The Second Violin

by Grace S. Richmond

THE SECOND VIOLIN

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CHAPTER I

Crash! Bang! Bang! "The March of the Pilgrims" came to an abrupt end. John Lansing Birch laid down his viola and bow, whirled about, and flung out his arms in despair. "Oh, this crowd is hopeless!" he groaned. "Never mind any other instrument, providing yours is heard. This march is supposed to die away in the distance! You murder it in front of the house. That second violin--"

Here his wrath centered upon the red-cheeked, black-eyed young player.

The second violin returned his gaze with resentment. "What's the use of my playing like a midsummer zephyr when Just's sawing away like mad on the bass?" she retorted.

The first violin smiled pleasantly on the little group. "Let's try it again," she suggested, "and see if we can please John Lansing better."

"You're all right," said Lansing, with a wave of his hand at Celia, "if the rest of the strings wouldn't fight to drown you out. Charlotte plays as if second violin were a solo part, with the rest as accompaniment."

Charlotte tucked her instrument under a sulky, round chin, raised her bow and waited, her eyes on the floor. Celia, smiling, softly tried her strings.

"That's it, precisely," began the leader, still with irritation. "Celia tunes between practice; Charlotte takes it for granted she's all right and fires ahead. Your E string is off!"

The second violin grudgingly tightened the E string; then all her strings in turn, lengthening the process as much as possible. The 'cello did the same--the 'cello always stood by the second violin. Jeff gave Charlotte a glance of loyalty. His G string had been flatter than her E.

Lansing wheeled about and picked up his instrument, carefully trying its pitch. He gave the signal, and the "March of the Pilgrims" began--in the remote distance. The double-bass viol gripped his bow with his stubby twelve-year-old fingers, and hardly breathed as he strove to keep his notes subdued. The 'cello murmured a gentle undertone; the first violin sang as sweetly and delicately as a bird, her legato perfect. The second violin fingered her notes through, but the voice of her instrument was not heard at all.

The leader glanced at her once, with a frown between his fine eyebrows, but Charlotte played dumbly on. The Pilgrims approached--crescendo; drew near--forte; passed--fortissimo; marched away--diminuendo; were almost lost in the distance--piano--pianissimo. Uplifted bows--and silence.

"Good!" said a hearty voice behind them. Everybody looked up, smiling--even the second violin. His children always smiled when Mr. Roderick Birch came in. It would have been a sour temper which could have resisted his genial greeting.

"Mother would like the 'Lullaby' next," he said. "She's rather tired to-night. And after the 'Lullaby' I want a little talk with you all."

Something in his voice or his eyes made his elder daughter take notice of him, as he dropped into a chair by the fire. "Play your best," she warned the others, in a whisper. But they needed no warning. Everybody always played his best for father. And if mother was tired--

The notes of the second violin fell daintily, caressing those which wrought out the melody enveloping but never overwhelming them. As the music ceased, the leader, turning to the second violin, met her reluctant eyes with a softening in his own keen ones. The hint of a laugh curved the corners of her lips as his smiled broadly. It was all the truce necessary. Charlotte's sulks never lasted longer than Lanse's impatience.

They laid aside their instruments and gathered round their father. Graceful, brown-eyed Celia sat down beside him; Charlotte's curly black hair mingled with his heavy iron-gray locks as she perched upon the arm of his chair, her scarlet flannel arm under his head. The youngest boy, Justin, threw himself flat on the hearth-rug, chin propped on elbow, watching the fire; sixteen-year-old Jeff helped himself to a low stool, clasping long arms about long legs as his knees approached his head in this posture; and the eldest son, pausing, drew up a chair and sat down to face the group.

"Now for it," he said. "It looks serious--a consultation of the whole. Mayn't we have mother to back us?"

"I've sent mother to bed," Mr. Birch explained. "She wanted to come down to hear you play, but I wouldn't let her. And indeed there are moments--" He glanced quizzically at his eldest son.

"Yes, sir," Lansing responded, promptly. "There are moments when the furnace pipes convey up-stairs as much din as she can bear."

Mr. Birch sat looking thoughtfully into the fire for a minute or two.

He began at last, gently, "Celia--has mother seemed quite strong to you of late?"

"Mother--strong?" asked Celia, in surprise. "Why, father, isn't she? She--had that illness last winter, and was a long time getting about, but she has seemed well all summer."

Their eyes were all upon his face. Even young Justin had swung about upon his elbows and was regarding his father with attention. They waited, startled.

"I took her to Doctor Forester to-day, and he--surprised me a good deal. He seemed to think that mother must not spend the coming winter in this climate. Don't be alarmed; I don't want to frighten you, but I want you to appreciate the necessity. He thinks that if mother were to have a year of rest and change we need have no fears for her."

"Fears!" repeated Lansing, under his breath. Was it possible that anything was the matter with mother? Why, she was the central sun about which their little family world moved! There could not--must not--be anything wrong with mother!

"Tell us plainly, father," urged Celia's soft voice. She was pale, but she spoke quietly.

Charlotte, at the first word of alarm, had turned her face away. Jeff's bright black eyes--he was Charlotte's counterpart in colouring and looks--rested anxiously on the second violin's curly mop of hair, tied at the neck with a big black bow of ribbon. It was always most expressive to Jeff, that bow of ribbon.

Lansing repeated Celia's words. "Yes, tell us plainly, sir. We'd rather know."

"I am alarming you," Mr. Birch said, quickly. "I knew I could not say the slightest thing about her without doing that. But I need to talk it over with you all, because if we carry out the doctor's prescription it means much sacrifice for every one. I had no doubt that you would make it, but I think it is better for you to understand its importance. Doctor Forester says New Mexico is an almost certain cure for such trouble as mother's, if taken early. And we are taking it early."

Justin and Jeff looked puzzled, but Celia caught her breath, and Lansing's ruddy colour suddenly faded. Charlotte buried her head in her father's shoulder and drew the scarlet flannel arm tighter about his neck.

The iron-gray head bent over the curly black one for a moment, as if the strong man of the household found it hard to face the anxious eyes which searched his, and would have liked, like his eighteen-year-old daughter, to run to cover. But in an instant, he looked up again and spoke in the cheery tone they knew so well.

"Now listen, and be brave," he said. "Mother's trouble is like a house just set on fire. A dash of Water and a blanket--and it is out. Wait till a whole room is ablaze, and it's a serious matter to stop it. Now, in our case, we've only the little kindling corner to smother, and the New Mexico air is water and blanket--a whole fire department, if need be. The doctor assures me that with mother's good constitution, and the absence of any hereditary predisposition to this sort of thing, we've only to give her the ten or twelve months of rest and reënforcement--the winter in New Mexico, the summer in Colorado--to nip the whole thing in the bud. I believe him, and you must believe him--and me. More than all, you must not show the slightest change of front to her. She knows it all, but she doesn't want you to know. I think differently about that.

"Three of you are men and women now, and the other two," he smiled into the upturned, eager faces of Jeff and Justin, "are getting to be men. Even my youngest can be depended upon to act the strong part."

Justin scrambled to his feet at that, and gravely laid a muscular boy's hand in his father's.

"I'll stand by you, sir," he said.

Nobody laughed. Charlotte's black bow twitched and a queer sound burst from the shoulder where her head was buried. Jeff's thick black lashes went down for a moment; Celia shook two bright drops from brimming eyes and patted Just's sturdy shoulder. Mr. Birch shook the hand vigorously without speaking, and only Lansing found words to express what they felt.

"He speaks for us all, I know, sir. And now if you'll tell us our part we'll take hold. I think I know what it means. Trips to New Mexico, from New York, are expensive."

"They are very expensive," Mr. Birch replied, slowly. "I must go with her. We must travel in the least fatiguing fashion, which means state-rooms on trains and many extras by the way. She has kept up bravely, but this unusual exhaustion after one day in town shows me how careful I must be of her on the long journey. Then, once away, no expense must be spared to make the absence tell for all there is in it. And most of all to be considered, while I am away there will be--no income."

They looked at each other now, Celia at Lansing, and Lansing at Jeff, and Jeff at both of them. Charlotte sat up suddenly, her cheeks and eyes burning, and stared hard at each in turn.

The income would stop. And what would that mean? The family had within three years suffered heavy financial losses from causes outside of their control, and the father's income, that of attorney-at-law in a large suburban town, had since become the only source of support. So far it had sufficed, although Charlotte and Celia had been sent away to school, and both Celia and Lansing were now in college.

It was the remembrance of these heavy demands upon the family purse which now caused the young people to look at one another with startled questioning. Lansing was about to begin his senior year at a great university; Celia had finished her first year at a famous women's college. Within a fortnight both were expecting to begin work.

Charlotte did not care about a college course, but she had planned for two years to go to a school of design, for she was a promising young worker in things decorative. As for Jefferson, sixteen years old, captain of the high-school football team, six feet tall, and able to give his brother Lansing a hard battle for physical supremacy, his dearest dream was a great military school. Even Justin--but Justin was only twelve--his dreams could wait. His was the only face in the group which remained placid during the moments succeeding Mr. Birch's mention of the astonishing fact about the income.

The father's observant eyes noted all that his children's looks could tell him of surprise, disappointment and bewilderment; and of the succeeding effort they made to rally their forces and show no sign of dismay.

Lansing made the first effort. "I can drop back a year," he said, thoughtfully. "Or I--no--merely working my way through this year wouldn't do. It wouldn't help out at home."

"Why, Lanse!" began Celia, and stopped.

He glanced meaningly at her, and the colour flashed back into her cheeks. In the next instant she had followed his lead.

"If Lanse can stay out of college, I can, too," she said, with decision.

"If I could get some fairly good position," Lanse proposed, "I ought to be able to earn enough to--well, we're rather a large family, and our appetites----"

"I could do something," began Charlotte, eagerly. "I could--I could do sewing----"

At that there was a general howl, which quite broke the solemnity of the occasion. "Charlotte--sewing!" they cried.

"Why not take in washing?" urged Lanse.

"Or solicit orders for fancy cooking?"

"Or tutor stupid little boys in languages? Come! Fiddle--stick to your specialty."

Charlotte's face was a study as she received these hints. They represented the things she disliked most and could do least well. Yet they were hardly farther afield than her own suggestion of sewing. Charlotte's inability with the needle was proverbial.

"What position do you consider yourself eminently fitted for, Mr. Lansing Birch?" she inquired, with uplifted chin.

"You have me there," her brother returned, good-humouredly. "There's only one thing I can think of--to go into the locomotive shops. Mechanics' wages are better than most, and a little practical experience wouldn't hurt me."

It was his turn to be met with derision. It could hardly be wondered at, for as he stood before them, John Lansing looked the personification of fastidiousness, and his face, although it surmounted a strongly proportioned and well developed body, suggested the mental characteristics not only of his father, but of certain great-grandfathers and uncles, who had won their distinction in intellectual arenas. Even his father seemed a little daunted at this proposal.

"That's it--laugh!" urged Lanse. "If I'd proposed to try to get on the 'reportorial staff' of a city newspaper you'd all smile approval, as at a thing suited to my genius. I'd have to live in town to do that, and what little I earned would go to fill my own hungry mouth. Now at the shops--you needn't look so top-lofty! Dozens of fellows who are taking engineering courses put on the overalls, shoulder a lunch-pail and go to work every morning during vacation at seven o'clock. They come grinning home at night, their faces black as tar, their spirits up in Q, jump into a bath-tub, put on clean togs, and come down to dinner looking like gentlemen--but not gentlemen any more thoroughly than they have been all day."

Jeff looked at his brother seriously. "Lanse," he said, "if you go into one of the locomotive shops won't you get a place for me?"

But Celia interposed. "Whatever the rest of us do," she said, "Jeff and Just must keep on with school."

Jeff rebelled with a grimace. "Not much!" he shouted. "I guess one six-footer is as good as another in a boiler-shop. You don't catch me swallowing algebra and German when I might be developing muscle. If Lanse puts on overalls I'm after him."

Celia looked at her father. "What do you think of all this, sir?" she asked. "If I stay at home, dismiss Delia, and do the housework myself, and Lanse finds some suitable position, can't we get on? Charlotte can put off the school of design another year. We will all be very economical about clothes----"

"Being economical doesn't bring in cash to pay bills," interrupted Jeff. "Do the best he can, Lanse won't draw any hair-raising salary the first year. He could probably get clerical work at one of the banks, but what's that? He'd fall off so in his wind I could throw him across the room in three months."

They all laughed. Jeff's devotion to athletics dominated his ideals at all times, and his disgust at the thought of such a depletion of his brother's physical forces was amusing.

Celia was still looking at her father. He spoke in the hearty tone to which they were accustomed, his face full of satisfaction.

"You please me very much, all of you," he said. "It will be the best tonic I can offer your mother. Her greatest trial is this very necessity, which she foresaw the instant the plan was formed--so much sacrifice on the part of her children. Yet she agreed with me that the experience might not be wholly bad for you, and she said"--he paused, smiling at his elder daughter--"that with Celia at the helm she was sure the family ship wouldn't be wrecked"

Then he told them that they might plan the division of labour and responsibility as they thought practicable. He agreed with Celia that the younger boys must remain in school, but added--since at this point it became necessary to mollify his son Jefferson--that a fellow with a will might find any number of remunerative odd jobs out of school and study hours. He commended Lansing's idea, but advised him to look around before deciding; and he passed an affectionate hand over Charlotte's black curls as he observed that young person sunk in gloom.

"Cheer up, little girl!" he said. "The second violin is immensely important to the music of the family orchestra. The hand that can design wall-papers can learn to relieve the mistress of the house of some of her cares. Celia, without a maid in the kitchen, will find plenty of use for such a quick brain as lies under this thatch."

But at this moment something happened--something to which the family were not unused. Charlotte suddenly wriggled out from under the caressing hand, and in half a dozen quick movements was out of the room. They had all had a vision of brilliant wet eyes, flushing cheeks, and red, rebellious mouth.

"Poor child!" murmured Celia. "She thinks we find her of no use."

"She is rather a scatterbrain," Lanse observed. "The year may do her good, as you say, father--as well as the rest of us," he added, with modesty.

"There's a lot of things she can do, just the same,"--Jeff fired up, instantly--"things the rest of us are perfect noodles at. When she gets to earning more money in a day than the rest of us can in a month maybe we'll let up on that second-fiddle business."

"Good for you, you faithful Achates!" said Lanse. Then he turned to his father. "You haven't told us yet when you go, sir."

"If we can, two weeks from to-day," said Mr. Birch. Then he went up-stairs to tell his wife that she might go peacefully to sleep, for her children were ready to become her devoted slaves. Justin followed Jeff out of the room, and Jeff broke away from this younger brother and hastened to rap a familiar, comforting signal of comradeship on Charlotte's locked door.

Left alone, Lanse and Celia looked at each other.

"Well, old girl--" began Lansing, gently.

"O Lanse!" breathed Celia.

He patted her shoulder. "Bear up, dear. It's tough to give up college for a year--"

"Oh, that's not it!" cried the girl, and buried her face in a sofa pillow.

"No, that's not it," he answered, under his breath. He shook his shoulders and walked away to the fire, stood staring down into it for a minute with sober eyes, then drew a long breath and came back to his sister.

"It's a relief that there's something we can do to help her get well," he said, slowly. "And she will get well, Celia--she will--she must!"

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CHAPTER II

"Where's the shawl-strap?"

"Charlotte, wait just a moment; are you perfectly sure that mother's dressing sack and knit slippers are in the case? Nobody saw them put in, and I don't--"

"Justin, run down-stairs, please, and get that unopened package of water-biscuit. You'll find it on the pantry shelf, I think."

"Lanse, if the furnace runs all night with the draught on, your fire will be burned out in the morning, and it will take an extra amount of coal to get it started again."

"Where's Jeff? He must be told about--"

"Put mother's overshoes to warm."

"I have left two hundred dollars to your credit at the bank, Lansing, and I--"

"Lanse, did you telephone for--"

"Where did Celia put the--"

"Listen, all of you. I--"

"What did Jeff do with that small white--"

"Silence!" shouted Lansing, above the din. "Can't you people get these traps together without all yelling at once? You will have mother so used up she can't start."

Mrs. Birch smiled at her tall son from the easy chair where she had been placed ten minutes before, her family protesting that they could finish the numberless small tasks yet to be done. It was nine o'clock in the evening, and it lacked but an hour of train-time.

They all looked at the slender figure in the easy chair. They had learned in these last two weeks to take note of their mother's appearance as, with easy confidence in her exhaustless strength, they had never done before. Since the night when they had learned that she was not quite well, they had discovered for themselves the delicacy of the smiling face, the thinness of the graceful body, the many small signs by which those who run may read the evidences of lessened vitality, if their eyes are once opened. They wondered that they had not seen it all before, and found the only explanation in the cheery, undaunted spirit which had covered up every sign of fatigue.

"She is too tired already," declared Celia. "Run away, and let father and me finish."

But they would not go. How could they, with only an hour left? They subdued their voices, and ran whispering about. Jeff held a long conference in an undertone with his mother. Justin perched on the arm of her chair, with his head on her shoulder, and she would not have him taken away, her own heart sick within her at thought of the long absence from them all. Altogether, when one took into account the preceding fortnight of making ready for the trip, it was not strange that in this last hour of preparation she gave out entirely.

The first they knew of it was when Mr. Birch, with a low exclamation, sprang across the room, and catching up his wife in his arms, carried her to a couch.

"Water!" he said. "And open the window!"

Startled, they obeyed him. It was only a brief unconsciousness, and the lovely brown eyes when they unclosed were as full of bravery as ever, but Mr. Birch spoke anxiously to Lansing in the hall outside.

"I don't like to start with her, as worn-out as this," he said. "Yet everything is engaged--the state-room and all--and I don't want to delay without reason. There's not time to send to the city for Doctor Forester. Suppose you telephone Doctor Ridgway to come around and tell us what to do about starting. If he is out, try Sears or Barton. Have him hurry. We've barely forty-five minutes now."

