Part 2

“Mrs. _Bo_-gardus! _here_!” exclaimed mother, setting down the cream jug with undue suddenness; while Mr. Hancock, who had been morosely weighing his biscuit in servile imitation of Mrs. Hudson, dropped it into his coffee cup, and stared with popping eyes.

“Yes,” returned Mrs. Hudson, evidently very well satisfied with the impression she was producing. “Haven’t I mentioned that I am expecting a visit from Mrs. _Bo_-gardus to-day? She is coming to lunch with me. It seemed about time I should repay some of her hospitality. I hope my little plan in no way inconveniences any one?”

Haze kicked me under the table. Ernie wriggled ecstatically. Robin sighed, and opened wide, shining eyes; while poor Miss Brown murmured feebly,—

“Mrs. Hudson! Mrs. _Bo_-gardus! oh really!”

Mother was the first to regain her composure.

“We will be very glad to meet any friend of yours, Mrs. Hudson,” she said; “but I am sorry you did not tell me before. It would have been easier to make arrangements.”

“Certainly, I intended to do so,” observed Mrs. Hudson. “But the fact is, the matter slipped my mind.”

We looked at one another in open admiration. Could human cheek be carried further? Mrs. _Bo_-gardus was coming to luncheon, and _the fact had slipped Mrs. Hudson’s mind_!

Gradually the boarders faded from the room, leaving us to a hurried family council. It was Monday; there was cold roast left over from yesterday’s dinner, and a washerwoman in the kitchen. Yet, strangely enough, no one thought of rebellion or complaint.

“Mrs. _Bo_-gardus,” murmured Haze, in a voice as nearly like Miss Brown’s as he could make it, “Mrs. _Bo_-gardus, you know, is coming to lunch!”

And then, for no earthly assignable reason, we dropped into various receptacles along the way and melted and sobbed with mirth. Robin caught his knees in both arms and rolled over and over on the rug, a corner of the tablecloth stuffed in his mouth. Ernie began to caper and frisk madly about, hugging the bewildered and rebellious kitten. I sank helpless on the window-seat, and hid my face among the curtains.

“Shut the door, Hazard,” gasped mother, as soon as she was able to articulate. “They mustn’t _hear_ us!”

At which the gale began afresh. Somehow the situation struck us as irresistibly funny.

“Well,” chuckled Hazard, weakly at last, “there’s no lark here for me. I shan’t meet her. I’ll be away at school.”

“And I have a holiday to-day and to-morrow, because they are repairing the furnaces! How jolly!” cried Ernie.

“Will she come in a hansom?” piped Robin, “or by fairy?”

He meant the ferry; and these two modes of conveyance are the most elegant known to his youthful experience.

“Yankee-doodle came to town, Riding in a han-som!”—

parodied Haze.

“And driven by Samuels,—with an _s_, if you please, Miss Brown,” mocked Ernie, wickedly.

“Children! children!” warned mother. “We must be serious. It is Mrs. _Bo_-gardus, you know;—and I had planned cold veal for luncheon!”

“Not even chicken?” pleaded Ernestine.

The situation as one faced it loomed portentous. The psychic power of that Name was not to be lightly evaded.

“Well,” said mother, at last, with a little sigh, “we must do the best we can. Elizabeth will help me in the kitchen, Rose is never the least good of a Monday, and Ernestine can dress Robin and superintend the setting of the table. Let me see, there will be six, seven, of us,—eliminating Haze and Mr. Hancock, who fortunately do not lunch at home. I like an even table so much better.”

“Let me wait then, mother dear,” volunteered Ernie. “The way I do Sunday evenings when Rose is out. You know she never does serve things properly.”

“You would not mind?” asked mother.

“No, indeed; not a bit,” answered Ernie, frankly. “Everybody will know I am your daughter, just the same, and I think it is rather fun.”

So it was arranged. The _menu_ took a little longer to plan; and with cooking, dusting, and dressing, the morning flew swiftly by. One might have supposed we were preparing for a royal visit.

Eleven o’clock struck,—half-past eleven. Robin and Ernie in their pretty blue sailor-suits flashed down to the kitchen for inspection.

“Will she be here soon?” pranced Robin. His eyes were bright as stars, his cheeks as pink as roses.

“I think so,” answered mother. “Run up to the nursery now, where you can watch from the window.”

At quarter to twelve precisely there sounded the clatter of horses’ feet upon the asphalt. Shall I confess it? Interrupting a hasty toilet I ran to the window, too, and peeped out like any child.

