CHAPTER FIVE
"Teddy, did you ever hear me say anything about Gertrude Keith?"
"Why—yes. Wasn't she the cousin who married Harry Everard?"
"Your memory does you credit." Mr. Farrington's eyes belied his bantering tone.
"What about her?"
"Nothing about her. She died, the year before we were married, and left Harry with this one daughter. He has had a housekeeper since then; but the housekeeper took unto herself a husband, a third one, a month ago. Now Harry has been having pneumonia and is ordered to southern France for a while, and he wants to know if the child can come to us."
"What?" Theodora's tone was charged with consternation.
"Isn't it awful? And yet I am sorry for him. We're the nearest relatives the child has except Joe Everard, and naturally she can't be left to the mercies of a bachelor uncle. What shall we do, Ted?"
For one short instant, Theodora stared into the fire. Then she looked up into her husband's blue eyes.
"Take her, of course," she said briskly.
Mr. Farrington had never outgrown certain of his lover-like habits. Now he stretched his hand out to hers for a minute.
"You're a comfort, Ted," he said. "I hated to refuse Harry, for his letter was a blue one. Will she be horribly in the way?"
"No; I sha'n't let her," Theodora answered bluntly. "Don't worry, Billy; we shall get on, I know. Have you ever seen her?"
"Once, when she was in the knitted-sock stage of development. She wasn't at all pretty then."
"How old is she now?"
"Hear what her father saith." And Mr. Farrington took a letter from his breast pocket. Its creases showed signs of the frequent readings it had received that day. As he said, he had disliked to refuse the request of his old friend; but he disliked still more to burden his wife with this new care which would be such an interruption to her work. Moreover, the girl would be in his own way.
"Cicely is just sixteen now," he read, "a bright, sunny-tempered child, and, I hope, not too badly spoiled. You will find her perfectly independent and able to shift for herself; all I want is to have her under proper chaperonage. I should take her with me; but the doctor has forbidden my having the care, and I hate to put the child into a boarding-school."
Theodora laughed, as her husband paused for breath.
"The paternal view of the case, Billy. Cicely is a nice, demure little name; but I suspect that the young woman doesn't quite live up to it. Still, I believe I would rather have an independent damsel than a shrinking one. She will be more in my line."
"But do you think you ought to try it, Teddy?" her husband remonstrated. "Won't it be too hard for you? I can just as well tell Harry to put her into a school."
For one more instant, Mrs. Farrington wavered. Then she saw the frown between her husband's brows, a frown of anxiety, not of discontent.
"No; it will be good for us, Billy. We are getting too staid, and we need some child-life in the house. We can try the experiment, anyway; and it will be easy enough to pack her off to school, after we have grown tired of her. Will you write, to-night?"
"If you are sure you think best."
"I do; and perhaps I'd better put a note into your letter. It may make Harry feel easier about leaving the child with strangers. He will find it hard enough, anyway."
She crossed the room to her desk, to write the letter which was to bring new courage to the anxious, exiled invalid. Suddenly she turned around, with her pen in mid air.
"Billy, the hand of fate is in this. The girl may be just what
Allyn needs."
"Ye—es; only it is within the limits of possibility that they may fight."
"Then they will have to make up again, living in such close quarters as this. Besides, that kind of fighting isn't altogether unhealthful. I believe the whole matter is foreordained for Allyn's good."
"It is an optimistic view of the case that wouldn't have occurred to me,
Ted. Still, we'll hope for the best."
Valiantly she took his advice and hoped for the best, while she busied herself about the details of receiving her new charge. March was already some days old, and it had been decided that Cicely should arrive on the twentieth, so the time was short. In the midst of her domestic duties, Theodora found time for some hours of writing, each day, for she had a well-founded fear lest the new arrival might be of little help to the cause of light literature. In the intervals, she and Billy discussed the invasion of their hearthstone from every possible point of view; but as a rule the ridiculous side of the situation prevailed and they had moments of wild hilarity over the coming demands on their dignity.
"Uncle William!" Theodora observed, one day. "It suggests a scarlet bandanna and an ivory-headed cane. She will probably embroider you some purple slippers next Christmas too."
"No matter, so long as she doesn't undertake to choose my neckties. Never mind, Ted; the uncertainty will soon be over. She comes, to-morrow."
"I wonder what she really is like," Theodora said slowly. "Paternal testimony doesn't count for much, and I am beginning to be a little alarmed at what I may have undertaken. Independent and not too badly spoiled are not reassuring phrases, Billy."
"Her mother was as staid as a church, and Harry is sobriety itself, so the girl can't have inherited much original sin from either of them. Independent from Harry's point of view doesn't mean the same thing that it would from yours. She probably is a mild-mannered little product of the times."
"I don't know just what I do want," Theodora sighed. "One minute, I hope she will be a modest violet; the next, I am in terror lest she be too insipid. What are girls of that age like, Billy? It is years since I have known any of them. Just now, I am in doubt whether I may not shock her even more than she will shock me. The modern girl is a staid and decorous creature, I suspect; not such a tomboy as I was."
Late the next afternoon they both drove to the station to meet their new relative. In spite of herself, as the time came nearer, Theodora was inclined to treat the whole affair as an immense joke; but her husband had misgivings. Theodora was fitted to cope with any girl he had ever known; but he feared she might find the process more wearing than she anticipated.
"I beg your pardon, but is this Mr. Farrington?"