In three minutes Lansing came back and beckoned his father out of the room.

"They're all out," he said, "I tried old Doctor Hitchcock, too, but he's sick in bed. How about that new doctor that's just moved in next door? I like his looks. He certainly will know enough to advise about this."

Mr. Birch hesitated a moment. "Well, call him," he decided.

Lansing was already down the stairs. Three minutes later he returned with the young doctor. Mr. Birch met them in the hall.

"Doctor Churchill, father." Mr. Birch looked keenly into a pair of eyes whose steady glance gave him instantly the feeling that here was a man to trust.

The young people waited impatiently outside while Doctor Churchill spent fifteen quiet minutes with their father and mother. When Mr. Birch came to the door again with the physician, he was looking relieved.

Doctor Churchill paused before the little group, his eyes glancing kindly at each in turn, as he spoke to Lansing. He certainly was young but there was about him an air of quiet confidence and decision which one felt instinctively would be justified by further acquaintance.

"Don't be anxious," he said. "All this hurry of preparation has been a severe test on her, taken with her reluctance to leave her home. She is feeling stronger now, and it will be better for her to get the leave-taking over than to postpone and dread it longer. You will all make it easy for her--No breakdowns," he cautioned, with a smile. "New Mexico is a great place, and you are doing the best thing in the world in getting her off before cold weather."

He was gone, but they felt as if a reviving breeze had passed over them, and when they went back to their mother's room it was with serene faces. If Charlotte swallowed hard at a lump in her throat, and Celia lingered an instant behind the rest to pinch the colour back into her cheeks, nobody observed it. Perhaps each was too occupied with acting his own light-hearted part. Somehow the minutes slipped away, and soon the travellers were at the door.

Into Mrs. Birch's face, also, the colour had returned, summoned there, it may be, not only by the doctor's stimulating draught, but by the insistence of her own will.

"Good-by! good-by! God be with you all!" murmured Mr. Birch, breaking with difficulty away from Justin's frantic hug.

Mrs. Birch, on Lansing's arm, had gone down the steps to the carriage. The father followed, surrounded by an eager group. Only Lansing was to go to the train. The others, as they crowded round the carriage door, were incoherently mingling parting messages. Then presently they were left behind, a suddenly quiet, sober group.

Inside the carriage Mrs. Birch, with her hand in her eldest son's, was saying to him things he never forgot, while his father looked steadily out of the window.

"I leave them in your care, dear," she told Lansing, in the quiet, confident tones to which he was used from her. "I could never go, I think, if I hadn't such a strong, brave, trustworthy son to leave in care of the younger ones. Celia will do her part, and do it beautifully, I know, but it's on you I rely."

"I'll do my best," he answered, cheerfully, although he felt, even more than before, the heavy responsibility upon him.

"I know you will. Don't let Celia overdo. She will be so ambitious to run the household economically that she will set herself tasks she's not fit for. See that Jeff keeps steadily at his studies, and be lenient with Justin. He adores you--you can make the year do much for him if you take thought. And with my little Charlotte--be very patient, Lanse. She will miss us most--and show it least."

"I doubt that," thought Lanse, but aloud he said, "We'll all hang together, mother, you may count on that. We have our differences and our, eccentricities, but we've a lot of family spirit, and no one of us is going to sacrifice alone while the rest fail to take notice. And you're going to know all that goes on. We've planned to take turns writing so that at least every other day a letter will start for New Mexico."

"And if anything should go wrong?"

"Nothing will," asserted Lansing.

"That you don't know, dear," said the gentle voice, not quite so steadily as before. "If anything should come we must know."

"I'll remember," he promised, reluctantly, his hand under pressure from hers. But inwardly he vowed, "Anything short of real trouble you'll not know, little mother. Your children are stronger than you now, and they can bear some things for you."

At the train it took all Lansing's determination, sturdy fellow though he was, to keep up his cheerful front. The colour had ebbed away from Mrs. Birch's face once more, and as she put up her arms to her tall son, in the little state-room, she seemed to him all at once so small and frail that he could not endure to see her go away from them all, facing even the remote possibility that in the new land she might fail to find again her old vigour.

It had to be done, however. Lansing received her clinging good-by, whispered in her ear something which would have been unintelligible to any but a mother's intuition, so choky was his voice, gripped his father's hand with both his own, turned and smiled back at the two as he pulled open the door, and swung off the train just as it began to move.

He raced away over the streets to take a trolley-car for home, having dismissed the carriage, and craving nothing so much as a long walk in the cool September night.

At home he found everybody gone to bed except Celia, who met him at the door. She smiled at him, but he could see that she had been crying. Although he had carried home a heavy heart, he braced himself to begin his task of keeping the family cheered up.

"Off all right!" he announced, in a casual tone, as if he had just sent away the guests of a week. "Splendid train, jolly state-room, porter one of the 'Yassir, yassir' kind. Judge and Mrs. Van Camp were taking the same train as far as Chicago. That will do a lot toward making things pleasant to start with."

"I'm so glad!" Celia agreed. "How did mother get off? Did her strength keep up?"

"Pretty well--better than I'd have thought possible after all the fuss of that last hour. The new doctor braced her up in good shape. He seems all right. Didn't you like the way he acted? Neither like an old family physician nor a new johnny-jump-up; just quiet and cool and pleasant. Glad he lives next door. I mean to know him."

Lansing was turning out lights as he talked, looking after window fastenings, and examining things generally. Celia watched him from her place on the bottom stair. He was approaching her with the intention of putting out the hall light and joining her to proceed up-stairs, when he stopped still, wheeled, and made for the back of the hall, where the cellar stairs began.

"I'm forgetting the furnace!" he cried.

"It's all right," Celia assured him. "Jeff took care of it. He says that's his work, since you're to be away all day."

"Think he can manage it?"

"Of course he can. The way to please Jeff is to give him responsibility. He's old enough, and even having to look after such small matters regularly will help to develop him."

Lansing laughed; then, extinguishing the light, he came up to her on the stair, and putting his arm about her shoulders, began to ascend slowly with her.

"Shouldering your cares already, aren't you? Got to keep us all straight, and develop all our characters. Poor girl, you'll have a hard tussle!"

"I'm afraid I shall. Do you go to work at the shops in the morning?"

"Yes. Breakfast at six. Did you tell Delia?"

"Yes, but I'm going to let her go afterward. I arranged with her, when father first told us, to stay just till they had gone, and then leave things to me. I can't be too busy from now on, and I don't want to wait a day to begin."

"Wise girl. Sorry, though, that I have to get you up every morning so early. Couldn't you leave things ready so I could manage for myself about breakfast, somehow?"

"No, indeed! If I'm to have a day-labourer for a brother, I shall see that he has a good hot breakfast and the heartiest kind of a lunch in his pail every-day."

"You're the right sort!" murmured Lansing, patting his sister's shoulder as he paused with her in front of her door. "I must admit I shall prefer the hot breakfast. Better sleep late to-morrow morning, though."

"I shall be up when you are," Celia declared.

"Look here, little girl," said Lansing, speaking soberly in the darkness. "You know you haven't got this household on your shoulders all alone. It's a partnership affair, and don't you forget it. Now, good night, and take care you sleep like a top."

Celia held him tight for a minute, and answered bravely:

"You're a dear boy, and a great comfort."

Lansing tiptoed away to his own room, farther down the hall, feeling a strong sense of relief that the determination of the young substitute heads of the house to begin the new regime without a preliminary hour of wailing had been successfully carried through.

"We've got the worst over," he thought, as he fell asleep. "Once fairly started, it won't be so bad. Celia's clear grit, that's sure."

Alone in her room, Celia had it out with herself, and spent a wakeful night. But she brought a cheerful face to Lansing's early breakfast, and when the younger members of the family came down later she was ready for them with the sunshine they had dreaded not to find.

Everybody spent a busy day. Jeff and Justin went off to school. Charlotte announced with meekness that she was ready for whatever work Celia might find for her, and was given various rooms up-stairs to sweep and dust, her sister being confident that vigorous manual labour would be the best tonic for a mind dispirited.

As for Celia herself, she dismissed Delia, the maid of all work, with a kindly farewell and the letters of recommendation her mother had prepared, and plunged eagerly into business. She was a born manager, and loved many of the details of housework, particularly the baking and brewing, and she was soon enthusiastically employed in putting the small kitchen to rights.

At noon Charlotte and the boys were served with a light luncheon, with the promise of greater joys to come, and by five in the afternoon the house was filled with the delightful odours of successful cookery.

At that hour Charlotte, whose labours had been enlarged by herself to cover a thorough overhauling of the entire house--such tasks being her special aversion, and therefore to be discharged without mitigation on this first day of self-sacrifice--wandered disconsolately into the kitchen with broom and dust-pan, looking sadly weary. She gazed with envious eyes at her sister, flying about in a big apron, with sleeves rolled up, her cheeks like carnations, her eyes bright with triumph.

"Well, you do start in with vim," the younger sister observed, dropping into a chair with a long sigh.

"Yes; and the work has gone better than I had hoped," declared Celia, whisking a tinful of plump rolls into the oven. "It's really fun."

"I'm glad you like it."

"Poor child," said Celia, pausing to glance at the dejected figure in the chair, its dark curls a riot of disorder, a smudge of black upon its forehead, and its pinafore disreputable with frequent use as a duster, "I gave you too much to do! Didn't I hear you in Delia's room? You needn't have touched that to-day."

"Wanted to get through with it. Delia may be a good cook, but she left a mess of a closet up-stairs. Please give me one of those warm cookies. I'm so used up and hungry I can't wait for supper."

"Justin came in half an hour ago so famished there wouldn't have been a cookie left if I hadn't filled him up with a banana. By the way, I sent him down cellar after some peach pickles, and I haven't seen him since. I'll run down and get some. I've hot rolls and honey for supper, and Lanse always wants peach pickles with that combination."

Celia took a bowl from the cupboard, opened the cellar door and started down, turning on the second step to say:

"Go and take a bath and put on a fresh frock; you won't feel half so tired. Wear the scarlet waist, will you? I want things particularly bright and cheery to-night, for I know Lanse will come home fagged with the new work. Mrs. Laurier sent over some red carnations. I've put them in the middle of the table; they look ever so pretty. I'm going to----"

What she intended to do Celia never told, if she ever afterward remembered. What she did do was to slip upon the third step of the steep stairway, and, with no outcry whatever, go plunging heavily to the bottom.

---

CHAPTER III

"Celia--Celia--are you hurt?" cried Charlotte, and dashed down the stairs.

There was no answer. With trembling hands she felt for her sister's head. It lay close against the cellar wall, and she instantly understood that Celia must be unconscious. But whether there might be more to be feared than unconsciousness she could not tell in the dark. Her first thought was to get a light, the next that she must have help at once.

She rushed up the stairs, calling Jeff and Justin, but neither boy was to be found. Then she ran to the telephone, with the idea of summoning one of the suburban physicians, but turned aside from this purpose with the further realisation that first of all Celia must be brought up from the cold, dark place in which she lay, and restored to consciousness.

She ran to the front door to summon the nearest neighbour, and she remembered then, with relief, that the nearest neighbour was Doctor Churchill, the young physician who had been called in to see her mother the evening before.

She flew across the narrow lawn between her own house and that where the new doctor had set up his office, and rang imperatively. The door opened, and Doctor Churchill, hat and case in hand, evidently on his way to a patient, stood before her.

What he thought of the figure before him, with its riotous curly black hair, brilliant eyes, pale dark cheeks, dusty pinafore, a singular smudge upon the forehead, and sleeves rolled up to the elbows, nobody would have known from his manner, which instantly expressed a friendly concern.

Charlotte could only gasp, "Oh, come--quick!"

He followed her, stopping to ask no questions. At the open cellar door Charlotte stood aside to let him pass.

"Down there--my sister!" she breathed.

"Bring a light, please," said the doctor, and he disappeared down the stairs. Charlotte lighted a little kitchen lamp and came after him. He bade her stand by while he made his first brief examination.

"I think the blow on her head isn't serious," he said, presently, "but I can't tell where else she may be hurt till I get her up-stairs."

He was strong, and he lifted Celia as if she had been a child, and carried her easily up the steep stairs.

Charlotte led the way to a wide couch in the living-room. As Celia was laid gently upon it she opened her eyes.

Half an hour later, John Lansing Birch, in his oldest clothes and wearing a rather disreputable soft hat pulled down over his forehead, with his hands and face excessively dirty and a lunch-pail on his arm, pushed open the kitchen door. "Phew-w! Something's burning!" he shouted. "Celia--Charlotte--where are you all? Great Scott, what a smudge!"

He strode across the room and lifted from the stove a kettle of potatoes, from which the water had boiled away some minutes before.

"First returns from the amateur cooking district!" he muttered, glancing critically about the kitchen.

Something else in the way of overcooked viands seemed to assail his nostrils, and he jerked open the oven door. A tin of blackened rolls puffed out at him their pungent smoke.

"Well, what--" he was beginning with the natural irritation of the hungry man, who has been anticipating his supper all the way home, and sees it in ruin before his eyes, when Charlotte appeared in the doorway.

"O Lanse!" she cried, and ran to him.

"Well, what is it? Celia got a headache and left you in charge? Everything's burnt up--I can tell you that----"

"Celia is--she's broken her knee!"

"What?"

"She fell down the cellar stairs and----"

"Where is she?" Lunch-pail and hat went down on the floor as Lanse got rid of them and seized Charlotte's arm.

"Up in her room. Doctor Churchill's there. He's sent for Doctor Forester."

"Churchill--Forester," repeated Lanse, as if dazed. "Poor old girl--is she much hurt?"

"She's broken her knee, I tell you," Charlotte repeated. "Of course she's much hurt. She's suffering dreadfully. She hit her head, too. She was unconscious at first. I was all alone with her."

Lanse started for the door, then hesitated. "Shall I go up?"

"The doctor wants to see you as soon as you are home. He's waiting for Doctor Forester. He's made Celia as comfortable as he can, but wants our regular doctor here, he says, before he does up her knee. I don't see why. I wanted him to fix it himself."

"That's all right," said Lanse. "Doctors always do that kind of thing--the honourable ones do. It's better to have Doctor Forester see it, too. Did you get him? Will he be here right off?"

"The doctor got him. He'll be here soon."

"Go tell Doctor Churchill I'm here, will you? Maybe I'd better not see Celia till I'm cleaned up a bit. She's not used to me like this. Poor little girl! poor little girl!" he groaned, as he made his rapid way to the bath-room. "The cellar stairs--they're dark and steep enough, but how could a light-footed girl like Celia get a fall like that? And father and mother--how are we going to fix it with them?"

In the midst of his splashing and scrubbing he heard Jeff and Justin come shouting in for supper and Charlotte hushing them and telling them the news. The next instant Jeff was upon him.

"Say, but this is awful, Lanse! She was getting up a rattling good dinner, too--been at it all day. Her one idea was to please you, your first day at the shops. Been up to see her? Charlotte says I'd better not go yet--nor Just. Just's all broken up, poor youngster! Says Celia told him to go after the pickles, and he forgot it. If he'd gone she wouldn't have got her tumble. What'll father and mother say? What are we going to do, anyhow? Second Fiddle's no good on earth in the kitchen; she couldn't boil an egg. Say, breaking your knee-pan's no joke. Price Williston did it a year ago August, and he hasn't got good use of it yet,--'fraid he never will----"

"Oh, let up on that,"--Lanse cut him short,--"and don't mention it again to anybody. Doctor Forester and Churchill will fix her up all right, only it's an awful shame it should have happened. I'm going up to see Doctor Churchill."

At the foot of the stairs he met that person coming down, shook hands with him eagerly, and listened to a brief and concise account of his sister's injury. As it ended, Doctor Forester's automobile rolled up to the door.

"Did the five and a half miles in precisely twenty minutes," said Doctor Forester, as he came up the steps, watch in hand; "slow speed within limits and all. Lanse, my boy, this is too bad. Doctor Churchill--very glad to see you again. Decided to settle out here, eh? Well, on some accounts I think you're wise. Charlotte, little girl, cheer up! There are worse things than a fractured patella--I believe that's what you called the injury, Doctor Churchill."

In such genial fashion the surgeon and old friend of the family made his entry, bringing with him that atmosphere which men of his profession carry about with them, making the people who have been anxiously awaiting them feel that here is somebody who knows how to take things coolly, and is not upset at the notion of a broken bone.

He moved deliberately up-stairs toward Celia's room, listening to the younger physician's statement of the conditions under which he had been called, turning at the door to smile and nod back at Charlotte, who watched him from the top of the staircase with serious eyes.

At the end of what seemed like a long period of time the two physicians came down-stairs together, meeting Lanse at the foot.

"Well, sir," said Doctor Forester, "so far, so good. Celia is as comfortable as such cases usually are an hour or two afterward, which is not saying much from her point of view, though a good deal from ours. She has a long siege of inactivity before her to put that knee into a strong condition, but it will not be a great while before she can be about on crutches, I hope. Doctor Churchill, at my insistence, has put up the knee in the best possible shape, and I am going to leave it in his care. I'll drop in now and then, but the doctor is right beside you, and I've full confidence in him. I knew his father, and I know enough about him to be sure that you're all right in his hands."

Lanse drew a long breath of relief. "I'm very thankful it's no worse," he said. "But, Doctor Forester, what are we to do about father and mother? We can't tell them----"

"Tell them! No!" said Doctor Forester, with decision. "I wouldn't have your mother told under any consideration, so long as the girl does well. She would be back here on the next train and then we'd have something worse than a broken patella on our hands. If there is any way by which you can let your father know I should do that."

"I can, I think," said Lanse, thoughtfully. "We're to send them general-delivery letters until they're settled, and father will get those at the post-office and read them first."

"As to your other problems--housekeeping and all that, over which Celia is several times more worried than over her own condition--can you figure those out?"

