Part 5

Under his able generalship the sitting-room was presently transformed into the semblance of a rolling prairie, with a settler's wagon in the midst of the landscape in which travelled Richard as husband and father, driving a span of wicker chairs, while Doris, smothering a fine family of long-haired dolls, sat behind.

Elizabeth who paused to glance in at this stage of the proceedings was gratified by a sight of the four happy, earnest little faces, and the apparent innocuousness of the proceedings.

"We're havin' lots of fun, mother; we're playin' wagon!" Doris explained. "These are all my children; an' we're goin' west to live."

"Det-ap!" vociferated Richard, pulling manfully at the red lines decorated with bells, with which he restrained his restive steeds.

"Whoa!" and he applied the gad with spirit. "Dey's doin' fast, mudzer," he shouted.

"That's a nice play!" chanted Elizabeth; "only be careful of the whip, dear." Then she hurried up-stairs intent upon restoring immaculate order to the upper part of her house before luncheon.

X

The better part of an hour had passed before she remembered the children again; then a sound of terrific tumult from below gave wings to her feet.

The scene which met her astonished eyes was one of blood and carnage. The two boys, their faces horribly streaked with scarlet and yellow, their hair stuck full of feathers, had evidently fallen upon the peaceful settlers in their progress across the western plains, and were engaged in plunder and rapine; Richard, bound hand and foot with his scarlet lines, howled with abject terror, while Doris, wild-eyed and furious, fought for the protection of her family of dolls.

"You shan't touch my best doll; you horrid boy!" she shrieked. "I'll tell my--mother! I'll tell--my----"

"Give 'er here! I'm a big Injun an' I'm goin' to scalp every one of your children!" yelled Robbie Stanford. "Here you, Carroll! what you doin'? There's another kid a-hidin' under the chair--I mean the wagon! She'll scalp easy!"

"Why, children! What are you doing? Carroll, Robert! Stop this instant!"

"We're playing Indian!" panted Carroll, pausing to eye his mother disgustedly through his war-paint. "Doris oughtn't to have yelled so, an' Buddy's nothin' but a bawl-baby. We didn't hurt him a single bit."

"Jus' see what they did to my dolls!" wailed Doris. "Tore the hair off of ev'ry one of 'em!"

"Why, boys! I don't see what you were thinking of to spoil Doris' pretty dolls!"

"We was only scalpin' her children," volunteered the instigator of the crime, with a cheerful grin. "I c'n stick on the hair again, jus' as easy as anythin', if you'll give me the glue. I scalped our baby's doll an' my mother she stuck the hair on again with glue. 'Tain't hard to stick it on; an' we only broke one. We wouldn't 'ave done that, if Doris----"

"What is that stuff on your faces?" demanded Elizabeth sternly, as she collected the parti-coloured scalps from among the débris on the floor.

"It's only war-paint, mother," explained Carroll. "Indians always put it on their faces; don't you remember the Indians in my Indian book? We made it out of jam an' egg. Celia gave it to us; we got the feathers out the duster."

Elizabeth heaved a great sigh. "Come, and I'll wash your faces," she said; "then I think perhaps Robbie had better----"

"No, ma'am;" said Master Stanford firmly; "it isn't two hours yet. I c'n stay till the whistles blow, an' if you invite me I guess I c'n stay to lunch."

"I'm not going to invite you," slipped off Elizabeth's exasperated tongue. "I want you to go straight home, as soon as I've washed you and made you look respectable."

The youngster's under lip trembled. Two big tears welled up in his black eyes. "I--didn't--mean to--be--naughty!" he quavered. "I don't care if you--whip--me; but I don't want--t' go home. Annie's--cross. She slapped--me--twice this morning! She says I'm the plague o' her life."

Annie was the Stanford's cook and possessed of unlimited authority which she frequently abused, Elizabeth knew. "Where is Livingstone?" she asked in a milder voice, as she removed the traces of her best raspberry jam from the visitor's round face.

"Mother took baby with her; she's going to leave him at gran'ma's house till she comes home. She said I couldn't go, 'cause gran'ma--she's--kind of nervous when I'm there."

"Well, dear; you can stay and have lunch with the children; only----"

"Are you goin' to whip me? I shan't cry if you do."

"My mother doesn't whip anybody," said Carroll superbly; "she's too kind an' good!"

"So's my mother kind an' good! I double dare you to say she isn't!"

