The laughter which rose to the lips of some of the observers was promptly checked as they saw that the girl lay perfectly still in the dust where she had fallen, making no effort to rise, and unconscious of her injured finery. “She’d better have kep’ still an’ let ’em wet her,” said Alfy, nudging Jane Potter. “She ain’t gettin’ up because she can’t,” answered Jane and sprang out of the landau, to kneel beside the prostrate girl; then to look up and cry out: “She’s hurt! She’s dreadful hurt!” Unhappy Mr. Winters set his teeth and his lips were grim. “If ever I’m so misguided as to engineer another young folks’ House Party, I hope——” He didn’t express this “hope” but stooped and with utmost tenderness lifted Mabel to her feet. She had begun to rally from the shock of her fall and opened her eyes again, while the pallor that had banished her usual rosiness began to yield to the returning circulation. Already many hands were outstretched to help, some with the dipper from the well, others with dripping wooden plates “If that gets on my clothes—they’re so dusty—Oh! what made me—Oh! oh! A-ah!” Then she began to laugh and cry alternately, as the misfortune and its absurdity fully appeared, and Helena saw that the girl was fast becoming hysterical. Evidently, in their wearer’s eyes, the beautiful frock now so badly smirched and the white gloves which had split asunder in her fall were treasures beyond compute, and Helena herself loved pretty clothes. She felt a keen sympathy in that and another respect—she had suffered from hysteria and always went prepared for an emergency. Stepping quietly to Mabel’s side, she waved aside the other eager helpers, saying: “I’m going to ride back in the landau, Alfy, please take my place in the cart. Here, Mabel, swallow a drop of this medicine. ’Twill set you right at once.” Her movements and words were as decided as they were quiet and Mabel unconsciously obeyed. She submitted to be helped back into the carriage and as Helena took the empty seat beside her, Ephraim drove swiftly away. Thus ignored the dripping twins stared ruefully after the vanishing vehicle and Mr. Seth looked as ruefully at them. But Molly begged: “Let them go in the cart with us. Alfy’s frock and mine will wash, even if they soil us. One can ride between Jim and me and Melvin and Alfy must look after the other. Let’s choose. I take Ananias. I just love boys!” “Be sure you’ve chosen one then,” laughed Jim as he rather gingerly picked up one infant and placed it behind the dashboard. He had on his own Sunday attire and realized the cost of it, so objected almost as strongly as Mabel had done to contact with this well-soused youngster. “Say, sonny, what made you tumble in the brook? Don’t you know this is Sunday?” “Yep. Didn’t tumble, just went. I’m no ‘sonny’; I’m sissy. S-a-p sap, p-h-i——” began the little one, glibly and distinctly. “You can’t be! You surely are Ananias! Your hair is cut exactly like a boy’s and you wear boy’s panties! You’re spelling the wrong name. Look out! What next?” cried Molly anxiously, as the active baby suddenly climbed over the back of that seat to join her mate behind. There master Ananias—or was it really Sapphira?—cuddled down on the rug in the bottom of the cart and settled himself—herself—for sleep. Neither Alfy nor Melvin interfered with these too-close small neighbors; but withdrawing to the extreme edges of the seat left them to sleep and get dry at their leisure. After that the homeward “But you haven’t the sea!” retorted Melvin, proudly. “We don’t need it. We have the HUDSON RIVER!” came as swiftly back; and as they had come just then to a turn in the road where an ancient building stood beneath a canopy of trees, he asked: “Hold up the horses a minute, will you, Littlejohn? I’d like our English friend to say if he ever saw anything more picturesque than this.” “This” was a more than century-old Friends’ meeting-house. Unpainted and shingled all over its outward surface. “Old shingle-sides” was its local name, and a lovelier location could not have been chosen even by a less austere body of worshipers. Meeting had been prolonged that First Day. The hand clasp of neighbor with neighbor which signaled its close had just been given. From the doorways on either side, the men’s and the women’s, these silent worshipers were now issuing; the men to seek the vehicles waiting beneath the long shed and the women to gossip a moment of neighborhood affairs. Mr. Winters was willing to rest and “breathe “Huh! That’s old Oliver in his First Day grays! But he’s in the grumps. Guess the Spirit hasn’t moved him to anything pleasant, by the look,” he remarked to Dorothy beside him. “He does look as if he were in trouble. I don’t like him. I never did. He wasn’t—well, nice to Father John once. But I’m sorry he’s unhappy. Nobody ought to be on such a heavenly day.” If Oliver saw those watching beside the gate he made no sign. His fat shoulders, commonly so erect, were bowed as if he had suddenly grown old. His face had lost its unctuous smile and was haggard with care; and for once he paid no heed to George Fox’s un-Quakerlike gambols, fraught “Sisters,” thought Dorcas Sands, “yet not alike.” Then casting a second, critical glance upon Luna she uttered a strange cry and clutched her husband’s arm. “Dorcas, thee is too old for foolishness,” was all the heed he paid to her gesture, and drove stolidly on, unseeing aught but his own inward perturbation which had found no solace in that morning’s Meeting. Dorcas looked back once over her shoulder and Dorothy returned a friendly smile to the sweet old face in the white-lined gray bonnet. Then the bonnet faced about again and George Fox whisked its wearer out of sight. “I declare I’d love to be a Quakeress and wear such clothes as these women do. They look so sweet and peaceful and happy. As if nothing ever “Huh! I don’t know. That there Mrs. Sands—Dorcas Sands is the way she’s called ’cause the Friends don’t give nobody titles—I guess there ain’t a more unhappy woman on our mountain than her.” “Why, Littlejohn! Fancy! With such a—a good man; isn’t he?” “Good accordin’ as you call goodness. He ain’t