"Yes, somehow."

"Good! Go up and tell her so. She thinks the house is going to destruction without her. Good chance for the second violin. Too bad that clever little orchestra will have to drop its practice for a few weeks. I meant to run in some evening soon and hear you play. Well, I'm overdue at the hospital. Good-by, Lanse--Doctor Churchill. Keep me posted concerning the knee."

Then the busy surgeon, who had put off several engagements to come out to the suburban town and look after the family of his old friend, whom he had known and loved since their college days, was off in his runabout, his chauffeur getting promptly under as much headway as the law allows, and rushing him out of sight in a hurry.

Lanse turned to Doctor Churchill, who stood upon the porch beside him, hat and case in hand.

"I'm mighty thankful you were so near," he said.

"Doctor Forester hasn't given you much choice," said the other man, smiling. "I did my best to give you the chance of having some one of the physicians you know here in town take charge of the case, but he insisted on my keeping it. I should like, however, to be sure that you are satisfied. You don't know me at all, you know."

The steady eyes were looking keenly at Lanse, and he felt the sincerity in the words. He returned the scrutiny without speaking for an instant; then he put out his hand.

"Somehow I feel as if I do," he said, slowly. "Anyhow, I'm going to know you, and I'm glad of the chance."

"Thank you." Doctor Churchill shook hands warmly and went down the steps. "I will come over for a minute about ten o'clock," he added, "to make sure that Miss Birch is resting as quietly as we can hope for to-night."

Lanse watched the broad-shouldered, erect figure cross the lawn and disappear in the office door of the old house near by; then he turned.

"Well, we're in a sweet scrape now, that's certain," he said gloomily to himself, as he marched up-stairs.

At the top he encountered his young brother Justin. That twelve-year-old stood awaiting him, his face so disconsolate that in spite of himself Lanse smiled.

"Cheer up, youngster," he said. "It's pretty tough, but as Doctor Forester says, it might be worse. Want to go in with me and see sister a minute?"

But Justin got hold of his arm and held him back. "Lanse, I've got to tell you something," he begged. "Please come here, in your room a minute."

Lanse followed, wondering. Justin, although a healthy and happy boy enough, was apt to take things seriously, and sometimes needed to be joked out of singular notions. In Lanse's room Justin carefully locked the door.

"It's all my fault, Celia's knee," he said, going straight to the point, as was his way. His voice shook a little, but he went steadily on. "She sent me down cellar after pickles, and I sat on the top of the stairs finishing up a banana before I went. I've been down there to look, and--and the banana skin was there--all mashed. It was what did it."

He choked, and turned away to the window.

"You left a banana skin on those stairs?" Lanse half-shouted.

"Yes."

"Right there, at the top--when Delia almost broke her neck more than once going down those stairs only last winter, just because they're so steep and narrow?"

Just nodded.

"And you fell on a banana skin once yourself, and wanted to thrash the fellow who left it!"

Just's chin sank lower and lower.

Lanse eyed him a moment, struggling with a desire to seize the boy and punish him tremendously. But as his quick wrath cooled a trifle in his effort to control himself and act wisely, something about Just's brave acknowledgment, where silence would have covered the whole thing, appealed to him. The thought of the way the absent father and mother had met every confession of his own that he could remember in a life of prank-playing softened the words which came next to his lips.

"Well, it's pretty bad," he said, in a deep voice of regret. "I don't wonder it breaks you up. Such a little thing to do so much mischief--and so easy to have avoided it all. I reckon you'll take care of your banana skins after this. But I like the way you own up, Just, and so will Celia. That's something. You haven't been a sneak in addition to being thoughtless. It would have been hard to forgive you if I had found it out while you kept still. It's pretty hard as it is," he could not help adding, as his imagination pictured Celia spending her winter as a cripple.

Just said not a word, but the outline of his profile against the fading light at the window was so suggestive of boyish despair that the elder brother walked over to him and laid a hand on his shoulder.

"It gives you a chance to make it up to her in every way you can," he said. "There are a lot of things you can do for her, and I shall expect you to try to square the account a little."

"I will! Oh, I will!" cried poor Just, who had longed for his mother in this crisis, and had found facing the elder brother, whom he both admired and feared, harder than anything he had ever had to do. "I'll do anything in the world for her, if she'll only forgive me."

"She'll forgive you, for she's made that way. It's forgiving yourself that can't be done."

"I never shall."

"Don't. If I thought you would, I'd thrash you on the spot," said Lanse, grimly, sure that a wholesome remorse was to be encouraged. Then he relented sufficiently to say in a tone considerably less severe:

"Go and wash up, and begin your good resolutions by getting down and seeing to the kitchen fire. It's undoubtedly burnt itself out by this time. There's probably no dinner for anybody, but we can't mind little things like that to-night."

He went to Celia's room at last, feeling many cares upon him, a sensation which an empty, stomach did not tend to relieve. He found his sister able to give him a very pale-faced but courageous smile, and to receive his earnest sympathy with a faint:

"Never mind, dear. Don't worry. It might have been worse."

"That seems to be everybody's motto, so I'll accept it. We'll take courage, and you shall have us all on our knees, since yours are laid up for repairs."

"You haven't had your dinner, Lanse," murmured Celia. She was suffering severely, but she could not relax anything of her anxiety for the family welfare.

"Oh, I forgot there was such a thing as dinner in the world!" cried Charlotte, and was hurrying to the door when Celia called her back. "Please wash that smudge off your face," she whispered, and covered her eyes.

---

CHAPTER IV

Coming down-stairs from Celia's room, Dr. Andrew Churchill made his way through what had now become somewhat familiar ground to the little kitchen. As he looked in at the door he beheld a slim figure in a big Turkey-red apron, bending over a chicken which lay, in a state of semi-dissection, upon the table. As he watched for a moment without speaking, Charlotte herself spoke, without turning round.

"You horrid thing!" she said, tragically, to the chicken. "I hate you--all slippery and bloody. Ugh! Why won't your old windpipe come out? How anybody can eat you who has got you ready I don't know!"

"May I bother you for a pitcher of hot water?" asked an even voice from the doorway.

Charlotte turned with a start. Her cheeks, already flushed, took on a still ruddier hue.

"Yes, if you'll please help yourself," she answered, curtly, turning back to her work. "I am--engaged."

"I see. A congenial task?"

"Very!" Charlotte's tone was expressive.

"Did I gather that the fowl's windpipe was the special cause of your distress?" asked the even voice again.

Charlotte faced round once more.

"Doctor Churchill," she said, "I never cleaned a chicken in my life. I don't know what I'm doing at all, only that I've been doing it for almost an hour, and it isn't done. I presume it's because I take so much time washing my hands."

She smiled in spite of herself as the doctor's hearty laugh filled the little kitchen.

"I think I can appreciate your feelings," he remarked.

He walked over to the table. "Get a good hold on the offending windpipe, shut your eyes and pull."

"I'm afraid of doing something wrong."

"You won't. The trachea of the domestic fowl was especially designed for the purpose, only the necessary attachment for getting a firm grip on it was accidentally omitted."

"It certainly was." Charlotte tugged away energetically for a moment, and drew out the windpipe successfully. The doctor regarded the bird with a quizzical expression.

"I should advise you to cut up the chicken and make a fricassée of it," he observed.

"I want to roast it. I've got the stuffing all ready." She indicated a bowlful of macerated bread-crumbs mixed with milk and butter, and liberally seasoned with pepper.

"I see. But I'm a little, just a little, afraid you may have trouble in getting the stuffing to stay in while the chicken is roasting. You see--" He paused.

"I suppose I've cut it open too much."

"Rather--unless you're a very good amateur surgeon. And even then--"

"I'm no surgeon--I'm no cook--I never shall be! I--don't want to be!" Charlotte burst out, suddenly, beginning to cut up the chicken with vigorous slashes, mostly in the wrong places.

"Yes, you do. Hold on a minute! That joint isn't there: it's farther down. There. See? Once get the anatomy of this bird in your mind, and it won't bother you a bit to cut it up. Pardon me, Miss Charlotte, but I know you do want to be a good cook--because you want to be an accomplished woman."

Charlotte put down her knife, washed her hands with furious haste, got out a pitcher, poured it full of hot water, and handed it silently to Doctor Churchill without looking at him. He glanced from it to her with amusement as he received it "Thank you," he said, politely, and walked away.

When he came down-stairs fifteen minutes later, he found the slim figure in the Turkey-red apron waiting for him at the bottom. As the girl looked up at him he noted, as he had done many times already in the short two weeks he had known her, the peculiar, gipsy-like beauty of her face. It was a beauty of which she herself, he had occasion to believe, was absolutely unconscious, and in this he was right.

Charlotte disliked her dark skin, despised her black curls, and considered her vivid colouring a most undesirable inheritance. She admired intensely Celia's blonde loveliness, and lost no chance of privately comparing herself with her sister, to Celia's infinite advantage.

"Doctor Churchill," she said, as he approached her, hat in hand, "I was very rude to you just now. I am--sorry."

She held out her hand. Doctor Churchill took it. Charlotte's thick black lashes swept her cheek, and she did not see the look, half-laughing, half-sympathetic, which rested on her downcast face.

"It's all right," said Doctor Churchill's low, clear voice. "Don't think I fail to understand what it means for the cares of a household like this to descend upon a girl's shoulders. But I want you to know that I--that they are all immensely pleased with the pluck you are showing. I have seen your sister's lunch tray several times since I have been coming here; it was perfect."

"I burned her toast just this morning," said Charlotte, quickly. "And poached the egg too hard. Lanse says the coffee is better, but--oh, no matter--I'm just discouraged this morning, I--shall learn something some time, perhaps, but----" She turned away impulsively. Doctor Churchill followed her a step or two.

"See here, Miss Charlotte," he said, "how many times have you been out of the house since your sister was hurt?"

"Not at all," owned Charlotte, "except evenings, after everything is done. Then I steal out and run round and round the house in the moonlight, just running it off, you know--or maybe you don't know."

"Yes, I do. Will you do something now if I ask you to very humbly?"

Charlotte looked at him doubtfully. "If you mean go for a walk--which is what doctors always mean, I believe--I haven't time."

Doctor Churchill looked at his watch. "It is half past ten. Is that chicken for luncheon?"

"No, for supper--or dinner--I don't know just what it is we have at night now. I simply began to get it ready this morning because I hadn't the least idea in the world how long it takes to cook a chicken." She was smiling a little at the absurdity of her own words.

"And you didn't want to ask your sister?"

"I meant to surprise her."

"Well, of one thing I am fairly confident," said Doctor Churchill, with gravity. "If you take a run down as far as the old bridge and back, there will still be time to see to the chicken. What is more, by the time you get back, all big obstacles will look like little ones to you. Go, please. I am to be in the office for the next hour, and if the house catches fire I will run over and put it out. I could even undertake to steal in the back door and put coal on the kitchen fire, if it is necessary."

"It won't be."

"Then will you go?"

"Perhaps--to humour you," promised Charlotte.

"Thank you! And remember, please, Miss Charlotte, if you are to do justice to yourself and to your family, you must not plod all the time. Plan to get away every day for an hour or two. Go to see your friends--anything--but don't cultivate 'house nerves' at eighteen."

"I'm older than that," said Charlotte, as she watched him go down the steps. He turned, surprised. "But I shall not tell you how much," said she, and closed the door.

Doctor Churchill went straight through his small bachelor house to the kitchen. Here a tall, thin woman, with sharp eyes and kindly mouth, was energetically kneading bread.

"Mrs. Fields," said he, "I wish you would find it necessary to-morrow morning to run in at that door over there"--he indicated the little back porch of the Birch house--"and borrow something."

Mrs. Fields eyed him as if she thought he had taken leave of his senses. "Me--borrow?" she said. "Doctor Andrew--are you----"

"No, I'm not crazy," the doctor assured her, smiling. "I know it's tremendously against your principles, but never mind the principles, for once--since by ignoring them you can do a kindness. Run in and borrow a cup of sugar or something, and get acquainted."

"Who with? That curly-haired girl with the red cheeks? She don't want my acquaintance."

"She would be immensely grateful for it if it came about naturally. Take over some of your jelly for Miss Birch, if that way suits you better, but get to know Miss Charlotte, and show her a few things about cookery. She's trying to do all the work for the whole family, and she knows very little about it."

"I suspected as much. You haven't told me about 'em, and of course, being a doctor's housekeeper, I'm too well trained to ask."

The doctor smiled, for Mrs. Fields had been housekeeper in his mother's family in the days of his boyhood, and she felt it her right to tell him, now and then, what she thought. She was immensely proud of her own ability to hold her tongue and her curiosity in check.

"So I know only what I've seen. You told me the oldest girl had broke her knee, and that's all you've said. But I see this girl a-hanging dish-towels, and opening the kitchen door to let out the smoke each time she's burned up a batch of something, and I guessed she wasn't what you might call a graduate of one of those cooking-schools."

"You must be a bit tactful," warned the doctor. "The young lady is a trifle sensitive, as is natural, over her inefficiency, but she's very anxious to learn, and there's nobody to teach her. She is too independent to go to the other neighbours, but I've an idea you could be a friend to her."

"She looks pretty notional," Mrs. Fields said, doubtfully. "Shakes out her dust-cloth with her chin in the air----"

"To avoid the dust."

"And pulls down the shades the minute the lamp is lighted----"

"So do you."

"I saw her lock the kitchen door in the face of that Mis' Carter the other day, when she caught sight of her coming up the walk."

"See here, Fieldsy, you've been spying on your neighbours," said Doctor Churchill severely. "You despise that sort of thing yourself, so you mustn't yield to it. Go over and be neighbourly, as nobody knows how better than yourself, but don't judge people by their chins or their curls."

He gave her angular shoulder an affectionate pat, looked straight into her sharp eyes for a moment, until they softened perceptibly, said, "You're all right, you know,"--and went whistling away.

"That's just like your impudence, Andy Churchill," said Mrs. Hepsibah Fields to herself, as she laid her smooth loaves of bread-dough into their tins and proceeded energetically to scrape the board. "You always did have a way with you, wheedling folks into doing what they didn't want to just to please you. Now I've got to go meddling in other people's business and getting snubbed, most likely, just because you're trying to combine friendship and doctoring."

But Mrs. Fields, when her work was done, went to look up her best jelly, as Doctor Churchill had known she would do. And twenty-four hours had not gone by before she had made friends with Charlotte Birch.

It was not hard to make friends with the girl if one went at it aright. Mrs. Fields came in as Charlotte was stirring up gingerbread.

"I don't think much of back-door neighbours," Mrs. Fields said, "but I didn't want to come to the front door with my jelly. I thought maybe your sister would relish my black raspberry."

"That's very kind of you," said Charlotte. "You are--I think I've seen you across the way. Won't you come in?"

"No, thank you. You're busy, and so am I. Yes, I'm Doctor Churchill's housekeeper, and his mother's before that."

The sharp eyes noted with approval, in one swift glance as Charlotte turned away with the jelly, the fact that the little kitchen was in careful order. To be sure, it was four o'clock in the afternoon, an hour when kitchens are supposed to be in order, if ever, yet it was a relief to Mrs. Fields to find this one in that condition. Brass faucets gleamed in the afternoon sunlight, the teakettle steamed from a shining spout, the linoleum-covered floor was spotless, and the table at which Charlotte was stirring her gingerbread had been scrubbed until it was as nearly white as pine boards can be made.

"Gingerbread?" said the housekeeper, lingering in the doorway. "I always like to make that. It seems the biggest result for the smallest labour of anything you can make, and it smells so spicy when it comes out of the oven."

"Yes, when it isn't burned," agreed Charlotte, with a laugh. Things had gone fairly well with her that day, and her spirits had risen accordingly.

"Burning's a thing that will happen to the best cooks once in a while. 'Twas just day before yesterday I blacked a pumpkin pie so the doctor poked his fun at me all the time he was eating it," said the housekeeper, with a tactful disregard for the full truth, which was that a refractory small patient in the office had driven the doctor to require her assistance for a longer period than was consistent with attention to her oven.

"Oh, did you?" asked Charlotte, eagerly. "That encourages me. Doctor Churchill told me he had the finest cook in the state, and I've been envying you ever since."

"Doctor Churchill had better be careful how he brags," Mrs. Fields declared, much gratified. "Well, now, I'll tell you what you do. It ain't but a step across the two back yards. When you get in a quandary how to cook anything--how long to give it or whether to bake or boil--you just run across and ask me. I ain't one o' the prying kind--the doctor'll tell you that--and you needn't be afraid it'll go any further. I know how hard it must be for a young girl like you to take the care of a house on yourself, and I'll be pleased to show you anything I can."

"That's very good of you," said Charlotte, gratefully, as Mrs. Fields went briskly down the steps; and she really felt that it was. She would have resented the appearance of almost any of her neighbours at her back door with an offer of help, suspecting that they had come to use their eyes, and afterward their tongues, in criticism. But something about Mrs. Hepsibah Fields disarmed her at once. She could not tell why.

"This gingerbread is perfect," said Celia, an hour later, when Charlotte had brought up her supper. "You are improving every day. But it frets me not to have you come to me for help. I could plan things for you, and teach you all the little I know. I'm doing so well now, the doctor says I may get down-stairs on the couch by next week. Then you certainly must let me do my part."

But Charlotte shook her head obstinately. "I'm going to fight it through myself. I'd rather. You've enough to do--writing letters."

When Lanse came into Celia's room that evening, his first words were merry.

"What I'm anxious to know," he said, "is what you did with your rice pudding. Charlotte says you ate it--and the inference was that it was good to eat. So I ate mine--manfully, I assure you. But it was a bitter dose."

"Poor little girl! She tries so hard, Lanse. And the gingerbread was very good."

"So it was. It helped take out the taste of the pudding. Did you honestly eat that pudding?"

"See here." Celia beckoned him close. She reached a cautious hand under her pillow and drew out her soap-dish. "Please get rid of it for me," she whispered, "and wash the dish. I couldn't bear not to seem to eat it, so I slipped it in there."