"Come, children; you mustn't get to quarrelling. Of course your dear mother is kind and good, Robbie. And you ought to try to be so kind and good and obedient that she won't ever feel that you ought to be whipped."

Master Stanford's black eyes opened very wide at this difficult proposition. "Aw--I don't know 'bout that," he said diffidently. "I guess my mother'd jus' 's soon I'd be bad some o' the time. She says she's glad I ain't a milk an' water child like Carroll. An' my papa, he says----"

"You may both sit right down on this sofa," interrupted Elizabeth hastily, "and look at these two books till I call you to luncheon. If you get up once, Robbie, I shall be obliged to send you home to Annie."

"The idea of Marian saying such a thing about my Carroll," she thought unforgivingly, as she set forth bananas and small sweet crackers for the children's dessert. "A milk and water child, indeed; but of course, with a boy like Robbie to deal with, she has to say something. I'm sorry for those two children of hers."

Robbie Stanford stayed till his mother came after him at four o'clock, and Elizabeth laying aside all other occupations supervised her small kindergarten with all the tried patience and kindness of which she was mistress.

Mrs. Stanford was voluble with apologies as she invested her son with his coat and mittens. "I told Annie to have Robbie ask Carroll over for luncheon," she said, "and I left the play-room all ready for them. I assure you, Elizabeth, I had no notion of inflicting my child upon you--when you have company, too; I'm really ashamed of Robbie."

"Yes, mother," interrupted that young person, "but Annie got mad jus' 'cause I made little round holes in one o' her ol' pies with my finger. I only wanted to see the juice come out. 'N'--'n she slapped me, 'n' tol' me to get out o' her way, or she'd pack her clo'es an' leave. So I----"

Mrs. Stanford's pretty young face flushed with mortification. "I can see that you are thinking me very careless to leave Robbie with a bad-tempered servant," she said, "but Annie is usually so good with the children, and I had to go. I had really neglected my teeth till one of them ached."

"It was no trouble," dissembled Elizabeth mildly, "and really I should much prefer to have Robbie here than to have Carroll at your house when you are away. I should tremble for the results to your property. Of course my Carroll alone is almost as innocuous as milk and water, but with Robert to bring out his stronger qualities one can never safely predict what will happen."

Mrs. Stanford looked up in sudden consternation, and meeting Elizabeth's smiling glance she laughed and shrugged her shoulders. "Well," she said, "I'm glad, Betty, if you aren't actually worn out mothering my black-eyed lamb. Another time I'll cope with all three of yours, if you'll let me." Then she stooped and kissed Elizabeth in her usual half-mocking way. "Thank you, little neighbour," she murmured; "you make me ashamed of myself, whenever I see you. You are so much better than I."

When Evelyn Tripp returned that afternoon in the gloom of the gathering twilight she stood for a few minutes in the glow of Elizabeth's cheerful fireside, slowly drawing off her gloves. She appeared pallid and worn in the half light, and Elizabeth caught herself wondering if she had lunched.

"Yes, dear," Miss Tripp informed her absent-mindedly; "I had a cup of tea--I think it was tea--and a roll. I wasn't hungry after my interview with the South Popham school principal."

"Oh, then you saw him? Did you--Was he----"

Evelyn laughed a little drearily. "No, dear," she sighed, shaking her head; "nothing came of it. I suppose I ought not to have expected it. Professor Meeker wanted someone with experience, and--and--a younger person, he said. I didn't realise that I looked really old, Betty. I thought----"

"You don't look old, Evelyn," denied Elizabeth warm-heartedly. "What was the man thinking of?"

"Apparently of a red-cheeked, nursery-maid sort of a person who had taught in the public schools. I saw him afterwards holding forth on the needs of the Popham Institute to a young woman with a high pompadour and wearing a red shirt-waist, a string of blue beads and a large glittering watch-chain--the kind with a slide. I think she must have been what he was looking for. Anyway the Whitcher people told me he had engaged her."

Elizabeth gazed at her friend, a sort of aching sympathy withholding her from speech.

