Elsie Singmaster

THERE IS COMPANY TO SUPPER

Miss Miflin wondered day after day why the Wenner twins did not come to school. She knew that their father had died,—that would account for three or four days, but why had they not come back after the funeral?

It was true that their absence made Miss Miflin's life much easier. They were not only very active themselves, but they were able to incite the best-behaved of schools to mischief. When Miss Miflin heard confusion behind her as she put a problem on the board, she needed only to call out, "Ellen Louisa!" and then "Louisa Ellen!" and the noise ceased.

When they were approached in private, the twins were as shy as rabbits. They stood twisting their aprons and looking at each other as though Miss Miflin were an ogress. There seemed to be in them the same strange quality that Miss Miflin had discovered in William and Sarah,—a certain standing on guard. It had prevented Miss Miflin from writing to William to try to straighten out the miserable tangle which they had made of their friendship; it made her think of Sarah as a rather reserved young woman, instead of a lonely little girl. It made her hesitate even to offer her sympathy now that Sarah's father was dead. She was not a Pennsylvania German, and it seemed to her that they did not thoroughly trust her.

She was always prepared for the unexpected in the twins' behavior; but when, one morning late in March, they appeared at the school-door carrying an old shot-gun, the same which had done such deadly execution upon the frightened Jacob Kalb, she said aloud, "Well, what next!" Then she went down the aisle to speak to them.

"I am glad to see you back, Ellen Louisa and Louisa Ellen." She had long since discovered that any attempt to abbreviate the names of the twins was not received with favor.

"Yes, ma'am," the twins answered politely. They could not have told why they were so mischievous; it was a Topsy-like obsession which they could not control. They both blindly adored Miss Miflin.

"And why do you come to school armed as though you were going to war?"

The twins giggled. The idea of going to war pleased them.

"So nobody shall carry us off," answered Louisa Ellen.

"Is anybody likely to carry you off?" asked Miss Miflin, smiling. She had seen at once that the gun was useless as a weapon.

"Yes, ma'am," answered Ellen Louisa.

Miss Miflin smiled again. It was time to begin school, and she supposed it was all one of the twins' tricks.

"Put the gun in the corner and go to your seats," she said.

An hour later Miss Miflin heard a stir in the back of the room.

"Ellen—" she began. Then she followed the children's gaze toward the window.

Sarah Wenner stood there, looking in, as though she only meant to assure herself of the twins' presence. But what a changed, wild-eyed Sarah! Miss Miflin dropped chalk and ruler and went to the door.

"Sarah!" she called.

Sarah came hurriedly from the other side of the schoolhouse.

"I didn't mean anything," she explained. "I wanted just to see if Ellen Louisa and Louisa Ellen were in school, that was all."

She did not say that the twins had added another frightened hour to those which had made her face so white. They had slipped away while she went to the barn.

"Didn't you want them to come to school?" asked Miss Miflin.

"Ach, yes!" cried Sarah. "I want them to go every day in the school."

Belief and the sight of Miss Miflin were already patting some color into her cheeks.

"Are you well, Sarah?" asked Miss Miflin.

"Ach, yes!" answered Sarah. "But now I must go home. You must excuse me while I disturbed the school for you. Here is lunch for Ellen Louisa and Louisa Ellen, then they need not come all the way home for dinner. Will you—will you watch them, so they do not go off to play at recess? Just give it to them if they are not good. I will then walk a piece way along to meet them when they come home from school."

Sarah was gone before Miss Miflin could ask any more questions. She saw her look back as she tramped along the muddy road, then she vanished behind a hedge of alders. Miss Miflin was puzzled and disturbed.

It was almost an hour before Sarah reached the Eberts' door. She was inexpressibly tired, and the roads were deep with mud. She had not been sleeping well at night. Uncle Daniel had made no farther move, but she felt that the delay was only a truce. She had seen nothing of Albert, though it had been several weeks since his uncle had carried him away. They were guarding him well.

Ebert had not come to plough, and Sarah was worried. She had looked for him day after day, and now she feared that he was sick.

