CHAPTER VIII

ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY

In the Dale home, dinner was served in the middle of the day on Sunday, and Serena caused the meal to partake of the nature of a banquet. Abstemious in week day luncheons, Obadiah succumbed to the flesh pots on the seventh day and thereafter relapsed into slumber during digestion even as a boa-constrictor.

He was sleeping off his Sunday engorgement in a porch chair. His head drooped awkwardly and he had slumped into his best clothes, while from time to time he choked and coughed and made weird noises. All about him lay the peace of a summer Sabbath broken only by the low hum of the bees gathering sweetness from the blooming honeysuckle vine near by. Only the energetic resisted the combined attacks of plenteousness and the somnolent afternoon.

Virginia had not surrendered to the soporific tendencies of the hour. She had conversed with her father until made aware that, mentally speaking, he was no longer with her. Such knowledge is discouraging even to the most enthusiastic of female dialogists, and so, as the minutes passed, her words lost force and her sentences fire. Compelled to seek other fields of interest, the girl strolled aimlessly about the lawn until she came to the gate. The street looked cool and inviting beneath its arching elms and she moved down it slowly. She had almost reached the corner when a woman's voice sounded from an awning shaded porch, "Virginia, come here. Don't you pass my house without stopping." It was Mrs. Henderson.

"Yes, Hennie, I'm coming. I was sure that you were taking a nap." The girl turned up a walk, bordered with blooming rose bushes, towards an old-fashioned house. "You are as busy as usual, I suppose?" she continued, after she had been affectionately greeted by her hostess.

Mrs. Henderson nodded. No other woman in South Ridgefield gave as much of her time and, proportionately, of her wealth to help others as did this strangely constituted widow. Hers was a frank nature, given to the expression of its views without regard to time or place. She had the faculty of so phrasing her remarks that they cut their victim cruelly and convulsed her hearers. So, respected for her innate goodness, and feared for her sharp tongue, Mrs. Henderson had many acquaintances but few friends. She was judged in the light of a magazine of high explosives, dangerous to those near, but likely to blow up if left without attention. Many were her friends because they were afraid not to be, but there were those who appreciated her character. Strangely, these were they who had waged mighty battles with her, to emerge from strife her devoted adherents. Having felt her sting, they dubbed her harmless as a dove, delighting in her intimate companionship. Such a one had been Virginia's mother.

But Obadiah had no place in this category. Soon after the death of his wife, Mrs. Henderson had discovered that a girl who worked in his mill was sick and in dire want. She asked him to assist the sufferer, but, to her surprise, the mill owner refused. Thereupon, Mrs. Henderson, without mincing words, expressed her opinion of him. Also, she repeated her remarks to a friend.

Obadiah's legs were thin, and under stress of excitement he pitched his voice high. When it became known that Mrs. Henderson had likened the mill owner, to his face, to a mosquito sucking blood from his employees, the whole town laughed. The tale spread to his mill, during a time of labor unrest, and a cartoon portraying the manufacturer as a mosquito hovering about emaciated workers was circulated.

A strike followed in which the employees were successful and Obadiah never forgave Mrs. Henderson for giving a weapon to his opponents. Yet, strangely enough, he had never attempted to interfere with her friendship for his daughter. Possibly, knowing the widow, he feared that she would openly defy him, and, abetted by Serena, carry the war into his own house, to the greater enjoyment of his fellow townsmen.

As Mrs. Henderson welcomed Virginia, she was thinking of other things than Obadiah. She was filled with amusement and gave vent to laughter. "Dearie, how on earth did you get mixed up with that minstrel parade? I never dreamed that my little girl would startle this town." Again the widow gave way to merriment. She was thinking of a group of women she had caught discussing with great unkindness the outcome of the girl's efforts to make the pickaninnies happy. Hennie's championship of her favorite had been unusually vigorous, and the endeavors of the critics to reverse themselves had resembled a stampede.

"We had nothing to do with the parade," Virginia told her. "We followed it so that the orphans might enjoy the music. As we had nearly frightened them out of their wits, I took them for a ride to make up."

"I heard how you came to take the orphans for a ride. I could understand that, but the minstrel part puzzled me," Mrs. Henderson's amusement faded into seriousness. "That ride idea is a splendid one. It would add so much to the happiness of those children." She continued, "I have been on the Board of that Home for years. There are so many things to be done over there and so little to do with. No one is particularly interested in the place. We must find some way, though, to arrange rides for those orphans now that you have started things going."

Virginia was instantly fired with great enthusiasm. "I'll take them out each week, myself," she promised.

Mrs. Henderson smiled. "We can't allow you to continue to excite too much interest in this town."

The girl disregarded the objection. "But I started it, Hennie."

"That is very true, but you can't expect your father to let you use his fine car for those children. Anyway, it is not necessary to bother about that, because it is entirely too small. We need a truck. Something in which movable seats can be placed."

"Like those at the mill? Why not ask Daddy for one of them?" suggested Virginia.

"They would be the very thing," Mrs. Henderson admitted, but she shook her head hopelessly. "Your father would never let you have one of them. We must look elsewhere."

"Oh, yes, he will, Hennie," Virginia assured her with great confidence. The widow's doubting eye moved the girl to remonstrate, "You don't know him at all. I think that it is the strangest thing, that you have been my father's neighbor all of these years and don't understand him better."

Mrs. Henderson displayed sudden stern-eyed interest in a flower bed upon her lawn, and the toe of her shoe softly tapped the floor of the porch.

