Chapter 2

"METHINKS YOU ARE MY GLASS"

Just across the street from the old Ashton place was another house equally old and yet wholly unlike it, for instead of being a stately, well-kept-up mansion with great rooms and broad halls and half an acre of garden about it, this was a cottage of the earliest New England type. It was low and rambling, covering a good deal of ground and yet without any porch and very little yard, because as the village closed about it and Elm Street became a fashionable quarter the land had been gradually sold until now its white picket fence was only a dozen feet from the front door and passers-by could easily have looked inside its parlor windows save for the tall bushes that served as a shield. By immemorial custom the cottage had always been painted white and green, but for a good many years it had not been troubled by any paint at all, "but had lived," as Polly said, "on its past, and like a good many persons in Woodford had gotten considerably run down by the process."

Now there were no lights at any of the front windows, although it was eight o'clock in the evening, but as the warm steady glow of a lamp shone from the rear of the house, it was plainly occupied.

There was no doubt of this in the mind of the girl who stood knocking noisily at the closed door, saying in an imploring voice:

"Oh, do please hurry, Polly dear, you know it is only me and that I can't bear to be kept waiting."

At this moment a candle was evidently being borne down the hall, for the door opened so quickly afterwards that two girls, one on either side the door, fell into, one another's arms.

"Dear me, it's 'The Princess' and she is no more ill than I am, though we were told she couldn't possibly be at school to-day on account of her ill health," the girl on the inside spoke first, recovering her breath. "I suppose royal persons may lie abed and nurse their dispositions, while poor ones have to keep on washing dishes. But come on into the kitchen, Betty, we are in there to-night and I haven't yet finished my chores."

She led the way with the candle down the shabby hall until both girls entered the lighted room. There, with a little cry of surprise, Betty ran over and dropped down on her knees by the side of a lounge.

The woman on the lounge was not so large as the girl, although her brown hair showed a good deal of gray and her face looked tired and worn. She had been holding a magazine in her hands, but evidently had not been reading, for her eyes had turned from the girl, who stood only a few feet away from her drying some cups and saucers, to the two others who had just come in, without an instant's delay.

"I am quite all right, dear," she answered the newcomer, "only the kitchen seemed so warm and cozy after the wet day and I was tired."

Betty was too familiar with the lovely, old-fashioned kitchen of her dearest friends even to think about it, but to-night she did look about her for a moment.

The room was the largest in the cottage; the walls were of oak so dark a brown from age that they were almost black; there were heavy rafters across the ceiling and swinging from them bunches of dried, sweet-smelling herbs. The windows had broad sills filled with pots of red geraniums and ground ivy, and as they were wide open the odor of the wet, spring earth outside mingled with the aromatic fragrance of the flowers.

An old stove was set deep into the farthest wall with a Dutch oven at one side and above it a high, severely plain mantel holding a number of venerable pots and pans of pewter and copper and two tall, copper candlesticks. The candles were lighted, as the room was too large for the single light of the lamp on the table near the lounge.

Polly O'Neill had gone straight to her sister and putting both hands on her shoulders had pushed her steadily back inch by inch until she forced her into a large armchair.

"Mollie Mavourneen, you know I hate washing dishes like an owl does the day light, but I am not going to let you do my work and to-night you know the agreeable task of cleaning up belongs to me. I asked you to leave things alone when I went to the door and I don't think you play fair." Polly seized a cup with such vehemence that it slipped from her hand and crashed onto the floor, but neither her mother nor Mollie showed the least sign of surprise and only Betty's eyes widened with understanding.

Strangers always insisted that there were never twin sisters in the world so exactly alike as Mollie and Polly O'Neill (not that their names had ever been intended to rhyme in this absurd fashion, for they had started quite sensibly, as Mary and Pauline), but to the friends who knew them both well this idea was absurd. It was true they were of the same height and their hair and eyes of the same color, their noses and mouths of somewhat the same shape, but with these superficial likenesses the resemblance ended. Anybody should have been able to see that in each detail Polly was the more intense; her hair was blacker and longer, her eyes bluer, her cheek bones a little higher with brighter color and her chin and delicate nose a trifle longer and more pointed. Of the two girls, however, Mollie was the prettier because her features were more regular and her expression more serene; but once under the spell of her sister, one never thought much of her appearance.

