Part 4

"Oh-e-e!" in a rapturous chorus from all the children.

"I don't want you to make that noise when Celia brings it in to the table; that's why I'm telling you beforehand."

Richard was pirouetting heavily on his little stubbed shoes. "Oh-e-e!" he repeated, "ice-cweam!"

"Now, do you think you can remember?" asked Elizabeth, clasping a string of gold beads about her pretty throat, and turning to meet the three pairs of upturned eyes. "I want Aunty Evelyn to think you've improved a great deal since the last time she was here. You weren't very good that time."

Carroll's clear gaze met his mother's reprovingly. "Do you want Aunty Evelyn to think we've improved, if we haven't?" he asked. "Because we're really getting badder most every day."

"You're badder, you mean," said Doris, with a superior and pitying smile; "I'm as good 's I can be. Mrs. Van Duser said I was a very inter-est-in' 'zample of a child. So there!"

Carroll shook his head. "I'm not going to quarrel with you, Doris, 'cause I promised mother I wouldn't," he said with dignity; "but we are badder--'specially you; you didn't mind mother three times to-day."

"I am not badder."

"I said I wouldn't quarrel, Doris; but you are--very much badder."

"Hush, children!" exclaimed Elizabeth, hurriedly intervening between the militant pair. "Come right down stairs, and don't talk to each other at all unless you can be pleasant and polite."

Miss Evelyn Tripp presently appeared in a wonderful toilet, all lace and twinkling jets. She exclaimed over Carroll's marvellous gain in inches, and Doris' brilliant colour, and kissed and cooed over Richard.

"They're certainly the dearest children in the world," she said. "I've been simply wild to see them all these months, and you, too, Betty dear! I've so much to tell you!"

She twined her arm caressingly about Doris, and smiled brilliantly down at the little girl, who gazed with round appreciative eyes at the visitor's gown and at the jewels which sparkled on her small white hands.

"Both of my front teeth are all wiggly," whispered the child, feeling that something out of the ordinary was demanded of her in a social way. "I can wiggle them with my tongue."

"Can you, darling? How remarkable! Never mind; you'll soon have some nice new ones that won't wiggle."

Doris giggled rapturously. "We're going to have ice-cream for dinner," was her next confidence. "But I'm not going to act s'prised when Celia brings it in. We've all promised mother we won't, even if it's pink. I hope it'll be pink; don't you?"

"Doris," warned her mother, "you're talking too much."

"Oh, do let the dear little soul say anything she likes to me, Betty!" protested Miss Tripp. "If you knew how I enjoyed it!"

Doris nestled closer to the visitor, eyeing her mother with the naughtily demure expression of a kitten stealing cream. "I was going to tell you something funny," she said, "but I can't think what it was. I guess I'll remember when we're eating dinner."

"The artless prattle of a child is so refreshing, you know," continued Miss Tripp, "after all the empty conventionalities of society. I simply love to hear the little darlings--especially yours, dear Betty. You are bringing them up so beautifully!"

VIII

When Mr. George Hickey rang the bell at the door of the modest Brewster residence that night, it was with the pleasant anticipation of a simple, but well-cooked dinner, of the sort a bachelor, condemned by his solitary estate to prolonged residence in that semi-public caravansary known as the American boarding-house, seldom enjoys.

He was very far indeed from a knowledge of the fact that he was in the oft-quoted position of the man in a boat on the hither side of the great rapids of Niagara. Mr. Hickey had allowed himself to be drawn into feeling a somewhat uncommon interest in Miss Evelyn Tripp, it is true; but he attributed this feeling wholly to the fact that he had known Miss Tripp when he was a tall, awkward boy of twenty and she was a rosy, fascinating miss of sixteen. She had laughed at him slily in those days, and he had resented her mirth with all the secret and hence futile agony which marks the intercourse of the awkward youth with the self-possessed maid. But the scar which Evelyn's youthful laughter had left in his bosom had remained unwontedly tender--as an old wound sometimes will; and when after the lapse of years they had met once more Mr. Hickey found the lady so surprisingly sweet, so gentle, so altogether tactful and sympathetic, that he could hardly escape a pleasant and soothing sense of gratitude. They spoke of old times--very old times they were; the mere mention of which brought a delicate blush to Miss Tripp's cheek. And the auroral light of youth, which never appears so roseate as when it shines upon the cold peaks of middle life, irradiated their common past and appeared to linger fascinatingly over Miss Tripp's somewhat faded person.