Striving to smother his mirth, Lanse bore the soap-dish away. Returning with it, he carefully replaced the soap and set the dish on the stand, where it had been within Celia's reach. "I wish I had had a soap-dish at the table," he remarked, "but the cook's eye was upon me, and I had to stand up to it. But see here. I've a letter for you--from Uncle Rayburn."

Celia stretched an eager hand, for a letter from Uncle John Rayburn--middle-aged, a bachelor, and an ex-army officer, retired by an incurable injury which did not make him the less the best uncle in the world--could not fail to be welcome. But she had not read a page before she dropped the sheet and stared helplessly and anxiously at Lanse.

"What's up?" he asked.

"Why, Uncle Rayburn writes that he would like to come to spend the winter with us," answered Celia.

"What luck!"

"Luck--with Charlotte in the kitchen?"

"Uncle Ray is a crack-a-jack of a cook himself. His board bill will help out like oil on a dry axle, and if we don't have a lot of fun, then Uncle Ray has changed as--I know he hasn't."

---

CHAPTER V

"Two cripples," declared Capt. John Rayburn--honourably discharged from active service in the United States Army on account of permanent disability from injuries received in the Philippines,--"two cripples should be able to keep a household properly stirred up. I've been here five days now, and my soul longs for some frivolity."

He leaned back in his big wicker armchair and looked quizzically across at his niece Celia, who lay upon her couch at the other side of the room. She gave him a somewhat pale-faced smile in return. Four weeks of enforced quiet were beginning to tell on her.

"Some frivolity," repeated Captain Rayburn, as Charlotte came to the door of the room. "What do you say, Charlie girl? Shall we have some fun?"

"Dear me, yes, Uncle Ray," Charlotte responded, promptly, "if you can think how!"

"I can. Is there a birthday or anything that we may celebrate? I've no compunction about getting up festivities on any pretext, but if there happened to be a birthday handy--"

"November--yes. Why, we had forgotten all about it! Lanse's birthday is the fourth. That's--"

"Day after to-morrow. Good! Can you make him a birthday-cake? If not, I--"

"Oh, yes, I can!" cried Charlotte, eagerly. "I've just learned an orange-cake."

"All right. Then we'll order a few little things from town, and have a jollification. Not a very big one, on account of the lady on the couch there, who reminds me at the moment of a water-lily whom some one has picked and then left on the stern seat in the sun. She looks very sweet, but a trifle limp."

Celia's smile was several degrees brighter than the previous one had been. Nobody could resist Uncle Ray when he began to exert himself to cheer people up.

He was a young, or an old, bachelor, according to one's point of view, being not yet forty, and looking, in spite of the past suffering which had brought into his chestnut hair two patches of gray at the temples, very much like a bright-faced boy with an irrepressible spirit of energy and interest in the life about him. It could hardly be doubted that Capt. John Rayburn, apparently invalided for life and cut off from the activity which had been his dearest delight, must have his hours of depression, but nobody had ever caught him in one of them.

"I should like some music at this festival," Captain Rayburn went on. "Is the orchestra out of practice?"

"We haven't played for six weeks," Charlotte said. "And Celia's first violin--"

"You couldn't play, bolstered up?"

Celia shook her head. "I should be tired in ten minutes."

"I'm not so sure of that, but we'll see. Anyhow, I've the old flute here--"

"Oh, fine!" cried Charlotte.

"Suppose we ask Doctor Forester out, and your young doctor here next door, and two or three of your girl friends, and a boy and girl or two for Jeff and Just."

"What a funny mixture, Uncle Ray! Doctor Forester and Norman Carter, Just's chum, and Carolyn Houghton?"

"Funny, is it?" inquired Captain Rayburn, undisturbed. "Now do you know, that's my ideal of a well-planned company, particularly when all the family are to be here. Invite somebody for each one, mix 'em all up, play some jolly games, and you'll find Doctor Forester vying with Norman Carter for the prize, and enjoying it equally well. It sharpens up the young wits to be pitted against the older ones, and it--well, it burnishes the elder rapiers and keeps them keen."

"All right, this is your party," agreed Charlotte, and she went back to her duties.

"You're not afraid it will be too much for you, little girl?" Captain Rayburn asked Celia, whose smile had faded, and who lay with her head turned away.

"Oh--no."

"Mercury a little low in the tube this morning?"

"Just a little."

"Any good reason why?"

"N-no."

"Except the best reason in the world--heavy atmospheric pressure. Knee a trifle slow to become a solid, capable, energetic knee, such as its owner demands. Owner a bit restless, physically and mentally. Plans for the winter upset--second lieutenant winning spurs while the colonel lies in the hospital tent, fighting imaginary battles and trying to keep cool under the strain."

Celia looked round and smiled again, but her head went back to its old position, and tears forced themselves out from under the eyelids which she shut tightly together.

"And a little current of anxiety for the inhabitants of New Mexico keeps flowing under the edge of the tent and makes the colonel fear it's not pitched in the right place?"

Celia nodded.

"Well, that's not warranted in the face of the facts. Latest advices from New Mexico report improvement, even sooner than we could have expected. Then at home--Lanse is conquering the situation in the locomotive shops very satisfactorily. Doctor Churchill told me yesterday that he's won the liking of nearly all the men in his shop--which means more than a girl like you can guess. Jeff and Just are prospering in school, according to Charlotte, who is herself working up in her new profession, and whose last beefsteak was broiled to a turn, as her critical soldier guest appreciates. As for Celia--"

He got to his feet slowly, grasped his two stout hickory canes and limped across the room to the couch, showing as he went a pitiful weakness in the tall figure, whose lines still suggested the martial bearing which it had not long ago presented, and which it might never present again. Captain Rayburn sat down close beside Celia and took her hand.

"In one thing I made a misstatement," he said, softly. "They're not imaginary battles that the colonel lies fighting in the hospital tent. They're real enough."

There was a short silence; then Celia spoke unsteadily from the depths of her pillow:

"Uncle Ray, were you ever mean enough to be jealous?"

The captain looked quickly at the fair head on the pillow. "Jealous?" said he, without a hint of surprise in his voice. "Why, yes--jealous of my colonel, my lieutenants, my orderlies, my privates, my doctors, my nurses--jealous of the very Filipino prisoners themselves--because they all had legs and could walk."

"Oh, I know--I don't mean that!" cried Celia, "Of course you envied everybody who could walk. Poor Uncle Ray! But you weren't small enough to mind because the officers under you had got your chance?"

"Wasn't I, though? Well, maybe I wasn't," said the captain, speaking low. "Perhaps I didn't lie and grind my teeth when they told me about the gallant work Lieutenant Garretson had done with my men at Balangiga. A mere boy, Garretson! The whole world applauded it. If I'd not been knocked out so soon it would have been my name that would have gone into history. Yes, I chewed that to shreds many a sleepless night, and hated the fellow for getting my chance."

Captain Rayburn drew a long breath, while his fingers relaxed for an instant; and it was Celia's hand which tightened over his.

"But I got past that," he said, quietly. "It came to me all at once that Garretson and the other fellows in active service weren't the only ones with chances before them. I had mine--a different commission from the one I had coveted, to be sure, but a broader one, with infinite possibilities, and no fear of missing further promotion if I earned it."

There was a little stillness after that. When the captain looked down at Celia again he found her eyes full of pity, but this time it was not pity for herself. He comprehended instantly.

"No, I don't need it, dear," he said, very gently. "I've learned some things already in the hospital tent I wouldn't have missed for a year's pay. And you, who are to be only temporarily on the sick-leave list, you don't need to mind that the little second lieutenant--"

But the second lieutenant was rushing into the room, bearing on a plate a great puffy, round loaf, brown and spicy.

"Look," she cried, "at my steamed brown bread! I've tried it four times and slumped it every time. Now Fieldsy has shown me what was the matter--I hadn't flour enough. Fieldsy is a dear--and so are you!"

She plunged at Celia, brown bread and all, and kissed the top of her head, tweaked a lock of Captain Rayburn's thick hair, and was flying away when Celia spoke. "You're the biggest dear of anybody," she said, with a smile.

---

It was getting up a party in a hurry, but somehow the thing was accomplished. Whether Lanse remembered his own birthday at all was a question. When he came home at six o'clock on that day, Charlotte told him that she had special reasons for seeing him in his best.

"Why, you're all dressed up yourself," he observed. "What's up?"

"Doctor Forester's coming out to hear us play," was all she would tell him, and Lanse groaned over the fact that the little orchestra was so out of practice.

When the guests arrived, they found the man with the birthday anxiously looking over scores. He greeted them with enthusiasm.

"Doctor Forester, this is good of you, if we can't play worth a copper cent. Miss Atkinson! Well this is a surprise--a delightful one! Miss Carolyn, how goes school? How are you, Norman? You'll find Just in a minute. Miss Houghton, now you and I can settle that little question we were discussing. Charlotte, you rogue, you and Uncle Ray are at the bottom of this! Ah, Doctor Churchill! This wouldn't have been complete without our neighbour. Miss Atkinson, allow me to present Doctor Churchill."

Thus John Lansing Birch accepted at once and with his accustomed ease the rôle of host, and enjoyed himself immensely. Celia, watching him from her couch, said suddenly to Captain Rayburn, who sat beside her:

"This is just what the family needed. If you hadn't come we should probably have gone drudging on all winter without realising what was the matter with us. No wonder poor Lanse appreciates it. He's had a month of hard labour without an enlivening hour. And Charlotte--doesn't she look like a fresh carnation to-night?"

"Very much," agreed the captain, with approving eyes on his younger niece, who wore her best frock of French gray, a tint which set off her warm colouring to advantage. Celia had thrust several of Captain Rayburn's scarlet carnations into her sister's belt, with a result gratifying to more than one pair of eyes.

"Still," remarked the captain, his glance returning to Celia, "I'm not sure that I can say whether a fresh carnation is to be preferred to a newly picked rose. That pale pink gown you are wearing is certainly a joy to the eye."

Celia blushed under his admiring glance. There could be no question that she was very lovely, if a trifle frail in appearance from her month's quiet, and it was comforting to be assured that she was not looking like a "limp water-lily" to-night.

"When are we to hear the orchestra?" cried Doctor Forester, after an hour of lively talk, a game or two, and some remarkable puzzles contributed by Just. The distinguished gentleman from the city was enjoying himself immensely, for he was accustomed to social functions of a far more elaborate and formal sort, and liked nothing better than to join in a frolic with the younger people when such rare opportunities presented.

"Of course we're horribly out of practice and all that," explained Lanse, distributing scores, and helping to prop up Celia so that she might try to play, "but since you insist we'll give you all you'll want in a very few minutes. Here's your flute, Uncle Ray. If you'll play along with Celia it will help out."

It was not so bad, after all. Lanse had chosen the most familiar of the old music, everybody did his and her best, and Captain Rayburn's flute, exquisitely played, did indeed "help out."

Celia, her cheeks very pink, worked away until Doctor Churchill gently took her violin from her, but after that the music still went very well.

"Good! good!" applauded Doctor Forester. "Churchill, you're in luck to live next door to this sort of thing."

"Now that I know what I live next door to," remarked the younger physician, "I shall know what to prescribe for the entire family on winter evenings."

There could be no question that Doctor Churchill also was enjoying the evening. Helping Charlotte and the boys serve the sandwiches and chocolate, which appeared presently--the chocolate being made by Mrs. Fields in the kitchen--he said to the girl:

"I haven't had such a good time since I came away from my old home."

"It was so nice of Fieldsy to make the chocolate," Charlotte replied, somewhat irrelevantly. Then as the doctor looked quickly at her and laughed, she flushed. "Oh, I don't call her that to her face!" she said, hurriedly.

"I don't think she would mind. That's what Andy Churchill called her, and calls her yet, when he forgets her newly acquired dignity as a doctor's housekeeper. I'm mighty glad Fieldsy can be of service to you. You've won her heart completely and I assure you that's a bigger triumph than you realise."

"She's the nicest neighbour we ever had," said Charlotte, gaily. The doctor paused, delayed them both a moment while he rearranged a pile of spoons and forks upon his tray, and said:

"If you talk of neighbours, Miss Charlotte, there's a certain homesick young doctor who appreciates having neighbours, too."

Charlotte answered as lightly as he had spoken: "With Mrs. Fields in the kitchen and you in here with a tray full of hospitality, I'm sure you seem very much like one of our oldest neighbours."

"Thank you!" he answered, with such a glad little ring in his voice that Charlotte could not be sorry for the impulsive speech. But she found herself wondering more than once during the evening what he had meant by calling himself "homesick."

"See here, Mrs. Fields," called Jeff, hurrying out for fresh supplies, "this is the best chocolate ever brewed! Doctor Forester wants another cup, and all the fellows looked sort of wistful when they heard him ask for it. May everybody have another cup?"

"Well, I must say, Mr. Jefferson!" said Mrs. Fields, in astonishment. "I thought Miss Charlotte was going clean crazy when she would have three double-boilers made. But it seems she knew her friends' appetites. Don't you know it ain't considered proper to pass more than one cup--light refreshments like these?"

"Oh, this isn't any of your afternoon-tea affairs, I can tell you that!" declared Jeff, watching with pleasure the filling of the tall blue-and-white chocolate pot. "People know they are going to get something good when they come here. I warned the fellows not to eat too much supper before they came. Any more of those chicken sandwiches?"

"For the land's sake, Mr. Jeff!" cried Mrs. Fields.

"What's the matter, Jeffy?" asked Charlotte, coming out. Doctor Churchill was behind her, bearing an empty salad bowl.

"I want more sandwiches," demanded Jeff.

"Everybody fall to quick and make them," commanded Charlotte. "Norman Carter and Just have had seven apiece. That makes them go fast."

"Well, I never!" breathed the housekeeper once more. But Charlotte was slicing the bread with a rapid hand. The doctor, laughing, undertook to butter the slices, and Jeff would have spread on the chicken if Mrs. Fields had not taken the knife from his hand.

Ten minutes later Jeff was able to announce that everybody seemed to be satisfied.

"That's a mercy," said Mrs. Fields, handing him a tray full of pink and white ices, Captain Rayburn's contribution to the festivities. "You'd have to give 'em sody-crackers now if they wasn't. Carry that careful, and tell Miss Charlotte to send out for the cake. I'll light the candles."

Doctor Churchill came out alone for the cake. It stood ready upon the table, Charlotte's greatest success--a big, old-fashioned orange "layer-cake," with pale yellow icing, twenty-three pale yellow candles surrounding it in a flaming circle, and one great yellow Maréchal Niel rose in the centre.

"Whew-w, that's a beauty!" cried Doctor Churchill. "Did you make it, Fieldsy?"

"Indeed I didn't," denied Mrs. Fields, with great satisfaction. "Miss Charlotte made it herself, and I didn't know but she'd go crazy over it, first for fear it wouldn't turn out right, and then for joy because it had."

The doctor handed it about with a face so beaming that Doctor Forester leaned back in his chair and regarded his young colleague quizzically.

"You make this cake, Churchill?" he asked.

The doctor laughed. "It was joy enough to bring it in," he said.

"Who did make it?" demanded Forester. "It was no caterer, I know."

Charlotte attempted to escape quietly from the room, but Lanse barred the way. "Here she is," he said, and turned his sister about and made her face the company. A friendly round of applause greeted her, mingled with exclamations of surprise. They all knew Charlotte, or thought they did. To most of them this was a new and unlooked-for accomplishment.

"It's not half so good as the sort Celia makes," murmured Charlotte, and would hear no more of the cake. But Celia, in her corner, said softly to Doctor Forester:

"It's going to be worth while, my knee, for the training Charlotte is getting. She'll be a perfect little housekeeper before I'm about again."

"It's going to be worth while in another way too," returned her friend, with an appreciative glance at the face which always reminded him of her mother's, it was so serenely sweet and full of character.

"It is? How?" she asked, eagerly, for his tone was emphatic.

"I have few patients on my list who learn so soon to bear this sort of thing as quietly as you are bearing it," he said. "Don't think that doesn't count." Then he rose to go.

Celia hardly heard the leave-takings, her mind was so happily busy with this bit of rare praise from one whose respect was well worth earning. And half an hour afterward, as Lanse stooped to gather her up and carry her up-stairs to bed, she looked back at Captain Rayburn, who still sat beside her couch, and said, with softly shining eyes:

"The colonel almost wouldn't be the second lieutenant if he could, Uncle Ray."

Lanse, lifting his sister in his strong arms, remarked, "I should say not. Why should he?"

Celia and Captain Rayburn, laughing, exchanged a sympathetic, comprehending glance.

---

CHAPTER VI

Three times Jefferson Birch knocked on his sister Charlotte's door. Then he turned the knob. The door would not open. "Fiddle!" he called, softly, but got no reply.

"You're not asleep, I know," he said, firmly, at the keyhole. "I can see a light from outside, if you have got it all plugged up here. Let me in. I've some important news for you."

Charlotte's lock turned and she threw the door open. "Well, come in," she said. "I didn't mean anybody to know, but I'm dying to tell somebody, and I can trust you."

"Of course!" affirmed Jeff, entering with an air of curiosity. "What's doing? Painting?"

The table by the window was strewn with artist's materials, drawings, sheets of water-colour paper and tumblers of coloured water. In the midst of this confusion lay one piece of nearly finished work--the interior of an unfurnished room, showing wall decoration and nothing more. The colouring caught Jeff's eye.

"That's stunning!" he commented, catching up the board upon which the colour drawing was stretched. "What's it for? Going to put in some furniture?"

Charlotte laughed. "No, I'm not going to put in any furniture," she said. "This is just to show a scheme for decorating a den--a man's den. Do you really like it?"

"It's great!" Jeff stood the board up against the wall and backed away, studying it with interest. "Those dull reds and blues will show off his guns and pictures and things in fine shape. How did you ever think it up?"

