CHAPTER ONE

ITS INMATES

"How do you know when you're a young lady?" asked Roberta Grey.

She was sitting before the ancient mahogany dressing-table in her--and Wythie's--room, unblushingly regarding herself in the mirror, while the fingers of both hands, supporting her brilliant face, experimented with changes in it by pushing up the delicate eyebrows into quite a celestial angle.

Frances Silsby, from the rocking-chair by the window, and Wythie on the foot of the bed, laughed.

"I know I'm young by the record in the Bible--and by the way I feel," said Frances. "And I know I'm a lady by the company I keep, since 'birds of a feather,' and so forth." Frances made a deep salaam almost to the floor, taking advantage of the forward tilt of the rocking-chair to deepen it.

"That's the retort courteous, Francie. You will be an ornament to the diplomatic circle when you are Lady Ambassadress to the court of St. James'. But I should like to know how to be sure one's reluctant feet have crossed the meeting point of the brook and the river," insisted Rob.

"_Lady_ Ambassadress, Rob?" hinted Oswyth. "You don't think that is tautological, do you? You know in 'Rudder Grange' they never noticed that Pomona had grown up until a young man walked home with her one night, and loitered at the gate; perhaps that's the test," added Wythie slyly. Bruce Rutherford had come down with Rob from Frances' the previous night alone, and not with Basil and Bartlemy to bear them company, as usual, hence Wythie's suggestion had a personal application.

"If one had to put on shoes and stockings, for instance, after she ceased to stand where the brook and river meet, she would know that she had waded in and had come out on the other side, a young lady," Rob went on with slightly heightened colour, ignoring her sister. "That's it; I have it!" she cried, wheeling around to look at her audience outside the glass. "It is something of the sort--it's the hair! I am just eighteen, but I wear my hair in a braid, with a big bow where it is turned up on the top of my head. If I discarded that bow, and made a great soft knot of hair 'on the top of my head, in the place where the wool ought to grow'"--Rob chanted this direct quotation--"I should be a young lady! I think I'll do it!"

She jumped up, snatched a kimono from a hook in the closet, threw it over her shoulders, dropped back into her chair before the dressing-table and in a twinkling had the pins out of her braid; the bow, badge of young girlhood, thrown on the table, and her rebellious, red-brown hair tumbling about her slender shoulders in a mass of beautiful colour.

"Wythie is already done up, and Frances, too. I have been wondering why they seemed so much more the real thing than I did, and I never discovered till now," said Rob, speaking with difficulty as she sat, head almost touching her lap, gathering her wealth of locks into her hand. "Now, I am going to take my place among my peers," she added, righting herself, displaying crimson cheeks as she faced the glass, and twisting and coaxing her hair to the crown of her head. "You shall see me in my true dignity henceforth. Won't it be pathetic, when the fashion-books come and Mardy has no longer any interest in those charming pages headed: Styles for Young Girls? Thank goodness, there is Prue still, but even she is sixteen, and that means her hours are numbered. I didn't want to grow up, and I mean to italicize the _young_ in my title of young lady just as long as I can, but I think I'm grown up. There, will that do?"

Rob arose as she spoke and faced her sister and her friend. She was tall, slender, radiant with nervous energy and quick wit; pretty, yet charming more than pretty. The sort of girl that she had promised to be; one who would carry everything before her with her high courage, high standards, and her flashing charm of variety in colouring and expression. Wythie was the same Wythie that she had been always; pretty, womanly, gentle, sweet, with goodness, pure, simple, unadulterated goodness, shining from her steady eyes and smiling lips. Frances Silsby had not changed much. She, too, was pretty in an unobtrusive way, and had grown more so in growing older. "She was a girl," Bruce Rutherford said, "whom one would endorse or cash at sight," and she deserved the trust that she inspired. But Rob swept everything before her; no one ever stopped to criticise nor analyse Rob. She flashed on the scene, and instantly every eye was filled with the variable charm of her face, which defied regular laws of beauty. Every heart went out to the warmth of her magnetic presence and kindliness of nature; while no one could be sceptic enough to doubt her crystal purity of purpose and truth.

Oswyth loved her with adoring love, and Frances regarded her as the embodiment of all her ideals, just as she had regarded her from her first meeting with Rob at the great age of three.