It had not, however, occurred to Mr. Hickey that the foregoing had any bearing whatever upon his own immediate future, nor upon the immediate future of Miss Evelyn Tripp. In a word, Mr. Hickey was very far from contemplating matrimony when he entered the Brewster's cheerful little parlour, bearing a box of bonbons for its mistress, and a jumping-jack capable of singular and varied contortions, for the young Brewsters.

Miss Tripp appeared very much surprised to meet Mr. Hickey again; she gave him a beautiful little hand of welcome from the deep chair where she was enthroned with Richard upon her knee ruthlessly crumpling the skirt of one of her carefully cherished gowns.

"I'm telling the children a fairy story," she said archly; "you mustn't interrupt."

"May I listen, if I'm a good boy?" asked Mr. Hickey, endeavouring to assume a light and festive society air, which hardly comported with his tall spare figure and the air of sober professionalism which he had acquired during a somewhat stern and strenuous past.

Carroll, who guarded Miss Tripp's chair on the right, exchanged puzzled glances with Doris who occupied the left. The little girl giggled.

"You aren't a boy," she said, addressing Mr. Hickey with a confidence inspired by past acquaintanceship; "you're all grown up."

"I like fairy stories, anyway," he asserted untruthfully; "and I want to hear the one Miss Tripp is telling. You'll let me; won't you, Doris?"

"I'll let you, if Aunty Evelyn'll let you; but I guess she won't."

Miss Tripp laughed musically. "What a quaint little dear it is," she murmured, kissing the child's pink cheek. "Why shouldn't Aunty Evelyn let Mr. Hickey hear the story if he wants to, dear?"

"He's too old," said Doris convincingly. "He wouldn't care about Cinderella losing off her glass slipper."

"Oh-e-e, Doris Brewster!" exclaimed Carroll, swelling with the superior enlightenment of his three years of seniority. "That's very rude indeed! Mr. Hickey doesn't look so very old. He's got quite a lot of hair left on the sides of his head, and----"

"Thanks, my boy," interrupted Mr. Hickey hastily. "But don't entirely floor me by enumerating all my youthful charms. How about that slipper of Cinderella's, Miss Tripp; there's a prince in that story, isn't there? with--er--plenty of hair on top of his head?"

Miss Tripp, who was actually blushing pink, quite in her old girlish fashion, exchanged mirthful glances with the engineer.

"I was just coming to the prince," she said. "He was--oh, such a beautiful prince, all dressed in pale blue, embroidered with pearls and silver, and on his breast a great flashing diamond star. And when he saw Cinderella, standing all by herself, in her beautiful gauzy ball-dress----"

"An' her glass slippers!" gurgled Doris rapturously.

"An' her gwass sippers!" echoed Richard, hugging the story-teller in a sudden spasm of affection.

"Yes, her glass slippers, of course, darlings," cooed Miss Tripp; "but the prince did not notice the slippers, he was so agitated by the sight of her lovely face and her shining golden hair."

Mr. Hickey caught himself gazing dreamily at Miss Tripp's elaborately arranged coiffure. The yellow gas light fell becomingly upon the abundant light brown waves and coils, touching them into a shimmering gold which he did not remember to have noticed before. How well she was telling the story, too; and how fond of her the Brewster children appeared to be. He recalled mistily that someone had said, or written--perhaps it was one of those old author chaps--that it was impossible to deceive a child. Mr. Hickey was convinced that this must be true. And insensibly he fell to thinking how pleasant it would be if this were his own fire-side, and if the lady in the deep wicker chair were----.

A sound of small hand-clapping brought him out of this blissful revery with a start. "I like that part best of all," Carroll was saying; "an' if I'd been that prince I'd 'av taken my big, shining sword and cut off the heads of those bad, wicked sisters! Yes; I would; I'd like to do it!" And the sanguinary small boy swaggered up and down, his shoulders squared and his eyes shining.

"Oh, my dear!" protested Miss Tripp mildly. "You wouldn't be so unkind; I'm sure you wouldn't."

"I'd take all their pretty dresses away an' wear 'em myself," shrilled Doris excitedly. "An' I'd--pinch 'em; I'd----"

"Let me tell you what dear, sweet Cinderella did," interrupted Miss Tripp, tactfully seizing the opportunity to impress a moral lesson. "She forgave her unkind step-mother and her two rude, spiteful sisters, and gave them each a castle and many, many lovely gowns and jewels; and after that they loved Cinderella dearly--they couldn't help it. And all of them were good and happy for ever afterward."