Charlotte brought out some sheets of wall-paper, as Jeff thought, but he saw at once that they were hand-work. They represented in full-size detail the paper used upon the den walls. Jeff studied them with interest.

"So this is where you are evenings, after you slip away. You're sitting up late, too. See here, this won't do!"

"Oh, yes, it will. Don't try to stop me, Jeff. I'm not up late, really I'm not--only once in awhile."

"I thought people couldn't paint by artificial light."

"They can when they get used to the difference it makes. But I do only the drudgery, evenings--outlines and solid filling in and that sort of thing."

"Going to show this to somebody?"

"Oh, don't talk about it!" said Charlotte, breathlessly. "If I can get my courage up. You know Mr. Murdock, with that decorating house where the Deckers had their work done? Well, some day I'm going to show him. But I'm so frightened at my own audacity!"

"If he doesn't like this, he's a fool!" declared Jeff, vigorously, and although Charlotte laughed she felt the encouragement of his boyish approval. Putting away her work, she suddenly remembered the excuse her brother had given for forcing his way into her room.

"You said you had important news for me. Did you mean it, or was that only to get in?"

"Oh," said Jeff sitting down suddenly and looking up at her, his face growing grave. "You put it out of my head when I came in. I met the doctor just now. He'd been to see Annie Donohue. She's worse."

Charlotte dropped her work instantly. "Worse?" she said, all the brightness flying from her face. "Why, I was in yesterday, and she seemed much better. Jeff, I must go down there this minute."

"It's after ten--you can't. Wait till morning."

"Oh, no!" The girl was making ready as she spoke. "You'll go with me. Think of the baby. There'll be a houseful of women, all wailing, if anything goes wrong with Annie. They did it before, when they thought she wasn't doing well. The baby was so frightened. She knows me. Of course I must go. Think what mother would do for Annie--after all the years Annie was such a faithful maid."

That brought Jeff round at once. In ten minutes he and Charlotte had quietly left the house. A rapid walk through the crisp January night brought them to the poorer quarter of the town and the Donohue cottage. A woman with a shawl over her head met them just outside.

"Annie's gone," she said, at sight of Charlotte. "Took a turn for the worse an hour ago. I never thought she'd get well, she's had too hard a life with that brute of a man of hers."

Charlotte stood still on the door-step when the woman had gone on. She was thinking hard. Jeff remained quiet beside her. Charlotte had known more of Annie than he; Annie had been Charlotte's nurse.

All at once Charlotte turned and laid a hand on his arm. "Jeff," she said, very softly and close to his ear, "we must take little Ellen home with us to-night."

"What!"

"Yes, we must. She's such a shy little thing. Every time I've been here I've found her frightened half to death. It worried Annie dreadfully."

"Well--but, Charlotte--some of these women can take care of her--Annie's friends."

"They are not Annie's friends; they're just her neighbours. Not Annie's kind at all. They're good-hearted enough, but it distressed Annie all the time to have any of them take care of Ellen. They give her all sorts of things to eat. She's only a baby. She was half-sick when I was here Thursday. Oh, don't make a fuss, Jeff! Please, dear!"

"But you don't know anything about babies."

"I know enough not to give them pork and cabbage. I can put the little thing to sleep in Just's crib. It's up in the attic. You can get it down. Jeff, we must!"

But Jeff still held her firmly by the arm. "Girl, you're crazy! If you once take her, you've got her on your hands. Annie has no relations. You told me that yourself. The child'll have to go to an asylum. It's a good thing that husband of hers is dead. If he wasn't, you'd have some cause to be worried."

"Jeff," said Charlotte, pleadingly, "you must let me do what I think is right. I couldn't sleep, thinking of little Ellen to-night. Besides, when Annie was worrying about her Thursday, I as much as promised we'd see that no harm came to the baby."

Jeff relaxed his hold. "I never saw such a girl!" he grumbled. "As if you hadn't things enough on your shoulders already, without adopting other people's kids!"

---

Dr. Andrew Churchill opened the door which led from the room of one of his patients into the small, slenderly furnished living-room of the tiny house which had been her home. It was her home no longer. Doctor Churchill had just lost his first patient in private practice.

In the room were several women, gathered about a baby not yet two years old. Over the child a subdued but excited discussion was being held, as to who should take home and, for the present, care for poor Annie Donohue's orphan baby.

Doctor Churchill closed the door behind him and stood for a moment, looking down at the baby, a pretty little girl with a pair of big frightened blue eyes.

"Well, I guess I'll have to be the one," said the youngest woman of the company, with a sigh. "You're all worse fixed than I am, and I guess we can make room for her somehow, till it's decided what to do with her. Poor Mis' Donohue's child has got to stay somewhere to-night besides here, that I do say."

"Well, that's kind of you, Mary, and we'll all lend a hand to help you out. I'll bring over some extra milk I can spare and----"

A sudden draft of January air made everybody turn. A girlish figure, in a big dark cape with a scarlet lining which seemed to reflect the colour from a face brilliant with frost-bloom, stood in the outer door. The next instant Charlotte Birch, closing the door softly behind her, had crossed the room and was addressing the women, in low quick tones. The doctor she did not seem to notice.

"I've come for the baby," she said, with a gentle imperiousness. "I've just heard about poor Annie. Of course we are the ones to see to little Ellen. If mother were here she would insist upon it. Where are her wraps, please? And has one of you an extra shawl she can lend me? It's a sharp night."

As she spoke, Charlotte knelt before the child and held out her arms. Baby Ellen stared at her for an instant, then seemed to recognise a friend and lifted two little arms, her tiny lips quivering. Charlotte drew her gently up, and rising, walked away across the room with her, the small golden head nestling in her neck. The women looked after her rather resentfully.

"I suppose the child wouldn't be sufferin' with such as us," said one, "if we ain't got no silk quilts to put over her."

"Neither have I," said Charlotte, with a smile, as she caught the words. "But I'm so fond of her. Annie was my nurse, you know."

"May I carry her home for you?" asked the doctor, at her elbow.

"Jeff is here," she answered.

But it was the doctor who carried the baby, after all, for she cried at sight of Jeff. She was ready to cry at sight of any strange face, poor little frightened child! But Doctor Churchill held her so tenderly and spoke so soothingly that she grew quiet at once.

It was a silent walk, and it was only as they reached the house that the doctor said softly to Charlotte, "If you need advice or help, don't hesitate to call on Mrs. Fields. She's a wise woman, and her heart is warm, you know."

"Yes, I know, thank you! And thank you, doctor, for--not scolding me about this!"

"Scold you?" he said, as Charlotte took the baby from him at the door. "Why should I do that?"

"Jeff did, and I didn't dare tell Lanse."

"If you hadn't brought the baby home," whispered the doctor, "I should have." And Charlotte, looking quickly up at him as Jeff opened the door and the light streamed out upon them, surprised upon his face, as his eyes rested upon the baby's pink cheek, an expression which could hardly have been more tender if he had been Ellen's father.

"Now, Jeffy, get the crib down, please, as softly as you can," begged Charlotte, when she had laid the baby on her own white bed and noiselessly closed the door. Jeff tried hard to do her bidding, but the crib did not get down-stairs without a few scrapings and bumpings, which made Charlotte hold her breath lest they rouse a sleeping household.

"Now go down and warm some milk for her in the blue basin. Don't get it hot--just lukewarm. Put the tiniest pinch of sugar in it."

"You seem to know a lot about babies," Jeff murmured, pausing an instant to watch his sister gently pulling off the baby's clothes.

"I do. Didn't I have the care of you?" answered Charlotte, with a mischievous smile.

"Two years younger than yourself? Oh, of course, I forgot that," and Jeff crept away down-stairs after the milk. It took him some time, and when he came tiptoeing back he found the baby in her little coarse flannel nightgown, her round blue eyes wide-awake again.

"She seems to accept you for a mother all right," he commented, as Charlotte held the cup to the baby's lips, cuddling her in a blanket meanwhile. But the girl's eyes filled at this, remembering poor Annie, and Jeff added hastily, "What'll happen if she wakes up and cries in the night? Babies usually do, don't they?"

"Annie has always said Ellen didn't, much, and she's getting to sleep so late I hope she won't to-night. I don't feel equal to telling the others what I've done till morning," and Charlotte smiled rather faintly. Now that she had the baby at home she was beginning to wonder what Lanse and Celia would say.

"Never mind. I'll stand by you. You're all right, whatever you do--if I did think you were rather off your head at first," promised Jeff, sturdily. He was never known to fail Charlotte in an emergency.

Whether it was the strange surroundings or something wrong about the last meal of the day cannot be stated, but Baby Ellen did wake up. It was at three o'clock in the morning that Charlotte, who, excited by the strangeness of the situation, had but just fallen asleep, was roused by a small wail.

The baby seemed not to know her in the trailing blue kimono, with her two long curly braids swinging over her shoulders, and in spite of all that Charlotte could do, the infantile anguish of spirit soon filled the house.

Charlotte walked the floor with her, alternately murmuring consolation and singing the lullabies of her own childhood; but the uproar continued. It is astonishing what an amount of disturbance one small pair of lungs can produce. It was not long before the anxious nurse, listening with both ears for evidences that the family were aroused, heard the tap of Celia's crutches, which the invalid had just learned to use. And almost at the same moment Lanse's door opened and shut with a bang.

"Here they come!" murmured Charlotte, trying distractedly to hush the baby by means which were never known to have that effect upon a startled infant in a strange house.

Her door swung open. Celia stood on the threshold, her eyes wide with alarm. Lanse, lightly costumed in pink-and-white pajamas, gazed over her shoulder.

"Charlotte Birch!" cried Celia, and words failed her. But Lanse was ready of speech.

"What the dickens does this mean?" he inquired, wrathfully. "Have we become an orphanage? I thought I heard singular sounds just after I got to bed. Is there any good reason why the family shouldn't be informed of what strange intentions you may have in your brain before you carry them out? Whose youngster is it, and what are you doing with it here?"

Charlotte's lips were seen to move, but the baby's fright had received such an accession from the appearance of two more unknown beings in the room that nothing could be distinguished. What Charlotte said was, "Please go away! I'll tell you in the morning." But the visitors, failing to catch the appeal, not only did not go away, but moved nearer.

"Why, it's Annie Donohue's baby!" cried Celia, and shrieked the information into Lanse's ear. His expression of disfavour relaxed a degree, but he still looked preternaturally severe. Celia hobbled over to the baby, and sitting down in a rocking-chair, held out her arms. But Charlotte shook her head and motioned imperatively toward the door.

At this instant Jeff, in a red bathrobe, appeared in the doorway, grasped the situation, nodded assurance to Charlotte, and hauled his elder brother across the hall into his own room, where he closed the door and explained in a few terse sentences:

"Annie died last night--to-night. We heard of it late, and Charlotte thought she wouldn't disturb anybody. The doctor was there. He carried the baby home. We couldn't leave her there. She was scared to death. She knows Fiddle, and she'll grow quiet now if you people don't stand round and insist on explanations being roared at you."

"But we can't keep a baby here," began Lanse, who had come home late, unusually tired, and was feeling the customary masculine displeasure at having his hard-earned rest broken--a sensation which at the moment took precedence over any more humanitarian emotions.

"We don't have to settle that to-night, do we?" demanded Jeff, with scorn. "Hasn't the poor girl got enough on her hands without having you scowl at her for trying to do the good Samaritan act--at three o'clock in the morning?"

Jeff next turned his attention to Celia. He went into Charlotte's room, picked up his elder sister without saying "by your leave," and carried her off to her own bed.

"But, Jeff, I could help Charlotte," Celia remonstrated. "The poor baby may be sick."

"Don't believe it. She's simply scared stiff at kimonos and pajamas and bathrobes stalking round her in a strange house. Charlotte can cool her down if anybody can. If she can't, I'll call the doctor. Now go to sleep. Charlotte and I will man the ship to-night, and in the morning you can go to work making duds for the baby. It didn't have anything to wear round it but a summer cape and Mrs. O'Neill's plaid shawl."

This artful allusion touched Celia's tender heart and set her mind at work, as Jeff had meant it should; so putting out her light, he slipped away to Charlotte, exulting in having so promptly fixed things for her.

But Charlotte met him with anxious eyes. The baby was still screaming.

"See how she stiffens every now and then, and holds her breath till I think she'll never breathe again!" she called in his ear. "I do really think you'd better call Mrs. Fields. You can wake her with a knock on her window. She sleeps in the little wing down-stairs."

As he hurried down the hall, the door of Captain Rayburn's room opened, and Jeff met the quiet question, "What's up, lad?"

He stopped an instant to explain, encountered prompt sympathy, and laid a hasty injunction upon his uncle not to attempt to assist Charlotte in her dilemma. That gentleman hobbled back to bed, smiling tenderly to himself in the dark--why, if he had seen him, Jeff never would have been able to guess.

---

CHAPTER VII

"I've got a sewing-machine that I know the kinks of," said Mrs. Fields to Celia and Charlotte and the baby, who regarded her with interest from the couch, where they were grouped. "The doctor's going to be away all day to-morrow, and if you'll all come over, we can get through a lot of little clothes for the baby. Land knows she ain't anyway fixed for going outdoors in all kinds of weather, the way the doctor wants her to."

This was so true that it carried weight in spite of the difficulties in the way. So before he went off to school on a certain February morning, Jeff had carried Celia across to Mrs. Field's sitting-room, and by ten o'clock three busy people were at work. Captain Rayburn had begged to be of the party, and although Mrs. Fields received with skepticism his declaration that he could do various sorts of sewing with a sufficient degree of skill, she allowed him to come, on condition that he look after the baby.

"Well, for the land's sake!" cried the forewoman of the sewing brigade, as she opened the big bundle Captain Rayburn had brought with him. "I should say you haven't left much for us to do!"

The captain regarded with complacency the finished garments she was holding up.

"Yes," said he, "I telephoned the big children's supply shop to send me what Miss Ellen would need for out-of-doors. It seemed a pity to have her stay in another day, waiting to be sewed up. Aren't they right? I thought the making of her indoor clothes would be enough."

Celia and Charlotte were exclaiming with delight over the pretty, wadded white coat which Mrs. Fields held aloft. There was a little furry hood to match, mittens, and a pair of leggings of the sort desirable for small travellers.

"If he hasn't remembered everything!" cried Mrs. Fields, when this last article of apparel came to view. "Well, sir, I won't say you haven't saved us quite a chore. I've got the little flannel petticoats all cut out. Doctor Churchill bought flannel enough to keep her covered from now till she's five years old. Talk about economy--when a man goes shopping!"

Mrs. Fields plunged into business with a will. The sewing-machine hummed ceaselessly. Celia, with rapid, skillful fingers, kept pace with her in basting and putting together, and Charlotte--well, Charlotte did her best. Meanwhile Captain Rayburn and the baby explored together mysterious realms of pockets and picture-books.

"For the land's sake, Miss Charlotte!" cried Mrs. Fields, suddenly, in the middle of the morning. "If you ain't made five left sleeves and only one right!"

Charlotte looked up, crimsoning. "How could I have done it?"

"Easy enough." Mrs. Field's expression softened instantly at sight of the girl's dismay. "I've done it a good many times. Something about it--sleeves act bewitched. They seem bound to hang together and be all one kind or all the other, anything but pairs."

"Why don't you rest a little, and take baby outdoors in her new coat?" Celia suggested. "Sewing is such wearisome work, if one isn't used to it."

So Charlotte and her charge gladly went out. A neighbour had lent an old baby sled, and in it Miss Ellen Donohue, snuggled to the chin in the warmest of garments and wrappings, took her first airing since the night, a week before, when she had been brought home in Doctor Churchill's arms.

She was a shy but happy baby, and had already won all hearts. Nobody was willing to begin the steps necessary to place her in any of the institutions designed for cases like hers. Charlotte, indeed, would not hear of it; and even the practical John Lansing, who had learned to figure the family finances pretty closely since he himself had become the wage-earner, succumbed to the touch of baby fingers on his face and the glance of a pair of eyes like forget-me-nots.

As for Captain Rayburn, he was the baby's devoted slave at all times, his most jealous rival being Dr. Andrew Churchill, who was constantly inventing excuses for coming in for a frolic with Baby Ellen.

"If the doctor could look in on us now," observed Mrs. Fields, suddenly, in the middle of the afternoon, when Charlotte was again bravely trying to distinguish herself at tasks in which she was by no means an adept, "he'd be put out with me for having this party a day when he was away. He sets great store by anything that looks like a lot of people at home."

"Is he one of a large family?" Celia asked.

"He was two years ago. Since then he's lost a brother and a sister and his mother. His father died five years ago. He has a married brother in Japan, and an unmarried one in South Africa. There ain't anybody in the old home now. It broke up when his mother died, two years ago. He hasn't got over that--not a bit. She was going to come and live with him here. It was a town where she used to visit a good deal, and since he couldn't settle near the old home, because it wasn't a good field for young doctors, she was willing to come here with him. That's why he's here now, though I suppose it don't begin to be as advantageous a place for him as it would be in the city itself. He thought a terrible lot of his mother, Andy did. Seems as if he wanted to please her now as much as ever. And he has some pretty homesick times, now and then, though he doesn't show it much."

It was the first time the doctor's housekeeper had been so communicative, and her three hearers listened with deep interest, although they asked few questions, made only one or two kindly comments, and did not express half the sympathy they felt. Only Captain Rayburn, thoughtfully staring out of the window, gave voice to a sentiment for which both his nieces, although they said nothing in reply, inwardly thanked him.

"Doctor Churchill is a rare sort of fellow," he said. "Doctor Forester considers him most promising, I know. But better than that, he is one whose personality alone will always be the strongest part of his influence over his patients, winning them from despair to courage--how, they can't tell. And the man who can add to the sum total of the courage of the human race has done for it what it very much needs."

A few minutes after this little speech the subject of it quite unexpectedly came dashing in, bringing with him a great breath of February air. He stopped in astonishment upon the threshold.