"After that," pursued Miss Tripp, "I went to another agency, and they asked me if I would like to travel abroad with a lady and her two daughters. I thought I should like it very much indeed--I could engage Cousin Sophia to stay with mother, you know--so I took the car out to Chelsea to see a Mrs. Potwin-Pilcher, and found what she was looking for was really an experienced lady's-maid and courier rolled into one, and that she expected 'willing services in exchange for expenses.' I told her I couldn't think of such a thing. Then Mrs. Potwin-Pilcher rose up--she was a big, raw-boned person glittering with diamonds--and informed me that she had fifty-nine applications for the position--I was the sixtieth, it seems--and that she was sure I would be unable to perform the duties of the position. After that I came directly home. Monday I shall----"

Miss Tripp paused apparently to remove her veil; when she finished her sentence it was in a steady, matter-of-fact voice. "I shall go to see an old friend of mother's--a Mrs. Baxter Crownenshield--I think you've heard me speak of her, Elizabeth. She and mother were very intimate once upon a time, and Mr. Crownenshield owed his success in business to my father. I'm going to--ask her advice. Now I think I'll go up-stairs and take off these damp skirts, and after that I'll come down and help you mend stockings, or anything----. Only let me do something, Elizabeth!"

There was almost a wail in the tired voice, and Elizabeth, wiser than she knew, pulled out her mending-basket with a smile. "I'm almost ashamed to confess that I need some help badly," she said. "I hope you won't be horrified at the condition of Carroll's stockings."

Miss Tripp was quite her charming self again when she reappeared clad in a trailing gown of rosy lavender. She told the children the lively tale of the goose-girl, which she had promised them in the morning, choosing the while the stockings with the most discouraging holes out of Elizabeth's basket and protesting that she loved--yes, positively adored--darning stockings. But she finished her self-imposed task at an early hour, and after playing two or three tuneful little chansonettes on Elizabeth's hard-worked and rather shabby piano, excused herself.

"I must write to mother," she said smilingly. "She quite depends on me for a bright chatty letter every day, and I've so much to tell her of to-day's amusing adventures. Really, do you know that Potwin-Pilcher person ought to go into a novel. She was positively unique!"

Elizabeth was silent for some moments after the sound of Evelyn's light foot had passed from the stair. Then she turned a brooding face upon her husband. "I am so sorry for poor Evelyn," she said.

Sam Brewster stirred uneasily in his chair. "So you said before she arrived," he observed. "I don't see anything about the fair Evelyn to call forth expressions of pity. She looks remarkably prosperous to me."

"Yes; but you don't see everything, Sam. That gown is one she has had for years, and it has been cleaned and made over and over again."

"Well; so have most of yours, my dear, and you don't ask for sympathy on that account."

"Sam, dear, they haven't any money. Can't you understand? They lost everything when the Back-Bay Security Company failed. Evelyn doesn't know what to do. There is her mother to take care of and you know how helpless she is. I don't suppose she ever really did anything in her whole life."

"It's a problem; I'll admit," agreed her husband, scowling over his unread paper; "but I don't see what we are going to do about it."

"That's the worst of it, Sam; we really can't do anything, and I'm afraid other people won't. I had thought--if nothing else turned up--that perhaps Mrs. Tripp could be induced to go into a home. One of those nice, refined places where one has to pay to be admitted, and then Evelyn--might----"

She paused and looked anxiously at her husband. "We might let her stay here, Sam; and----"

He shook his head. "You're the most self-sacrificing of darlings when it comes to helping your friends," he said; "but I couldn't stand for that, Betty. Two weeks is about my limit, I'm afraid, when it comes to entertaining angels unawares. I'm willing to admit the unique character of Miss Tripp, and to vote her a most agreeable guest, and all that. But----"

Elizabeth gazed at her husband understandingly. "I know, Sam," she said, "and I think so too. But----"

XI

"Mother, de-ar, can we go out to play in the back yard? I c'n put on my overshoes an' leggins, an' I c'n help Doris too, if you're busy."

Elizabeth looked up from her task of cutting out rompers for her baby with a preoccupied sigh. "You have a little cold now, Carroll," she said doubtfully, "and if you should get wet in the snow----"

"We won't get wet, mother. I pr-romise!"

"Very well, dear; now remember!"

It was cold and clear and there seemed very little danger of dampness as the two children ran out with a whoop of joy into the side yard where the snow-laden evergreens partially screened the Stanford's house from view. Robbie Stanford's round, solemn face was staring at them wistfully from a second-story window as they dashed ecstatically into a snow bank, to emerge white with the sparkling drift.

"Hello, Rob; come on out!" called Carroll.

"I can't," replied Master Stanford, raising the window cautiously.

"Why?"

"Oh, nothin' much; but I guess I'd better stay up here till mother comes home."

"Who said so?"