In the fifteen months that had passed since Rob's resolution had prevented the sacrifice of her beloved "Patergrey's" legacy to his family, and had secured for the Greys the full value of the patent into which he had poured the best effort of years of his pathetic life, both Oswyth and Rob had blossomed into girls of nineteen, and eighteen respectively, and into a fulness of life and happiness such as they could never have attained but that the stress and strain of anxiety and even want, had thus been removed. They were not wealthy people, by any means, these blithe and busy Greys, but they possessed, now, what seemed contrastingly like wealth to them, and which was quite enough to satisfy the true standards and tastes which their noble mother had given them. And the little grey house, which had always seemed rather like one of themselves than a mere house, had blossomed with its daughters into fuller adornment and cheerfulness during this year and a quarter. Many pretty modern things had crept in to take their places among the riches of inherited mahogany, pewter and china which were the little grey house's glory and pride.

"Well, you don't say anything! Don't you like me in my new rôle of full blown young lady, sans braid, sans bow, sans everything that fettered me in the bud?" demanded Rob, as Frances and Wythie gazed at her without speaking.

"You are lovely, Robin dear," said Wythie, "but somehow it makes me feel a little sorry to see the familiar bow discarded, and your hair done up with a full grown _do_! I am so used to my young girl sister!"

"You have preceded me a-down the knotty way, Wythie," said Rob. "See what dreadful puns you force me to in order to cheer you when you become pensive! Your hair has been knotted and twisted up for a year. You preceded me into the world by a twelvemonth, and dutifully I follow you, one year in retard, in the matter of full-grown hair-dressing. Isn't it all right, Francie?"

"The rightest kind of right, Rob," said Frances emphatically. "You are eighteen, and it is time you came into your kingdom--besides, it is most becoming! I only wish I could make my hair puff and lie up loose like that."

For Frances' hair was of that fine, yet determined kind which is no more capable of trifling with life than were the Puritan ancestors from whom it was derived.

"There is no power on earth could make mine lie down smooth and decorous like yours," retorted Rob, surveying with half approval, half disfavour her hair which, like her face, was as full of ripples and curves as ever. "Then, on the whole, the sentiment of the meeting is in favour of the new departure. Girls, you have been singularly fortunate! You have seen the larva turn into the butterfly--and you didn't have to stand a glass over me either! I am now, Roberta Grey, spinster, and I will fold up my hair-bow and present it to Prudence to have and to hold, and to use until her hour of eighteen sounds."

"Here she comes now, with your mother," announced Frances from her seat by the window.

"They went up to Aunt Azraella's, and then Mardy was going to Cousin Charlotte's, while Prue went to the post-office. They were to meet at Cousin Charlotte's, and come home together. I hope Mardy isn't tired," said Wythie, untwining herself from her Turkish position on the foot of the bed, and running to look over Frances' shoulder and to wave her hand at the beloved mother and Prudence.

Prue ran up-stairs; the girls heard Mrs. Grey going through the house to find Lydia in the kitchen. Accustomed as she was to seeing Prue, Frances felt anew, as she always did each time that she saw her, the startling quality of the youngest Grey girl's great beauty. During the past year Prue had grown amazingly, and had shot up into a slender creature that topped by nearly a head Rob, who had seemed fairly tall until Prue accomplished this feat. Her complexion was white with not a hint of colour, unless it was brought there by her emotions, or whipped into her cheeks by the breeze. Her features were faultlessly regular; her hair bright gold, silky and abundant, flying like floss around her low white brow. Her lips relieved the pallor of her face by their warm crimson, and from under the golden crown of hair, which the tall young creature wore proudly, there looked out a pair of large dark brown eyes that startled one by their contrast with their surroundings. There was no question that Prue was not only the beauty of the family, but that she had grown into a beauty of a rare type and of a very high rank. Unfortunately, she was conscious of her effect, although she was hardly to blame for this, since every one, except her wise mother and sisters, flattered her. It was a lucky thing for Prue that Wythie's sweetness and Rob's charm surpassed in the long run the attraction of Prue's dazzling beauty; for, otherwise, she might have forgotten altogether that beauty is by no means the only gift that the good fairies can bestow at a christening.

"I thought I should find you here, Frances. Here is a letter for you, Rob, but there was no other. I saw Battalion B down by the post-office; I thought they went back this morning," said Prue, dropping a letter in Rob's lap, and laying her hat on her knee as she seated herself beside Wythie and picked out the edges of its bows.