Both Theodora and Billy started and whirled around. In the rush of incoming passengers, they had been looking for some one smaller, more childish than this tall girl who stood before them. She was not at all pretty. Her brown hair was too straight and lank and light, and her grey eyes had a trick of narrowing themselves to a line; but her expression was frank and open, and she wore her simple grey suit with an air which spoke volumes for her past training. Across her arm hung a bright golf cape with a tag end of grey fur sticking out from the topmost folds.
"Are you Cicely?" Mr. Farrington inquired.
"Yes, and I suppose you are Cousin William. Papa said I'd know you by your hair." She caught herself, with a sudden blush. "Oh, I don't mean that," she added hastily; "I think red hair is just lovely, only it is rather uncommon you know."
Mr. Farrington laughed.
"Yes, fortunately," he remarked.
Cicely eyed him askance for a moment; then she too burst out laughing, while two deep dimples appeared in her cheeks and a queer little pucker came at the outer corners of her eyes. There was something so fresh, so heartily frank about her that Theodora felt a sudden liking for the girl, a sudden homesick twinge for her own healthy girlhood.
"There, I have made another of my speeches!" Cicely was saying, with a contrition that was only half mockery. "I'm always doing it, and you will have to put up with it. But truly I don't mind red hair, as long as it doesn't curl; and I hadn't any idea of being rude."
"Mine is tolerably straight, and I'm not very sensitive about it now for I have had it for some time," Billy observed gravely. "Cicely, this is your Cousin Theodora."
The girl turned around and stretched out her hand eagerly.
"Oh, I am so glad to be with you!" she said. "It seems to me I've loved you always, just from your books. You are so good to let me come to you. Am I going to be very much in the way? I'll try to be very good, just as good as I know how."
"And not be homesick?" Theodora asked laughingly, as she took Cicely's hand in both of hers.
Instantly the grey eyes clouded.
"I'll try not," Cicely answered. "I know I shall be happy, only—I wish papa needn't go so far away. We are all there are, you know, only Uncle Joe." Her lips quivered a little, as Theodora bent down to kiss them.
"Never mind, dear," she said. "It won't be for so very long, and I hope you can be happy with us, even if we are strangers to you. Can't Cousin Will take some of your things?"
"Oh, no; I've only this cape, and there's no need of disturbing Billy," Cicely replied, too absorbed in rubbing away a stray tear or two to heed the glance of astonishment exchanged between her new relatives at the unexpected freedom of her use of Mr. Farrington's name.
Seated in the carriage, all three were conscious of an awkward pause.
Cicely broke it.
"Cousin Will, don't you feel as if you had a white elephant on your hands?" she asked so unexpectedly that Theodora blushed and wondered if the girl had been reading her thoughts.
"No; only a grey one. I confess you are larger than I expected to see you. When I met you before, you could have been packed into a peck basket."
"They say I was a good baby," Cicely said reflectively; "they always emphasize the word baby, though, and that hurts my feelings."
"You cried a great deal, and you spent half your energy in trying to eat your own toes. You wore worsted slippers then," Billy answered, amused at a certain off-hand ease that marked her manner. "Perhaps you have improved since then."
"I hope so; but there may be room for it, even now," she returned, laughing.
"Are you going to miss your old friends too much, Cicely?" Theodora asked. "I have a young brother about your age."
"Really? I didn't know that. Is he near you?"
"Next door."
"I'm so glad, for I like boys. I have always been used to them, not flirty; papa wouldn't allow that, but just good friends." Cicely's manner showed her constant association with older people. She and her father had been always together, and their companionship had left its mark upon her. There was no trace of shyness in her manner, no hesitation in taking her share in the conversation. She was perfectly frank, perfectly at ease, yet perfectly remote from any suggestion of pertness. She only assumed it quite as a matter of course that it was worth while to listen to her. "Is your brother like you?"
"No; not really. But you can see for yourself, for he promised to call on you, this evening." Theodora prudently forbore to mention that she had obtained Allyn's promise only at the expense of much coaxing and some bribery.
"That will be good," Cicely remarked with satisfaction. "Papa always says that boys are good for girls; they keep you from getting priggish and conceited. They take all that out of you. What is your brother's name?"
"Allyn."
"I'm glad it is something out of the usual run. Have you some sisters?"
"One, at home."
Cicely clasped her hands contentedly.
"I didn't know I was coming into a whole family. I supposed I should just have to get along with you and Billy—not but what you'd have been enough," she added hastily, as this time she caught the glance exchanged between Theodora and her husband; "only it is rather good to have some young people within reach. Still, it isn't going to be all play for me. Papa wants me to keep up my practice, and that takes five hours a day."
"What kind of practice?" Theodora asked, as the carriage stopped at the steps.
"Piano. I play a good deal. Oh, what a dear place this is! Am I going to live here?" And she ran lightly up the steps, too eager to hear Billy's despairing,—
"Ted! Five hours of strumming, every day! What will you do?"
Or Theodora's laughing reply,—
"I can forgive that, Billy; but it is still rankling within me that we are no longer young. Alas for our vanished youth!"
"Alas for the frankness of childhood, you'd better say," Billy responded.
Inside the broad hall, Cicely walked up to the blazing fire and rested one slim foot on the fender for a moment. Then she bent down and carefully unrolled the cape. The tag end of grey fur stirred itself; there was a little growl, a little bark, and a little grey dog squirmed out of his nest and went waddling away across the rug.
"Mercy on us! What's that?" Theodora gasped, as the little creature shook himself with a vehemence which fairly hoisted him off his hind legs, then flew at the nearest claw of the tiger skin and fell to worrying it.
"That?" Cicely's tone was tinged with a pride almost maternal. "That's
Billy. He is a thoroughbred Yorkshire. Isn't he a dear?"