CHAPTER ELEVEN

ITS DEADLY INSULT

Wythie was in her "uniform," as the Grey girls still called the plain dark blue ginghams, feather-stitched in white which, renewed as fast as they wore out, were their housework gowns. With her plump hands protected by old gloves, she was sweeping her and Rob's room. A blue bordered handkerchief formed into a dusting-cap added greatly to her picturesque effect as she leaned on her broom and watched Rob coming up the street.

There had been several days in which to get used to the thought that Aunt Azraella was going hence from the big house on the hill, leaving it to Roberta for whatever purpose she pleased to use it. The question had been discussed in family conclaves, between the girls in private and with their mother and Miss Charlotte. It was an exciting thought that the power to do much was coming into the Grey girls' young hands, though the outlook was not for more wealth than would have seemed to many people just sufficient for their own wants. It was characteristic of these simple-hearted Grey people that they should be quite satisfied with what they already had, and begin at once to plan to help others with their moderate excess.

Wythie leaned out of the window as Rob drew near, and the brisk winter wind promptly removed her cap to deposit it at Rob's feet as she turned in at the low gate, set back for the season against the hedge and out of the way of drifts.

Rob picked it up and bowed low to her sister, holding the cap in a position of salute, while, with the other hand, she waved a letter upward.

"From Mrs. Flinders," she called, and Wythie immediately began to divest herself of her sweeping gloves as she called back: "I'm glad we've heard from her at last. I'm coming down."

She found Rob already hatless by the fireside in the sitting-room, where their mother and Cousin Peace were established with their work, and Polly, with Roberta Charlotte on her knee and Hortense in a doll's rocking-chair at her side, was reading aloud Hans Christian Andersen's Wonder Tales with much satisfaction in her own proficiency.

"Will Pollykins go out to visit Lydia for a little while?" asked Rob coaxingly. "We shall have something to tell her when she comes back, and we want to surprise her."

The quiet child arose at once and went obediently away, taking her family with her. Rob opened her mother's letter the instant that the door was closed behind the small representative of "the Flinders."

"It is addressed to you, Mardy, but I suppose it doesn't matter," remarked Rob as she acted on her supposition.

"Dear Mrs. Grey," Rob read. "I hope you are all enjoying the health at present which we are. He is not better, but remains much the same. I am about as usual. I received your letter which I now take my pen in hand to answer and would say that I do not know of any objections to renting our farm but the contrary because the taxes runs up pretty fast and when it is not worked it goes all to pieces. The hundred dollars which you mention as the price the man you wrote about will pay is more than we could get from any one round there but there is not no reason why you ought to tell him this if he wants to pay that much and we don't mind what use it gets so as we get the money regular. So if he wants it we will let him take it and be a relief off our minds more my mind than his because I got to take the care now he is laid up. What you say about Maimie sounds all right to me. I don't feel as if I could stand in her way if you think musics what she can do best of course she will have her own living to earn some-way. In the matter of education I do not feel as if I had enough myself to speak about it I can make out to spell right I guess because there is always a dictionary and nobody has no need to spell bad but for the rest I guess I had better leave it to you to do what you think is best about Maimie. I hope she knows that she is lucky to have such friends raised up to her when her father's stricken down and tell her to mind what you tell her and study hard. I guess she won't ever be our child again when she has got through studying. But it don't matter if she gets through her life better than we have. Her father would like to be remembered to you if he was just himself, but to-day is one of his times when he is sort of queer in his head. My love to Maimie, and my regards to all the family particularly Roberta.

"Yours respectfully. REBECCA ANN FLINDERS.

"P. S. Excuse mistakes and my poor writing my hand is sort of cramped from not writing much and doing housework."

"Oh, dear," sighed Rob, wiping away the tears of mingled amusement and pity which had risen in eyes quick to respond to both. "Isn't it funny? Spelled correctly, as she says, but guiltless of punctuation! And isn't it pathetic?"

"Very, when she says Polly will never be their child again--and I'm afraid it is true," said Mrs. Grey.

"But for all that she desires the child's best good; there spoke the mother, revealed in spite of ignorance, as eloquently as mother-love can be expressed," said Cousin Peace.

"This is certainly for Polly's best good," said Wythie. "I wish one were less often half sorry for succeeding in this world! However, we can now write Mr. Armstrong; Polly can be regularly installed as the next heir to his fund, and he can hire the farm, and Hester can begin her home for cripples without much longer delay."

