BLANCHE AURORA

When Linda waked next morning, she had been dreamless for nine hours; sunk so deep in slumber after weeks of restless, fitful naps that the return to earth was a slow, scarcely credible process. A soothing, rhythmic sweep of sound seemed saying, "Sleep on, Sleep on"; but a song sparrow perched on the corner of the sloping roof above her window was loudly declaring that it was ecstasy to waken. The rapturous burst, often repeated, won her slow attention. The sun shone through the rosy curtains and a breeze fanned her opening eyes. She turned her face into her pillow. Her first thought as ever of her father, she seemed to commune with him.

"I'm here in your room, dear. I dare think about you. The insults are going to cease, dearest, dearest!"

Her rested brain recalled those sentences in one of Mrs. Porter's letters, prophetic words of what the public verdict would be when truth began to appear. Then had come King's reassurance. She knew each phrase of both letters by heart.

Mrs. Porter had put Miss Barry's best photograph of her brother on the dresser in this room. Turning, Linda again opened her eyes and they rested upon it. For a moment she gazed, then rose with a sense of refreshment. How quiet the house was! She took her bath and dressed, still without hearing a human movement, and at last went downstairs to the empty living-room. The old-fashioned clock above the fireplace pointed to nine forty-five.

"I surely am a petted child!" thought Linda. She moved through the dining-room and was going to the kitchen when the swing door suddenly opened, nearly striking her, and a girl of thirteen years appeared. By dint of peeking around the corner of the house, Blanche Aurora had obtained a glimpse of the tall slender figure in black when aunt and niece arrived yesterday; and of the two, Linda was the more surprised at the sudden encounter now.

In any case, Blanche Aurora was not easily daunted. She had spent years in twitching smaller brothers and sisters into the path of duty. Perhaps the necessity of her being "careful about many things," notwithstanding her youth, had drawn Miss Belinda to her in sympathetic remembrance of her own childhood; but if that was the case, it had resulted in no tenderness given or received. Theirs was a relation of armed neutrality in which neither ever got much the better of the other.

Blanche Aurora's eyes were round, expressionless, and light blue. Each of the two pigtails of her red hair had a string braided in with it to discourage relaxation, and this cord was twisted around their ends with a determined hand, the whole so tightly reined that each braid turned up at the end like a fishhook.

A dozen times this morning she had pushed open the swing door under the impression that she heard the guest descend: the wonderful guest, who never had to touch foot to the ground, but rolled around in carriages and ate off gold plates. Blanche Aurora had vaguely expected something so overwhelming in the appearance of the millionaire's daughter that the apparition of Linda in a plain white gown, not glittering at any point, was somewhat disappointing. The flat-chested little maid viewed the tall girl's shining, waving hair and her large, grave eyes for a moment; then she spoke:—

"Pretty near hit you, didn't I?" she said airily.

"My aunt—" murmured Linda.

"They've gone to see the chickens, and I'm to give you your breakfast. There's your place."

Blanche Aurora's businesslike, no-time-to-spare finger pointed to the white table which bore a dish of fruit and a single goldbanded plate with its complement of silver and napkin.

Linda sat down meekly.

"I s'pose you'll want a finger-bowl," said Blanche Aurora.

"If—if it's convenient," replied Linda.

The other actually smiled. "Ho! We've got lots of 'em," she returned, and stalked to the sideboard, where she poured water into a bowl and placed it close by Linda's elbow.

While the guest opened an orange, the light-blue eyes watched her white ringless hands. "She don't look a bit rich," thought Blanche Aurora, "but I'll bet she's stuck-up."

She withdrew against the wall, from whence Linda felt her unwinking, round stare.

"Are you my aunt's little maid?" asked the girl, after the silence began to be embarrassing.

"No," came the prompt reply, "I'm her help." All Blanche Aurora's remarks were made in a loud tone as if she were talking against the sound of the sea. "I come after I git the children to school."

"Children?"

"My brothers and sisters."

Linda glanced up at the short, slight form clad in a faded gingham dress that was outgrown.

"Don't you go to school yourself?"

"Ho! No! I got through last year; I'm thirteen."

A pause, during which the help reluctantly admired Linda's hands and her deft manner of manipulating spoon and orange. As the guest laid down the empty rind, her companion's voice rent the air.

"Oatmeal, wheatena, and all the cold cereals!" she vociferated.

Linda started. "I—I don't really care—"

"One's jest as easy as the other. They're all handy."

"I'll take the—oatmeal, please," replied Linda under the pressure of that strenuous reassurance.

During the brief absence of the small maid, the girl leaned back in her chair, and looked through the open windows fronting the sea.

Presently, Blanche Aurora's foot kicked open the swing door and she advanced with the cereal and noted that the guest shivered.

"Be ye cold?" she questioned sharply; "I can shet the winders."

"Yes, I wish you would. This is like eating on a boat."