The children stared in round-eyed displeasures at this ethical but entirely tame denouement.

"That isn't in my story-book," said Carroll positively. "Cinderella married the Prince, an' the fairy god-mother turned the bad sisters into rats, an' made 'em draw her carriage for ever an' ever."

"Why, Carroll Brewster! I guess you made that up!" cried Doris. "The fairy god-mother didn't turn the bad sisters into anything; she jus' waved her wand an' turned Cinderella's ol' ragged clo'es into a lovely spangled weddin' dress, an' then----"

"She turned 'em into rats," repeated Carroll doggedly. "An' I'm glad she did it."

"She did not turn 'em into rats!"

"She did!"

"She didn't!"

At this crucial moment entered Elizabeth, flushed and bright-eyed from a final encounter with the elemental forces in the kitchen. "Won't you all come out to dinner," she said prettily; "I'm sure you must have concluded that dining was among the lost arts by this time."

"Not in this house," said Mr. Hickey gallantly. "This is one of the few--the very few places where one has the inestimable privilege of really dining. The balance of the time I merely take food from a strict sense of duty."

"We're going to have ice-cream," whispered Carroll kindly.

His father, who had caught the whisper, laughed outright. "He wants to give you something to look forward to, George," he said, as he tried the edge of his carving-knife. "If variety is the spice of life anticipation might be said to be its sweetening--eh? Will you have your beef rare or well-done, Miss Tripp?"

"Well-done, if you please," murmured Miss Tripp, smiling happily as she squeezed Doris' chubby hand under the table-cloth.

The little girl's eyes were very bright as she said, "I like to have you a-visitin', Aunty Evelyn."

"Do you, dear? Well Aunty Evelyn is very, very happy to be here."

"We were going to have rice-pudding for dessert if you hadn't come. I don't like rice-pudding; do you, Aunty Evelyn?"

"Doris--dear!"

Her mother's voice held reproof and warning; but the child with the specious sense of security inspired by the presence of strangers displayed her dimples demurely. "I didn't know it was naughty not to like rice-pudding," she said, in a small distinct voice.

Mr. Hickey glanced thoughtfully across the table at Miss Tripp, who was smiling down at the little girl encouragingly. "Most of us are naughty when it comes to hankering after the unusual and the unattainable," he observed didactically. "I eat my rice-pudding contentedly enough most days of the year; but on the three hundred and sixty-fifth I----"

"You pine for pink ice-cream; don't you?" smiled Miss Tripp; "but one might tire of even the pinkest ice-cream, if it appeared too often. What one really wants is--plain bread." She cast a barely perceptible glance at Elizabeth, the laces at her throat quivering with the ghost of a sigh. The next instant she was laughing at Richard whose curly head was beginning to droop heavily over his food.

"Poor little fellow," she murmured. "Do look, Elizabeth, he's almost gone!"

"Won't you carry him up-stairs for me, Sam?" Elizabeth begged her husband. "I ought not to have kept him up for dinner.--You'll excuse us just an instant; won't you?"

It was a pretty picture; the tall, stalwart father lifting the child rosy with sleep, and the little mother hovering anxiously near, like a small brown bird. Mr. Hickey observed it solemnly; Miss Tripp smilingly; then, for some reason unknown to both, their eyes met.

"--Er--let me pass you the--bread, Miss Tripp," said Mr. Hickey, short-sightedly choosing among the viands immediately within his reach.

"Thank you, Mr. Hickey," said Evelyn, and again that faint, elusive sigh shook the delicate laces at her throat.

IX

As Miss Tripp was putting the finishing touches to a careful toilet the next morning she caught the sound of a whispered dispute in the hall; then small knuckles were cautiously applied to the panel of her chamber door.

"Aunty Evelyn! Aunty Evelyn! are you waked up?"

Miss Tripp had been brooding since daylight over the accumulated problems which appeared to crowd her narrow horizon like so many menacing thunder-caps; but she summoned a faint smile to her lips as she opened the door.

"Why, good-morning, dears!" she cried cheerfully at sight of the two small figures in their gay dressing-gowns and scarlet slippers.

"We want to hear a story, Aunty Evelyn," announced Doris, prancing boldly in, each individual curl on her small head bobbing like coiled wire. "We like stories."