"It seems to me we are getting into charities without any effort on our part," observed Rob. "We live our uneventful, commonplace lives, and a sort of warm gulf stream of the milk of human kindness is at once penetrating us and bearing us away upon its bosom."

"Dear me, Rob, what oratory!" laughed her mother.

"Literary style, gained from composing my stories and telling them to the children," explained Rob.

"Poor little ones!" commented Cousin Peace mischievously.

"Well, it really is queer," persisted Rob. "Hester began it with her vague aspirations, like the little St. Theresa going out to see if she couldn't find some obliging person to martyr her, and then we began to find we could help one or two little miserables so easily that there was no escaping doing it, and now comes Mr. Armstrong, following Mr. Silsby and Dr. Fairbairn's interest in the project, and Aunt Azraella crowns it all. Truly, I knew some people had greatness thrust upon them, but I never knew any one had goodness thrust upon them--I always thought one had to achieve sanctity painfully! Yet, here we are getting made benefactors and saints in spite of ourselves!"

"Don't worry, Rob; it takes more than one home for destitute children, and more than a little kindly feeling to make a saint," said her mother.

Just then Polly turned the handle of the door and looked in timidly. "Please will it bother you if I tell you that Lydia said she should like to have Rob come out in the kitchen? Because Ben Bolt has a man treed, she says, in the orchard," said Polly, without showing any curiosity as to why she had been dismissed.

"A man in the orchard!" cried Rob, springing to her feet, and rushing out after Polly, followed in turn by Wythie, while Mrs. Grey and Miss Charlotte folded up their work to come after them.

Rob almost ran into Lydia in the kitchen door-way, and encountered her reproachful gaze.

"That goat," said Lydia severely, "has got a man penned up behind an apple-tree. He's a real nice looking man, and he was coming here through the orchard, short cutting from the back street. I guess he thinks it's not a very Christian way of receiving a person."

"I don't see why he should look for Christian ways in a goat," laughed Rob. "Poor old Ben Bolt! He knows we have no dog, and Kiku-san can't guard us, so who else is there but him to keep off intruders? I'll go out and rescue this one, however." Rob pulled on her old rubbers, kept convenient in the kitchen, and went out to save the person skulking behind the tree, while old grey Ben Bolt, the family friend whom Prue had rescued from the hands of his enemies, years ago when he was a kid, stood with lowered horns, holding at bay the stranger whom he evidently regarded as a menace to the estate.

Rob ran up and seized Ben's horns. "He really is not dangerous," she explained, struggling with her desire to laugh at the same time that she struggled with Ben Bolt. "He acts dangerous, but he is a lamb."

"Exactly so," observed the stranger, emerging from the position which Braddock's men were so disastrously withheld from taking, and rubbing the frayed lichens from the sleeve which had dung so tenaciously to the apple-tree. "It is a beautiful goat; a very fine specimen. I am devoted to animals myself, but he seemed disinclined to accept my homage. I was told that this was a short cut to Mrs. Grey's house, but I fear it has consumed more time than the longer way would have required. Is this Miss Grey whom I have the honour to address?"

"Yes," said Rob, not considering it worth while to enter into the order of succession in the Grey family. "Won't you follow me to the house? I will guarantee your safety."

"Thank you," said the man fervently. "I have come on a matter of business, and I should be obliged to go around the front way and reappear if I did not go with you now."

"Dreadful alternative!" murmured Rob, holding Ben Bolt firmly while the stranger skittishly circumnavigated him. After he was past she liberated the goat and followed the visitor towards the house, wondering much at his manner, which was a delicate blend of effrontery and timidity, and at his voice and language which were both of the suavest. She decided as she watched him that there was no need of apologizing for taking him in by the kitchen way where Lydia stood holding the door open with her most correct and reserved manner to contradict the active interest in her eye.

"Thank you, miss," said the stranger as Lydia indicated the cocoa mat with a movement of her foot; Lydia was conservative of her kitchen floor.

"I see that the family has assembled to witness my predicament with the bearded monster yonder," he continued with a playfulness that his voice carefully labelled as such. "This is fortunate for me. Permit me to present my card."

Rob, who still stood nearest to this personage, took the card and read:

"Albert Lockwell, Dealer in Antiques. Colonial Furniture a Specialty. Antique furniture, old china, pewter, silver and brass bought and sold. Highest prices given and lowest asked-- Fourth Avenue, New York." And in the lower left-hand corner she read: "Mr. Demetrius Dennis."