"I hate bo'ts," vouchsafed the help, and crossing to the windows slammed them down, after which she resumed her position against the wall while Linda served herself with oatmeal.

"There's coffee and rolls and eggs," shouted Blanche Aurora after half a minute of dead silence during which the clock ticked.

Linda jumped again. The help was so very responsible and so clean and wiry that she smiled as she lifted her eyes.

"I've got an hourglass and you're to tell me when you want 'em put on."

"What?"

"The eggs; they're good and fresh. Luella Benslow's hens laid 'em."

"Are those the hens Aunt Belinda has gone to see?"

"Yes; Mis' Porter wanted to see the hens that have hot-water bags."

Linda kept on smiling.

"Dear me!" she said. "What is your name, please?"

"Blanche Aurora Martin," came the prompt report; "but you don't have to say the Martin. It's Blanche Aurora for short."

"I see; and I am Miss Barry."

"Yes, I know," was the prompt reply; "but I made up my mind to call you Miss Belinda 'cause if there was two Miss Barrys, I couldn't stand it."

"Really? Very well; but what did you mean about hens with hot-water bags?"

"Why, Luella puts 'em in every nest when it comes cold, and Mis' Porter, she laughed and laughed when she heard about it; Luella's some slack about lots o' things, but she's got real good ideas about helpin' the hens along and Mis' Porter wanted Miss Barry should take her over and see 'em." Blanche Aurora's sharp gaze noted the guest's languid appetite as evinced by the slight diminution of the oatmeal. "The eggs is real good," she continued, "and I've got an hourglass."

Linda lifted her somber eyes and showed the tips of her white teeth again.

"I hope you don't boil them an hour, Blanche Aurora?"

It wasn't very often that Miss Barry's maid was offered a joke, but the relaxing of her thin cheeks now showed that she could take one.

"No danger!" she returned smartly. But the suggestion of eggs, even those laid luxuriously in the proximity of a hot-water bag, could not tempt the pale guest this morning.

"Coffee and toast sound very good," she said. "No eggs this morning, I think."

"Hev it your own way," returned the help; "we cal'late to give you what you want," and at once she attacked the swing door. The little creature's sudden energy of motion after absolute repose was like her stentorian tones breaking dead silence.

When coffee and toast were set before the guest, Blanche Aurora again supported the wall and watched her charge with an unremitting stare.

"You don't need to wait," said Linda.

"I druther," returned Blanche Aurora with a finality which admitted of no argument.

The guest followed the line of least resistance.

"Is Mrs.—— is the hen lady one of your neighbors?"

"Luella Benslow? Yes, she and her father. Her father's a wonderful man—Luella's father is."

"What does he do?"

"Well, he don't do nothin' much. He never did support his family nor anythin' like that; but he has such wonderful 'complishments. There ain't nobody can ketch a frog like Cy Benslow can."

Linda looked up and felt color coming into her cheeks in the novel desire to laugh.

"How does he do it?"

"Like this." The round light eyes gained a spark of interest as Blanche Aurora began describing large circles in the air with her right hand, and advancing toward the table with a stealthy tread. As she approached, the circles contracted gradually, until close to the guest they had narrowed to a small ring out of which the hand made a jab toward the victim's face, and Linda jerked her head back.

Blanche Aurora smiled in triumph and returned to her place.

"I—I really thought you had my nose!"

"That's jest it. Ye see the frog's got to look so many directions, he don't know which way to jump, so he's jest kind o' par'lyzed and gits ketched."

"Very ingenious," laughed Linda.

Yes, she laughed. Blanche Aurora, unconscious that she had performed a feat eclipsing Cy Benslow's, warmed to her theme.

"And you jest ought to see him git worms for bait."

"Now, Blanche Aurora, it was bad enough to be a frog. I positively decline to be a worm."

"You don't have to be. I'll jest tell ye about it. He goes up to a post, Cy does." The speaker moved forward, and Linda put out a warning hand.

"Nor a post either, Blanche Aurora. I firmly decline to be a post."

"And he takes a board and scrapes it back and forrard across the post; it grits somethin' awful, and the shakin' gets to the worms somehow and they begin comin' up out o' the ground to see what's goin' on, and"—Blanche Aurora nodded significantly—"and that's the last they do see, I can tell ye. They go whack into Cy's pail and ketch his dinner for him."

"What a wizard!"

"No, he don't get no lizards, and I'm glad we don't have 'em. There was a lady once boardin' to Benslows' and she had one with a chain to its leg and she let it run all over her. Bah!" the speaker shuddered. "I'd hate to feel their scrabbly feet, wouldn't you?"

"I've finished, Blanche Aurora," said Linda hastily. She pushed her chair back from the table. There was pressure in her throat and in her eyes. She rose abruptly.

"Say! you forgot your finger-bowl," shouted her waitress after the figure swiftly retreating toward the piazza.