"That horrid ol' Annie. I was down in the kitchen an' I fired only one clothespin at her, jus' for fun, an' it hit her in the eye; she got mad an' chased me up here an' locked the door."

"Where's your mother?"

"She's gone down town. She said she'd bring me some candy if I was good. Bu' 'f I ain't good she'll take the paddle to me. Say, Carroll!"

"What?"

"Why don't you an' Doris make a skatin' rink?"

"A--what?"

"A skatin' rink. It's great. I know how; I saw a boy makin' one in his back yard. It's awful easy. You just run the hose----"

Master Stanford paused in the course of his exposition to cast a cautious glance behind him. "I guess I'm takin' cold all right," he went on feelingly. "I hope I am. Then maybe I'll have the croup an' be awful sick. I guess they'd all be sorry, then. Say, Carroll, do you see Annie anywheres?"

Carroll reconnoitred cautiously. "She's hangin' up clo'es in the back yard," he informed the young person aloft.

"If I c'd get out of here, I'd show you how to make that skatin' rink. We c'd make it easy, an' have it ready to skate on b' to-morrow."

"We haven't any skates," objected Doris. "B'sides," with a toss of her scarlet hood, "I don't believe you know how to make a skatin' rink."

"I don't know how? Well, I just bet I do!" exclaimed the prisoner dangling his small person far over the window-sill, while Doris screamed an excited protest. "Pooh! I ain't afraid of fallin' out--ain't afraid of nothin'; I'll bet I c'd jump out this window. I guess I'd have to if the house took on fire. Say, if this house should ketch on fire, Carroll, your house would burn up too. I've got some matches in my pocket," he added darkly; "if I should take a notion I c'd burn up everythin' on this block, an' maybe the whole town. I'll bet I c'd do it."

"How do you make a skatin' rink?" inquired Carroll, with an anxious glance at his own cosy home, which suddenly appeared very dear to him in view of a general conflagration.

Master Stanford reflected frowningly. "Is our cellar window open?"

"Nope; it's shut."

"Well, first you'll have to dig out a big square place, an' pile snow all round the edge. I'll get out o' here somehow b' the time you get that done; then we'll run it full of water. 'N after that it'll freeze."

"Where c'd we get the water?" inquired Doris, with an unbelieving sniff. "Mother wouldn't let us get it in the kitchen."

"Out of our hose pipe," said Master Stanford grandly. The Brewsters owned no hose, and this fact was a perpetual source of grievance in summer time. "I'll run her right under the hedge into your yard," continued the proprietor of the hose generously, "an' let her swizzle!"

"Oh--my!" gasped the small Brewsters in excited chorus.

"Well; are you goin' to do it?"

Carroll shook his head. "We promised mother we wouldn't get wet," he observed with an air of superior virtue. "'N we always mind our mother, don't we, Doris?--at least I do. Doris doesn't always. But she's a girl."

Master Stanford cackled with derision. "Aw--you're a terrible good boy, aren't you?" he crowed. "My father says you're a reg'lar prig. He says he'd larrup me, if I was always braggin' 'bout bein' so good the way you do. He says I haven't anythin' to brag of. Course if you're 'fraid of your mother----"

Doris pirouetted off across the yard with a flirt of her short skirts. "We aren't afraid, smarty!" she cried, her pink chin high in air. "An' we aren't any gooder an' you are, Robbie Stanford--at least I'm not; so there! Come on, Carroll; let's make a skatin' rink."

Hard labour with two small snow-shovels produced the semblance of a square enclosure bounded by uneven ridges of soft snow. Mrs. Brewster glancing out of the window at her darlings was pleased to observe their red cheeks and the joyous enthusiasm with which they were pursuing their self-imposed task.

"Dear little souls!" she thought, "how little it takes to keep them happy." Then she became absorbingly busy at her machine in the task of double-stitching the seams of the baby's rompers.

In the meanwhile young Robert Stanford had been released from durance vile by the kind-hearted Annie, whose warm Irish heart had reproached her for her fit of bad temper.

"Sure an' yez didn't mean to hit me eye; did yez, now?" she inquired, as she poked her broad red face into the room.

"Naw; course I didn't," the incarcerated one ingratiatingly assured her. "Say, Annie, c'n I have four cookies?"

"Oh, go 'way wid yez; four's too many entirely; I'll give ye wan wid a clip over yer ear."

"No; honest, I ain't goin' to eat 'em all. I want one for Carroll an' Doris an' two for me."