She could get no answer when she knocked at the door. The house was closed, yet in the field near by the earth had been turned up that morning. Why did they not answer? She could not know that Mrs. Ebert watched her from an upper window, with tears in her eyes.

"I wasn't going to tell her that you wouldn't plough for her," she said to her husband at noon.

"Well, I guess I am not going to plough and then let Swartz have the benefit," answered Ebert.

Troubled and anxious, Sarah went on toward home. As she turned to go up the lane she saw a man at work in the north field. Ah, Ebert had begun! Then her flying feet halted. The horses were Uncle Daniel's grays, the man was Jacob Kalb. Sarah cried out as though she had been struck.

Then she saw that the fence was down. It was not a worm-fence, which could be put up again in a little while, but a stout "post and rail." The posts had been taken out. The two fields formed together a great slope which ran from the Wenners' garden to the edge of the Swartzes' yard.

Sarah gathered her shawl a little closer about her and ran on.

"Get out, Jacob Kalb!" she called.

For a minute Jacob looked as though he meant to run. He had protested against coming to plough so near the house, for fear that Sarah might "do him something." Now he saw that Sarah did not carry a gun. He mocked her rudely.

"Get out, Sarah Wenner!"

"I tell you, you shall go away, Jacob Kalb," she shouted. "This is not your land."

Jacob laughed. "You will have to go pretty soon away," he said.

Sarah could eat no dinner, but sat at the window watching. Already the boundary between the two farms was fast disappearing. How would they be able ever to find it again? What would her mother and father have said? What would William say when he came home?

When he came home. It was growing to be if he came home in Sarah's mind. Anxiety was doing its work.

She remembered things which she had heard as a child and forgotten,—her mother's sharp criticism of Daniel Swartz's meanness, her father's good-natured laughter. She did not know how easily that same dear, thoughtless father might have made it impossible for his brother-in-law to interfere with them. He might easily have provided another guardian for his children. He had meant to,—that much must be said for him,—but he was a procrastinator, and at the end there had been no time.

Sarah could not go now to meet the twins when they came from school; she did not dare to leave the house. Jacob Kalb might take possession while she was away.

The afternoon passed slowly. Toward evening, there was a late flurry of snow. And the twins did not come. Sarah ran part way down the lane,—they were not yet in sight,—then she went to the barn to milk, her ears straining to hear any unfriendly sound. It soothed and comforted her to be with the friendly beasts which she loved. Both "Mooley" and "Curly" had been born on the place, they were part of the living fibre of the homestead.

It was fortunate that the twins called to Sarah before they ran up to the door of the barn, for another shock was more than Sarah could have borne at that moment. The twins' voices trembled with some exciting news.

"She came along home with us," said Louisa Ellen.

"She carried the gun for us," said Ellen Louisa.

"She is waiting at the front door."

"Who is waiting at the front door?" asked Sarah. Then she added fearfully, "Aunt Mena?"

"No, teacher."

"Teacher!" repeated Sarah. "Wh-what did she come for? Have you then not been smart?"

"For to see us," said Louisa Ellen impatiently. "She is coming for company. She—"

Sarah had crossed the lane, a milk-pail in either hand.

"Come," she called, in a voice which was meant to be a whisper, but which Miss Miflin, waiting on the broad doorstep, heard clearly. "Hurry yourselves, and fix a little up. Perhaps—" Sarah could scarcely speak for excitement. "Perhaps she will stay for supper."

A moment later, she opened the front door. Her black hair was brushed back a little more closely to her head, her face shone, the great white apron which she had hastily put on over her gingham one was much longer than her dress, and from the back her gray-stockinged ankles could be seen outlined against it in pathetic thinness.

"Come in, teacher," she begged shyly. "Come once into the room [parlor] and I will hurry make a fire."

"Oh no," said Miss Miflin. "I'll come back to the kitchen with you. I didn't come to be company. I came to bring the twins home, and the gun."

"The gun!" repeated Sarah. "Did they then take the gun along? Come in. It doesn't look here so good like always. I—I didn't work this afternoon so very much. I—"

And Sarah ushered Miss Miflin into the immaculate kitchen.

