Anna Chapin Ray

My dear Teddy,—If you haven't entirely forsaken us, can't you come over and spend the afternoon and dine here? We both of us miss your calls, Will especially, since he hasn't been so well; and we can't think why you have turned the cold shoulder to us. I wanted to send for you, yesterday; but Will wouldn't let me, for fear you had something else to do. To-day, I haven't told him, so he won't be disappointed.

Come if you can, dear, and stay to dinner with us. Will is so blue that he needs you to brighten him up, now he is on his back again.

Sincerely,
Jessie Farrington.

This was the note which Patrick had brought over, that morning, and which Theodora now sat twisting in her fingers, while she anxiously wondered what it all meant. She had not heard that Billy was worse, and it was a week since she had seen him, for she still lacked courage to show him her shorn head. She dreaded his teasing; most of all she dreaded the questions he must inevitably ask. Her own family was bad enough; she felt that she could not face him, if once he knew the secret of her missing locks.

Never was a hasty, hot-tempered act more thoroughly punished than this. There had been little need for the doctor or his wife to add a word. Theodora's sorrow and shame were intense; intense, too, was her power of self-abasement. For a week, she spent most of the time in her own room, as if she feared to meet the eyes of her family; and, in this self-imposed isolation, it chanced that she had heard no mention of the Farringtons.

It had taken repeated calls to bring Theodora down to breakfast, the morning after her outbreak. In all her after-life, she never forgot the exclamations of horror and surprise which greeted her when she appeared, half-defiant, half-sulky, and altogether shamefaced. For a few moments, there was a babel of comment; then Mrs. McAlister rose and took her hand.

"Theodora, dear," she said gently; "come into my room, and tell me all about it."

The door closed behind them, and for two hours they were alone together. What passed between them, no one else ever knew. When the long talk was ended, and Theodora, clinging to her new mother just as she had been wont to cling to her own mother, years ago, had sobbed till she could sob no more, Mrs. McAlister left her and went to her husband.

"She's punished enough, Jack," she said to him. "There wasn't much need for me to say anything; but I think perhaps this has given me my opportunity. I've come closer to the child than I ever dared to hope, and, with Heaven's help, I mean to stay there."

Her husband bent over her.

"You're good to my naughty girl, Bess," he said gently.

She smiled; but her eyes looked heavy.

"She is worth it, Jack. At heart, she is sweet and sound as a girl can be. It is only this ungovernable temper of hers. She is quick and impulsive; but she is sorry enough now. I think she won't do anything like this again. And I have promised that she sha'n't be teased about it, and, above all, that no one shall speak of the affair to the Farringtons. Can you see about it, Jack? A word from you will help me in this."

For the next few days, a spirit of heavy quiet rested on the McAlister household. As a rule, Theodora was the life of the house, and now that she moped in corners, hiding her shorn head as best she could, the others were dull and listless in sympathy.

"I hate everybody," Phebe said, coming into the dining-room where Hope was arranging flowers, one morning.

"Why, Babe, what's the matter?" Hope looked up in surprise.

"Nothing, only I'm lonesome."

"Where's Allyn?"

"In the attic. He spoils everything, and I don't want to play with him. Teddy's cross, and Hu won't do anything."

There was a silence, while Hope filled a tall vase with late chrysanthemums.

"I wish I were a flower," Phebe said moodily; "only Allyn would tear it to pieces. I'd rather be a vine; that's tougher."

"What has Allyn done?" Hope asked.

"I don't tell tales, Hope McAlister." And Phebe departed with her chin in the air, leaving Hope to console herself for the rebuke with the reflection that Phebe's code of honor, in such cases, varied according to her own share of the blame.

Half an hour later, Phebe appeared to Billy, who sat in an easy-chair before a crackling fire in the library.

"Hullo, Phebe!" he exclaimed. "How you was?"

"All right. I thought I'd come over and see you, a while."

"That's good. You don't often come. Sit down, won't you?" He waved his book hospitably in the direction of a chair. "Where's Teddy? She hasn't been over here for an age."

"She's—busy." Phebe spoke with a tone of conscious mystery.

"What do you mean?" Billy turned to look at his guest in astonishment.

"Oh—nothing."

"What is the matter? Is Teddy sick?"

"No; she's all right." Phebe gave a hostile sniff.

"Then why doesn't she come over?"

"I s'pose because she doesn't want to."

"Is she mad about anything?"

Phebe shook her head mockingly. Then she rose and stood facing him, with her back to the fire.

"It's all Teddy, Teddy, Teddy!" she said complainingly. "Nobody takes the trouble to talk to me, and you're just as bad as the rest of them. You needn't think your old Teddy is perfect, for she isn't."

"Maybe not; but she is a blamed sight better than you are," Billy answered more bluntly than courteously.

"Is she?" Phebe plunged her hand into her pocket. "What do you think of this?" she demanded, pulling out a long brown pigtail and brandishing it before Billy's astonished eyes.

"What's that?"

"Can't you tell? You've seen it often enough."

"Let me see." Billy held out his hand.

"Sha'n't. It's Teddy's. She cut it off."

"I don't believe it. Let me take it, Babe." His tone was commanding.

For her only answer, Phebe sprang back out of his reach, caught her heel in the rug and fell. Her stiff white apron lay for an instant against the grate; the next moment, it blazed above her head.

With a swift exclamation, Billy struggled to move, to go to her assistance. Again and again he tried to wrench himself from the chair; then, with a groan, he fell back and blew a long, shrill note on the silver whistle which never left him.