"That is my name," said the stranger indicating the latter inscription with his thumb-nail backward. "I represent the well-known firm of Lockwell. Please allow the other ladies to peruse the card."

Rob handed it to Lydia to be given over to her mother; the solemn handmaiden carefully "perused" the card herself before yielding it up.

"That, madam, as I have said, is my name: Demetrius Dennis, representing ALBERT LOCKWELL."

He spoke as if his principal's name was capitalized. "We read in the morning papers lately a notice of the entertainment you gave in this town, in which it was stated that your costumes were veritable antiques, heirlooms of the Grey family. My principal is a person of remarkable astuteness; he said at once: 'Demetrius, where there is so many antique garments there very likely may be antique furniture and china. Take a train to Fayre on the first convenient morning, and buy it up.'"

Mrs. Grey gasped at the assurance of this speech, but Rob laughed outright. "Buy up the train or buy up the morning?" she asked. "And is this a convenient morning? I have always found mornings more or less convenient; they answer to begin the day with."

The visitor was impervious to ridicule, and he smiled kindly at Rob's fun-crinkled face.

"It suited me, Miss Grey," he said. "It was perfectly convenient to me. I could not come yesterday, because I went out to Jersey in pursuit of a corner dresser which proved utterly valueless, utterly worthless, I assure you. I am glad to see through the vista afforded me by that door that here I have not come in vain. If I mistake not that room, which I assume to be your dining-room, contains genuine pieces of old mahogany." He stepped forward as he spoke, and before the indignant Greys could interpose he had passed them and gone into the dining-room, ushered forward by Lydia, whose face expressed the deepest admiration for the language with which he was inundating her entranced ears.

"Ah!" observed this curious person with the Graeco-Hibernian name, "Now there is a side-board for which I am prepared to make a liberal offer, and for all the pewter which surmounts it. Also for that corner cupboard, and the blue and white china which it contains. Also for that cloverleaf side table. And here are chairs for which I will make a lump offer sufficient to replace them with moderns quite as good from the point of view of any but a collector. This is your sitting-room, I perceive," continued the invader, pushing on. "Just as I expected! For those high book-cases I am prepared to give as much as a hundred dollars apiece. That card-table, that work-table, that claw legged great sofa--all these things I will take, and give you more than any other dealer in New York. Doubtless you have antique bureaux, chairs, tables, all sorts of antique stuff in your bedrooms. I will just run them over hastily and make a rough inventory, and we will write you, we will write you, offering for everything, calculating each piece individually, but offering in the lump. I assure you we shall give you a good sum--it will mount above a thousand dollars, I fancy, judging from my rapid survey, and I am considered as good a judge of antiques as there is in the city. It is not impossible that you have a tester bed? An old high poster? I will take that at two hundred, if it is in good condition. It is remarkable to find a collection so complete so near New York; I consider myself lucky that no other dealer has superseded me. Now, if you please, the bedrooms."

He turned towards the hall with the same cheerful confidence and rapid movement that he had evinced since, rescued from Ben Bolt, whose intelligence the Greys were rating higher with every word, he had bent his attention upon the errand which had brought him to the little grey house.

But as he started in that direction Mrs. Grey recovered from the stunned state of mind into which the suddenness and rapidity of Mr. Dennis' invasion had thrown her. She uttered the one word: "Stop!" with such force that it arrested the invader. He wheeled suddenly, presenting to the Greys a face of such amazement that Rob burst out laughing, although her cheeks were reddened with anger.

"Mr. Dennis," said Mrs. Grey, consulting the card for the name, "you lose sight of a very important fact. I have not offered my furniture for sale, nor have had the slightest intention of parting with it. Is it your habit to push through houses in this impertinent manner, assuming that your presence, and your appraisals, and offers to purchase are welcome? You will remain, sir, precisely where you are; my house is not open for your inspection, nor are its contents for sale. The reason for the presence here of so many relics of the past, which you seem to consider remarkable, is very simple. This house has remained in one family for more than two hundred years, and its treasures have not been on the market. They are not for sale now. You will withdraw at once. This front door is the safer way; the goat is still in the orchard."