"Come here, pet, and let Aunty brush your curls."

"No; I don't want my curls brushed; I want to hear a story about a be-utiful princess going to seek her fortune."

Miss Tripp suppressed a vague sigh. "I know a poor, forlorn princess who is obliged to go out all alone into the cold world to seek her fortune," she said. "And I'm very much afraid she won't find it."

"Is she young and be-utiful?" asked Doris, with wide-eyed attention. "An' has she got a spangled dress?"

"Dot a spangled dwess?" cooed Richard, like a cheerful little echo.

"No; she's forced to wear a plain black dress in her wanderings, and she isn't beautiful at all. She's not very young either, and ugly lines are beginning to creep about her eyes and across her forehead; and one day, not long ago she found--what do you suppose?"

"A bag of gold?"

"A bag o' dold?" echoed Richard.

"No, dear; this poor, forlorn little princess found three silver hairs growing among the brown ones just over her ear."

Miss Tripp's sweet, drawling voice trembled slightly as she went on with her little fable. "The princess felt so badly that she shed bitter tears when she saw the glitter of those three silver hairs, because she knew that she could never, never catch up with youth any more."

"What youth--the fairy prince?" Doris wanted to know.

And Richard smiled seraphically as he trilled, "Oh, dood! It was 'e pwince!"

"No, darlings; there isn't any prince at all in this story. There was one--once--away back in the beginning of it; but he--went away--to a far country, and he--never came back."

"Did the princess cry?"

"Did her cwy?"

"Yes; she cried till all the brightness went out of her pretty eyes. Then she stopped crying and laughed instead, because--Oh; because crying didn't help a bit."

"You've been crying, Aunty Evelyn!" said Doris suddenly. "Why-e! your eyes are all teary now!"

"I've got a cold; I'm afraid," prevaricated Miss Tripp.

"I don't like that story," objected Doris. "Unless----" and her eyes brightened, "the prince came back. Let him come back, Aunty Evelyn; please let him; it'll spoil the story if he doesn't."

Miss Tripp drew a deep breath. "I--wish he might come back," she said; "but I--I'm afraid he never will, dear; and the poor little princess will have to go on alone till----"

"Till what?" demanded Doris indignantly. "I c'n tell a better story 'an that," she added.

"Tell it, dear."

"Well; the princess went out in her horrid ol' black clo'es an' travelled an' travelled, _an' travelled_ till she was mos' tired out, an' everywhere she went she asked 'where is my prince?' An' at first all the people said, 'We don't know where any prince is.' But the princess jus' made up her mind she _would_ find him; an'--an' bimeby she did--jus' as easy! He was right there all the time; only he was enchanted by an awful bad fairy so she couldn't see him, an' so----"

Doris paused to draw breath, and Richard gravely took up the tale, nodding the while like a gay little china mandarin. "He was 'chanted an' she was 'chanted, an' they bof was 'chanted, an'----"

"Be quiet, Buddy, an' let me tell," interrupted Doris. "She did find him! Course she found him, an'--an' her horrid ol' clo'es was changed to a lovely wedding dress, an'--an'--that's the end of it!"

Miss Tripp laughed. She felt unreasonably cheered by this optimistic finale to her sad little story--which had no ending.

"That would be the beginning of a very cheerful story," she said. "Now Aunty Evelyn must get some breakfast and start out into the cold world."

"Oh! we want you to stay!"

"I'm coming back, dears; yes, indeed; I'll be back this very evening, and then I'll tell you the loveliest story in the world, all about a little goose-girl."

It was a very cold world indeed into which Miss Tripp fared forth that winter morning. But Elizabeth's friendly protests were vain.

"I really must go, dear," Evelyn told her with a firmness quite foreign to her fashionable self. "You don't know--you can't guess how necessary it is for me to find some way of earning money. Mother----" her voice shook a little--"isn't at all well; she never was very strong, and our losses have quite--Why, Elizabeth, you would hardly know mother; she's so changed. She just sits by the window, and--looks out; I can't seem to rouse her to--to do anything."

Remembering the frail, artificial old lady, with her elaborate toilets and her perpetual aura of rice-powder and sachet, Elizabeth thought this exceedingly probable. "Was it so very bad, Evelyn?" she asked hesitatingly. "You know you only told me----"

"We lost nearly everything when the Back-Bay Security Company failed last fall," said Evelyn quietly. "I--couldn't seem to believe it at first. Of course we were never rich; but we had always lived very comfortably--you know how pleasant it was in our little apartment, Elizabeth, with our good Marie to do everything for us, and all our friends."

