slender boy lay on the hearth-rug in the light of the fire kindled to dry the dampness, the warmth of which was grateful, although it was almost June. He was recklessly pulling a stitch that was broken in the knee of his stocking all the way down to the ankle, and the gloomy expression of his face indicated a melancholy pleasure in the knowledge that he had no business to do this.

Tommy Traddles, the striped cat, sat before a plump little girl on the floor, whose sunny face no amount of bad weather could cloud, watching the hearth-brush in her hand, which she occasionally whisked to and fro for his amusement, and making uncatlike cooings in his throat if she forgot him for too long. Jack Hildreth, the boy on the rug, said he was a cat with a canary-bird attachment.

On the edge of a chair opposite the cheery little girl on the floor sat a long-limbed, dark-eyed girl, holding her gypsy face in her hands, her elbows on her knees, listlessly watching Amy Tracy and the cat. They were spending the afternoon with Margaret Gresham, Jack's cousin, who was kept in the house by a cold, and whose tiny figure was curled up in a big leather chair near the fire, and her pale face and big, eager gray eyes looked out from its brown depths in sharp contrast.

"I'm going to ask St. Anthony to find the sun," announced the gypsy-like girl suddenly. She spoke through her closed teeth, not taking the trouble to remove her hands from her face.

"Not a bad idea, Trix," said Jack, laughing.

But their hostess looked shocked. "Why, Beatrice Lane, you shouldn't say that, it isn't right," she protested.

"Well, I'm sure it seems lost enough," retorted Trix.

"Nothing's lost when you know where it is," said Jack.

"I don't know where the sun is, except that it's somewhere in the sky," said Trix.

"It's just about there," said Jack, sitting up to point out of the window, and becoming more cheerful in the chance to show off to the girls. "It's sliding right down to the zenith."

"Horizon, Jack," interrupted Margery, laughing.

"Well, horizon, then; it doesn't matter," Jack said, annoyed. "It's getting ready to slip down to China, and it's more than ninety-five millions of miles away."

"Good boy!" said Trix mockingly. "How much he knows! I don't care about the sun anyway, it's too late for it to shine to-day; but if I don't find something to do I'll eat that cat up, Amy."

Amy cried out in pretended fear, and gathered Tommy Traddles to her heart, but he remonstrated vigorously, and struggling free sat down in precisely the same spot, wrapping his tail around him, and looking as if he had never been disturbed.

"I was thinking," began Margery slowly, "of something nice."

"Charlotte Russe?" asked Jack, knowing Margery's weakness.

"Cats?" suggested Amy, alluding to another.

"Sister Aloysia?" inquired Beatrice, for Margery was devoted to her teacher, and, in school phrase, "had a favorite nun."

"It's something nice for us to do," replied Margery, with much dignity, "and it would not be for a day, but for always, and if you make fun of me I'll not tell you."

"All right, Margery, we won't, and do tell quick," said Trix.

"I wasn't really making fun of you, and I'm dying to hear," said Amy.

"Tell ahead, Margery; hurry up," added Jack.

Thus urged, Margery sat up, putting down her feet, upon which she had been sitting, and smoothing her skirt to do honor to what she had to reveal.

"I was thinking," she began, "that we might form a club, we four."

"Like the A. G. L.?" asked Amy.

They had banded themselves into an Anti-Gum League, and wore its badge, designed and made by Jack, which consisted of a piece of gum stuck on a bent pin on the centre of a wooden disk, and preceded by the word "No," in large red letters, which of course made the badge read: "No Gum." The only trouble was that the gum frequently fell off, and had to be renewed, and it required chewing in order to mould it soft enough for the pin to enter. The duty of preparing the gum for the badges was unanimously appointed to Jack, and honor forbade his chewing longer than the flavor lasted, which was an agreeable circumstance, and one that made him entertain secret doubts as to his being a worthy member of the league.

"No, not like the A. G. L.," said Margery, replying to Amy's question. "The A. G. L. has a noble end, for chewing gum is a bad habit; but this would be more of a club, and only be for fun, though I think it would improve us."

"Oh, what is it anyway?" cried Trix impatiently.

"There's a big tree down in the orchard," said Margery, "and it's hollow. I thought we might each take a character, and use that name for our letters, and Jack could fix up a box with partitions in it, and we could put it in the hollow tree, and we'd have----"

"A post-office!" cried Trix, jumping up in great excitement, her dark eyes snapping. "Margery, it's a great idea."

"Hurrah for Margery!" cried Jack.

"It's splendid. Oh, Margery, you are so clever!" cried Amy, scrambling up rapidly, to Tommy Traddles' great disgust.

"When you do think, Margery, you think," said Trix, pulling Margery out of her chair. "Come on," and holding Margery's slender little hands in her strong brown ones, she pranced around the room in a triumphal dance, followed by both the others, while Tommy Traddles retreated under the sofa, whence he peered out at the performance with dilated eyes.

He withdrew his head quickly as the four children fell breathless and laughing on the sofa to discuss and mature Margery's brilliant plan.

"What did you mean about names?" asked Jack. "You may write poetry, Margery, but you sometimes get mixed in talking prose."

"I mean this," began Margery. "Let's each take some character or name, and let's write to each other by these names instead of our own; it would be more fun. I'd like to be Mary Queen of Scots."

"Oh, I'll be Sir Brian de Bois Guilbert!" cried Jack, who in his twelfth year was beginning to taste the joy Sir Walter has to give an imaginative child, and revelled in constantly repeated reading of "Ivanhoe."