Miss Miflin breathed a sigh of relief. The chill of the house had struck into her heart. Could William have lived here? Then she saw the glow of the fire, the bright rag carpet, the blooming geraniums in the window. This looked like William. Miss Miflin put out her hand and drew Ellen Louisa, in a clean white apron, to her side. She, too, was William's.

"I wonder whether you would let me stay for supper?" she asked.

The glow in Sarah's face answered her.

"If it is you good enough," answered Sarah humbly.

"Good enough!" laughed Miss Miflin. She pulled off her over-shoes and slipped out of her coat. She had no home of her own, and had been boarding at a country hotel for three years. "But you children don't stay here alone at night!"

"Yes," said Sarah.

"But aren't you afraid?"

"Ach, no! Nobody would do us anything," stammered Sarah. She could not tell this stranger any of their troubles.

"But haven't you a little brother?" Miss Miflin looked round the kitchen.

"Yes, ma'am," answered Sarah. She suddenly put out her hand, and laid it on Louisa Ellen's shoulder, and Louisa Ellen closed her lips as though she had meant to speak, but had changed her mind. "Yes, Albert. He is now by my uncle."

"And don't any of your uncle's people come to stay with you at night?"

"Ach, no!" answered Sarah. Suddenly she felt her voice give way. There was something in Miss Miflin's brown, astonished eyes which made her feel that she might cry. But that would never do. "T-take a ch-chair. I-I guess you had to laugh at how the twins learned their lessons. I taught them while they were at home."

"They learned them well," replied Miss Miflin. "Now I am going to help get supper."

The twins could scarcely believe their eyes. It was as though a fairy had come to the farmhouse, a dear, capable fairy, who could dry dishes and cut bread, and magically change tired, care-worn Sarah into the gay, cheerful Sarah of old. It was almost nine o'clock when Ellen Louisa turned from the window, against which she had been flattening her nose.

"It's snowing again," she announced.

Miss Miflin looked up in dismay. She had forgotten how fast the time was passing. Sarah never knew that, summoned by her stories and her love, it seemed to Miss Miflin that William was there with them.

"I shall have to go at once," she cried. "I had no idea it was so late."

Sarah clasped her hands together.

"You are welcome to stay here," she said. "If it is you good enough, you are welcome to stay here!"

Miss Miflin crossed the room to look out of the window.

"I guess I'll have to. Then I can take the twins with me to school in the morning and they won't need the gun. And why do they want to run away, where some one might pick them up? And who wants to pick them up?"

It was a second before Sarah answered. Suppose she should tell Miss Miflin about Uncle Daniel, and about Jacob Kalb, and all her anxieties and fears? But, no, it would never do. It made her ashamed to think of Uncle Daniel. She did not believe William would like her to tell. She frowned again at Louisa Ellen.

"Ach, they are a little wild," she explained. "They like their school, but they are a little wild."

By this time Miss Miflin had a delighted and sleepy twin on each side of her on the settle.

"But they are not going to be wild any more," she said.

Sarah was asleep that night almost before her head touched the pillow. It seemed to her that peace had descended upon her heart, and hopes for a better day.

It was midnight when she suddenly awoke. Miss Miflin was standing beside the bed.

"Sarah! Sarah, dear, wake up. Your uncle is here and wants you."

Sarah tried to open her drowsy eyes.

"He can't have them," she said, bewildered. "Tell him he must go away."

"But listen, Sarah. He says Albert is sick and they want you."

Sarah sat up at once.

"He is waiting for you at the door. Come, I'll help you with your clothes. Don't come back to-night. I'll get breakfast for the twins. No, Sarah, the other shoe. No, you must put on all your warm clothes. There! Now, I'll come downstairs with you."

Sarah was too dazed with fright and sleep to speak. Miss Miflin was shocked at the anguish in her face. She put out her arms, and for one blessed moment Sarah felt the close pressure of sympathy and love.

"There, Sarah, dear! I'll look after the twins and the house, and to-morrow you must tell me everything, Sarah."

Miss Miflin opened the door, and told Uncle Daniel who she was, and Sarah went out. With confidence which touched even Uncle Daniel himself, she put her hand in his.

"Come, let us hurry," she whispered.