"If this isn't the unkindest trick I ever heard of!" he cried, his brilliant eyes flashing from one to another. "I suppose that arch-traitor of a Fieldsy planned to have you all safely away before I came home. I'm thankful I got here two hours before she expected me. See here, you've got to make this up to me somehow."

"Sit down!" invited Captain Rayburn. "You may hem steadily for two hours on flannel petticoats. If that won't make it up to you I don't know what will."

"No, it won't," retorted the doctor. "Sewing's all right in its way, but I've just put up my needle-case, thank you, and no more stitching for me to-day. I want--a lark! I want to go skating. Who'll go with me?"

"By the process of elimination I should say you would soon get at the answer to that," remarked the captain. "There seems to be just one candidate for active service in this company--unless Mrs. Fields--I've no doubt now that Mrs. Fields----"

"Will you go?" Doctor Churchill turned to Mrs. Fields. She glanced up into his laughing eyes.

"Run along and don't bother me," she said to him. "Take that child there. She's about got her stent done, I guess."

Doctor Churchill looked at the curly black head bent closely over the last of the little sleeves.

"You don't deceive me, Miss Charlotte," said he. "You're not as wedded to that task as you look. Please come with me. There's time for a magnificent hour before you have to put the kettle on. Miss Birch, I wish we could take you, too. Next winter--well, that knee is doing so well I dare to promise you all the skating you want."

Celia looked up at him, smiling, but her eyes were wistful.

"Doctor," cried Captain Rayburn, "telephone to the stables for a comfortable old horse and sleigh, will you? Celia, girl, we'll go, too."

"And I'll look after Ellen," said Mrs. Fields, before anybody could mention the baby. "Go on, all of you."

"May we all come back to supper with you?" asked Doctor Churchill, giving her a glance with which she was familiar of old.

"If you'll send for some oysters I'll give you all hot stew," she said, and received such a chorus of applause that she mentally added several items to the treat.

"Now I can enjoy my fun," whispered Charlotte to Celia, as she brought her sister's wraps, and pulled on her own rough brown coat. "Such a jolly uncle, isn't he?"

"The best in the world. Wear your white tam, dear, and the white mittens. They look so well with your brown suit. Tie the white silk scarf about your neck--that's it. Now run. I'm so afraid somebody will call the doctor out and spoil it all."

Charlotte ran, and found the doctor waiting impatiently, two pairs of skates on his arm. He hurried her away down the street.

"We must get all there is of this," he said. "I feel as if I could skate fifty miles and back again. Do you?"

"Indeed I do. I've wanted to get up and run round the block between every two stitches all day."

"They say the river is good for three miles up. That will give us just what we want--a sensation of running away from the earth and all its cares. And when we get back we'll be ready for Fieldsy's stew."

They found everybody on the river; Charlotte was busy nodding to her friends while the doctor put on her skates. In a few moments the two were flying up the course.

"Oh, this is great!" exulted Doctor Churchill. "And this is the first time you've been on the ice this winter--in February!"

"This is fine enough to make up. I do love it. It takes out all the puckers."

"Doesn't it? I thought you'd been cultivating puckers to-day the minute I saw you--or else I interpreted your mood by my own. Talk about puckers--and nerves! Miss Charlotte, I've done my first big operation in a certain line to-day. I mean, in a new line--an experiment. It was--a success."

She looked up at him, her face full of sympathy. "Oh, I'm so glad!" she said.

"Are you? Thank you! I wanted somebody to be glad--and I hadn't anybody. I had to tell you. It's too soon to be absolutely sure, but it promises so well I'm daring to be happy. It's the sort of operation in which the worst danger is practically over if the patient gets through the operation itself. She's rallied beautifully. And whatever happens, I've proved my point--that the experiment is feasible. Some of the men doubted that--all thought it a big risk. But I had to take it, and now--Ah, come on, Miss Charlotte! Let's fly!"

Away they went, faster and faster--long, swinging strokes in perfect unison; two accomplished skaters with one object in view; working off healthy young spirits at a tension. They did not talk; they saved their breath; they went like the wind itself.

At the farthest extremity of the smooth ice, which ended at a little frost-bound waterfall, they came to a stop. Churchill looked down at a face like a rose, black eyes that were all alight, and lips that smiled with the fresh happiness of the fine sport.

"I've skated at Copenhagen and at St. Petersburg," he said gaily, "to say nothing of Fresh Pond and Lake Superior and other such home grounds. But it's safe to say I never enjoyed a mile of them like that last one. You--you were really glad, weren't you, that it went so well with me to-day?"

"How could I help it, Doctor Churchill?" she answered, earnestly. Ever since coming out she had been remembering the little revelation his housekeeper had made of his life, and it had touched her deeply to know why he had come to settle in the suburban town instead of in the much more promising city field--a question which had occurred to her many times since she had known him.

"I always expected," he went on, in a more quiet way, "to be able to come home and tell my mother about my first triumphs. She would have been so proud and happy over the smallest thing. Her father was a distinguished surgeon--Marchmont of Baltimore. He died only four years ago--his books are an authority on certain subjects. My other grandfather was Dr. Andrew Churchill of Glasgow--an old-school physician and a good one. So you see I come honestly by my love for it all. And mother--how we used to talk it all over--"

He stopped abruptly, with a tightening of the lips, and stood staring off over the frozen fields, his eyes growing sombre. Charlotte's own eyes fell; her heart beat fast with sympathy. She laid the lightest of touches on his arm.

"I know," she said, softly. "Fieldsy told me--a little bit. I'm so sorry."

He drew a long breath and looked down at her, his eyes searching her face. "You are a little comrade," he said, and his voice was low and moved. Then with a quick motion he seized her hands again and they were off, back down the river. Not so fast as before, and silently, the two skaters covered the miles, and only as they came within sight of the crowd of people at the beginning of the course did Doctor Churchill speak.

"This has been a fine hour, hasn't it?" he said. "Your face looks as if you had lost all the puckers. Have you?"

"Indeed I have! Haven't you?"

"It has done me a world of good. I was wrought up to a high pitch--now I'm cool again. I have to go back to the hospital as soon as supper is over. I shall stay all night."

"When you get back," said Charlotte, "will you telephone me how the case is doing?"

"May I?" he answered, eagerly.

"Of course you may. I shall be anxious till I know."

"I have no business to add one smallest item of anxiety to your list of worries," he admitted. "But it seems so good to me to have somebody care, just now. Fieldsy's a dear soul--I couldn't get on without her, but--Never mind, that's enough of Andrew Churchill for one afternoon. Shall we make a big spurt to the finish? Let's show them what skating is--no little cutting of geometrical spider-webs in a forty-foot square!"

They drew in with swift, graceful strokes, threaded their course through the crowd of skaters, and were soon on their way home. Captain Rayburn and Celia passed them, called back that it was a great day for invalids and children, and reached home just in time for the doctor to carry Celia into the little brick house. Charlotte ran to summon her three brothers, for it was after six o'clock.

Never had an oyster stew such enthusiastic praise. Not an appetite was lacking, not a spoon flagged. Mrs. Fields, moved to lavish hospitality, in which she was upheld by the doctor, produced a chicken pie, which had been originally intended for his dinner alone, and which she had at first designed, when she proposed the oysters, to keep over until the morrow. This was flanked by various dishes, impromptu but delectable, and followed by a round of winter fruit and spongecake--the latter the pride of the housekeeper's heart, and dear to her master from old association.

"If you live like this all the time, Doctor Churchill," said John Lansing Birch, leaning back in his chair at last with the air of a man who asks no more of the gods, "I advise you to keep up a bachelor establishment to the end of your days."

"How would that suit you, Mrs. Fields?" asked the doctor, laughing.

Mrs. Fields, from her place at the end of the table--they had insisted on having her sit down with them--answered deliberately:

"As long as a man's a man I suppose nothing on earth ever will make him feel so satisfied with himself and all creation as being set down in front of a lot of eatables. Now what gives me most peace of mind to-night is knowing that that little Ellen Donohue, asleep on my bed, has got enough new clothes, by this day's work, to make a very good beginning of an outfit."

"Now, how do you old bachelors feel?" cried Celia, amidst laughter, and the party broke up.

At ten o'clock that evening, when Charlotte had seen her sister comfortably in bed--for Celia still needed help in undressing--had tucked in Just and warned Jeff that it was bedtime, the telephone-bell rang.

Lanse and Captain Rayburn sat reading in the living-room, where the telephone stood upon a desk, and Lanse, who was near it, moved lazily to answer it. But before he could lift the receiver to his ear Charlotte had run into the room and was taking it from him, murmuring, "It's for me--I'm sure it is."

"Well, I could have called you," said Lanse, looking curiously at her as, with cheeks like poppies, she sat down at the desk and answered. With ears wide open, although he had again taken up the magazine he had laid down, he listened to Charlotte's side of the conversation. It was brief, and no more remarkable than such performances are apt to be, but Lanse easily appreciated the fact that it was giving his sister immense satisfaction.

"Hullo--yes--yes!" she called. "Yes--oh, is she? Yes--yes, I'm so glad! Yes--of course you are. I'm so glad! Thank you. Yes--Good night!" Charlotte hung up the receiver and swung round from the desk, her face radiant, her eyes like stars.

"Is she, indeed?" interrogated Lanse, lifting brotherly, penetrating eyes to her face. "Engagement just announced? When is she to be married? I'm glad you're glad--you might so easily have been jealous."

Charlotte laughed--a ripple of merriment which was contagious, for Captain Rayburn smiled over the evening paper, and Lanse himself grinned cheerfully.

"Mind telling us the occasion of such heartfelt joy?" he inquired. But Charlotte came up behind him, laid a warm velvet cheek against his for a moment, patted her uncle on the shoulder, cried, "Good night to you, gentlemen dear!" and ran away to bed.

---

CHAPTER VIII

Charlotte let little Ellen slide down from her lap, washed and brushed.

"Now, Ellen, be a good girl," she said as she set about picking up the various articles she had been using in the baby's bath and dressing. "Charlotte's in a hurry."

The door-bell rang. Celia was in the kitchen, stirring up a pudding. It was April now, and Celia's knee was so far mended that she could be about the house without her crutches, with certain restrictions as to standing, or using the knee in any way likely to strain it.

It was Charlotte who did the running about, and it was she who started for the door now, after casting one hasty look around the bath-room to make sure that the baby could do herself no harm.

Left to herself, Ellen investigated the resources of the bath-room and found them wanting. After she had thrown two towels, the soap and her own small tooth brush back into the tub from which she had lately emerged, and which Charlotte had not yet emptied, she found her means of entertainment at an end. The other toilet articles were all beyond her reach. She gazed out of the window; there was nothing moving to be seen but a row of Mrs. Fields's dish-towels waving in the wind.

She turned to the door. Charlotte had meant to latch it, but it was a door with a peculiar trick of swinging slowly open an inch after it had apparently been closed, and it had not been latched. Ellen pushed one small hand into the crack and pulled it open.

Charlotte was nowhere to be seen or heard Across the hall was the door of her room, ajar; and since doors ajar have somehow a singular charm for babies, this one crossed to it and swung it wide.

Here was richness. This was Charlotte's workshop. She slept in a smaller room adjoining, the baby in the crib by her side; and with that smaller room little Ellen was familiar, but not with this. The tiny feet travelled eagerly about, from one desirable object to another. And presently she remembered the big, porcelain-lined bath-tub, There was nothing Ellen liked so well as to throw things into that tub and see them splash.

Two books crossed the hall and made the plunge, one after the other, into the soapy water. Ellen gurgled with delight. Two more journeys deposited a shoe, a hair-brush and a small box, contents unknown, in the watery receptacle. Then Ellen made a discovery which filled her small soul with joy.

Just two days before, Charlotte had completed the set of colour drawings which delineated the wall decoration of four rooms--a "den," a dining-room and two bedrooms. They represented the work of the winter, pursued under the exceeding difficulties of managing a household, and, for the last three months, caring in part for a little child.

But Charlotte had toiled faithfully, with the ardour of one who, having only a small portion of time to give to a beloved pursuit, works at it all the more zealously. And she had gone on from one room to another, in her designing, with the hope that if in one she failed to please those upon whom her success depended, some one of the series might appeal to them, and give her the desired place in their interest.

It was her intention on this very day, after luncheon should be over and she should be free for a few hours, to make the much-dreaded, wholly-longed-for visit to the great manufacturing house where she was to show her wares.

The drawings lay in a pile upon Charlotte's table, ready to be wrapped. Baby Ellen, spying the pile of drawings, with an edge or two of brilliant colour showing, trotted gaily over to the table. She stood on tiptoe and pulled at the corner nearest her. The drawings fell from the table in a disordered heap on the floor.

The sight of them pleased Ellen immensely. She held one up and shook it in her small fists, slowly and carefully tore a corner off it, and cast the sheet down in favour of the next in order. This she tore cleanly in two in the middle. The paper was tough, to be sure, but the little fists were strong.

Then she remembered that seductive bath-tub. A patter of little feet, a laugh of pleasure--"Da!" cried Ellen, gleefully---and the first sheet was in.

Seven trips, pursued with vigour and growing hilarity, and Charlotte's work had received its initial plunge into a new state of being. Four of the drawings had been torn in two. The bath-tub was a mass of softly blending colours.

Charlotte came running back up the stairs, her mind, which had been held captive by a young caller, reverting with some anxiety to the small person whom she had left, as she thought, shut up in the safe bath-room. She expected to hear Ellen crying, as was likely to be the case when left alone without sufficient means of amusement; but the silence, as she flew up-stairs, alarmed her. Silence was almost sure to mean mischief.

The bath-room door was ajar. Charlotte pushed it open and looked in. One glance showed her he havoc which had been wrought. She stopped short, staring with wild eyes into the bath-tub; then she caught her treasures out of it, held them dripping before her for an instant, and let them drop on the floor. She turned and ran out of the room to look for Ellen.

The baby sat calmly on a rug, in the middle of Charlotte's room, engaged in pulling the leaves, one by one, out of a small sketch-book which had been on the table with the drawings. She looked up, a most engaging and innocent expression on her round face, and smiled at Charlotte. But she met no smile in return.

"You little wretch!" breathed Charlotte, between her teeth, as she seized the sketch-book and whirled the baby to her feet. "Oh! Is this the way you pay me for all I've done for you? You wicked--cruel--heartless----"

It was the explosion of a blind wrath which made the girl shake the tiny form until Baby Ellen roared lustily. Charlotte set her upon the floor again, and stood looking down at her with blazing eyes. The small head was clasped in two little fists, as the child tore at her yellow curls, her infant soul stirred to indignation and fright at this most unexpected treatment. Suddenly Charlotte seized her again and bore her swiftly away to Captain Rayburn's room.

"Take care of her for an hour? Surely. But what's the matter?"

It was small wonder he asked, for Charlotte's face was white, her eyes brilliant, and her lips quivering as she spoke:

"It's nothing--only baby has spoiled something of mine, and I'm so angry I don't dare trust myself with her."

She dropped little Ellen in his arms and fled, leaving her uncle to think what he might. He looked grave as he soothed the baby, whose small breast still heaved convulsively.

"Are you conscientiously trying to do your full share in developing our little second fiddle's capacity to play first?" he asked the baby, with his face against hers. "Never mind, little one, never mind. Baby doesn't know--but John Rayburn does--that this being a means of education to other people is a thankless task sometimes. Don't cry. Aunty Charlotte will kiss her hard and fast by and by, to make up for losing her temper with the little maid. I suspect you were very, very trying, to make Aunty Charlotte look like that."

Charlotte came down-stairs after a time and attended to the luncheon, her lips pressed tight together, her eyes heavy--although not with tears. She would not let herself cry.

Celia had a headache and did not notice, being herself disinclined to talk, and Captain Rayburn forbore to look at Charlotte. But Jeff, when he came in, observed at once that something was amiss. As soon as the meal was over he drew Charlotte into a corner.

"You haven't been to Murdock with the pictures and been--turned down?" he asked.

"No."

"Going this afternoon, aren't you?"

"No."

"Why not? Thought that was the plan."

Charlotte turned away, fighting hard for self-control. Jeff caught her arm.

"See here, Fiddle, you've got to tell me. You look like a ghost. No bad news--from New Mexico?"

"Oh, no--no! Please go away."

"I won't till you tell me what's up. You're not sick?"

Charlotte ran off up-stairs, Jeff following. "Charlotte," he cried, as he pursued her into her room before she could turn and close the door, "what's the use of acting like this? Something's happened, and I'm going to know what it is."

Charlotte sat down in a despairing heap on the floor and hid her face in her hands. Jeff glanced helplessly from her to the table in the corner. Then he observed that it was bare of the pile of drawings.

"Nothing's happened to the wall-paper?" he asked, eagerly.

Charlotte nodded.

"What?"

"Go look up in the attic, if you must know."

Jeff dashed up-stairs, and surveyed the havoc. He came back breathless with dismay.

"How did it happen?"

"Baby--bath-tub."

"The little--imp! Are they spoiled?"

"You saw."

"Yes; colours run together a bit on some, others torn in two. Yet they show what they were, Fiddle--I vow they do. I'd take them just as they are, explain the whole thing, and see what comes of it."

Charlotte raised her head to shake it vigorously. "Offer work in such shape as that? I'm not such a goose."

"Got to do them all over?"

Her head sank again. "If I can get the courage."

"Of course you can," declared Jeff, more cheerfully. "You never lack pluck. Poor girl, I'm mighty sorry, though. It's simply tough to have it happen at the last minute. You're all tired out, too--I know you are; you ought never to have to do it all over again."

"If I could just have shown them to Mr. Murdock," said Charlotte, heavily, "and have found out that it was the sort of thing they would like, it wouldn't seem so hard to do them all over again. But to work for weeks more--and then perhaps have it a failure, after all----"

"I know. Well, I've got to be off, or I'll be late. Mid-term exams this week. Cheer up, Fiddle, maybe you can fix 'em up easier than you think."