"No; Basil said he had to meet Mr. Dinsmore--they are having some trouble with their landlord, and Basil said if they couldn't get it straightened up they would buy the Caldwell place. It isn't really their landlord, but his agent that bothers them," said Wythie, trying to mention Basil Rutherford's name in the same old, easy, unconscious way she had used it when Battalion B and the Grey girls had first become friends. "And Bruce wanted to see Dr. Fairbairn, so they all waited to go back to New Haven this afternoon--of course Bartlemy waited to go with Basil and Bruce."

"Basil and Bruce both said that they would buy the Caldwell place rather than leave Fayre," smiled Frances, and Wythie blushed; but Rob was deep in her letter and did not heed. "Do you know, Wythie, I don't believe we realize what a lot of money those boys must have?" Frances continued. "You know they never say anything directly, but here they are, all three of them in Yale, keeping this place here, and having every wish gratified--all this means wealth, Oswyth, my dear. You know papa is called the richest man in Fayre, but he says Commodore Rutherford must have a great deal more than he has, for his boys to do all this. They are so nice and simple that somehow they seem to have the effect of being quite poor, but they are far from that."

"It doesn't make people simple to be poor, Francie; it makes them self-conscious and generally horrid. I have so recently escaped the throes of dire poverty, you know, that I speak by the book. The reason Battalion B are such nice, straightforward boys is that they don't have to think of money at all, and that--"

"That they are upright, straightforward, honest boys, well-bred, and all 'round fine," said Mrs. Grey, entering and interrupting Rob. "What nonsense you do talk, Robin, you chatterbox! I think Wren would be a better name for you than Robin! As though money made people or unmade them, by its possession or lack! Qualities are intrinsic, as you know quite well, my dear. The boys are gentlemen, in the true sense of that abused old word, and would be such were they kings or beggars. Whom is your letter from; isn't it Hester Baldwin?"

"Yes, Mardy," said Rob meekly. "Please don't call me Wren; it doesn't sound lofty and dignified, somehow. Don't you see that I've done my hair up in what Wythie called 'a grown-up do'? I'd hate to be called Wren with my hair done up--it's such an abbreviated bird!"

"Rob, you are so very silly!" smiled Mrs. Grey reproachfully. "Your hair looks well, dear, but must I lose the last vestige of my little Rob?"

"Yes, Mardy; she is gone but not forgotten. Prue, here before these witnesses, I give you my last-worn hair-bow, and these, and these," said Rob, hastily rummaging in her drawer and producing several big, soft ribbon bows which she tossed into Prue's lap.

"Much obliged," said Prue, beginning to fold her acquisitions. "I think that I shall give up hair ribbons before I am eighteen; whom will mine descend to?"

"There are always little girls, Prudy, though they may not be little Grey ones," said Rob wisely. "Your ribbons will probably go to little Polly Flinders. How did you find our relatives, Mardy? Is Aunt Azraella still herself, and is dear Cousin Peace well?"

"Aunt Azraella has a cold, Rob; it isn't serious, but she is nursing it. I think it would be as well if you and Wythie would go up there after tea. And Charlotte looked tired. I fear it is too much for her to go on keeping house there, now that she is alone. The dear soul clings to her life-long home, but without some one besides Annie to look after her it seems to me unsafe for her to live there," said Mrs. Grey, looking anxious. "Why, what did Hester say, Rob? I forgot to ask you?"

"And you may well ask!" cried Rob, springing to her feet. "How could I forget to tell you? She says that she wants to bring her favourite cousin here to-morrow, and that if she doesn't hear from us to the contrary she will assume that it is all right to do so, and come."

"Her cousin? What cousin is it? Does she mean to stay with us, or merely to call? asked Mrs. Grey with a quick mental outlook over the domestic conditions for guests.

"To lunch only," said Rob, looking over her letter. "The cousin is that Lester Baldwin of whom she has talked so much. He is named after her father, with the John dropped. He is young--twenty something--and has been in Japan for three years. Hester thinks there never was such a boy. When we wave our Battalion B in her face and she praises them, you can see her reserving her opinion of Lester. We shall let them come, Mardy?"

"Oh, yes, of course," said that motherly woman. "It is curious, but with all her advantages I feel as though I must do everything I can to make Hester happy."

"She just escaped being morbid," said Wythie rising. "Frances, you will excuse me if I leave you to Rob and baby Prue, and go to look over the pantry? There is time for one of us to go down again with orders if there is anything that we must have for the lunch to-morrow. Suppose I go down with orders, and stop at Aunt Azraella's, Mardy? Then Rob won't have to go."