Miss Tripp touched her eyelids delicately with her little lace-edged handkerchief. "I--mustn't cry," she said. "It makes one look so like a fright, and I----. Elizabeth, do you suppose I could get a place to--teach? I do love children so, and they always seem to like me."

"What would you teach?" Elizabeth asked, anxiously sympathetic, yet knowing a little more of the ways of the educational world than did Miss Tripp. "You know, Evelyn,--at least I am told--that nearly every teacher has to be a specialist now. You might study kindergartening," she added more hopefully.

Miss Tripp shook her head. "No; I couldn't do that. It would take too long, and we should have plenty of time to--starve, I fancy, before----. But what nonsense I'm talking! I must start out this minute; I have an appointment at Whitcher's Teacher's Agency this morning. They told me yesterday that a man--a school principal--was coming there to hire a primary teacher. I'm sure I could do that; don't you think I could, Elizabeth?--Just to teach the children how to read and write and do little sums on their slates. I shall say I can anyway."

She waved her hand to her friend as she went bravely away down the snowy street, and Elizabeth turned back to her children, feeling a new and unfamiliar sense of gratitude for the warm home nest, with its three turbulent birdlings.

It was Saturday, and the children could not be dispatched to kindergarten as on other mornings of the week. It was also baking-day, and bread and rolls were in slow process of rising to their appointed size in the chilly kitchen. Elizabeth was frugally looking over the contents of her larder with a view to a "picked-up" luncheon, when she heard a small yet distinct knock on the back door.

She opened it upon Robbie Stanford, dancing with impatience on the snowy step.

"Good-morning, Mrs. Brewster," he began with an ingratiating smile, "I've come over to play with Carroll an' Doris. I c'n stay two hours 'n' maybe three, 'nless my mother comes from down-town before that."

"Oh; isn't your mother at home?" asked Elizabeth, with a dubious glance at the red-cheeked, black-eyed young person, who was already edging smilingly toward the closed door of the dining-room. She had entertained Master Stanford before in the absence of his parents and had learned to dread the occasions of his visits.

"No, ma'am," said Robbie politely. "My mother's gone to have her teeth fixed. The' was a teeny hole in one of 'em, an' the hole ached. Did you ever have holes in your teeth, Mrs. Brewster?"

"Why, yes; I suppose I have," assented Elizabeth doubtfully. "Now, Robbie; I want you to promise me that you will be a good boy this morning, and not get into any mischief; I'm going to be very, very busy, and----"

"I'll be good," responded the young person cheerfully. "I'll be gooder 'an anything. Where's Carroll?"

"He's in the other room; but--wait a minute, dear. You remember the last time you played with Carroll you----"

"Yes, 'm; I 'member. We made an ocean in the bath-room, an' you said----"

"Doris took a bad cold from getting so wet, and Richard almost had the croup."

"I won't do it again," promised the visitor, digging his toes rather shamefacedly under a loosened edge of the linoleum. "I'll jus' look at pictures, 'n'--'n' things like that."

"Very well; I'll take you in where the children are playing. Carroll will be glad to see you; I'm sure," she added, feeling that she had been rather ungracious to her friend's child.

The three young Brewsters greeted their neighbour with a whoop of joy. Master Stanford was blessed with a pleasantly inventive turn of mind, and one could generally depend upon a break in the monotony of the home circle when he appeared.

"What'll we do?" inquired Doris, prancing gaily around the visitor, who gazed about him at the assembled Brewster toys with a somewhat ennuied expression on his small, serious countenance.

"Aw--I don't know; play with dolls, I guess. I promised I'd be good."

"We might play Indian," suggested Carroll hopefully. "Mother lets us take the couch-cover for a tent."

The visitor considered this proposition in Napoleonic silence. "Have your dolls got real hair?" he inquired darkly of Doris.

"Uh-huh; every one of 'em 's got real hair. My new doll 'at I got Christmas 's got lovely long curls. I don't play with her ev'ry day, 'cause mother's 'fraid I'll break her."

"Go an' get her; get all yer dolls."

"Oh--we don't want t' play with dolls," objected Carroll. "Let's build a depot an' have trains a-smashin' int' each other."

"Nope; we'll play Indian," the visitor said firmly. "I'll show you how."