THE JOY OF GIVING
After Walter left it did not take the girls with their sled long to reach Sarah Bragley's modest little cottage.
Mrs. Ellis opened the door at their knock.
"How is Mrs. Bragley to-day?" Nan asked, as they went in.
"As well as can be expected," replied the nurse. "She had a little fever last night, but not enough to be at all anxious about."
"Has the doctor been here to-day?" queried Rhoda.
"Yes," was the reply, "about an hour ago."
"What did he say?"
"He says she is doing very well," Mrs. Ellis answered. "The only thing that gives him any concern is her lack of appetite. If he can coax that, he thinks she will soon be well."
"Perhaps these things will tempt her," remarked Nan, as she emptied the contents of the basket upon the table.
"How splendid!" exclaimed the nurse. "They are just the things she needs. I'll go and tell her that you are here, and you can take them in to her."
Left alone, the girls glanced around them. A warm fire blazed in the stove. Everything in the room was spotless.
"Doesn't it look nice?" observed Bess.
"Couldn't be any neater or more comfortable," judged Nan with satisfaction. "I'm so glad we could get Mrs. Ellis."
"She's a jewel, and no mistake," affirmed Rhoda.
At Mrs. Ellis' invitation, the three girls trooped into Mrs. Bragley's room. They were delighted to find her propped up in bed and looking very cheerful and comfortable.
"I'm glad to see you, young ladies," was her greeting to them. And she looked with pleasure into the bright faces as the girls clustered about the bed.
"You are feeling pretty good to-day, Mrs. Ellis tells us," said Nan brightly.
"Oh, very much better," was the reply. "I ought to when I have so many kind friends."
Just then the nurse came in, bringing the delicacies that the girls had purchased.
"See what these friends have brought you," she said, as she lifted the things one by one from the basket and placed them on a table by the side of the bed.
Mrs. Bragley's eyes grew wet with sudden tears.
"You are too good to me, young ladies! What kind hearts there are in the world!"
The oranges especially seemed to please her, and Mrs. Ellis prepared one for her.
"How good that orange tastes," she remarked. "I've always been very fond of them. At one time I thought I'd be owning a whole grove of them. But that was just a dream."
"What do you mean?" Rhoda asked, with interest.
"Well, dearie," answered the woman, evidently pleased with Rhoda's interest, "some years ago my husband thought he saw his way to make a little fortune for us. He heard of a company in Florida that was developing orange lands, and it looked so good to him that he bought a share in it. He thought he was going to make money enough out of it to make us safe for life. But nothing ever came of it."
"Where was this land?" asked Nan.
"Let me see," mused Mrs. Bragley, wrinkling her brow with the effort to remember. "It was somewhere in Florida, but I can't remember the name. It was—it was—I can't just think. Not that it matters much, anyhow, but I hate to forget things that way. Sun—sun—Sunny Slopes. That's what the name was."
"What a pretty name!" cried Bess.
"Yes. But that's about all that was pretty about it," replied Mrs. Bragley, with a weak smile. "My husband invested almost all his savings in it because he thought it was going to make him rich."
"When was that?" asked Nan, who was growing deeply interested.
"Only a short time before his death," came the answer sadly.
"But haven't you heard anything about it since?" queried Bess wonderingly. "You may really be rich, for all you know."
Mrs. Bragley smiled wanly.
"Not much chance of that, I fear," she replied. "I have written again and again, but have never received any answer to my letters. I'm afraid it was all a swindle."
"You must have papers of some kind," observed Nan.
"Yes," the woman assented. "They're in that bottom drawer there, if you'll trouble to get them for me."
Nan opened the drawer indicated and took from it a packet of papers. The documents bore marks of frequent folding and unfolding.
"May I look at them?" Nan asked, as she brought them to the bedside.
"Surely," was the ready answer. "And if one of you will just hand me my specs, I'll look over them with you and tell you all about them."
The three girls bent eagerly over Mrs. Bragley as she opened one paper after the other, prospectuses, several of them, highly colored illustrated leaflets and descriptive circulars. Then came a certificate for forty shares in the Sunny Slopes Development Company. The only individual name on any of the papers seemed to be that of Jacob Pacomb, who, it appeared, was the manager and the developer of the tract.
"It's extremely strange that no answer ever came to any of your letters," remarked Rhoda, as she scanned the documents. "Did any of the letters ever come back?"
"Not one," was the reply.
"Perhaps the man did not receive them," conjectured Nan.
"In that case," Mrs. Bragley replied, "the letters would have been returned to me, as I put my name and address on the outside."
"This man, Pacomb," suggested Bess, "may have died and all of the letters may have been destroyed."
"That wouldn't be very likely," objected Nan. "Some one would probably have settled up the business or taken it over and kept on with it. In either case, the letters would almost surely have been answered."
"I have thought of all that," the woman replied; "and that is why I think it must have been all a fraud. If I had been able to spare the money I would have taken a trip to Florida and looked into
the matter myself, but I never felt that I could afford it."
The three girls bent eagerly over Mrs. Bragley as she opened one paper after another. (See page [65])
"It is too bad you couldn't have gone," said Rhoda thoughtfully; "for if there was fraud you would then at least have found it out and could have had somebody punished. It looks to me that, knowing you were a widow and without means to look into things, they have deliberately held back any money that might have been coming to you and cheated you out of your rights."
The girls had been so interested in the papers and the story that went with them that they had thought of nothing else. Now Nan, suddenly glancing up, noticed that the old face looked white and tired. She rose at once.
"I'm afraid we've stayed too long," she said penitently. "We ought to have remembered that Mrs. Bragley isn't strong."
She replaced the papers in the drawer, smoothed the bed covers, and gave the injured woman a comforting pat on the shoulders.
"I hope you will be well again very soon," she said, "and then perhaps some way will be found to look into this matter."
"Anyway, we're going to try to do something about it," promised Rhoda as they took their leave.
The girls found when they got outside that it had begun to snow.
"Looks to me as if we were in for another storm," was Rhoda's comment, as they trudged along.
"Who cares?" cried Bess, catching up a handful of the snow and making a snowball.
"You can't hit anything," scoffed Nan. "Try it."
"All right, here goes for the blacksmith shop," answered Bess gaily, for they were almost directly in front of the little smithy.
"Gracious! Going to try to hit the whole building?" queried the girl from Rose Ranch.
"A blind man could do that," added Nan.
"I'm going to hit the door—the very middle of the door," answered Bess.
"Oh, Bess! if the man is inside, what will he think?" said Nan.
"I don't care what he thinks," was the quick reply. "Here goes!"
Away flew the snowball, and it must be admitted that Bess's aim was decidedly good, for the snowball sailed directly for the center of the door of the smithy.
But as the girl launched the snowball the door of the blacksmith shop opened and a man came forth.
Spat! the snowball landed directly in the man's face!