"You forget that I am now the favourite niece, Wythie dear," said Rob. "But go if you will, and try to usurp that proud position; I will never upbraid you."

Wythie smiled her quiet smile and left the room. Just beyond the door she met with Kiku-san, grown into a mountain of a cat, but more clingingly kittenfied and dependent than ever. Wythie swung him to her shoulder just as she had always done since he had come to them, a white down-ball with pink trimmings, and continued her way to the kitchen to interview Lydia.

Lydia was the young woman who had come to preside over that department when the sale of the bricquette machine patent had made it possible for the Greys to have some one to help them in the tiresome routine of housework.

"Help" was what Lydia was, in the old-fashioned sense of the word, used as a particularly proper--and personal--noun. She was a most staid and respectable young woman of native stock antedating Revolutionary days. She could not have been more than half-way through her second decade of years, but she seemed removed by eons from anything approaching to youthful pleasures, not to say follies.

She had scorned domestic service, having preferred attending Fayre's bake-shop, until she learned that the Greys were seeking "help"; then she offered herself for the position, which she had filled from that day to the present one. The Greys were immensely flattered by her preference for them over all their townsfolk until they discovered that Lydia had been willing to come to them because, as they had heretofore been doing their own housework unaided, "they wouldn't feel themselves better than she was." This humbled the Greys, but delighted their sense of humour, and from the date of this discovery they had, Rob said, "been vainly trying to feel themselves as good as Lydia." Thus Lydia was a character, in the possession of whom the merry Greys revelled, not less for her competent service than for her unconscious contributions to their mirth. She welcomed Wythie, and Kiku-san on Wythie's shoulder, with a solemn face raised from a small sheet which she was attentively reading.

"Don't you think you had ought to take the pledge, Wythie?" she demanded so unexpectedly that Wythie involuntarily glanced in the small mirror which hung convenient to Lydia's back door to see what there was in her appearance to warrant such a question.

"Why, no, Lyddie," she said rallying and with difficulty keeping her lips straight. "I can't say I have felt any special need of it. What made you ask that?"

"This paper," said Lydia, tapping the sheet she held as if Doom were wrapped in it. "I get it sent me from Maine; it's a warning. I think you had ought to take the pledge, you and Roberta and Prue, the whole of you. There's the Rutherford boys."

"Where?" cried Wythie, looking hastily out of the window, for the Rutherford boys were, she supposed, safely back at college by this time. "Oh, you mean we ought to take the pledge on the boys' account? Well, but you see, Lydia, we never give the boys wine, and they are perfectly safe, as far as I can see----"

"It's the example," said this serious young woman severely, "I'm a-going to sign. This paper has made me see I owe it to my conscience to Protest--" she spoke the word with a capital--"and Protect the weak from themselves. Was you going to get something?" she added, for Wythie beat a retreat to the pantry, hiding her face in Kiku-san's fur. Lydia frequently propounded moral questions to Wythie and Rob when they came upon her, or were working with her, but thus far they had not grown accustomed to these questions to the extent of meeting them with the gravity which their handmaid felt they deserved.

"No," came Wythie's voice huskily from the depths of the pantry. "No, Lyddie, I don't want anything, except to see what we have in the house toward a luncheon-party to-morrow. Hester Baldwin is coming out from New York, bringing a young man cousin of hers whom we have never seen, so I want them to have something particularly nice. I thought we would take account of stock and plan our lunch, and that I would go down to-night to order what we needed before tea. Then I shall be here all the morning to help you with some of the fancy things that take time."

"You might have lobster _à la_ Newburg," said Lydia, folding her paper and abandoning the principles which it had just taught her with a speed that finished Wythie's hopes of gravity.

Her laugh rang out so infectiously that her mother, hearing it up-stairs, smiled in sympathy.

"Isn't that appropriate?" said Lydia, standing rigid in displeasure.

"We couldn't have anything better," cried Wythie emphatically. "That wasn't what I laughed at, Lyddie. And you make it so well that we are proud of your skill, aren't we?"

"That's what made me mention it," said Lydia innocently. And Wythie just succeeded in checking a second laugh.

But Lydia would never have guessed that Wythie laughed because the solemn girl beside her had lost sight of her principles and the wine in the lobster _à la_ Newburg at one and the same moment, oblivious to all but her newly acquired skill in making the delectable dish. Lydia had long ago abandoned all hope of understanding at what Wythie and Rob Grey laughed so often. She had decided that it was usually mere light-mindedness.