"An' it's the generous young one he is entirely," laughed Annie. "Come on down an' I'll put yer coat on, and mind yez don't get into no more mischief or I'll be afther tellin' yer mother; thin you'll get a taste of the paddle."

"I'll give you a whole lot of my candy, Annie," said the boy earnestly, "if you'll tell mother I was awful good. Will you?"

"'Awful' it was, all right," giggled Annie; "but if I was to say you was good I'd have to burn in purgatory for me sins. I'll say nothin'."

"Where's purgatory, Annie?" inquired the young person after a thoughtful silence.

"It's a warrum place entirely where you'll find yourself some day, I'm thinkin', if yez meddle too much in my kitchen," said Annie darkly. "Here's your cookies; now g'wan wid yez an' don't ye be afther botherin' me no more."

It was a matter which required concerted effort to uncoil the heavy hose, attach it to the water pipe and lift the nozzle to the level of the window; but it was accomplished at last through the united efforts of the two boys ably assisted by Doris, who was all excitement at the prospect of sliding on a real ice pond in her own yard.

"I guess our daddy'll be s'prised when he sees us goin' around like lightnin' on reg'lar ice," she said. "He's got skates, our daddy has, an' he c'n skate like everythin', our daddy can."

"Pooh! that's nothin'," retorted Master Stanford; "my father c'n beat your father all holler. He's a whole lot taller 'n your father, an' our house is higher 'n yours, too."

"It's p'liter not to brag," said Doris, ignoring her own deflections from civility. "Oh, my, look at the water spurting out of that teeny, weeny hole! It's just like a fountain."

The two boys were laboriously dragging the heavy hose across the yard, and in the process other holes appeared through which the water hissed and gurgled with increasing force.

"I don't care," the proprietor of the hose assured them loftily. "It's an' ol' thing anyway. We're goin' to have a great long new one nex' summer; then maybe we'll give you this one. My father's so rich he don't care. Now I'll poke the nozzle through the hedge an' let her swizzle. Get out o' the way, Doris; I don't care if I do get wet."

Ten minutes later Mrs. Stanford, rosy and cheerful, after her brisk walk in the winter sunshine, appeared on the scene. "What are you doing, kiddies?" she inquired pleasantly; then in a more doubtful tone. "What _are_ you doing? Why, Robbie!"

"We're jus' makin' a skatin' rink, and the ol' hose leaks like thunder," explained her son, employing a simile he had heard his father use the day before, and which he had considered particularly manly and admirable.

"Robert! you are soaked to the skin--and so is Carroll. Go right into the house. What do you mean by being so naughty?"

"You didn't say I couldn't take the hose," sulked the boy, surveying his parent from under lowering brows.

"Go in the house, sir; I'll attend to you presently," said his mother sternly.

"Oh, please; I'll be good! I didn't--mean--to," whined the child. "Carroll an' Doris, they wanted a skatin' rink, an' I----"

Mrs. Stanford stooped to turn off the water. "Go home at once," she said to her neighbour's children. "And you, Robert, go up to the bathroom and take off your wet clothing." Her pretty young face was flushed with anger. "I never saw such dreadful children!" she murmured wrathfully.

"My, but she's mad!" whispered Carroll, looking after the slim, erect figure, "it wasn't our fault their ol' hose leaked."

"I guess our mother'll be some mad, too," said Doris doubtfully; "that water spurted all over my leggins; an' now I guess it's freezing."

The two walked slowly across the yard, ploughing through the rapidly congealing slush, which was the disappointing outcome of two hours of hard work.

"I don't like Robbie Stanford one bit," said Doris disgustedly. "He's always getting us into mischief."

"I said we ought not to get wet," Carroll reminded her eagerly. "Don't you remember I did? An' you said----"

"I don't like you either," pursued the little girl stonily. "I don't b'lieve I like boys _a'tall_; so there!"

"I'm all wet," she announced to her mother, "an' Carroll's wetter 'an I am; an'--we--we're--both--c-cold!"

It was characteristic of Elizabeth that she thoroughly dried and warmed the children before asking any questions. Then despite their dismayed protests she put them both to bed. "You disobeyed me," she told them, "and now you'll have to stay in your beds till to-morrow morning. I'll explain to your father. Of course he'll be disappointed not to see you at dinner; but I can't help that."

A period of depressing silence followed during which both children caught the distant sounds of passionate and prolonged crying from the neighbouring house.