Polly had a temperament and she was having an attack of it to-night; the room was fairly electric with it. From some far off Irish ancestor she must have inherited it, for though her father had been an Irishman and had spent forty out of the fifty years of his life in Ireland, he had quite a different disposition and had been as amazed by Polly in her babyhood as the rest of her family.

Captain O'Neill had resigned from the English army eighteen years before and crossed the ocean to spend a few years in the neighborhood of the White Mountains on account of his health; he had no more money than most Irish gentlemen, but had charming manners, was extremely handsome and had soon fallen in love and married a girl twenty years younger than himself. Mary Poindexter had been the girl most loved in Woodford, one of its belles and heiresses, but her money had not amounted to much and soon disappeared after her marriage, until now she had only the cottage in which she and her daughters lived and the income earned by her work as private secretary to Mr. Edward Wharton of "The Wharton Granite Co." Captain O'Neill had lived only until his twin daughters were eight years old and since then the girls and their mother had kept up their small home together.

"You are dead tired and Polly is cross as two sticks and poor Mollie does not know what to do with you. Would you rather I should go away? I only came to tell you something wonderful," Betty whispered in Mrs. O'Neill's ear.

The older woman shook her head. "No, you have come just at the right time. I am not very tired, only my daughters chose to think so and wouldn't let me help with dinner and so, as I am an obedient, well brought-up mother, I am doing as I am told. And Polly is not in a bad humor, at least I hope--"

The girl, who had been picking up the bits of broken china from the kitchen floor, now straightened up and for the first time Betty discovered that she must have been crying a short while before.

"Oh, yes, I am anything you may like to call me," Polly announced indifferently, "and I am not in the least ashamed to have 'The Princess' know it. If Betty had to stand all the things I have stood to-day, she would be in a far worse humor. She and I are not angels like Mary and Mollie, so I suppose that is the reason why we love one another part of the time and hate one another the rest. I am sure I never pretend not to being dreadfully envious of 'The Princess'."

Polly came over and sat down cross-legged on the old rug near her mother and best friend, and though she smiled a little to remove the sting from her words, something in her expression kept Betty from answering at once. In the meantime Mollie joined the group, taking her place at the foot of the lounge.

The three girls were nearly the same age and the closest friends, and Betty probably spent nearly as much of her waking time, at the cottage as she did in her own home, for whenever she was lonely or bored, or, tired perhaps of having too much done for her, she had been used to run across the street to play or work with her friends from the time they were children. Mrs. O'Neill had never seemed very much older than her daughters and had always been called "Mary" by the three girls.

Now Betty reached over and laid one and lightly on Polly. "Don't say we hate no another just because we quarrel now and then and both have bad tempers. I never hate Polly, do I Mary?"

But before Mrs. O'Neill could answer, Polly suddenly faced fiercely about. "I hate you to-night, Betty," she insisted, and then to make her words entirely unlike her actions, slipped one arm around her friend. "Oh, you know that I don't really mean I hate you, I only mean that I am horribly envious and jealous of your having all the money you want and being able to do things without worry, not just things for yourself, but things for other people." And Polly bit her lips and ceased speaking, both because of the note of warning in her mother's face and because the brightness had died away from Betty's.

"I wish you would understand, Polly, that just having things does not necessarily make one happy; I often think it must be nicer to be poor and to have to help like you and Mollie do. This afternoon I was feeling quite forlorn myself, as I had a kind of headache and no one came to see me, and then just like magic from out our haunted chamber there appeared well, I can hardly call her a good fairy, she was too homely, but at least a girl who told me of something so delightful that it sounds almost like a fairy tale. I talked of it to father at dinner and then rushed over to tell you, as I thought you might be interested, but perhaps I had better wait--"

From the foot of the lounge Mollie O'Neill now interrupted. Utterly unlike either her sister or friend in her disposition, her influence often held them together.

"We do want to hear what you have to tell us, Betty, most dreadfully. Just because we happen to be specially worried about something to-night is no reason why Polly should be so mysterious. I vote we tell you what our trouble is and then you tell us your secret."

Polly got up from the floor. She was always curiously intense, not deliberately, but perhaps as a part of her inheritance. Now she made a little bow to Betty. "I am sorry I was rude to you, Princess," she said gently, "but tell you the reason for my special tirade against poverty to-night, I will not and Mollie shall not tell either."