A hansom-cab, as Robin had predicted, was drawn up before our door. From it stepped a middle-aged lady. She was tall, somewhat spare, attired in conventional black. From the distance at which I surveyed her she looked a little, just a _little_, like—_Miss Brown_! She mounted the steps and rang the bell.

The excitement died from my brain. A chill feeling of disappointment crept over me. Was this the phœnix? this the invisible mentor under whose _dicta_ our household had trembled for so many months? A minute later the sound of subdued greeting floated up from the hall below.

“How do you do, Mrs. Hudson?”

“How do _you_ do, Mrs. _Bo_-gardus?”

I went into the nursery to capture Robin and give his locks one final dab before lunch should be announced.

“She’s just like anybody else,” he mourned, lifting a tear-stained face from where it had been buried in his arm against the window sill.

“Well, dearest, what did you expect?” I asked, with an absurd inflection of sympathetic woe.

“I don’t know,” admitted Bobsie, “but, somehow, I thought—she would be _different_.”

Then the bell rang, and we hastened downstairs.

In the dining-room the presentations were being made.

“Mrs. Graham, allow me the Honour of Presenting my friend Mrs. _Bo_-gardus; Mrs. _Bo_-gardus, Mrs. Graham.—— Miss Brown, allow me to Present my friend Mrs. _Bo_-gardus; Mrs. _Bo_-gardus, Miss Brown.—— Mrs. Hancock, allow me the Honour of Presenting my friend Mrs. _Bo_-gardus; etc.——”

Immediately our spirits rose. It was an Occasion, after all. Mrs. Hudson felt it, I felt it, Robin felt it. He put out his little hand quite prettily when his turn came.

“So this is the lame boy?” remarked Mrs. _Bo_-gardus, in a stiff falsetto.

“No,” protested Robin (I don’t think he had ever been called lame, before), “I just hop a little, because sometimes my side aches.”

“It is the same thing, my dear,” explained Mrs. Hudson. “Mrs. _Bo_-gardus knows all about such matters. She sits on two hospitals boards, and is Secretary of the Free Kindergarten Association.”

“Indeed!” murmured Miss Brown.

With Mrs. Hudson as expositor, and Miss Brown as chorus, Mrs. _Bo_-gardus’s glory could not wane. She shone upon us, enigmatic, sphinx-like, throughout a somewhat oppressive meal. No one but Mrs. Hudson ventured to mingle in the conversation. Indeed, it was not necessary. Ernie waited very prettily; the croquettes were silently engulfed, likewise the custards. And, despite Mrs. _Bo_-gardus’s sensitive “stummick,” we were encouraged to believe that they would _sit_.

“My dear, will you play for us?” Mrs. Hudson asked after lunch. “Mrs. _Bo_-gardus is very fond of music.” It was rather a royal command than a request, but without an _e_ string what could one do?

“Then perhaps your little brother will recite?” persisted Mrs. Hudson.

“What shall I say, Elizabeth?” asked Robin, obligingly.

“Suppose you say ‘My Shadow,’” I suggested.

So Bobsie, flushed and honoured, standing on the worn Bokhara rug, began:—

“I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.”

The ladies sat about the parlour, their hands folded in their laps, Mrs. _Bo_-gardus with her head a little to one side as if listening for a false note, Mrs. Hudson pompously responsible, Miss Brown meekly appreciative.

“The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow,— Not at all like proper children, which is always rather slow,”

piped Robin in his pretty treble.

“For he sometimes shoots up taller,——”

Mrs. _Bo_-gardus’s head tilted just a little to the left.

“Shoots?” queried Mrs. Hudson. “Are you sure of that word _Shoots_?”

Robin paused, and looked doubtfully at me.

“Yes,” I answered. “Shoots is right.”

“—like an india-rubber ball,”

continued Robin.

Mrs. _Bo_-gardus’s head again cocked towards the left, and a slightly pained expression gathered between her brows.

“Isn’t it _plant_, my dear?” corrected Mrs. Hudson. “Since the first word is _shoots_ it certainly must be an india-rubber _plant_?”

“No,” I said, “ball is right.”

“And he sometimes gets so little that there’s none of him at all,”

persisted Robin, bravely.

Mrs. _Bo_-gardus pursed her lips.

“Well, well,” concluded Mrs. Hudson, hurriedly. “This is a very pretty piece, no doubt, and we are much obliged; but Mrs. _Bo_-gardus can’t sit here all the afternoon listening to one little boy recite, when she might hear twenty any day she pleased, all with kindergarten training, too! There are some photographs we have planned to look over upstairs, so _if_ you will excuse us——” And the two ladies, rising with majestic accord, swept from the room.