bad, not so bad; only you want to look sharp when you have dealings with him. They say he measures the milk his folks use in the cookin’ and if more butter goes one week than he thinks ought to he skimps ’em the next. I ain’t stuck on that kind of a man, myself, even if he is all-fired rich. Gid-dap, boys!” With which expression of his sentiments the young mountaineer touched up the team that had rather lagged behind the others and the conversation dropped. But during all that homeward ride there lingered in Dorothy’s memory that strange, startled, half-cognizant gaze which gentle Dorcas Sands had cast upon poor Luna. But by this time, the afflicted guest had become as one of the family; and the fleeting interest of any passer-by was accepted as mere curiosity and soon forgotten. After dinner Mr. Winters disappeared; and the younger members of the House Party disposed But Dorothy noticed that he still looked anxious and that he was preoccupied, a manner wholly new to her beloved Mr. Seth. So, as she bade him good-night she asked: “Is it anything I can help, dear Master?” “Why do you fancy anything’s amiss, lassie?” “Oh! you show it in your eyes. Can I help?” “Yes. You may break the news to Dinah that those twins are on our hands for—to-night at least. I’m sorry, but together you two must find them a place to sleep. We can’t be unchristian you know—not on the Lord’s own day!” He smiled his familiar, whimsical smile as he said this and it reassured the girl at once. Pointing to a distant corner of the room, where some considerate person had tossed down a sofa cushion, she showed him the ill-named babies asleep with their arms about each other’s neck and their red lips parted in happy slumber. “They’ve found their own place you see; will it do?” “Admirable! They’re like kittens or puppies—one After a custom which Father John had taught her, though he could not himself explain it, Dorothy “set her mind” like an alarm clock to wake her at six the next morning and it did so. She bathed and dressed with utmost carefulness and succeeded in doing this without waking anybody. Those whose business it was to be awake, as the house servants, gave her a silent nod for good-morning and smiled to think of her energy. The reason appeared when she drew a chair to a desk by the library window and wrote the following letter: “My darling Aunt Betty: “Good-morning, please, and I hope you’ll have a happy day. I’ve written you a post card or a letter every day since you went away but I haven’t had one back. I wonder and am sorry but I suppose you are too busy with your sick friend. I hope you aren’t angry with me for anything. I was terrible sorry about somebody—losing—stealing that money! There, it’s out! and I feel better. Sorrier, too, about it’s being him. Well, that’s gone, and as you have so much more I guess you “Yesterday we went to church and so did the dogs and the twins. I haven’t told you about them for this is the first letter since they came and that was just after breakfast Sunday. A crazy man brought them and said he’d ‘passed them on.’ They’re the cutest little mites with such horrible names—Ananias and Sapphira! Imagine anybody cruel enough to give babies those names. They aren’t much bigger than buttons but they talk as plain as you do. They said ‘A-ah!’ and ‘A-A-men!’ in the middle of the sermon and stopped the minister preaching. I wasn’t sorry they did for I didn’t know what they’d do next nor Luna either. They three and Mr. Seth are the uninvited, or self-invited, ones and they’re more fun than all the rest. Mabel fell out the carriage, or jumped out, and spoiled her dress and fainted away. “My House Party is just fine! Monty got stuck in the barn and had to be sawed apart. I mean the barn had to be, not Monty; and not one of us said a word about it. “I’m writing this before the rest are up because afterward I shan’t have a minute’s chance. It’s a great care to have a House Party, though the Master—we call Mr. Winters that, all of us—takes “Monty’s real smooth outside but he has prickly tempers sometimes; and I guess he—he sort of ‘sassed’ the Master, ’cause he refused to give us any money to hire a sail boat and Monty hadn’t any left himself. But it all blew over. Mr. Seth doesn’t seem to mind Monty any more’n he does his tortoise-shell cat; and he’s a very nice boy, a very nice boy, indeed. So are they all. I’m proud of them all. So is Mabel. So is Molly B. Those two are so proud they squabble quite consid’able over which is the nicest, and the boys just laugh. “Oh! I must stop. It’s getting real near breakfast time; and dear Aunt Betty, will you please send me another one hundred dollars by the return of the mail? I mean as quick as you can. You see to-day, we’re going around visiting ‘Headquarters’ of all the revolution people. There’s a lot of them and they won’t cost anything to see; but to-morrow there’s ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ coming to Newburgh and I must take my guests to it. I really must. “Good-by, darling Aunt Betty. “P. P. S.—Mr Seth says that this Headquartering will be as good as the circus, but it isn’t easy to believe; and Melvin isn’t particularly pleased over the trip. I suppose that’s because our folks whipped his; and please be sure to telegraph the money at once. The tickets are fifty cents a-piece and ten cents extra for every side-show; and Molly and I have ciphered it out that it will take a lot, more’n I’d like to have the Master pay, generous as he is. Isn’t it lovely to be a rich girl and just ask for as much money as you want and get it? Oh! I love you, Aunt Betty! One of the men was going to early market and by him the writer dispatched this epistle. Promptly posted, it reached Mrs. Calvert that morning, who replied as promptly and by telegram as her young relative had requested. The yellow envelope was awaiting Dorothy that evening, when she came home from “Headquartering” with her guests, and she opened it eagerly. But there seemed something wrong with the message. Having read it in silence once—twice—three times, she crumpled it in her hand and dashed out of the room scarlet with shame and anger. |