"I'll be Anthony Wayne, because I'd love to ride down the steps," said Trix enthusiastically; "or Lafayette, or Light Horse Harry, or Napoleon."

"O Trix, you can't be a man," expostulated Margery.

"Yes, I can. I'd like to know why you can't make believe the whole thing just as well as part of it. I'm as much like a man as you're like Mary Queen of Scots, or Jack is like Sir Whatever-his-name."

"Oh, but----" began Margery, with the anxious line appearing between her eyes that always came there when she was worried.

"Now I think that it would be a bother to take any of these characters," said Amy, the peacemaker. "You know, all the letters would have to fit the parts, or they'd be silly, and I never could keep up writing _thee_ and _thou_, and _wot ye_, instead of do you know, and all that kind of words. You'd have to write the way Shakespeare did, and I can't."

"Can't you? That's queer," remarked Margery, and the rest shouted.

"No, I can't," Amy continued, quite unconscious of a joke. "I'd like to be the good Lady Godiva myself, who saved her people from starving, but I couldn't keep it up."

"Couldn't you?" asked the others, and laughed again.

"No, I couldn't," reiterated Amy, who was the practical little woman of the party. "I say we just take names, and not characters."

"Well," assented Margery reluctantly, "I'll be the Lady Griselda of the Castle of the Lonely Lake."

"My goodness, Margery; no wonder you write poetry!" exclaimed Beatrice.

"I'll be----" but she got no farther.

"Now, Trix, please, _please_ don't be a boy," cried Margery.

"Well, I think it's mean; I've wanted to be a boy all my life, and you won't even let me play one," grumbled Trix. "But I'll be a daring, splendid girl, then. Couldn't we take a name out of a book?"

"Yes; don't you think so, Amy?"

"I don't see why not," said Amy.

"Then I'll be Catharine Seyton, who barred the door with her arm when the mean Lady of Lochleven tried to break through into the queen's chamber. I heard my brothers reading about it," cried Trix.

"It's in 'The Abbot,' by Scott," said Jack, glad to show his acquaintance with literature, which Trix evidently considered grown up. "I'll take Sir Harry Hotspur," he added.

"Isn't that history?" asked Margery doubtfully.

"No, not exactly," replied Jack. "It's Shakespeare, too; I'll take only his part." Which, though not very clear, was satisfactory.

"I'm going to be Mrs. Peace Plenty, a philanthropist," announced Amy, convulsing the rest.

"P. P. P.," gasped Margery, emerging from a sofa pillow with her usually pale face crimson. "O Amy, you _are_ so funny, and you never just seem to mean to be."

"Well, it's not so funny as that," said Amy, laughing good-naturedly.

"What is a philanthropist, Jack?" asked Trix. "How did you know, Amy?"

"It's a charitable person," said Jack.

"It's a person who loves human beings," said Amy at the same time. "I know, because papa said if I didn't mind my p's and q's I'd grow up to be one, and get on committees; so I asked him what it was, and when he told me I didn't think it would be so bad to be one."

"Well, now we have settled the names. Do you think you could make the box, Jack?" asked Margery.

"Of course I can," said Jack, looking with loving condescension at the anxiously puckered brow of his little cousin, who, though a year younger than he, was cleverer, yet made such mistakes as this question implied; probably because she was only a girl.

"I'll make four divisions in it, and maybe I'll paint it."

"And make a drop-box, and nail it outside the tree for us to drop letters in with a slit in the top," said Trix.

"Just as you like, Trix," remarked Jack solemnly. "I for one don't mean to write letters with slits in the top. I'll make a slit in the top of the box, though, if you like."

"Don't be a goose, Jack," replied Trix, with dignity. "You know I meant that."

"We ought to have a name for our club," said Amy.

"Yes; I've been thinking of that underneath all the time we were talking," said Margery.

Jack stooped down and peeped under the sofa.

"I don't see how you could have thought _underneath_, Margery," he said; "I see only Tommy Traddles there."

"Now, Jack, don't be funny," said Margery, "and look out for smartness. You know aunty says you are troubled with smartness sometimes. I meant that underneath all we were saying I kept thinking of our name."

"Would Post-Office Club do?" asked Amy.

"I know; call it the Happy Thought Club," cried Trix, "because it was a lovely thing for Margery to think of, and when we were half dead for something to do, too. And we can have it a secret from all the other girls and boys, and if we had the letters P. O. on our badge they'd know right off what they stood for. We'll have a badge, won't we?" she added.

"Let's vote on the name," said Margery. "All in favor of calling it the Happy Thought Club please signify it by saying aye."

Four voices instantly chorused "Aye."

"Contrary, no," said Margery, and paused. Deep silence reigned, and the clock on the mantelpiece struck once.

"I propose we have for a badge a blue ribbon, and get mamma to paint an envelope on it, with the initials of the club over it. Would that be nice?" asked Margery.

"Lovely; and now I must go, because that was half-past five that struck," said Trix, jumping up.

"So must I," echoed Amy.

They hastily bundled themselves into their waterproofs, and Amy was stamping her foot into her right rubber, when she paused with the other rubber suspended in the air, on the way to her left foot.

"Why, there's Miss Isabel; we never thought of her!" she cried.

"Sure enough." "That's so." "Oh, our dear Miss Isabel," cried Trix and Jack and Margery together.

"You'll have to make five divisions in the box, Jack," said Margery decidedly, "for she's got to be an honorary member."