CHAPTER IX.

ONE HONORARY MEMBER TO THE OTHER HONORARY MEMBER.

TOMMY TRADDLES was aroused from his morning nap by the shock of seeing his little mistress appear at half-past five all dressed and ready for the day. He welcomed her with his usual salutation of soft murmurs, rubbing his head against her, which she interpreted to mean on this occasion, "Why are you dressed so early?"

"I couldn't sleep, Tommy," Margery answered; "I have so much on my mind."

By six the entire household was awake, for Margery began to practise energetically, that there should be no hindrance to her starting to take the letter to Miss Isabel as soon as breakfast was over.

Mary, Miss Isabel's old servant, told Margery that Miss Isabel was in the garden, and the little girl ran quickly through the big hall and down the box-bordered paths to find her.

Miss Isabel was watering and tending her lilies. She looked pale and ill as she bent over the tall stalks, in her white morning gown, dusting the glossy leaves, and showering them from her little watering-pot. Margery thought that she had never seen her beloved Miss Isabel look so weary and sad, and fear for her health for a moment drove all thought of the letter from her mind.

"Dear Miss Isabel, are you ill?" she cried, running to throw her arms around her.

Miss Isabel brightened as she turned to meet her.

"Why, my Margaret!" she cried; "you startled me! What a very early bird you are! No, I am not ill, only a trifle tired, and perhaps a little sad."

This recalled Margery to her errand.

"I brought you a letter, Lady Alma Cara," she said.

Miss Isabel set down the watering-pot, and put out her hand.

"Was it a special delivery that you came so early?" she asked.

"I think it was," said Margery, "though it was not marked."

Suddenly Miss Isabel dropped her shears and sponge, and sat down on the old gray stone bench, beside which the lilies grew white and stately; they were not as white as Miss Isabel's face as she looked at Margery.

"What is this, Margery?" she asked.

"Mr. Dean wrote it," began Margery, very much frightened. "He is going away, and we can't bear it, and he wants you to be friends, and so do we, for then he would stay, and he has told you all about it, so that you'll be nice to him, as you are to everybody else, even--even _worms_," said Margery, inspired to this comparison by looking down at the lilies' roots. "Please, _please_ don't be angry with him any more, Miss Isabel. You're the nicest of anybody in the whole world, except mamma, and he's the next nicest."

Miss Isabel was sobbing.

"Go back, dear Margery," she whispered. "You must go away now."

Margery was dreadfully frightened. She knelt at Miss Isabel's feet, and pulled her hands from before her face, peering under a lily to look at her.

"Are you angry?" she implored. "Only tell me that; are you angry?"

"Yes," said Miss Isabel, suddenly laughing in a queer sobbing way; "why didn't you bring this letter before?"

And Margery went away, pondering over this incomprehensible answer. As she walked slowly down the street she saw Trix and Amy coming to meet her. Trix's face was tragic; her cheeks were crimson, her lips set, her brow dark, and her eyes full of dumb misery. Amy's comfortable, rosy little countenance was stamped with sympathetic sorrow. Margery saw that something dreadful must have happened.

"What's the matter?" she called out, as soon as they could hear, running to receive the answer.

"I have been sent with a note to your house, and I'm to stay with you all day till three, and if I go out I'm not to go near home," replied Trix in an awful tone.

"Going to spend the day? I'm glad. What's the matter, Trix, that you look so solemn," asked Margery.

"Don't you know what that means?" demanded Trix, in such a horror-stricken manner that Margery trembled and shook her head.

"I'll tell you, then," said Trix. "You know mamma fell down-stairs three weeks ago and sprained her ankle?"

"Yes, I know that," said Margery.

"Well, the doctors are coming to-day to cut her leg off," declared Trix, and Margery gasped, as did Amy, though she had been told this before.

"How do you know?" demanded Margery, recovering from the shock.

"I'm sure of it," Trix replied. "I've heard how they do those things. They send the children out of the way always, and mamma thought I would never guess, and it would be easier for me to come home and find her leg gone than to be there and smell the ether and hear her groan, and I _know_ that's it, and I shall die, I shall die!"

Margery and Amy looked at each other, feeling helpless in the face of such a calamity as this.

"Did you say anything to my mother?" Margery asked at last.

"No, I gave her mamma's note, and that will tell her," said Trix. "I didn't want her to know I knew, because they were trying to keep it a secret from me."

"It's awful!" shuddered Margery. "You'd better come home with me, Trix, and we'll try to do something to forget it."

"Forget it!" cried Trix, turning on her indignantly, as they began to walk onward. "Do you think you could forget it if you knew those horrid doctors were cutting off your mother's leg, and she had to go on crutches forever? Perhaps they're coming with their knives this minute."

Margery looked faint, Amy began to sob, and Trix quivered from head to foot.

"We shall all go crazy if we think of it," said Margery, bracing herself. "It may not be that at all."

"I tell you I know it is," asserted Trix, so confidently that Margery yielded the point.

"Well, come home, and don't let us talk of it," she said. "I know some people walk very nicely with crutches, and it doesn't hurt to have a leg taken off, because they use ether."

But there was no consoling Trix, and the task of entertaining her proved a heavy one. Jack came, and heard the story with so much excitement that the others were wrought to a higher pitch than ever.

"I'm going to be a doctor myself when I grow up," he announced. Jack would have had more lives than a cat to follow half the callings that at different times he thought that he should like to follow. "I'd like to cut off legs. Now, don't you fret, Trix; your mother'll be all right in a few days, and crutches would only be fun. Think how fast I can go on stilts, and that must be about a million times harder, for you don't have even one foot on the ground. I've thought of a good play. We'll pretend this house is a castle besieged by the enemy, and I'll be a scout. I'll go around by Trix's house every half hour, and come back to let you know how it looks."