Without replying Betty turned to pick up her blue cloak which had dropped from her shoulders as she knelt by the lounge. It had a cap attached with a blue silk lining and this she slipped over her head.

"It isn't worth while for me to talk of my plan to-night, then," she returned, "for if Polly won't be interested, you and, I could never make a go of it by ourselves, Mollie. Good-night; I promised not to stay very long." Passing by the lounge Mrs. O'Neill reached out, slipping her hand in Betty's and drew her to a place beside her. Usually a girl with the three other girls there was now and then a note in Mrs. O'Neill's voice which they seldom failed to recognize.

"Mollie is right, as Betty is almost one of our family, it is only fair to tell her what has put Polly in her present mood. The truth is, dear, the doctor thinks I am not very well and am needing a rest, so I am being made to lie down every evening after my work, by my daughters, and I am sure when warm weather comes I shall be all right again."

"You won't," Polly interrupted, "and if that is all you mean to tell Betty, why I shall certainly tell her everything now you have started."

Polly went on quickly, with two bright spots of color in her cheeks: "Resting in the evenings is not going to help mother; Dr. Hawkes says she needs months and months of rest and unless she has it she will soon be having a nervous breakdown or something else; that working for nearly eight years in an office supporting herself and two daughters is enough to tire any woman out. Then to-day a wonderful invitation came from my father's relatives, who have never paid the least attention to us before, asking mother to spend the summer with them in Ireland, and--"

Betty's hands were clapped eagerly together as she concluded, "So you are going to accept and Polly's blue at the thought of being separated from you, but really I can't see any reason why I should not have been told of this."

Instead of replying, Polly frowned and Mrs. O'Neill shook her head, so the explanation fell to Mollie. "No, mother is not going to accept; that is what the trouble is and that is why Polly and I sometimes feel cross with you, Betty, because rich people never seem to be able to understand about poor ones. You do what you like without thinking of the money, and we can't do anything we like without thinking of it. Mother feels she can't afford to go."

Looking almost as depressed as her two friends, Betty now turned her back deliberately on both girls to whisper in the older woman's ear.

"Oh, Mary, won't you, can't you; you know how happy it would make us." But she knew her answer even before it was given and also understood that Polly's pride would never have agreed to let her mother accept any favor through her. Indeed, never in all the long years of their friendship had Betty ever dared do half the things she longed to do for her two friends, and indeed Mrs. Ashton often said that Betty accepted far more than she was able to return, since she spent so much of her time in Mrs. O'Neill's home.

"You are awfully foolish, Mary," Betty argued, "because if you should really get ill--"

"That is just what I have been saying, Betty dear, for the past two hours," Polly protested, forgetting the difference between herself and her friend and edging close enough to the lounge to lay her head in, the other girl's lap. "And the worst of it is, Mr. Wharton says mother can have the holiday, he will pay her salary while she is away, and she only won't go because she says she can't leave Mollie and me alone and can't afford to pay any one to look after us. It is so foolish, when we are old enough to be taking care of her! I suppose she wouldn't be afraid to leave Mollie, it is just me! Sometimes it does not seem quite fair to be born a twin, because see how things are put into Mollie divided, all the good got and all the bad into me; so I suppose mother thinks I would set the house on fire or run away and go on the stage as I sometimes threaten, so soon as her back was turned. Oh, Mavourneen darling of the world, the very name of Lake Killarney, where our cousins live, would make you well."

But again Polly stopped talking because Betty had seized her by both shoulders, giving her a decided shake. "Say it again to me quickly. Is it just because Mary does not know what to do with you and Mollie that she won't go away?"

And both sisters nodded silently.

With a cry of what sounded like delight, Betty rose hurriedly to her feet, letting the blue cloak slip away from her for the second time.

Then dancing across the kitchen she seized the two tall candlesticks from the mantelpiece and setting them down in the center of the floor afterwards added the third, with which Polly had lighted their way through the hall. Above them she made a mystic sign by flattening the fingers of her right hand against those of her left, while slowly she revolved about them chanting: "Wohelo, Wohelo, Wohelo, in you lies the answer to all our difficulties," to the entire amazement of her small audience.