Late in the afternoon Charlotte came to her uncle for the baby. He had cared for her all day.

"She's safe with you now?" he asked, with a keen look up into her quiet face.

"I hope so." Charlotte's cheek was against the little head; she held the baby tenderly.

"When she is in bed to-night will you come and tell me what she did?"

Charlotte shook her head, with a faint smile. "She wasn't to blame. I left her alone for ten minutes."

"But I should like to know about it," he said, coaxingly. "I have had rather a busy day with Ellen-baby--why not reward me with your confidence?"

But she would not promise; neither did she come. This was exceedingly characteristic of the girl, but Captain Rayburn, his sharp eyes observing in her aspect the signs of misery in spite of a brave attempt to seem cheerful, made up his mind to find out for himself. Twice he encountered her coming down from the attic, and each time she avoided speaking to him.

That night, after everybody was in bed, Captain Rayburn, his canes held under his arm, crept slowly up-stairs, a little electric candle of his own in his pocket. By means of this he soon discovered Charlotte's ruined work, which she had not yet found heart to remove from the place where she had first laid it, trusting to the privacy of a place which was seldom invaded by anybody.

He sat down on a convenient box and studied the coloured plates and sketches. As he looked, his lips drew into a whistle of surprise and admiration, followed by a long breath of pity for what he was sure he understood.

Jeff, having just dropped off into the sound sleep of the healthy boy, found himself gently punched into wakefulness.

"Come to, Jeff, and tell me what I want to know," said Captain Rayburn, smiling at his nephew in the dim white light from the candle. Jeff raised himself on his pillow.

"Wh-what's up?" he grunted, blinking like an owl.

"Nothing serious. What was Charlotte going to do with her colour drawings? Show them to some wall-paper manufacturers?"

"What--er--yes--no. What do you know about it?" Jeff was up on his elbow now, staring at his uncle.

"All about it--except that."

"Charlotte tell you? I didn't think she----"

"She didn't. I guessed--and found out. You may as well tell me the rest."

"Isn't it a shame? Poor girl's worked months on those things; just got 'em done. You ought to have seen them; they were great. I told her she could take them as they were, but she wouldn't hear of it."

"But where were they going?"

"To Mr. Murdock, at Chrystler & Company's office. He saw something of Charlotte's once by chance, through a niece of his who's Charlotte's friend, and he sent word to Fiddle that she ought to cultivate that colour sense, or whatever it was, I forget what he called it--for she had it to an unusual degree. Charlotte has cultivated it for two years since then, and now--oh, confound that baby! That's what you get for trying to be a missionary. I wish we'd sent her to an orphanage right off. What's the use?"

"You don't feel that 'sweet are the uses of adversity'? Sometimes they are, though, son. The little second violin hasn't given in and wailed about it; I saw no traces of tears."

"No, you're right you haven't," agreed Jeff, proudly. "She's not that sort. She's all broken up, though, inside, and I don't blame her."

"No. Jeff, to-morrow--it's Saturday, isn't it? You must get those drawings early in the morning, while Charlotte is busy with her Saturday baking. We'll have a livery outfit, and you shall drive me down to Chrystler's."

"Uncle Ray! You're a trump! It's just what I said should be done. The work shows perfectly well what she intended, and if a chap like you explains it----"

Captain Rayburn limped away, laughing, his hand red with the tremendous grip his nephew had just given it. It gave him great pleasure to see the way the boy invariably stood by his sister. It was a characteristic of the Birch family, as a whole, which, it may be said, was worth more both to themselves and to the world at large than the possession of almost any other trait.

It was not until dinner was over that Captain Rayburn and his nephew returned, begging pardon for their tardiness, and explaining that they had taken luncheon in the city.

"Fiddle," Jeff said, with a face of preternatural gravity, "come up to Uncle Ray's room when the dishes are done, will you?"

He vanished before his sister could ask why, and before she could see the grin which overspread his ruddy countenance as he turned away. But something he could not keep out of his voice roused her curiosity, and she made quick work of the dishes.

"Come in, come in!" invited Captain Rayburn, and Jeff rose from the couch, where his nose had been buried among some of his uncle's periodicals.

There were always books and magazines by the Score wherever Captain Rayburn settled himself for any length of time.

The ex-soldier and the schoolboy eyed each other doubtfully for an instant as Charlotte dropped into a chair. Her usually bright face was still very sober, and her eyelashes swept her cheek as she waited.

Captain Rayburn nodded at Jeff. The boy stood on one foot, then on the other, pushed his hands deep into his pockets, pulled them out again, cleared his throat, laughed nervously, and strode suddenly across the room to his sister. He thrust out his hand as he came to a halt before her. "Congratulations to the distinguished decorator!" he cried, and came to the end, temporarily, of his eloquence.

Charlotte looked up in amazement. Jeff seized her hand and pumped it up and down. She glanced in bewilderment at her uncle, and met his smile of encouragement.

"Mine, too," he said.

"What--" she began, and her voice stuck in her throat. Her heart began to thump wildly. Then Jeff told it all in one burst:

"Uncle Ray found your stuff in the attic--thought it great--woke me up and ground it out of me what you meant to do with it. He was sure, as I was, it was fit to show, and you ought not to do it all over first. Got a horse, drove into Chrystler's, saw Murdock. He would look at anything, listened to the story about the baby, looked at the stuff. Face changed--didn't it, Uncle Ray?--from politeness to interest, and all the rest of it. Said the work had faults, of course--you expected that, Fiddle--but it showed promise--'great promise,' that's just what he said. He wants to see everything you do. He wants you to come and see him. He thinks he can use at least two of your rooms, after you've made them over. Oh, he was great! You've done it, Fiddle, you've done it!"

But he was not prepared for the way his sister took the good news. She sat looking solemnly at him for a minute; then she jumped up, turned toward Captain Rayburn with a face on fire with conflicting and uncontrollable emotions, then whirled about and was out of the room like a flash.

"Well, if I ever!" declared Jeff, in intense displeasure, staring at his uncle. But Captain Rayburn's face was the picture of satisfaction.

"It's all right, Jeff," said his uncle. "You never can tell what a woman will do, but you can count on one thing--it won't be what you expect."

"You don't suppose she was angry, do you?"

The captain smiled. "No, I don't think she was angry," he said confidently.

The door flew open again. Two impetuous arms were around Jeff's neck from behind, nearly strangling him. A breezy swirl of skirts, and Captain Rayburn feared for the integrity of his head upon his shoulders. And then the two were alone again.

"Christopher Columbus!--discovered America in 1492!" ejaculated Jefferson, an expression of great delight irradiating his countenance. Then he looked at his uncle with an air of superior wisdom. "Now she'll cry," he said.

"I shouldn't wonder if she did," agreed the captain, nodding.

---

CHAPTER IX

Lanse stood in the kitchen door, lunch-pail in hand. It lacked ten minutes of seven of a June morning; therefore he wore his working clothes. He glanced down at them now with an expression of extreme distaste, then from Celia to Charlotte, both of whom wore fresh print dresses covered with the trim pinafore aprons which were Celia's pride.

"When this siege is over," he remarked, "maybe I won't appreciate the privilege of wearing clean linen from morning till night every day in the week."

"Poor old Lanse!" said Celia, with compassion. "That's been the part that has tried your soul, hasn't it! You haven't minded the work, but the dirt----"

"I hope I'm not a Nancy, either," Lanse went on. "I'm sure I don't feel that my wonderful dignity is compromised by my occupation. Better men than I soil their hands to more purpose every day, but--well, I must be off."

He departed abruptly, leaving Celia standing in the door to wave a hand to him as he turned the corner.

"John Lansing is tired," she said to Charlotte, sisterly sympathy in her voice. "I don't think we've half appreciated what all these months in the shops have meant to him. It isn't as if he were training for one of the engineering specialties, and were interested in his work as practical education in his own line. He'll never have the least use for anything he's learning now."

"He may," Charlotte suggested. "He may marry a girl who will want him to do odd jobs about the house. A mechanic in the family is an awfully desirable thing. Mrs. Fields says there's nothing Doctor Churchill can't do in the way of repairing; and when I told that to Uncle Ray he said that all good surgeons needed to be born mechanics, and usually were. And even though Lanse makes a lawyer, like father, he may need to get out of the automobile he'll have some day, and crawl under it and make it over inside before he can go on."

Celia laughed, and went to call the rest of the family from their beds, early hours having now perforce become the habit of the Birch family.

It was some three hours later that Charlotte sat down for a moment to rest on the little vine-covered back porch. The breakfast work and the bed-making were over, the kitchen was in order, and there was time to draw breath before plunging into the next set of duties.

Celia had gone up-stairs to some summer sewing she had on hand; Captain Rayburn had taken the baby around the corner to a pretty park, where the two spent long hours now, in the perfect June weather; the boys were at school, and the house was very still.

Charlotte stretched her arms above her head, drawing a long breath.

"How long ago it seems that I was free after breakfast to do what I wanted to!" she said to herself. "And how little I realised all the cares that were always on mother! Oh, if it were only time for them to come back--this day--this hour--this minute! I wouldn't mind the work now, if they were only here."

The girl's gaze, fixed wistfully on the leafy treetops above her, suddenly dropped to earth. A man's figure was stumbling along the little path which led diagonally from the back of the Birch premises through a gateway and off toward a back street, the route by which Lanse was accustomed to take an inconspicuous short cut toward the locomotive shops, by the river.

For an instant, only the similarity of the figure to Lanse's struck her, for the wavering walk and bandaged head, with hand pressed to the forehead, did not suggest her brother. At the next instant the man lifted a white face, and Charlotte gave a startled cry as she saw that it was John Lansing himself, in a sorry plight.

She ran to him. His head was clumsily tied up in a soiled cloth, which the blood was beginning to stain. As she put her arm about him he smiled wanly down at her, murmuring, "Thought I couldn't make it--glad I have. No--not the house--Doctor's office. Don't want to scare Celia. It's nothing."

It might be nothing, but he was leaning heavily on his sister's strong young shoulder as they crossed the threshold of Doctor Churchill's little office, Charlotte having flung open the door without waiting to ring. Nobody was there.

"No, don't try to sit up in a chair. Here, lie down on the couch," she insisted, and Lanse yielded, none too soon. His face had lost all colour by the time he had stretched his tall form on the wide leather couch which stood ready for just such occupants.

Charlotte went back to the door and rang the bell; then, as nobody appeared, she explored the lower part of the house for Mrs. Fields in vain.

Returning, she caught sight for the first time of a little memorandum on the doctor's desk: "Out. Return 10:30 A.M." She glanced at the clock. It was exactly quarter past ten.

She studied her brother's face anxiously. The stain upon the cloth was rapidly growing larger. She was sure he ought not to lie there with the bleeding unchecked. She went to the door of the small private office; her eyes fell upon a package labeled "Absorbent Cotton." She opened it, pulled out a handful, and went back to her brother.

She lifted the cloth from his head, and saw a long, uneven gash, from which the blood was freely oozing. Taking two rolls of cotton, she laid one on each side of the wound, forcing the edges together. After a little experimenting she found that by holding her cotton very firmly and pressing in a certain way, the flow of the blood was almost completely checked.

"Does that hurt?" she asked Lanse. He nodded without speaking, but she did not lighten her pressure. She saw that he was very faint.

"I'm sorry it hurts you, dear," she said, "but it stops the blood when I press this way, and I'm sure that's better for you. The doctor will be here soon, and I think I'd better hold it till he comes."

Lanse nodded again, his brows contracting with pain, not only from the pressure upon the wound, but from the reaction from the blow which had caused it.

Charlotte's eyes watched the clock, her hands never relinquishing their task.

"What next?" she was thinking. "Will the time ever be up and father and mother come back to find us all safe? Three more months--three more months----"

Dr. Andrew Churchill came whistling softly across the lawn, glancing at his watch, and noting that he was fifteen minutes later than he had expected to be. In the doorway of his office he came to a surprised halt.

"Miss Charlotte! What's happened?"

Lanse spoke faintly for himself: "Got hit at the shop--wrench slipped out of man's hands above me--nothing much----"

"No--I see," the doctor answered, surveying the situation.

He lifted Charlotte's cotton rolls, noted the character and extent of the injury, and lost no time in getting at work.

"Keep up that pressure just as you were doing, please, Miss Charlotte, while I make things ready. We'll have you all right in a jiffy, Birch."

Two minutes later the doctor had Lanse stretched on a narrow white table in an inner office. "I've got to hurt you quite a bit," he said to his patient. "I don't want to give you an anesthetic, but somebody must hold your head. Shall I call Mrs. Fields?"

He glanced at Charlotte, and met what he had counted on--her help. "No, I can manage," she said quietly.

The doctor was soon ready, with arms, surgically clean, bared to the elbows.

It was rather a bad ten minutes for Lanse that followed, although he bore it bravely, without a sound. The strong, steady support of his sister's hands on the sides of his head never varied, and her eyes watched the doctor's rapid movements with absorbed attention. Doctor Churchill glanced at her two or three times, but met only quiet resolve in her face, which, although pale, showed no sign of weakness.

The injury was a severe one, being no clean cut, but a jagged gash several inches in length, caused by a heavy blow with a rough tool. Charlotte observed that the worker seemed never at a loss what to do, that his touch was as light as it was practised, and that his eyes were full of keen interest in his work. At length Doctor Churchill finished his manipulations and put on the smooth bandages, which, he remarked with a laugh, were to turn Lanse into the image of the Terrible Turk.

"You show all the Spartan attributes of the real martyr," declared the doctor, as he helped his patient back to a couch. "It took pluck to get home here alone. How was it they sent no man with you?"

"Everybody busy. A man was coming with me if I'd let him, but I didn't care for his company so I slipped out. It was farther home than I thought," Lanse explained. "How long will this lay me up? I can go back to-morrow, can't I?"

"Suppose we say the day after. That hammock on your front porch behind the vines strikes me as a restful place for you. A bit of vacation won't hurt you."

By afternoon the ache in John Lansing's head had reached a point where he gladly lay quietly in the hammock and submitted to be waited on by two devoted feminine slaves. The doctor came over to see him after supper, and found him in a high state of restlessness. He got him to bed, stayed with him until he fell into an uneasy slumber, then left him in charge of Celia, and came so quietly down to the front porch again that he startled Charlotte, who lay in the hammock Lanse had lately quitted.

"Do you need me?" she asked eagerly. "I thought Lanse would rather have Celia with him, and I was sure she wanted to take care of him, so I stayed. But I'm ready, if I'm wanted."

"You're wanted," returned Doctor Churchill, gently, "but not up-stairs just now. Lie still in that hammock; let me fix the pillows a bit. Yes, do, please. Do you know it's positively the first time I've seen you appearing to rest since I've known you?"

"Why, Doctor Churchill!"

"It's absolutely so. You're growing thin under the cares you've assumed. And I suspect, besides the cares, you keep yourself busy when you ought to be resting. Am I right?"

Charlotte coloured in the twilight of the porch, which the thick vines of the wisteria screened from the electric light on the corner, except for a few feet at the end nearest the door. She had been working harder than ever all the spring over her designs for Chrystler & Company, and her cheeks were of a truth somewhat less round and her colour less vivid of hue. She was tired, although she had not owned it, even to herself.

"You see, Doctor Churchill," she said, slowly, "until father and mother went away I had been the lazy one of the family, the good-for-nothing--the drone--and I've not yet learned to work in the quiet way my sister does, which accomplishes so much without any fuss. Now that she can get about again she does twice as much as I do, but she doesn't make such a clatter of tools, and doesn't get the credit for being as busy as I."

"I see. Of course I had a feeling all along that this dish-washing and dinner-getting and baby-tending were mere pretense, and I'm relieved to have you own up to it!"

Charlotte laughed. "After all, one doesn't like to be taken at one's own estimate," she admitted. "I confess I feel a pang to have you agree with me, even in jest."

"Do you know," he said, abruptly, after an instant's silence, "you gave me great pleasure this morning?"

"I? How?"

"By the way you stood by your brother."

"Oh!" said Charlotte, astonished. "But I didn't do anything.

"Nothing at all, except keep cool and hold steady. Those are the hardest things a surgeon can set a novice at, you know."

"But you needed me; and Mrs. Fields was out. You didn't know that, but I did. And I don't think I'm one of the fainting-away kind."

"No, you can stand fire. I think sometimes--do you know what I think?"

Charlotte waited, her cheeks warm in the darkness. Praise is always sweet when one has earned it.

"I believe you would stand by a friend--to the last ditch."

Charlotte was silent for a minute; then she answered, low and honestly, "If he were a friend at all worth having I should try."

"And expect the same loyalty in return?"

"Indeed I should."

"I should like," said Doctor Churchill's steady voice, "to try a friendship like that--an acknowledged one. I always was a fellow who liked things definite. I don't like to say to myself, 'I think that man is my friend--I'm sure he is--he shows it.' No, I want him to say so--to shake hands on it. I had such a friend once--the only one. When he died I felt I had lost--I can't tell you what, Miss Charlotte. I never had another."

There was a long silence this time. The figure in the hammock lay still. But Charlotte's heart was beating hard. She knew already that Doctor Churchill was the warm friend of the family. Could he mean to single her out as the special object of his regard--her, Charlotte--when people like Lanse and Celia were within reach?

Charlotte rose to her feet, the doctor rising with her. She held out her hand, and he could see that she was looking steadily up at him. He gazed back at her, and a bright smile broke over his face.

"Do you mean it?" he said, eagerly. "Oh, thank you!"

He grasped the firm young hand as Charlotte fancied he might have grasped that of the comrade he had lost.

"Can't we take a little walk in this glorious moonlight?" he asked, happily. "Just up and down the block once or twice? Or are you too tired?"