This idea was hailed with rapture, and was about to be carried out, but just as Jack had reached the front gate Mrs. Gresham's voice was heard from the window.

"Jack! Jack!" she called.

"Yes, Aunt Margaret," replied Jack, pausing.

"If you are going out, don't go near Mrs. Lane's house," said his aunt.

So that plan was never fulfilled. Luncheon made one of the hours pass a little better, but after luncheon Trix's restlessness became uncontrollable. She wandered in and out of the house; she accepted Amy's proposition to make a visit to the church and pray for her mother, but, as Amy remarked, "did not seem to feel any better after it." She quarrelled with Jack, and almost fell out with Margery, for she teased Tommy Traddles till that confiding cat fled in terror, and altogether led her friends such a life that no prisoners could long for freedom more eagerly than they longed for three o'clock to come. It never occurred to one of the four to lay their trouble before Mrs. Gresham, and she being busy did not discover its symptoms. Children are such queer little beings that they will sometimes suffer all sorts of misery without a word, and in this case the feeling that there was a secret to be kept from them made them unwilling to betray their knowledge of it.

At last it was ten minutes to three, and Trix could go. Amy, Margery, and Jack accompanied her.

"I don't smell ether," remarked Amy as they went in the door.

Katie, smiling with all her might, showed them into the parlor. Mrs. Lane, looking very bright and happy, stood by the window; she turned at once, and came swiftly forward to meet the children.

"Look, Trix!" she said, and pointed to a piano standing in all the glory of new polish over at the end of the room.

"For me!" gasped Trix.

"Yes, for you. You see now why I sent you off," said her mother. "I didn't want you to see it until it was all in place."

Trix had longed for a new piano, but she did not know whether to be glad or sorry; the revulsion of feeling was too strong.

"And you didn't have your leg cut off, after all?" asked Jack.

"I don't understand," said Mrs. Lane in bewilderment.

"Trix thought you were having your leg cut off, and that was why you sent her away," explained Margery. "We've had an awful day."

"You poor, poor child!" cried her mother, taking Trix in her lap, in spite of her great length. "Why didn't you tell Mrs. Gresham?"

And for the first time in that hard day Trix burst out crying, though she explained that it was because she was so glad.

"To think that we've had such a dreadful day for nothing," said Jack, in profound disgust, as they left the house.

"Why, Jack Hildreth, I'm ashamed of you; one might think you were sorry that Mrs. Lane wasn't a cripple," cried his cousin.

The children parted at their respective homes, and Margery went around by the orchard to look at the post-office, for throughout the troublous day she had not forgotten her anxiety as to Miss Isabel and the letter. She met Miss Isabel coming out of the gate as she went in. She was all in white, with a bunch of sweet peas at her belt; her face was glowing with color, her eyes shining. Margery did not stop to consider how strange it was to find her there now when she had ceased coming to the post-office; she only stood still in wondering amazement at the change in Miss Isabel since morning. Miss Isabel put her arms around her, and nearly kissed her breath away.

"You little dove of good tidings, my dear little Margery, how can I love you enough?" she cried.

"Have you answered?" asked Margery eagerly.

"I posted a note just now, and it was addressed to Mr. Oliver Twist," said Miss Isabel, and fairly ran away.

Margery went at once to take it out of the box. It was alarmingly thin, and her heart sank. Still, you could not always judge letters by the outside, and she ran with it all the way to the Evergreens.

She found Mr. Dean marching up and down the walk, "just as if he were expecting some one," thought Margery.

"A letter, Margery?" he cried, as soon as he saw her.

"Yes, but it's very thin, and yours was so thick," said Margery, not wishing him to be disappointed.

He snatched it from her and tore it open while she stood by trembling with eagerness to know whether he was to stay or go, and whether Miss Isabel had been so cruel as not to forgive him, and to make the children lose their kind new friend. It was a tiny note, but it took Mr. Dean ten minutes to read it, with bowed head, and only his shoulders visible to anxious Margery. Then he straightened himself, and turned towards her such a happy face that her heart leaped with joy.

"I shall not go away, my little dove," he said simply.

"Then Miss Isabel isn't angry any more?" asked Margery.

"No, and it is your blessed little plan that saved us," said Mr. Dean. "You dear little dove of peace and good tidings, you brought the olive branch."

"And now I can keep you and Miss Isabel?" asked Margery.

"You can keep me; I'm not so sure about Miss Isabel," said Mr. Dean.

"I'm not afraid of losing her," laughed Margery happily. "Oh, I'm so glad, I'm so glad you can stay!"

"What shall we do to show how glad we are?" asked Mr. Dean.

Margery considered the question seriously.

"Let's kneel right down and thank God," pious little Margery suggested at last, and as there was no one there to see, the big man and the little maiden knelt down on the grass under the pines with their Gothic arches, and said a most sincere prayer of thanksgiving.

"But are you sure it is all right; it was such a little note, and yours was so thick?" said Margery as they arose.

"All right; it was little, but it was enough," said Mr. Dean, taking out the note and refolding it carefully to restore it to his pocket. And Margery went home pondering the mysterious ways of grown people. She was quite sure that she should never have been satisfied with such a tiny note in reply to a long letter.

Margery went to bed early that night, needing rest after a long and wearing day. She lay in her little white bed looking out at the soft summer twilight in which her two friends, whom she had been the means of reuniting, were that moment walking and talking after a separation of ten years. The stars shone down on her peacefully, and the one bright one that she called "her star" looked right into her eyes.

"It's glad, too, that everything is happy, and Mr. Dean is going to stay. It's smiling good-night."

And smiling back to it, Margery passed into happy dreams.