Demetrius Dennis beamed on the indignant lady with an indulgent and approving smile. "My dear madam," he said, "I see that you have an eye for business, and there is nothing that I do so admire as business sense. It is right for you to hold out for as large a price as you can get, and of course the more you seem not to care to sell, the more likely we are to persist and come down with something handsome. Something handsome it will be, I assure you, Mrs. Grey, and that I have told you frankly from the beginning. It has never come in my way to notice that people wouldn't sell in the end if they got what they wanted for their stuff. We shall not balk at a good price, because the collection includes so much that it will be worth our while to take it entire, and I don't mean that any other dealer shall get it."

There was a certainty of common understanding in the man's manner that disarmed Mrs. Grey's indignation as it stirred her sense of humor. It was perfectly evident that he considered himself her benefactor, and felt sure that, after some necessary delays for finesse, the furniture would be his. Whereat not only he would be entirely happy but he would leave the Greys even more so in the possession of a check large enough to furnish the little house over again in shining, highly varnished newness.

Her eyes softened into a laugh of pure amusement, which she prevented from reaching her lips, but Wythie and Rob were too young to be tolerant of impertinence, and Rob's eyes emitted an indignant flash as she said sternly: "You have heard my mother's order to leave the house. She has told you that its contents are not for sale. You will immediately obey her: there is the door."

"Now, why should you be huffy, my dear young lady?" began Mr. Dennis, reasonably. "Can't you see it's for your advantage to sell, and don't you suppose that I don't want to go back to town and report a failure? I don't generally fail, you know, when my head sends me out to buy for him."

"Nevertheless you have failed this time," said Rob. And gentle Oswyth added as she set the front door back: "Leave the house at once, sir. You are not to discuss the subject, nor be so impertinent as to assume that my mother means less than every syllable that she has uttered."

Here Lydia stepped to the fore. "This gentleman has left his hat in the kitchen. Come back the way you come in, sir, and I will hand it to you."

Demetrius Dennis, who looked much chagrined--even wounded--by the girls' sternness, turned to Lydia with a grateful smile. "No offence meant, I don't see why there should be any taken," he said. "If you insist on keeping the stuff, and on me going, there isn't anything else to be done but to let you keep it, and to go. But you don't know how hard it is for me to believe you'd refuse the offer I'd have made. Say, I'll leave that card with you, and if you change your mind when you talk it over around the evening lamp to-night--as you may you know, as you may--why a postal card dropped to me at that address will fetch me out here right away. You hadn't ought to be angry, madam; it's all in the way of business."

"I see that you consider it so. Another time you would be wiser to hesitate before you intrude. At least find out if you may inventory people's property. It doesn't matter. Lydia, take him safely out beyond Ben Bolt who evidently shares our prejudices against too great a disregard of private rights." And Mrs. Grey's lips twitched at the memory of the picture Mr. Demetrius Dennis had presented on their first glimpse of him.

"I wish you good-morning, ladies," said that individual with a bow comprehensive of the irate younger ones, and the amused elder ladies. Then he followed Lydia to the kitchen in pursuit of his hat, and after an unaccountable delay they saw him crossing the orchard in Lydia's wake, who preceded him as a bulwark against Ben Bolt.

At the rear gate their handmaid lingered long; the Greys saw her engaged in earnest conversation with the Graeco-Hibernian. By this time even Rob's indignation at his impertinence had given way to her sense of the ridiculous, and Mrs. Grey, Miss Charlotte, and the two girls were in the full tide of peals of laughter when Lydia reappeared to rebuke them tacitly by her gravity of demeanour, beneath which gleamed something like self-satisfaction.

"He told me to go straight in to you when I got into the house and say that he wasn't one mite offended, and for you to preserve the card in case you changed your mind," said Lydia. "He's a gentleman, that's what he is," added Lydia, as she half turned in the doorway, as one who would be willing to entertain a motion to linger.

"Is he, Lydia?" asked Rob demurely. "How did he prove it?"

"By not bearing ill-will when you all got angry," said Lydia with spirit. "And by his conversation with me. He's serious-minded; says he neither drinks, smokes, chews nor swears, and considers life too short to be wasted on dangerous pastimes, like such. He's got a lot of serious books that came in an old book-case his folks bought. He's going to come out here some pleasant night and lend me those books--bring 'em with him. I'd admire to read 'em! Some are biographies of good men, and some are sermons; he says some are obituary sermons. He's a perfect gentleman!"

Lydia departed to begin getting a dinner that would inevitably be late at best.

"Obituary sermons! Coming to lend them to Lydia! The test of gentlemanhood!" murmured Rob.

"Are we witnessing the dawn of a romance?" asked Wythie, whose perceptions in that direction were keener of late.