In a moment, it was all over. Patrick had rushed in and wrapped Phebe in a rug. Then, more frightened than hurt, the child had started for home, concocting, as she went, a plausible story to account for her charred apron. The maid came in to put the room to rights, and no one knew but Billy, as he ordered Patrick to move him to the sofa, that the sudden strain had done his invalid back a lasting injury. That was three days before, and now Theodora sat twisting his mother's note in her hands and wondering what it all meant.

The doctor was away, that day, and Theodora was too proud to ask the others any questions. She briefly explained to her mother that Mrs. Farrington had invited her to spend the afternoon and dine there, and, putting on her broadest hat, she went away across the lawn.

Patrick admitted her, and, even in the momentary glimpse she had of him, she saw that he looked unusually grave. As she entered the library, however, she was reassured, for the room looked just as usual, with Billy lying on the familiar lounge by the fire. It seemed so good to her to get back there, after her self-imposed banishment, that, forgetful of her cropped head, she sprang forward to his side.

"Oh, Billy!"

"Have you really come, Ted? I began to think you'd cut me. Where have you been?"

"At home. But what's the matter, Billy?" For, as she took his hand, she was startled at his pallor and at the heavy shadows under his eyes.

"Only this set-back," he answered. "My back's given out again, so I can't move a bit."

"What do you mean? When was it?" She dropped down beside him, and rested her arm on the edge of the lounge.

"Didn't you know it?"

"No. When was it?"

"How queer you didn't know! It was three days ago. I strained myself somehow or other, and it kept getting worse, till it's about as bad as it was at first."

"Oh, Billy!" Theodora's overstrained nerves were giving way. After her outbreak, after the shame which had followed and the week when she had missed her friend daily and hourly, this last was too much. After all her protestations of loyalty, he had been ill and suffering, and she had not known it, nor been near him at all.

"And you have to lie flat on your back, like this?" she demanded almost fiercely.

"Yes."

"And it hurts?"

"Yes."

"Much?"

"Some—yes, a good deal."

"All the time?"

He nodded.

"And I didn't know it, and you wanted to see me, and I never came near you." All at once, Theodora's head went down on her hands. "What did you think, Billy?"

"I thought you'd got sick of me," he answered frankly. "I couldn't see any other reason you should go back on me just now. I did miss you like fury, Ted."

"Why didn't you send word to me?"

He looked up at her with an odd little smile.

"Wait till you are flat on your back and no special good, and you'll know why."

His smile hurt her. She laid her hand on his again.

"Did you think that, Billy, really and truly?"

"Yes; that is, sometimes, but I don't now. You've stuck to me pretty well, Teddy."

"Do you know what was the reason I didn't come?" she asked impulsively.

"No."

"It was this." She pulled off her hat and sat before him, a strange, forlorn-looking Teddy, with her cropped head and tear-stained eyes.

"Jove!"

"Yes, I did it," she confessed bluntly. "I was mad at Hope and cut it off."

The boy lay staring at her in surprise. She drooped her head, unable to meet the amused look in his eyes.

"It's awful; isn't it?" she asked.

"Why, no; I don't think it is so bad," he said consolingly. "It isn't exactly pretty, and you look a good deal like a boy. When I get used to it, though, I think I shall rather like it. It seems to suit you, somehow."

She looked up gratefully.

"What a dear old fellow you are, Billy! That was the reason I didn't come. I couldn't bear to have you see me, or to know about it. Now I don't mind anybody else. I hated to have you know I was so horrid."

"You are peppery, Teddy, for a fact. Don't get in a tantrum again, or you will cut off your nose next, and that won't grow again." He tried to laugh; but his color was coming and going, and Theodora saw that he was suffering.

She sprang up and stooped to arrange the cushions about him.

"What is it?" she asked, startled at his changing color.

"It's the old pain. It won't last but a minute."

"What does papa say?" she asked, when he was easier again.

"Nothing, except that it's a strain and that I must keep quiet."

"How long?"

"That's the worst of it." There was an utter dreariness in his tone which Theodora had never heard before. "I didn't mean you to know; but I was going to surprise you all by walking over to your house, Thanksgiving morning, and now—" he hesitated, and, boy as he was and a plucky boy, too, two great tears came and splashed down on Theodora's fingers; "now he says it will be two or three weeks before I can even sit up again."

That night, when Theodora rose to go home, she turned back to the lounge once more, after she had said good-by to Mrs. Farrington.

"You must come in, every day," Mrs. Farrington said. "Will is better already for your being here."

Theodora herself saw the change, as she bent down to shake hands. He looked brighter and better than when she had come, more animated and eager, more like his old self.

"Billy," she said steadily; "I want you to promise me something."

"What's that?"

"That, if the time ever comes again when you want me, or when I can help you, you'll send for me, without waiting. I'm only a girl, I know; but I'm better than nothing, and I never go back on my friends."

Billy smiled up at her benignly.

"No, Ted; I don't believe you ever do. And there are times when 'only a girl' is about as good as anything you can find. Come again."

"I will," she answered.

She kept her word so well that, during all Billy's imprisonment, she never failed to spend a part of each day with him. It did her good to feel that some one counted on her coming and was the better for it. It made her steadier, more reliable; and, in the long, dreary days that followed, she gained a new gentleness from her constant association with her suffering friend. There were days when he was irritable and nervous, days when he was despondent, days when he was too weak with pain to talk; but, during all this time, Theodora was loyal to him, soothing him, cheering him up and bearing his ill-temper with a gentleness which surprised even herself, ministering to his comfort and content to an unmeasured degree, and at the same time gaining a quiet womanliness which she had never known before.

And the days passed on, and the youth and the maiden reaped from them all a harvest of good, a mutual gain from their frank intimacy.