It was rather dampening, to be sure, but Bobsie bore it well. Only his lower lip trembled a little as he asked,—

“It couldn’t have been a rubber-plant, now could it, Ellie?” That is his pet name for me. He uses it when he stands in need of comfort.

“No, honey,” I answered. “It certainly couldn’t.”

When just at that moment there was a crash, and a hurtle, and a smothered squeal in the hall outside, and we all ran out to see what could be happening.

I shall never forget it. Down the stairway from the second story, step after step, with a little bump on each, coasted Ernie. Her feet were stuck out straight before her, her arms were aloft, in one hand she bore a pitcher of ice-water, in the other a tumbler, while mother’s old silver serving tray rattled and rolled ahead. The poor child’s mouth was open, and every few steps she would emit a deprecating little squeak, as if to say:—

“_I know I ought not to be tumbling downstairs. But what are you going to do about it?_”

Mrs. Hudson and Mrs. _Bo_-gardus, who had started to go up in search of the photographs, stood midway of the flight, directly in the path of danger.

“Ernie! Oh, Ernie!” I cried. “Look out! Look _out_ for _Mrs. Bo-gardus_!”

“I c-c-c-can’t!” gurgled Ernie. “Let her g-get——”

And then there was a second crash, and a splash, and a renewed series of squeals, and Mrs. Hudson, and Mrs. _Bo_-gardus, and Ernie, and the pitcher, and the silver tray, all came crashing and bumping down together in one ignominious tangle.

Mother, and Mrs. Hancock, and Rose came running from various parts of the house. In a moment there was quite a crowd gathered.

First Mrs. Hudson was picked up, spluttering and bewildered; next we rescued Mrs. _Bo_-gardus; then Ernie, who still clung desperately to her half-empty pitcher. All dignity, all sense of social circumstance, had vanished. The members of the dripping little group glared upon one another, humanly, democratically mad.

“Here,” said Ernestine, thrusting out the pitcher resentfully to Mrs. Hudson, “I guess this belongs to you.”

“_This_” was the ceremonial blond front, which had somehow come unpinned in the mêlée, and was now floating mermaid-wise in a few inches of ice-water at the bottom of the pitcher.

Mrs. Hudson sniffed, fished out her crimps, and flapped them scornfully.

“I leave this house to-morrow,” she remarked. “Children are all very well in their _place_!”

“It wasn’t my _place_,” contradicted Ernie, wrathfully. “I slipped on the top step and tobogganed!”

“Ernestine!” rebuked mother. “I trust you are not hurt,” she continued, turning to Mrs. _Bo_-gardus, who stood beside the newel-post, ruefully rubbing an elbow.

“Not being a Christian Scientist, nor yet a gutta-percha image, I confess to a few bruises,” returned that lady, spitefully; after which she and Mrs. Hudson swept on their way upstairs, leaving us at gaze.

“As if I meant to,” brooded Ernestine. “I’m not a Christian Scientist, myself. Why couldn’t they get out of the way, I’d like to know? and—_who’s Mrs. Bogardus, anyhow_?”

For the first time the question was presented to us squarely. We gaped at one another, like so many goldfish.

“That is so,” admitted Miss Brown in a timid voice, after a moment of deep thought. “Who is she?”

“And it couldn’t have been a rubber-plant,” chirped Bobsie with sudden easy confidence, “because then there wouldn’t be any rhyme.”

“It was a hired hansom she came in,” observed Mrs. Hancock, cheerfully. “And did you notice that she ate three of those fried croquettes for lunch? Her stummick can’t be so very sensitive, after all! I shall have to tell my husband!”

Certainly, Ernestine’s pitcher of ice-water had had a wonderfully quenching effect! But Mrs. Hudson is going, and, as I said, we can’t afford it.

“I was only trying to help,” murmurs Ernie, mournfully pulling off one of her long stockings, as she sits on the floor in the middle of our little room. “Do stop writing, Elizabeth, and come to bed. There is a smudge of ink on the tip of your nose where you dipped it in the bottle, and I just know you are saying it is _all my fault_!”

Dear little Ernie, how did she ever guess?

Tuesday, December 2.

Mrs. Hudson left this afternoon, despite the fact that Ernie apologised to her very meekly this morning.

“Do you really think I ought, mother?” Ernie asked.

“Yes, dear; I do,” mother answered. “She was frightened and hurt and we are all sorry.”

Ernie made a wry face. “Perhaps she’ll stay, if she knows I did not mean it,” she said.