The girl leaned towards the older woman, her face aglow with pride and admiration, as she searched for some acknowledgment of her words. "Daddy is so noble and so good," she explained in a voice modulated by tenderness. "He spends all of his time thinking about other people."

The lines of Mrs. Henderson's mouth relaxed, and the tempo of the tapping toe slowed. Her eyes twinkled merrily.

"Isn't it wonderful, Hennie?" and Virginia looked up to a face for a moment puzzled.

"Very wonderful, child," responded the widow, and Virginia never dreamed that there was a delicate note of sarcasm in the voice. Leaning forward, Mrs. Henderson clasped the girl's hand. "Your father is a lucky man to have such love and affection," she said, and then as though thinking aloud, she murmured, "I hope that he appreciates it." After a pause she returned to the subject of the orphans with great vigor. "Some one in this town must loan us a truck. That is all there is about it."

"Let Daddy do it. He will love to."

The hopeful enthusiasm of the girl was lost upon the older woman. "Well, it will do no harm to give him the opportunity," she conceded dryly; "but I wouldn't count on it too much if I were you." Suddenly, she remembered something. "Dear me, I almost forgot it. I must run over to the Lucinda Home a minute. You come along, dear," she urged.

"Hennie, I can't. I haven't a hat. I am not dressed to go out."

Mrs. Henderson smiled. "It doesn't make any difference what you wear over there. Most of the old ladies are so nearly blind that they can't tell what you have on."

So Virginia agreed to go, and, as the distance to the institution was short, in a few minutes they entered the grounds.

The Lucinda Home for Aged Women occupied a large brick building. A triple-decked porch, supported by posts and brackets of ornamental iron work covered the entire front of the edifice and afforded delightful resting places from which to view the beautiful grounds.

The two women ascended the steps to the lower porch. On either side of the entrance stretched a line of chairs occupied by old ladies. They rocked and fanned and stared across the grounds with dulled, unseeing eyes, as if watching and waiting for something.

The afternoon light flashed against the spectacles. It brought out the snow of the moving heads. It showed the deep carved lines of age and it disclosed the hands, knotted and toil worn.

Once these faces were soft and full; these eyes snapped with health and joy. Love showered its kisses. The world showed wondrously beautiful in the tender light of romance and the voice of hope rang clear and strong. Came babies for these hands to fondle and caress, and tiny forms to be upheld as little feet struggled in first steps upon the rough and hilly path. Noble deeds of unselfishness gleamed in the shadowed lives of these women as they battled with the adversities which all who live must face. Slowly their beauty faded; their eyes no longer sparkled; their hands were red and hard. Little ones grew into men and women and went away, filled with hope and proud in their strength, leaving loneliness behind. Through the years, a shadow, almost indiscernible to youthful eyes, drew ever closer. One by one, they had seen friends and loved ones pass behind the black veil, until they were alone in a world, cold, loveless, without hope, waiting----

Waiting. Yes, waiting--slowly rocking and fanning--living anew the past, and peering out into the sunshine as if they sought with their poor eyes to glimpse the approach of that enfolding shadow of mystery.

The visitors paused for a moment at the entrance, sobered by the tragedy of age. Near them, an old woman became suddenly active. The sweep of her chair increased as she glanced at Virginia. She stopped and whispered to her neighbor.

This aged one started, as if awakened from slumber, and she, too, inspected the girl. Then, she placed her lips by the ear of her deaf companion and in a shrill voice of great carrying power, cried, "Powder makes her look pale. They all use it nowadays." She stopped for breath and screamed, "Her dress is too short. Her mother ought to have better sense than to let her run around that way."

Luckily for the embarrassed girl, at this moment Mrs. Henderson led her into the reception room and left her to regain her composure while she transacted her business with the matron in an adjoining room.

The remarkable quiet which reigned in this home of age oppressed Virginia, so that when Mrs. Henderson returned with the matron, she cried, impulsively, "Oh, Hennie, I am glad that you are back. This place is so still that it is lonesome."

Mrs. Henderson turned to Mrs. Smith, the matron. "That is what I have always said," she argued. "The old ladies like it quiet, but we overdo it here. The place is a grave. We should have more entertainment." She looked questioningly at the girl. "What do you think should be done, child?"

Virginia's blue eyes were very serious as she answered, "I hardly know--almost anything which would make it happier. It needs something to stir it up," she ended impulsively.

The older woman laughed and Mrs. Henderson put her arm about the girl's waist, and suggested, "You have nothing on your hands, child. Why can't you arrange some sort of an entertainment for these elderly women?"

"Oh, I couldn't," she demurred shyly.

"Certainly you can, you are quite old enough to undertake the task of making these old people happier for an afternoon."

Into the girl's mind came a remembrance of her birthday gift. "I will be glad to do it, Hennie," she agreed with great seriousness.

They paused at Mrs. Henderson's gate as they returned from the Lucinda Home. "Won't you come in, dear?" urged the older woman.

The girl, dreamily engaged in planning marvelous but impossible entertainments for the stirring up of the old ladies, did not hear.

"Come and have tea with a solitary somebody?" the widow begged the girl wistfully. "You think that the Lucinda Home is lonesome, but don't forget that an old lady who loved your mother and who loves you is lonesome, too."

"Dearest Hennie, you haven't the slightest idea of what loneliness is." Virginia smiled sweetly at the older woman and kissed her. "I would enjoy taking tea with you but I must not forget my father. Probably all afternoon he has been making plans to help the people who work in his