Charlotte was not too tired; her weariness had vanished as if by magic. The two strolled slowly up and down the quiet street, talking earnestly. The doctor told his companion about several interesting cases he had among the children, and of one little crippled boy upon whom he had recently operated. The girl listened with an unaffected interest and sympathy very grateful to the man who had long missed companionship of that sort. An hour went by as if on wings.

Celia came to the door as the two young people were saying good-night at the foot of the steps. The doctor looked up at her with a smile.

"Is the patient quiet?" he asked.

"Yes, only he mutters in his sleep."

"That's not strange. He's bound to be a bit feverish after that blow; but I don't anticipate serious trouble. Let Jeff sleep on the couch in his room; that will be all that's necessary."

Celia stood looking down at the doctor as her sister came up the steps. "It's strange," she said, "for I know Lanse isn't badly hurt, but all I can think of to-night is how I wish father and mother were here."

"That's been in my head all day," said Charlotte, with her arm around Celia's shoulder.

"I can understand," Doctor Churchill answered them both, and they knew he could. "But just remember that though they were on the other side of the world to stay for years, they can still come back to you. Just to know that seems to me enough."

They understood him. Celia would have made warm-hearted answer, but at that instant the sound of heavy carriage-wheels rapidly rounding the corner and coming toward them made all three turn to look. The carriage came on at a great pace, swerved toward them, and drew in to the curb, the driver pulling in his horses at their door.

"Who can it be?" breathed Celia. "Nobody has written. It must be a mistake."

Charlotte gasped. "It couldn't be--Celia--it couldn't be----"

The driver leaped from the box and flung open the door. A tall figure stepped out, turned toward them as if trying to make sure who they were, then waved its arm. The familiar gesture brought two cries of rapture as Charlotte rushed and Celia hurried down the steps.

The doctor stood still and watched, his pulse quickening in sympathy. He saw the tall figure grasp in turn both the slender ones, heard two eager cries of "Mother!" and beheld the second occupant of the carriage fairly dragged out, to be smothered in two pairs of impetuous young arms. Then he went quietly away over the lawn to his own house, feeling that he had as yet no right to be one of the group about the home-comers.

In his room, an hour later, he stood before the portrait of a woman, no longer young, but beautiful with the beauty which never grows old. He stood looking up at it, then spoke gently to it.

"She's just your sort, dear," he said, his keen eyes soft and bright. "It's only friendship now, for she's not much more than a child, and I wouldn't ask too much too soon. But some day--give me your blessing, mother, for I've been lonely without you as long as I can bear it."

---

CHAPTER X

"The gentle art of cooking in a chafing-dish," discoursed Captain John Rayburn, lightly stirring in a silver basin the ingredients of the cream sauce he was making for the chopped chicken which stood at hand in a bowl, "is one particularly adapted to the really intelligent masculine mind. No noise, no fuss, no worry, no smoke, everything systematic,"--with a practised hand he added the cream little by little to the melted butter and flour--"business-like and practical. It is a pleasure to contemplate the delicate growth of such a dish as this which I am preparing. It is----"

"You may have thickening enough for all that cream," Celia interrupted, doubtfully, watching her uncle's cookery with an anxious eye.

"And you may have sufficient mental poise to be able to lecture on cookery and do the trick at the same time," supplemented Doctor Churchill, his eyes also on the chafing-dish. In fact, everybody's eyes were on the chafing-dish.

The entire Birch family, Doctor Churchill, Lanse's friend, Mary Atkinson; Jeff's comrade, Carolyn Houghton; and Just's inseparable, Norman Carter--Just scorned girls, and when asked to choose whom he would have as a guest for Captain Rayburn's picnic, mentioned Norman with an air of finality--sat about a large rustic table upon a charming spot of greensward among the trees of a little island four miles down the river.

A great bowl of pond-lilies decorated the centre of the table; and bunches of the same flowers, tied with long yellow ribbons, lay at each plate.

When Captain Rayburn entertained he always did it in style. And since this picnic had been especially designed to celebrate the home-coming of the travellers, a week after their arrival, no pains had been spared to make the festival one to be remembered.

Mrs. Birch was in the seat of honour, a position which she graced. In a summer gown of white, her face round and glowing as it had not been in years, she seemed the central flower of a most attractive bouquet. Mr. Birch looked about him with appreciative eyes.

"I don't think I could attend to the chafing-dish with any certainty of result," he remarked. "I am too much occupied in observing the guests. It strikes me that nowhere, either in New Mexico or Colorado, did I see any people approaching those before me in interest and attractiveness. Except one," he amended, as a general laugh greeted this extraordinary statement, "and even she never seemed to me quite so----" He hesitated.

"Say it, sir!" cried Lanse. "We're with you whatever it is. I think 'beautiful' is the word you want."

Mr. Birch's face lighted with a smile. "Thank you, that is the word," he said.

The captain stirred his chopped chicken into his cream sauce with the air of a chef. "Now here you are," he said.

The captain would not allow everything upon the table at once, picnic fashion, but kept the viands behind a screen a few feet away, and with Jeff's and Just's assistance, served them according to his ideas of the fitness of things.

Toward the end of the feast a particularly fine strawberry shortcake appeared, which was followed by ice-cream. Altogether, the captain's guests declared no picnic had ever been so satisfactory.

"Isn't the captain great?" said Doctor Churchill, enthusiastically, to Celia, when they had all left the table and were beginning to stroll about. "Cut off from the sort of thing he would like best to do--that he aches to do--he occupies himself with what comes in his way. He would deceive any one into thinking him completely satisfied."

"I'm so glad you understand him," Celia answered. "Everybody doesn't. Just the other day a caller said to me, 'Isn't it lovely that Captain Rayburn is so contented with his quiet life? Whenever I see him sitting in the park with the baby and a book, I think what a mercy it is that he isn't like some men, or he never could take it so calmly.' Calmly! Uncle Ray would give his life to-morrow night if he could have a day at the head of his company over there in the Philippines."

"I don't doubt it for an instant. Since I've known him I've learned more admiration for the way he keeps himself in hand than I ever had for any single quality in any human being. I'm mighty sorry he's going away. It's for a year in France and Italy, he tells me."

"Yes. He's very fond of travel, and I imagine he's a little restless after the winter here. Do you know what I suspect? That he came just so that mother might feel somebody was keeping an eye on us."

"That would be like him. He's immensely fond of you all."

Celia caught sight of her uncle beckoning to her, and went to him. Doctor Churchill saw Mrs. Birch, lying among the gay striped pillows in a hammock which had been brought along for her special use, and went over to her. His eyes noted the direction in which Charlotte was vanishing, but he sat down on a log by the hammock as if he had no other thought than for the gracious lady who looked up at him with a smile.

And indeed he had thought for her. It was impossible to be with her and not give oneself up to her charm.

"I have been wanting to see you alone for a minute, Doctor Churchill," she said. "It has been such a busy week I haven't had half a chance to express to you how I appreciate your care for my little family. And especially I am grateful to you for the perfect recovery of Celia's knee. Doctor Forester has assured me that the knee might easily have been a bad case."

"I am very thankful that the results were good, Mrs. Birch," Doctor Churchill answered.

Nobody interrupted the two for a long half-hour. At the end of it Doctor Churchill rose, his eyes kindling.

"Thank you!" he said fervently. "Thank you! More than that I won't ask--yet. But if you will trust me--I promise you may trust me, little as you know me--you may be sure I shall keep my word, not only to you, but to my mother I know her ideals, and if I can be fit to be the friend of one who fills them----"

Mrs. Birch held out her hand.

"I do trust you, Doctor Churchill," she said. "Not only from what Doctor Forester has told me of your family, but from what I have seen and heard for myself."

With a light heart the doctor went away over the hill to the path which descended to the river. Far down the bank, near the pond-lilies, he had caught a glimpse of a blue linen gown.

Captain Rayburn and Celia came over to establish themselves upon rugs and cushions by the side of the hammock. Mr. Birch, who had been out with Just and Norman in a boat, appeared, sunburned and warm, and joined the party.

"I've been wanting to get just this quartet together," remarked the captain, when his brother-in-law had cooled off and was lying comfortably stretched along a mossy knoll.

"Go ahead, Jack, we are ready to listen. Your plans are always interesting," Mr. Birch replied. "What now?"

"In the first place," began the captain, "I want you people to understand that the person who has had least fun out of this absence of yours is the young woman before you."

"O Uncle Ray!" protested Celia, instantly. "Haven't I had as much fun as you?"

"Hardly. Between Mrs. Fields and Miss Ellen Donohue I don't know when I've been so enlivened. I hardly know which of the two has afforded me more downright amusement, each in her way. But Celia, I tell you, Roderick and Helen, has been one brave girl, and that's all there is of it."

"You'll find no dissenting voice here," Celia's father declared, and her mother added:

"Nobody who knows her could expect her to be anything else."

Celia looked away, her cheeks flushing.

"So now I want her to have her reward," said Captain Rayburn. "Let me take her with me for the year abroad."

Celia started, glancing quickly from her father to her mother, neither of whom looked so surprised as she would have expected. Both returned her gaze thoughtfully.

"How about the going to college?" Mr. Birch questioned. "I thought that was the great ambition."

"She shall have a four year's course in one if she comes with me. I shall spend much time in the libraries and art collections. My friends in several cities are people it is worth a long journey to meet. Undoubtedly such a year would be valuable at the end of a college course, and it may appear to you that the studies within the scholastic walls in this country had better come first. The point is that I am going now. I may not be, at the moment Celia takes her diploma. And the question of her health seems to me also one to be considered. Months of enforced quiet haven't been any too good for her."

"There's not much need to ask Celia what she would like," Mr. Birch observed.

The girl studied his face anxiously. "But could you spare me?" she asked. "If it means that mother would have to take my place again----"

"It won't mean that," said Captain Rayburn, stoutly. "My plans cover two maids in the Birch household, the most capable to be obtained."

"See here Jack," said Mr. Roderick Birch, quickly, "you can't play good fairy for the whole family--and it's not necessary. As soon as I am at work in the office again this close figuring will be over."

"I want my niece Charlotte to go to her school of design," the captain went on, imperturbably.

"We mean that she shall."

"I wish you people would let me alone!" he cried. "Here I am, your only brother, without a chick or a child of my own. Am I to be denied what is the greatest delight I can have? By a lucky accident my money was safe in the panic that swept away yours. Pure luck or providence, or whatever you choose to call it--certainly not because my business sagacity was any greater than yours. You wouldn't take a cent from me at the time, but you've got to let me have my way now. Celia goes with me--if you agree. Charlotte goes to her art school, and if you refuse me the fun of assuming both expenses, I'll be tremendously offended--no joke, I shall."

He looked so fierce that everybody laughed--somewhat tremulously. There could be no doubt that he meant all he said. Celia's cheeks were pink with excitement; Mrs. Birch's were of a similar hue, in sympathy with her daughter's joy.

"I tell you, that girl Charlotte," began the captain again, "deserves all anybody can do for her. She has developed three years in one. Fond as I've always been of her, I hadn't the least idea what was in the child. She's going to make a woman of a rare sort. Look here!" A new idea flashed into his mind.

He considered it for the space of a half-minute, then brought it forth:

"Let me take her, too. Not for the year--don't look as if I'd hit you, Helen--just till October. I mean to sail in ten days, you know. I've engaged plenty of room. There'll be no trouble about a berth----"

"O Uncle Ray!" Celia interrupted him. There could be no question about her unselfish soul. If she had been happy before, she was rapturous now.

"Three months will give her quite a journey," the captain hurried on, leaving nobody any time for objections. "I'll see that she gets art enough out of it to fill her to the brim with inspiration. And there will surely be somebody she can come back with. May I have her?"

"What shall we do with you?" his sister said, softly. "I can't deny you--or her. If her father agrees----"

"If I didn't know your big heart so well, Jack," said Roderick Birch, slowly, "I should be too proud to accept so much, even from my wife's brother. But I believe it would be unworthy of me--or of you--to let false pride stand in my girls' way."

From the distance two figures were approaching, one in blue linen, the other in white flannel--Charlotte and Doctor Churchill.

They were talking gaily, laughing like a pair of very happy children, and carrying between them a great bunch of daisies and buttercups that would have hid a church pulpit from view.

"Let's tell her now," proposed Celia. "I can't wait to have her know."

"Go ahead," agreed her uncle. "And let the doctor hear it, too. If he isn't a brother of the family, it's because the family doesn't know one of the finest fellows on the face of the earth when it sees him."

"You're a most discerning chap, Jack Rayburn," said his brother-in-law, heartily, "but there are other people with discernment. I have liked young Churchill from the moment I saw him first. All that Forester says of him confirms my opinion."

"How excited you people all look!" called Charlotte, merrily, as she drew near. "Tell us why."

Captain Rayburn nodded to Celia. She shook her head vigorously in return. He glanced at Mr. and Mrs. Birch, both of whom smilingly refused to speak. So he looked up at Charlotte, and put his question as he might have fired a shot.

"Will you sail for Europe with Celia and me week after next, to stay till October? Celia will stay the year with me; you I shall ship home as useless baggage in the fall."

Charlotte stood still, her arms tightening about the daisies and buttercups, as if they represented a baby whom she must not let fall. A rich wave of colour swept over her face. She looked from one to another of the group as if she could not believe her good fortune. Then suddenly she dropped her flowers in an abandoned heap, clasped her hands tightly together, and drew one long breath of delight.

"Can you spare me?" she murmured, her eyes upon her mother.

Mrs. Birch nodded, smiling. "I surely can," she said.

"Turn about is fair play," said Mr. Birch, "and your uncle seems to consider himself a person of authority."

"I want," declared Captain Rayburn, his bright eyes studying each niece's winsome young face in turn, "in the interest of the family orchestra, to tune the violins."

---

"Speaking of violins," said the captain, half an hour later, quite as if no interval of busy talk and plan-making had occurred, "suppose we see about how far off the key they are at present. Jeff--Just----"

Everybody stared, then laughed, for Jeff and Just instantly produced, from behind that same screen, five green-flanneled, familiar shapes. The entire company had reassembled under the oak-trees, drawn together by a secret summons from the captain.

"Now see here, Uncle Ray," remonstrated his eldest nephew, "this is stealing a march on us with a vengeance."

"I'm entirely willing you should let a march steal on me," retorted the captain, disposing himself comfortably among his rugs and cushions, "or a waltz, or a lullaby, or anything else you choose. But music of some sort I must have."

Laughing, they tuned their instruments, and the rest of the company settled down to listen. Lanse, his eyes mischievous, passed a whispered word among the musicians, and presently, at the signal, the well-known notes of "Hail to the Chief" were sounding through the woods, played with great spirit and zest. And as they played, the five Birches marched to position in front of the captain, then stood still and saluted.

"Off with you, you strolling players!" cried the captain. "The spectacle of a 'cello player attempting to carry his instrument and perform upon it at the same time is enough to upset me for a week. Sit down comfortably, and give us 'The Sweetest Flower That Blows.'"

So they played, softly now, and with full appreciation of the fact that the melodious song was one of their mother's favourites.

But suddenly they had a fresh surprise, for as they played, a voice from the little audience joined them, under his breath at first, then--as the captain turned and made vigorous signs to the singer to let his voice be heard--with tunefully swelling notes, which fell upon all their ears like music of a rare sort:

"The sweetest flower that blows
I give you as we part.
To you it is a rose,
To me it is my heart."

The captain knew, as the voice went on, that those barytone notes were very fine ones--knew better than the rest, as having a wider acquaintance with voices in general. But they all understood that it was to no ordinary singer they were listening.

When the song ended the captain reached over and laid a brotherly arm on Doctor Churchill's shoulder. "Welcome, friend," he said, with feeling in his voice. "You've given the countersign."

But the doctor, although he received modestly the words of praise which fell upon him from all about, would sing no more that day. It had been the first time for almost three years. And "The Sweetest Flower That Blows" was not only Mrs. Birch's favourite song; it had been Mrs. Churchill's also.

"See here, Churchill," said Lanse, as the orchestra rested for a moment, "do you play any instrument?"

"Only as a novice," admitted the doctor, with some reluctance.

"Which one?"

"The fiddle."

"And never owned up!" chided Lanse. "You didn't want to belong to such an amateurish company?"

"I did--very much," said Churchill, with emphasis. "But you needed no more violins."

"If I'm to be away all next year," said Celia, quickly, "they will need you. Will you take my place?"

"No, indeed, Miss Celia," the doctor answered, decidedly. "But if you would let me play--second."

He looked at Charlotte, smiling. She returned his smile, but shook her head. "I'm Second Fiddle," she said. "I'll never take Celia's place."

The eyes of the two sisters met, affectionately, comprehendingly.

"I should like to have you, dear," said Celia, softly.

But Charlotte only shook her head again, colouring beneath the glances which fell on her from all sides. "I'd rather play my old part," she answered.

Jeff caught up and lifted high in the air an imaginary glass.

"Here's to the orchestra!" he called out. "May Doctor Churchill read the score of the first violin. Here's to the First Violin! May she hear plenty of fine music in the old country, and come back ready to coach us all. And here's--"

He paused and looked impressively round upon the company, who regarded him in turn with interested, sympathetic eyes. "I say we've called her 'Second Fiddle' long enough," he said, and hesitated, beginning to get stranded in his own eloquence. "Anyhow, if she hasn't proved this year that she's fit to play anything--dishes or wall-paper or babies--" He stopped, laughing. "I don't know how to say it, but as sure as my name's Jefferson Birch she--er--"

"Hear! hear!" the captain encouraged him softly.

"Here's,"--shouted the boy, "here's to the Second Violin!"

Through the friendly laughter and murmurs of appreciation, Charlotte, dropping shy, happy eyes, read the real love and respect of everybody, and felt that the year's experiences had brought her a rich reward. But all she said, as Jeff, exhausted by his effort at oratory, dropped upon the grass beside her, was in his ear:

"If anybody deserves a toast, Jeffy boy, I think it's you. You've eaten so many slices of mine--burnt to a cinder--and never winced! If that isn't heroism, what is?"

---

BOOK II