“No,” answered mother. “I am sure that she will not. It is not for that reason that I want you to apologise. Apart from the financial inconvenience I can’t regret Mrs. Hudson’s decision. In some ways it will be a great relief.”

“Well, here goes,” announced Ernestine. “The little Christian martyr bids a last bye-bye to her fond family.” And she turned and ran from the room.

She found Mrs. Hudson packing.

“You know I did not mean to tumble downstairs, Mrs. Hudson,” she told me later that she said:—“and I’m sorry that I had the pitcher with me. I was taking it up to your room for Mrs. _Bo_-gardus.”

“You seemed to be coming _down_ the stairs when we met you,” returned Mrs. Hudson, suspiciously.

“Yes,” confessed Ernie. “I know it. I had brought up only one glass. I was going back for another, and my foot tripped.”

“Well,” returned Mrs. Hudson, evidently quite unmollified, “we will say no more about it. For a long time I have felt that a change would be desirable. Yesterday’s incident simply confirmed me in my half-formed resolution. I am going from here to stop with a Friend for a day or two, till I can look around and get more comfortably settled.”

“I hope you will have a good time, I’m sure,” observed Ernie, forgivingly. “But I wouldn’t want to visit her.”

Mrs. Hudson stared. “_You?_” she queried. “Oh, my dear!”

And directly after lunch she left us, and Ernie started in on a wild hunt for “the dump-cart contract.” To look for the contract is Ernie’s last resource in times of trouble.

“It must be somewhere, Elizabeth,” she argues, “and why not about the house? We know perfectly well that father went especially to get it signed that afternoon. He wouldn’t have come away without it. Perhaps it’s poked in a bureau-drawer, or under the blotting-paper on his desk, or maybe even back of the cuckoo-clock!”

And so, though these very places have been ransacked again and again, Ernie proceeded to turn the workshop upside down;—covered herself with dust crawling under Hazard’s cot, skinned the tip of her nose on the gas-fixture, and tore a great rent in her pink flannel petticoat.

About three o’clock Geof dropped in, as he generally does on his way home from school, and joined in the chase.

“Do you mean to say you have really lost a Boarder?” he asked, summing the catastrophe with a worried look. “You can’t afford it, can you?”

“No,” answered Ernie, mournfully, “we can’t. I just wish mother would whip me, as I deserve. It’s awful to love your family, Geof, and be nothing to them but a misfortune. Perhaps, if we don’t let Mrs. Hudson’s room soon, we won’t be able to afford ice cream on Sundays, and Mr. Hancock likes ice cream better than anything in the world. _They_ will be leaving next.”

“Oh, cheer up,” said Geoffrey. “You’re not a misfortune to anybody, Ernie. If only Uncle Dudley had finished this,”—the three of us were standing rather disconsolately about the flying-machine,—“you wouldn’t have to think of boarders, or dump-carts, or anything like that. You’d be rich, and famous, too. Did he ever make an ascension, do you know?”

“Once, late at night, he tried,” answered Ernestine. “But I don’t think it was a success. He only rose a few feet from the roof, and then got tangled in some of the neighbours’ clothes-lines. Come on, Geof. Let’s look once more in the cuckoo-clock. It stands at the foot of the stairs, you know. Father might have stopped to wind it, and slipped the agreement into the works by mistake. It buzzed fearfully the last time we tried to make it go,—as if it were suffering from some sort of impediment.”

Entertaining no personal hope in regard to the cuckoo-clock, I left them on the landing and ran down to the dining-room, where I found Haze, who had also just come in. He was standing in the window, looking ruefully over the gas bill, which the postman had handed him through the grating.

“So Mrs. Hudson has really gone?” he began, throwing off his overcoat. “Well, as far as I can see, that means just one thing.”

“What does it mean, Haze?” I asked, surprised at his tone.

“That I give up High School,” answered Hazard gloomily, and cast his books and cap together upon a chair.

“Oh, Hazey!” I protested. “Wouldn’t that be rash? We may let Mrs. Hudson’s room to-morrow.”

“We may,” returned Hazard, “but we won’t.”

Then he seated himself astride the chair, his arms folded across the back, his chin resting upon his arms.

“It’s this way, Elizabeth,” he began. “I’m the man of the family, and I mustn’t shirk my responsibilities.”

“But you aren’t shirking, Hazard,” I urged, settling myself in the window-seat opposite him. “You are working, and working hard, to finish your education. It would be a dreadful thing for you to give up now,—it would mean a handicap for years, perhaps for life.”

“Some fellows have got to accept a handicap,” answered Hazard. “And the very fact that they know it spurs them on,—so that in the end, perhaps, it isn’t a bad thing. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately; but I couldn’t make up my mind and so I wouldn’t talk, not even to you, old girl. But this is how it stands. I can’t bear to see mother struggling along with the house, and Robin, and all her worries,—trying to satisfy everybody, being snubbed sometimes, and—unappreciated. At first, I thought I’d give up college (you know, I’d intended going in for the Conklin Scholarship, and every one said I would win it, too), but even so there would be two more years of study, and I’m not sure I could keep up the pace I’ve set myself lately. Then, I had a talk with Merriweather the other day” (Dr. Merriweather is the principal of Hazard’s school), “which wasn’t altogether satisfactory. He doesn’t think a fellow gets any good cramming the way I’ve been doing, and he intimated that even if I took the examinations next fall, and passed ’em, he wasn’t at all sure that he would graduate me. Well, that pretty nearly settled the business, and now this affair at home drives in the last nail. I’m going to quit, and take my proper place as the head of the family.”

“But, Hazard,” I urged, “don’t you think you ought to consult mother, or some older person, first? It’s a very grave step for you to take on your own responsibility. And besides, I don’t believe mother will _let_ you be the head of the family. And who would employ you? and what sort of position could you fill?”

“That depends upon the acumen of the man to whom I apply,” returned Hazey, with such an owly look through his big glasses that I really wanted to laugh. “You know, Elizabeth, how Uncle George is continually repeating that though he doesn’t care for talent in his business he is willing to pay for ‘brains.’ I’ve got ’em, and I’m going to rent them to him! It’s a sacrifice, but I’ve made up my mind, so there’s no use arguing.”

“But you’ll wait till the end of the week, any way, dear,” I pleaded. “Give us that long, at least, to rent the room.”

“Yes; I’ll wait till Saturday,” compromised Hazard. “We shall have finished the Punic Wars by that time, and I’ve written a rather stunning outline on the subject I should like to have criticised. But if the room isn’t rented by then I quit. Now, remember, Elizabeth, not a word of this to anybody,—especially Ernestine. I don’t want her to feel that she is in any way responsible for blighting my career.”

“I won’t tell,” I answered; and so, of course, I haven’t; but, oh, I am very much afraid that Hazard is making a mistake!

Wednesday, December 3.

We advertised Mrs. Hudson’s room to-day. It cost a dollar. Ernie wanted to say that we are a refined Christian family with a good table, but mother would not hear of it;—which was lucky, considering the price! When the advertisement was finally ready, Haze and I took it around to the newspaper office;—and the long shining shafts cast by the electric-lights on the wet asphalt (it had been raining) made us feel quite frisky. I would rather be a mediæval knight than a girl whose mother keeps a boarding-house,—but, as Haze observed, there are diversions in every lot.

Friday, December 5.

This morning we had a call from Aunt Adelaide. She came “to advise” us, because she had heard about Mrs. Hudson. Aunt Adelaide does not call very often; but when she does, she makes the best of her time. To-day she had Georgie with her,—so charmingly dressed! He wore a dear little fur-lined overcoat, and a cap with snug ear-laps, and a jaunty cockade. How I wanted them for Robin!—who took cold yesterday when Ernie had him out on her sled. It was the first snowstorm of the season, and Bobs did so beg to go; but to-day he is in bed again, suffering with rheumatism in his back. Dear, patient, little lamb!

“So much sickness is most unfortunate,” reproved Aunt Adelaide. “Can’t you subordinate the children a little more, Margaret? How can you expect people to stop in a house where there is continual invalidism?”

“I don’t expect it,” returned mother, cheerfully. “It is a perpetual surprise to me that anybody _should_ stay.”

Aunt Adelaide stiffened. “Have you considered the consequences if they did not?” she asked.

“Yes,” admitted mother. “We should starve, I suppose,—since man does not live by advice alone.”

“George was really very much put out when he heard that you had lost Mrs. Hudson,” continued Aunt Adelaide. “It is most discouraging. You were beginning to get along quite nicely;—and a man who has so many heavy responsibilities naturally feels each extra burden.”

“Of course,” agreed mother. “It must be very trying to have poor relations, I am sure.”

Here Georgie interrupted. “You said I should visit with Bobsie, mamma,” he cried. “I want to go up now, and tell him about my new rocking-horse. It’s stupid down here.”

“Elizabeth will take you, love,” answered his mother, apparently without the least thought of “subordination.” So I took Georgie by the hand and led him up to the nursery.

When I returned to the library the conversation had been switched: