The Daughters of the Little Grey House

by Marion Ames Taggart

ITS GAINS AND LOSSES

"It will be a miserable summer," thought Rob despondently, keeping her face away from the range of Wythie's eyes as she stood before the glass brushing her hair for the night while her sister lay peacefully on her pillow, waiting for Rob to lie down beside her. Oswyth's and her mother's discretion and consideration oppressed Rob. They must have noticed that Bruce went home alone that night for the first time since Battalion B had been added to the assets of the little grey house, but they seemed not to see it. Rob, annoyed with herself, with Bruce, with fate, with the world in general and growing up in particular, suspected Frances of having given them a hint of her suspicions as to Rob's bad behavior that evening when she announced to them her own happiness. For Wythie watched her sister with a gentle gaze that Rob felt in her spine, but, contrary to their girlish custom, did not seem inclined to gossip over the happenings of that night. She let perturbed Rob alone so considerately that Rob longed to complain of her cruelty. Rob felt very much as she had felt when, in her childish days after some misdemeanor her mother had "left her to her conscience," as the good Mardy used to say, a process that was harder to endure than the whipping which she had never received would have been.

It proved not to be a miserable summer in the least. Bruce went back to college, and returned to Fayre his old self, unchanged. Rob, alertly suspicious, guessed that Basil had advised him to manage Rob thus, and that the advice had originated in Wythie. She felt quite certain that the time was only postponed in which she should have to face the disagreeable duty of wounding the friend whom she loved best in the world—so she put it to herself—for there was that in Bruce's eyes and beneath his easy comradeship which told her that a frustrated attempt to have his way would not be final to him.

But after a little while, allowable to her discomfort, Rob lost her dread of Bruce, and there was no constraint apparent between them, and no more romance in the atmosphere of the little grey house than Wythie's placid happiness with Basil, and Lydia's comedy of betrothal to her loquacious Demetrius.

In the meantime, the soft air of June was stirred by the carpenters' hammers rapidly putting up Cousin Peace's new house, and visits to watch its growth made serious inroads upon the busy Grey household's time.

It was going to be a little cottage with remarkable effect upon its neighbour and elder by two centuries. For not only had Lydia's plan to take Miss Charlotte under her wing, and to bring Demetrius to supplement languid auctioneering by caring for Miss Charlotte's garden been accepted, but Miss Charlotte proposed taking Polly Flinders to live with her. The child and the blind woman had grown so fond of each other that Polly hung evenly balanced between her desire to remain under the same roof with Rob and to go to Miss Charlotte, while the latter pleaded to the Greys that she needed Polly, while her cousin, rich in three girls, could afford to give her up.

It was not decided, but there was sufficient likelihood of Polly's going to the new house to make Rob suggest that it be called Anemone Cottage, "and that won't mean the frail little spring anemone, Cousin Peace," she said, "but the sea anemone, with tentacles sucking in everything it can reach."

"It is going to suck you into its depths, my Robin, just as my first house used to do, for its brightening," retorted Miss Charlotte.

College Commencement had passed—"commencement had ended," Bartlemy said—and the Rutherfords were all back in Fayre for the long vacation. Basil wrote every morning, to test his powers further in his chosen vocation; Bruce read and drove with Dr. Fairbairn every day; Bartlemy painted with industry, so that the long June days were far from idle ones. And Commodore Rutherford, "their long lost father," as Bruce called him, was coming home at last from the East to see the sons whom he had left tall boys, and was to find young men. There was a feeling of coming events in the air; with the supervising of the new house, the constant coming and going of Hester Baldwin, the absorbing interest of the increasing prosperity and success of Green Pastures, Mrs. Grey found her girls harder to secure for home usefulness than they had ever been before. Lydia complained feelingly of the difficulty she experienced in finding time to prepare the household linen which, though she would have no use for it in Miss Charlotte's house, she evidently regarded as equally indispensable to a lawful marriage as a license.

Besides all these distractions which disturbed the even currents of life in the little grey house, Aunt Azraella was rapidly growing much more ill; it was plain to them all that the term of life allowed her by the doctor was to be greatly curtailed. Aunt Azraella had not been the sort of person to which young affections are likely to cling; but death is never less than awful, and the shadow of Azrael's wings, drooping visibly over the woman who bore his name, modified the sunlight of that summer in the little grey house. The Greys allowed no day to pass without many of its hours being spent by one of them up in the big house on the hill. Altogether it was a time of many interruptions.

Rob had told her first series of stories to the Fayre children, and was launched on her second set continued late into July. She was winding it up with great relief, though her audience gave her attention most flattering, considering the heat, and that they were all at what Prue called "the wriggling age."

The dear old wainscotted room was shaded into comparative coolness, and a great bunch of mignonette sustained Rob through her last story with its fragrance close to her hand. Over by the window sat little Polly Flinders, looking out dreamily upon the warm stillness of the afternoon as she listened to Rob. The child never joined the other children who flocked close to Rob's side and hung on her knees; her love for her idol was too exclusive to share with these more prosperous little ones, too sacred to reveal to their eyes—Polly kept her revelations of it for Rob's knowledge alone.

Now she looked around so suddenly that Rob halted in her story, and asked: "What is it, Polly?"

"Your Aunt Azraella is coming," said Polly, and as she spoke Mrs. Winslow's figure passed the window, and paused at the rarely used door which led from this room out on the yard.

"Open the door, please, Polly," said Rob, wondering why Aunt Azraella should choose this entrance on her story-telling afternoon.

Mrs. Winslow entered, and seated herself near the door. "Go on, Roberta," she said. "I will wait; I wanted to see you alone, so came this way."

"Almost through, Aunt Azraella," said Rob. "So you see, children, as we were saying," she continued, "Godfrey de Bouillon was a great soldier, a wonderful leader of men, but that which we remember first when we think of him is not his high courage, or brilliant mind, but that he refused to wear a golden crown in Jerusalem, where his Lord had been crowned with thorns, and that he put away from him the honour and name of king, and would be called but the Defender of the Holy Sepulchre. Thus Godfrey, the hero, shows us that greatness of name and fame is less than greatness of soul, and his humble piety rings through the ages more loudly than the clash of his battles. We shall none of us be great in the other ways in which Godfrey was great, but we may try to have a little of his greatness of soul, and turn away from gain, and the glitter of worldly glory when conscience tells us that it is higher and nobler to be poor and lowly. And this last story of the crusaders shows us, what the lives of all real heroes show us, and that is that he is bravest who knows when to say No, and that the highest courage is to dare for the sake of right. It shows us that the greatest hero is not he whom the world honours, or who cares for its praise, but he who fights against meanness and cruelty; loving purity, truth and right better than anything that the world can give him. If we try, perhaps, like Godfrey of Bouillon, when we are tempted we can refuse gold and high sounding title, and greater glory if to get it we should have to be less worthy of the Master whom, when He came to show the world the beauty of holiness, they crowned with thorns."

Rob's voice trembled as she ceased, and she buried her face for an instant in the mignonette at her side. The chivalric girl was stirred into profound emotion at the thought of lofty deeds; she thrilled and quivered at the presentation of the highest ideals, and responded to the beauty of renunciation with the full force of her own great heartedness.

The children crowded around her to bid her good-bye with as much eagerness and fervour as if this had been a life-long parting instead of the end of her stories for the summer. She kissed each flushed, upturned little face, and when the last had withdrawn, turned to Aunt Azraella with a tired sigh.

"It's lovely work entertaining them, Aunt Azraella," she said, "and beautiful to see how they care for it, but it is exhausting. Why, what has happened?" she added, seeing for the first time the expression on Mrs. Winslow's face.

"I am much worse, Roberta," said Aunt Azraella. "I felt so queer at noon that I sent for Dr. Fairbairn, and he says my disease has taken a sudden turn for the worse. I shall probably die within two weeks—less time."

Rob dropped upon a chair and gasped, turning pale under the shock.

Mrs. Winslow went on in the same hard, even voice, as if she were announcing the most ordinary tidings. "The doctor said I must go to bed, but I made up my mind I was going to walk down here whatever he said; for the last time, you know. If a body's going to die, she is going to die, and it doesn't make any difference what you do. So here I am, I'm going all through this house, and you're not to say one word to any of the rest about what I've told you. Then you come home with me, and I will go to bed, for I don't believe I can keep out of it any longer. I want you to stay with me while I last. Now pull yourself together, Roberta, because you've got plenty of backbone when you need it, and I don't want your mother to know this is a visit to say good-bye to this house. I've always taken more interest in it than in any other place, except my own house, and more in your family than in my own relations—I like that Mayflower strain in the Winslows and Greys, and I like the way they forget all about money; we Browns always thought a good deal about money. Now, come along, Roberta, and keep your face natural, as well as your tongue still."

Roberta arose to follow her aunt as that indomitable woman strode ahead of her to bid good-bye to the little grey house. She could hardly realize that her uncle's widow was really under sentence of death. It was so ghastly like her to take it in this way, like the gladiator that she was. "Morituri te salutamus," thought Rob, as she fell back to see Mrs. Winslow throw open the sitting-room door and say: "Good-afternoon, Mary," in her usual tone and manner, though her face betrayed suffering.

"I should like to go over the house," announced Aunt Azraella. "I want to see every room in it."

Mrs. Grey arose with a look of wonder; she, too, saw the change in her sister-in-law's face, but she had long since been taught that Mrs. Winslow disliked sympathy, so she made no comment, going at once to escort her over the little grey house, speculating the while on her reasons for wishing to see it.

Aunt Azraella made her tour of the rooms, pausing a nearly equal time in each, and scanning their every detail as if to impress them upon her memory.

"It is a pleasant house, Mary," she said when they reached the lower hall again. "It has something about it that I don't understand, but it makes it more homelike than other places. My house will be better for Roberta; young people ought to have modern houses, and she will be able to afford to keep up the big house in good style, if she marries that second Rutherford boy. I want her to come up and stay with me to-night. I am not as well."

"I thought you were not as well, Azraella, but I feared to ask you," said Mrs. Grey. "Of course, you may borrow, Rob."

"Come up to-morrow and I will tell you how I am then," said Aunt Azraella. "I don't believe in complaining. Come, Rob." She led the way out the door; Rob ran up-stairs to snatch a few necessities for the night, glad to hide the face which she knew revealed her feeling on hearing her aunt's assumption that she was to marry Bruce.

She was not gone five minutes, and took her place at her aunt's side on the flagged walk where she was awaiting her, the only one of the little group in the doorway who understood the significance of Mrs. Winslow's long look up and down the little house which had seen so many depart from the light of its twinkling window-panes.

"Now, then, Rob," said Aunt Azraella, and nodded over her shoulder at her sister-in-law, Miss Charlotte, Wythie, and Prue, with little Polly, peering out under Wythie's encircling arm. Roberta felt the arm tremble which she drew within her own, but otherwise Mrs. Winslow gave no sign of the tragedy for which this call stood.

At her own house, after the difficult mounting of the hill, Aunt Azraella's indomitable will refused to sustain her beyond the attainment of its end. She sank, half fainting, into the faithful arms of Elvira, who had been suffering agonies of anxiety since her mistress had taken her way and gone down for that last visit, against the doctor's prohibition.

"She's got to be got to bed, Rob," said that devoted woman, who for so many years had been Mrs. Winslow's patient and affectionate house-mate in the old relation that forbade the word servant.

In that final effort Mrs. Winslow's granite will had broken forever, when Rob and Elvira laid her in her ample bed, in her large, orderly and bleak chamber, she laid herself down to die without a struggle.

She suddenly seemed very ill. When Dr. Fairbairn came up that night he stood looking long at his patient as he leaned with folded arms on the black walnut footboard of the bed, decorated with a bunch of grapes and its leaves. His face wore a look that plainly declared his work done.

Rob did not leave her aunt that night. Mrs. Winslow's eyes followed the girl speechlessly; both Rob and Elvira saw that they begged Rob not to leave her. So, even when she slept, Rob kept her post, and at two o'clock Aunt Azraella woke to mental activity.

"Rob," she said, "there is something that I want to say to you, now, while we are alone, and before I get worse. I have made my will."

"Ah, Aunt Azraella, don't bother about such things now; just rest," protested Rob.

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Mrs. Winslow with her accustomed energy. "Because I am done with my property, is that any reason that I should not make it available to the next one? This world, and its goods, too, still look important to me, Roberta; it is a good or a bad place while you are in it, according to what you have or lack, even if you don't stay in it much above seventy years; I am leaving it at sixty. I don't intend to be less practical because I'm dying, Roberta Grey. Now you listen to me. This house is yours; I've left it to you, as I said I should, and money to each of you girls. There's a niece of mine, Myrtilla Hasbrook, that may or may not turn up after I'm gone to tell you how I promised her the house and it ought to be hers. Now remember! It isn't hers, and she has no right to it. I've left it to you because I want you should have it, and supposing I did mean to give it to her once, that's not saying that I can't change my mind, is it?"

"No," said Rob, groping her way through vague fears, as her aunt paused for a reply. "Won't you tell me about this Miss Hasbrook, Aunt Azraella? Does she need the house?"

"She's my sister's daughter, and she isn't Miss, but Mrs. Hasbrook to begin with," said Aunt Azraella. "She's a young widow. As to needing the house, she needs almost anything. Myrtilla's one of the sort that hasn't any faculty. She married at seventeen, and now she's a widow at twenty-nine or thirty with four children. When I promised her the house I told her she could use it to take boarders, and get along; she's got her husband's life-insurance, and a little from her mother, but not enough to support four growing children. She's a gentle, harmless thing, but she hasn't gumption. Now, I've seen what there is in you, and I've made up my mind you're the one to keep up this house the way it should be, so I've left it to you. I only want you should understand, so if Myrtilla should come here and say anything—which it isn't at all like her to do, but she might—you're not to get any of your high flown, Grey notions, like your father, and give it up to her. For I'm certainly in the full possession of my faculties and I say it's yours. Now I'm going to sleep; it tires me to talk to-night."

Rob smoothed the sheet under her aunt's chin and turned the lamp a little lower without speaking. She was relieved to hear Mrs. Winslow's even breathing in a few moments, for she wanted to feel that she was alone to think.

She sat with her changeable face very grave, resting on the hand that her knee supported; she was thinking hard. The outline of the picture and the history of this hitherto unknown Myrtilla Hasbrook, the young widow to whom fate had been so hard, she was perfectly well able to fill out from her knowledge of Aunt Azraella's mind. She pictured her as gentle, shrinking, unfit to cope with difficulties, the sort of person whom Rob, out of her own sensitive soul and early hardships, most pitied, and whom she was to be the instrument of disappointing and further impoverishing!

No, she would not have the house! She started erect with the fulness of her determination. If she had any influence over her aunt-in-law, Mrs. Winslow, herself, should make right this intended injustice. She, Rob Grey, could get on perfectly with what she now had, and with the legacy that she could justly receive from her aunt out of the ample fortune her Uncle Horace had left her—but not the house!

She did not want to bother her mother with her refusal of this legacy, certain as she was that she should refuse it in any case, and she had a feeling that she did not want to pose as a heroine of renunciation in the eyes of her own family, especially Prue. When it was all over, some day she would tell her mother and Wythie all about it. She cast about in her mind for some one to help her to induce Aunt Azraella to change her will, and she thought of Bruce, Bruce whom she had abused, but who had never failed her when she needed a friend.

Bruce came in the morning early, sent by Dr. Fairbairn to administer certain remedies.

After the doctor-that-was-to-be had performed his task Rob followed him down the broad stairs and out into the dewy sweetness of the midsummer morning. She told him her story. "And you wouldn't have the house if you were I, would you, Bruce?" she ended.

Bruce looked at her queerly. "If I were you I suppose I should do precisely as you do, being the same person," he said. "But I doubt that many who were not you would act thus."

"But, even if you were yourself, wouldn't you feel as I do?" persisted Rob.

"I think we generally agree, Robin," said Bruce quietly. "I should feel as you do, yes. It comforts me in saying so to know that I could not change your mind were I to try. But it is my duty to point out that you are throwing away a valuable piece of property, which, lying only two hours distant from New York, is bound to increase in value, and to which most people would cling tenaciously. Also, that there is no obligation upon you of defending this unknown young woman."

"But you would act precisely as I want to act, Bruce," said Rob. "You like to have me do it, and you know that we all think that enough of this world's goods does not mean great wealth, and that I have enough without this. You want me to try to persuade Aunt Azraella to carry out her first plan—I see it in your eyes."

"Yes, Donna Quixote, I want you to act precisely in the chivalric spirit that inspires you, and I would rather see you—what you are," Bruce stopped himself, and went on more indifferently, "counting obligations binding which to many would not exist at all, than to see you richer than you are by millions. By all means make your aunt leave this house to her poor widowed niece. You will not want."

Rob flushed, half in gratification, half in annoyance at the remembrance of Bruce's own probable wealth, and what these last words might imply. And as she did so she remembered her words to the children on the preceding afternoon when Aunt Azraella had come in as she was finishing the story of Godfrey de Bouillon. She was glad, with a warmth at her heart, that Bruce was also knightly and had the inward vision which revealed to him duties and ideals to which the majority of mortals were blind.

"Good-bye, Roberta," said Bruce. "If I can help you to persuade your aunt to disinherit you, call on me; we'll manage it between us. Goodbye, Donna Quixote."

"Good-bye, Sir Bruce, the defender of the destitute," retorted Rob, and turned to run back into the house with a light step and lighter heart. For with the wisdom of the noble folly of her training Rob was glad that she hoped to turn from herself her aunt's rich gift.

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[CHAPTER FOURTEEN]

ITS RENUNCIATIONS

The days were filled with visitors and Rob had no opportunity to present her petition to Aunt Azraella. Wythie and Prue relieved her at this strange dying bed, and Mrs. Grey was rarely absent. It was Rob, however, Rob, and not Wythie, to whom Mrs. Winslow turned for comfort in those hours in which she lay facing eternity with thoughts which could be conjectured, but which she never expressed.

In the old days she had found Rob unmanageable, too quick of speech and impatient of mind, and Wythie had been her favourite of the three Grey girls. Now she turned to Rob's high courage and bright cheerfulness as to a tonic. It was another Rob, an older, more controlled and wiser Rob, too, on whom she was leaning. Mrs. Grey saw with great rejoicing the development of her daring, high-minded girl, who needed but this touch of womanly gentleness which she was gaining to make her very near the ideal of American girlhood.

"The end may be suffering," Dr. Fairbairn had said. "We shall be obliged to use morphine, probably; if there is anything that you think she would like to attend to get your sister-in-law about it now, Mary."

Mrs. Grey knew of nothing, but Rob, hearing, resolved that she must bring Aunt Azraella to change her will without further loss of time.

The brief sketch that Mrs. Winslow had given the girl of her young widowed niece had been enough to convince Rob that the promise of the house upon which she must be relying could not be broken for the benefit of Roberta Grey. But letters had been despatched to the various relatives of the dying woman, and Browns of varying degrees of kindred had been arriving in Fayre. For testamentary reasons, if not for more sentimental ones, Mrs. Winslow's death was an event in the Brown family.

Among the arrivals had been Myrtilla Hasbrook; she was in the house with her baby of four, as Rob plotted for the restoration to her of a bequest of which she had no idea that she had been deprived.

It seemed to Rob when her eyes first rested upon Myrtilla that she could have painted her portrait equally well before she had seen her as afterward. She was of medium height, medium colouring, with a pale, gentle, resigned face, and a slender, drooping frame. Goodness, the patient, uncomplaining goodness of the type of woman who has strength to endure forever, but none to remedy matters, shone from her sad eyes and quiet lips. Rob knew in a flash of intuitive pity just how such a woman must wear herself out to provide for her children in her poverty. How she would weep of nights lest that poverty prevent her from doing her duty by them. The young widow looked younger than her years, and Rob's great heart went out to her in a pulse of knightly protection.

"You poor thing!" she thought. "Indeed, I will never add one straw to the burden on those thin shoulders! If Aunt Azraella won't make a codicil to her will I'll give you the house anyway. But I should hate most dreadfully to appear in the light of a Noble Benefactor!"

That night Rob kept watch alone at her aunt's bedside. The dim light that deepened the darkness burned on the small table on which sat the alcohol stove and the collection of glasses and bottles inevitable to a sick room. Mrs. Winslow had slept, but at midnight she became wakeful, and Rob felt that her opportunity had come.

"Aunt Azraella," she began, coming close to the bed with a timidity new to her. "Do you think it would harm you if I talked to you a little while? I want to ask a favour of you when nobody can hear us, and we are so seldom alone!"

"You can't harm me, Rob, because we know exactly what end we are travelling to, and if you want to ask something of me there may not be much more chance," said Mrs. Winslow with her customary stalwart sense.

Rob perched herself lightly on the edge of the bed. She longed to take into her own one of the hands lying near her on the coverlid, but its self-reliance was so apparent, even then, that she dared not venture.

"I'm afraid you won't like what I have to say, Aunt," Rob began. "It's about this fine house which you want to leave me."

"Which I have left you, once for all," Aunt Azraella sharply corrected her. "Give me a teaspoonful of my cordial."

Rob obeyed, resuming her place when she had done so. "I know that you have willed it to me, Aunt Azraella, but I want you please, please to alter that will, and give the house to Mrs. Hasbrook. I can't take it."

Rob spoke with decision, and her aunt saw that she had considered, and had spoken out of a mind fully made up, saw it with dismay, for she had reason to know that Rob's decisions, once reached, were likely to be as inflexible as her own.

It was in a voice almost pleading that she cried: "Rob, Roberta, don't ask me to do that! I want you should have the house; I won't die happy if you haven't it, and I have a right to do what I please with it. Myrtilla has no claim."

"Yes, she has, Auntie!" cried Rob, slipping to her knees beside the bed and bringing her bright face close to the grim one on the pillow. "Dear Aunt Azraella, she has the claim of needing it so very, very much! She looks so sweet and patient and worn that it would be horrible to know that disappointment awaited her. I have all, more than I need, and she has those little children. Think of it, Aunt Azraella! And we shall know, you and I, that you wanted to give it to me, so that I shall always feel grateful, knowing that it was mine as far as your desire went. And nobody else need know anything about it. I couldn't live one week, feeling that because of me that poor girl was losing the home she needed. Dear Aunt Azraella, you can die happy giving it to her, because you know the good you will do, while I could never live happy, owning the house. You have left it to me absolutely, to be used for Hester's children, instead of the Flinders' place, or for my own use. Then listen, Aunt Azraella: To-morrow morning add a codicil to that will and give the house to Myrtle. If you do not I must tell you truthfully that I shall hand it over to her the moment that it comes into my possession. Will you, oh, will you do this for me, Aunt Azraella?"

"Do you think you leave me much choice?" demanded her aunt.

Rob almost laughed; the remark was so exactly in Aunt Azraella's familiar tone.

"No, I don't; yes, I do," she said. "You can force me to give your niece the house, and I don't want to. It would be horrid to be regarded as—oh, no decent person would want to seem that kind of heroine," protested Rob incoherently.

Aunt Azraella understood, and liked the young creature looking so enthusiastic, so flushed and lovely in the dim night light, better than she had ever liked her before. She even went so far as to lay one hand lightly on the rippling hair.

"I wanted you to live in my house, Rob," she said, and Rob instantly melted at this glimpse of an Aunt Azraella whom she had not known.

"Ah, dear Auntie, don't think me ungrateful; I love to think that you would rather it were I who had your home. But you have given it to me—that is enough for us to know. Now give it to Myrtle, for my sake, and let it be our secret," she said.

"Our secret? When I am gone?" asked Mrs. Winslow.

"Yes, into that world which holds no injustice," whispered Rob.

Mrs. Winslow was silent, and Rob waited, tears in her eyes, with the hand which had taken Aunt Azraella's hand after it had touched her hair, trembling eagerly.

"You see," Rob murmured when her aunt still kept silence, "it would hurt Myrtle if you took the house from her, and she had to receive it from me—and she has not deserved hurting."

"If I don't do this you will be made to see that the house is yours and that you can keep it," said Aunt Azraella slowly.

"Never, Aunt Azraella!" said Rob, "I shall give this house to Myrtilla Hasbrook; won't you do it for me?"

Mrs Winslow lay still, her head half turned from Rob. Then, suddenly she faced her.

"Yes, I will," she said. "But I hate to."

Rob sprang to her feet with an exclamation of delight. "Thank you, thank you more than I can say, dear Aunt Azraella! You are good to me, and I shall never forget."

"I hear the hall clock striking three; I took my medicine by that, this one is slow. Give me my drops. I wonder if any one ever heard of undue influence brought to bear on a dying woman to take away a gift she had made the person influencing her? You have a good deal of Sylvester Grey in you after all, Roberta; it's lucky you've got enough Winslow to save you from being all visionary and impractical," said Rob's uncle's widow with something between admiration and disgust in her voice.

In the morning Mrs. Winslow repented of her promise. She sent everybody from her room while she talked to Bruce Rutherford of the matter.

Rob dared not speculate on what Bruce told Mrs. Winslow; he kept his promise to Rob and urged the change of will—that was all that she knew—and, after all, it was enough.

Mr. Dinsmore came up that forenoon, and was closeted with Aunt Azraella.

When Rob brought her aunt her broth at noon the sick woman looked up at her with an inscrutable look. "I have kept my promise, Roberta; Myrtilla has the house," she said. "You're a foolish child, but maybe yours is wise folly. I suppose I should not be able to admit that much if I had not come to where you can look through."

More than that she never said, and in a day came the suffering that Dr. Fairbairn had foreseen, and with grim patience, and with the help of morphine Aunt Azraella waited the end.

It had come, and the Greys were back again in the little grey house, Myrtilla Hasbrook was installed in the big one, with her four little children to banish effectually its orderly primness under Aunt Azraella.

To Rob's unspeakable chagrin the secret of her generosity had leaked out; perhaps Aunt Azraella had meant it to be known, for she had acted upon Rob's thoughtless suggestion of a codicil, leaving the original bequest of the house to her to be read on the opening of the will, and she had so framed the codicil that it more than hinted at its being, the result of influence—and whose that influence save Rob's?

Rob turned thorny at her betrayal, and Wythie interposed her soft self as a fender for praise for her sister. The matter ceased to be discussed, and only the young widow's loving eyes told Rob that in spite of herself she was regarded as the Noble Benefactor—capitalized—which she had determined not to be.

This was to be the autumn of renunciation for the little grey house. Cousin Peace's dear little nest was built, and she and little Polly Flinders were to take possession of it as soon as it was made ready. And Lydia was solemnly prepared to espouse her Demetrius, and her mother was arriving to take—though perhaps not to fill—her place in the Grey household.

"Demetrius and I consider it wrong to indulge in worldly display at such a solemn event as entering into the holy bounds of matrimony," said Lydia, whose language grew more and more impressive as she profited increasingly by the companionship of Demetrius, and as she approached "the bounds" of matrimony. "I shall wear a brown suit throughout, with a brown hat, and no ornament but a brown feather. I'd like to ask you girls to the ceremony, but we consider it right to make it private. I've asked my mother to get here in time for it, and my friend Ella M. Barnes is going to stand up with me, and his brother, Lysander Dennis, is going to come out to stand up with him, and that's all there'll be, except the minister's wives, or somebody for the witnesses." Rob with difficulty restrained herself from suggesting that the minister's wife was probably not plural, and her mother asked instead: "Where are you to be married, Lydia?"

"At the minister's house, the Methodist minister's, because Demetrius' is willing to waive the Congregationalist, which is his sect," said Lydia.

"I should like to have a wedding supper for you here," said Mrs. Grey. "You have so long been an inmate of the little grey house."

"No, I don't want you should," said Lydia firmly. "I don't care about wedding suppers. You've given me my outfit, and that's enough. I'd rather you used the money in a good cause. If you wanted to do any more for me—you might subscribe, the whole family, to that temperance paper I set so much by; I'm getting up clubs."

"We will wait, then," said Mrs. Grey, controlling her lips. "We would rather do something more personal for you, Lyddie; there may be a chance later."

The three Grey girls hung out of the upper windows, watching with breathless interest Lydia departing to her marriage. Demetrius had come out from town to espouse Lydia in the glory of deeply creased pearl grey trousers, a white vest, stately Prince Albert coat, and a snowy satin tie, all topped by a silk hat. Fortunately the bride had secured Ben Bolt against an assault on this wedding raiment. The groom and bride-elect went out arm in arm from the little grey house, Lydia dignified in her uniform brown and audibly starched skirt. It occurred to the admiring girls, hurling slippers at her from their windows, that Lydia's mind was more distracted by her superiority to wedding finery than it would have been by all the glory of veil, wreath and bridal white.

After the wedding Lydia's mother returned to the grey house in Lydia's stead. The happy pair had gone on a wedding journey to Chautauqua, which it appeared both had longed to see; on their return they were to go to the new house to superintend Miss Charlotte; the little grey house would know Lydia no more.

Her mother proved to be a person who at once announced her daughter's likeness to her father, because she bore no resemblance to her mother. Her name was Rhoda, and she was rounded at every point, with an almost African tendency to sway her plump person, and a cheerful readiness to laughter. She was, as Rob had hoped, several years younger than Lydia, although she had lived two decades longer; age being, as, of course, every one knows, not a matter of years.

Timidly the Grey ladies confided to one another after Rhoda had been installed in Lydia's deserted room, that they foresaw something like relief in the possession of a lighter character in their kitchen. Rob said that she had learned to overlook herself, with charity for her own shortcomings, but that Lydia had made her dimly conscious that, ignore it as she would, she was on the Index. Wythie added that, good girl though Lyddie was, it would be restful not to feel as though one's most decorous street gown were a tarleton spangled skirt and a bright pink bodice.

"It is a funny wedding," said Prue from her own room. "I wonder whether people like that are really happy."

"They think they are, Prudy, and that does just as well," laughed Rob, but Wythie and she glanced at each other. Prue was a young lady, though she was but seventeen, and both her sisters feared that their hope for her was not to be fulfilled.

Bartlemy's fondness for her was unmistakable, but Arthur Stanhope, the acquaintance of the Twelfth Night entertainment, came more and more frequently to the little grey house, and Bartlemy's artistic eye did not appreciate Prue's marvellous beauty more keenly than did this newer friend. It was impossible for her mother's daughter to care for any one for the sake of his wealth, but Prue was young, and splendour and wealth had always held for her a glamour that it had not possessed for the other two girls.

Might it not be that Arthur Stanhope's immense fortune might clothe him in a charm that Prue, innocent of worldly intent, might mistake for love?

Well, Arthur Stanhope was trustworthy; Prue would not choose ill in choosing him, but Wythie and Rob were Bartlemy's advocates, though Rob glowered at a hint that Bruce deserved at least as well at her hands.

Only one year more and then would come the first break in the Grey household, for then Wythie and Basil would be married. She was twenty years old herself, poor Rob, rebelling against the fulfilment of their beautiful girlhood.

Two weeks after Lydia's wedding Miss Charlotte's tiny house received its final enrichings, and the last of her possessions had been carried by Battalion B from the little grey house to the new home. It was a day of tremendous excitement, for not only was it to see Cousin Peace's establishing, but at its close, Commodore Rutherford was at last coming to Fayre.

October winds were blowing high as Wythie, Rob, and Prue followed their mother and Cousin Peace down to the house which awaited them on the spot where Cousin Peace had lived all her serene life. Polly had been taken down first, "to make it seem homelike," Cousin Peace said, and to be there to welcome her. The boys were there also, and Frances; while Myrtilla Hasbrook, with her four children, had preceded the hostess to her home, and was there ready for the modest housewarming which this installation was to be. Mr. and Mrs. Demetrius Dennis had proved their title to look after Miss Charlotte by the shining order of everything, within and without, and by the odours which wafted in from the little kitchen.

Mrs. Grey, Miss Charlotte and the girls came into the square hall, which was also the living-room, and their faces brightened at the wood-fire on the hearth, and the sunshine pouring through the deep recessed windows, with their half curtains fluttering in the breeze which the fire necessitated admitting.

Polly ran to meet Miss Charlotte as if she had been parted from her for a month, instead of less than an hour. Then she turned to Rob and flung her arms around her. "I wish I had you both in one," she said.

"Like two out of a set of Japanese boxes?" suggested Rob. "It's much nicer to have us separate. Besides, Cousin Peace and I would be certain to quarrel as to which should be the outside one. You haven't gone away from us, Polly-kins—this little house is only the lean-to room, leaning a little further. And isn't it the dearest little home?"

There was no mistaking that Polly thought so. Miss Charlotte drew a long breath of profound content as she turned her face, from point to point, precisely as if she saw, whereas she was inhaling the room, if one may so express it.

"We are authorized, Miss Grey, to present you with this house, yielding up to you all claim and title," said Basil, with a tremendous bow, and as if the property had been his until that moment.

"And I have made a poem for the occasion, which I will now recite for you," added Bruce. "Usually it is Basil who is regarded as the literary member of Battalion B, but I have usurped his office. You will please notice that it is not my fault that the rhyme of my poem halts in one place—the only place, in fact, for the poem is not long. If the English language were ever pronounced as it is spelled the rhyme would be perfect, which you will at once perceive after I have recited it. Ladies and gentlemen: My poem."

Bruce also bowed deeply, turning from side to side, then proceeded to recite slowly and impressively:

Miss Grey,
The key!

and handed Miss Charlotte the key to her own front door.

"You perceive," said Bruce as soon as he could speak for his audience's applause and laughter, "that the spelling of those two words is identical; evidently the pronunciation of one or the other should be changed. There was not time after the composition of the poem—which consumed hours—to decide which it should be."

"If you had written your poem in Irish brogue it would have settled itself," observed Rob.

"Now we heroes of Battalion B are going down to meet our long lost father," said Bartlemy. "Come Bas and Bruce; there's not too much time."

The three tall, stalwart young fellows tramped out of the house and down the walk bordered by the old-fashioned shrubs which had sprung up again since the fire.

"How proud of them their father will be!" said Mrs. Grey, watching them with as loving a look as if they had been her own boys.

Polly and the little Hasbrooks were already friends, and Polly bore the four away to display the charms of her new home.

"It's as nice as it can be, and I'm glad you have it, Cousin Peace, but only think what renunciations the little grey house has had to make lately—you and Polly, Lydia—I suppose I can't include Demetrius——"

"Are those the only renunciations, and is it only the little grey house which has renounced, Rob dear?" asked Myrtle Hasbrook significantly.

"But, as I was about to say when this lady rudely interrupted me," continued Rob frowning at Myrtle, fearfully, "consider what we have gained: A new house to make a supplementary home; a new kind-of-cousin-through-our-aunt-in-law; up at the big house, little Doris and Ted and Bobby, besides dear little Betty to pet and look after, and——"

"Our father, dear Grey people," broke in Basil's voice, completing Rob's sentence.

The group around the fireplace of the new house turned towards the door.

They saw the three tall Rutherford boys, and with them a man in navy uniform, as tall as his sons, smiling at them with his handsome bronzed face.

"I need no introduction to the Greys. I have known you all so long through these great boys of mine that it feels like coming home, merely to meet you. It will take all of my two years' leave of absence to tell you how grateful I am for all that you have done for my boys. Dear Mrs. Grey, I am your humble debtor," said Commodore Rutherford, bending over the motherly hand which had wrought so much good to his sons, with a something caught in other climes added to his cordial frank heartiness of manner. "And which is Oswyth, my daughter Wythie?" he asked looking unerringly straight at Wythie's blushing and happy face. "My little girl, you dear, little old-fashioned, sweet faced little girl, I verily believe that Basil's love is not blind." And he kissed Wythie tenderly, half lifting her as he touched her cheeks.

"Come to supper in my new little house, and insure its prosperity by its happy beginning," called Miss Charlotte's musical voice from the dining-room.

---

[CHAPTER FIFTEEN]

ITS FIRST WEDDING

All winter Wythie had hemmed damask and stitched linen, like the old-fashioned little soul that she was. Not Oswyth Grey, the first, in her generation could have burned with more housewifely zeal for home-and-hand-made furnishings for the home to which she was never to go from the little grey house than did this Oswyth, set down, a sweet anachronism, amid the age of sewing-machines and ready-madeness. The long winter days were too short for the dear little woman, expert needlewoman though she was, in which to prepare for the home to which she was to go in June when Basil was graduated.

The Caldwell place—now the Rutherford place—was going through thorough renovations. The Greys had always known that the Rutherford boys were provided with enough money to remove them beyond anxiety as to the future. It was precisely like their unworldliness to accept this fact vaguely, and it gave Wythie something approaching a shock to discover that Basil was rich, measured by her simple standards.

"It won't matter in the least how poor are the books which he writes, Wythie; he will be able to live while they are writing, and then publish them himself and buy up the entire edition. So aren't you glad that his mother left Basil such a pretty little fortune?" asked Rob, energetically creasing the hem of the napkin for which she had offered her help.

"I think Basil will write nothing but poetry for twelve months," added Prue. "So he will need every penny. I don't consider the Rutherford boys' fortune riches."

"It is enough to keep up that big Caldwell place with two women and a man servant, and to live tastefully and other-fully; I call that rich, Prudence. What would you have?" said Rob.

Prue arose, tall and graceful in her eighteenth year, as a young goddess, and walked to the window where she stood looking out, her hands clasped at the back of her head with its crown of golden hair. The sunshine lit her up into a splendour that had nothing to fear from its most illuminating ray, and Wythie's busy hands paused, with her needle held at the full length of its thread, to look at her anew with an overwhelming sense of her fitness for a brilliant setting.

"I would have," said Prue slowly, without turning around, "I would have an income that was equal to these boys' principal. I would have great spacious rooms, filled with the most charming, exquisitely costumed people. I would have a retinue of well-trained servants that would keep me from feeling one jar of the wheels of living. I would have a life full of big interests, not a little, limited life like ours here. I would have the world, my sisters." And Prue extended her arms with a regal gesture that seemed at once to hunger for it and to seize it.

"Oh, Prue, Prudy!" expostulated Wythie in genuine distress. "After all our happy years in this dear little house! After all our blessed mother has taught us of the beauty of simplicity and unworldliness!"

Prue turned then to look at her elder with a tolerant smile. "Don't be so shocked, my dear, little, contented Mouse," she said. "You look as though I had announced my desire for something criminal. I don't want the world that we renounce in baptism; I don't want it in a sordid, vulgar, mean way. I want a big stage and on it I'd like to play a big part, and I'd like to use the power it gave me for glorious things. There are more ways of being good than humdrum ones."

"You are ambitious, Prudence, and Mardy says that ambitious women are not likely to be happy ones," insisted Wythie.

"Then I must be unhappy. I can't make myself like you, Wythie, satisfied to live, like Kiku-san, purring by the fire, nor like Rob, throwing herself into whatever lies at hand, and spending herself for a tiny circle," said Prue. "I'm going out into the world and it shall not be the worse for having me. I'm going to be part of a great scene, and I don't mean to be a blot on it."

Rob had let her napkin fall and was watching Prue as closely as Wythie was, sharing her presentiment of misfortune for their beautiful youngest, but seeing farther.

"Don't look so troubled, Wythiekins," she said. "Prue must dree her wierd, like the rest of humanity. She never was the wren we were; she wants to be an eagle and soar against the sun. I can understand her better than you do. I have my restless moments, but I think there is an instinct in me that is prescient; I know without having tasted, that the fruit of ambition does not nourish. Prudy will flash out into her bigger world, and she will learn that nothing matters, nothing counts but love and the inner things. I'm not two years older than you, my little tall sister, but I'm right, as you will see. It isn't only that Mardy thinks this; I feel it, or nobody knows what mad things I might do, for I'm fearfully impatient at times. It won't harm her, Wythie; the only difference is that what you and I know Prue must be taught by experience and disappointment."

"You talk like all the prophets melted into one," said Prue, impressed in spite of herself, for Rob's flashing dark eyes saw far, as her family well knew.

"Nothing that ends can satisfy any one with a mind, and much more with a soul, Prue. It is simple enough to understand, if once you realize that. Your world is too brief, dear Prudy. If you go forth to conquer it you will turn back some day to the narrow field you had here, and see that it was intrinsically a wider one, reaching farther, than that which you mistake for greater," said Rob.

"You talk like an old woman, and you are as inexperienced a girl as I am," said Prue.

"She talks like what she is; a creature of insights, and that is not a matter of years; Rob has always known," said Wythie, warmly. "'Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.'"

"Mercy upon us, Wythie, you and Rob ought to go about like Dinah Morris in 'Adam Bede,' in a cap and kerchief preaching unworldliness," cried Prue petulantly. "I shall take the world into my hands, not into my heart, and I'm going to make it give me its best gifts." She tossed her head as she spoke, and Wythie and Rob felt that her beauty made hers no idle boast.

Rob arose and, putting both arms around her, kissed Prue as her mother might have done. "Go your ways, dear," she said. "We fear nothing for you but that they will be harder ways than ours, and that in the end its youngest child will look back longingly at these peaceful years in the little grey house."

Prue broke away and quickly left the room, annoyed, moved, excited.

Rob went back to her seat and picked up her napkin, absently, examining it closely, as if the future lay folded in its hem.

"This means the death knell to poor Bartlemy's hopes, Wythie," she said. "This means Arthur Stanhope and his million."

"Ah, yes, I know that," sighed Wythie. "But, of course, it doesn't mean that Prue will marry for money!"

"No, but—well, we can't be sure, but I'm afraid that she doesn't realize the influence it has had on her mind," said Rob.

"Arthur Stanhope is very nice," suggested Wythie.

"How often have we assured each other of that?" laughed Rob. "We don't seem at ease about it. But he is, really, very nice, only he doesn't strike me as particularly forceful—and then he isn't, Bartlemy!"

"Oh, that's really the whole trouble," mourned Wythie. "Our dear, big Bartlemy! And I was so sure that not a link of the triple alliance would fail!"

Rob looked up quickly, but Wythie had not the most remote intention of teasing, so she resumed her creasing with heightened colour, and Wythie hemmed on, lost in thought.

The Grey girls went to the commencement, and saw their Battalion B dismissed from their beloved Mother Yale with honours for which all three, each in his way, had worked hard. The last train brought them back to Fayre: Wythie tucked under Basil's father's arm, who seemed hardly less fond of his little almost-daughter than Basil, while Basil looked after Hester; Lester Baldwin devoted himself to Frances, and Rob and Prue fell to Bruce and Bartlemy's share, just as they had always done.

"Mother Grey, here are our alumni!" cried Commodore Rutherford, his voice resounding through the stillness of Fayre at midnight as the party came up the flagged walk.

"I think it sounds pretty bad to say: 'I am an alumnus,'" said Bartlemy. "Much as I coveted the title it sounds zöological to me."

"Dear boys, I congratulate you with all my heart," said Mrs. Grey. "I feel a little of Mr. Peggotty's wonder when he found Davy 'a gentleman growed.'"

"I hope you are not struck by finding us gentlemen? We've been tolerably growed ever since you've known us," said Bruce.

"It was a delightful day? Not a blemish in it?" asked Cousin Charlotte, who had come up with Polly for the night to pay tribute to the alumni.

"It was the most beautiful, faultless day one could imagine," said Hester.

Basil began to count on his fingers. "Ten days from to-day I can easily imagine far more beautiful," he said, with a rapturous look at Wythie.

"Rhoda has made us chocolate, dear Alumni," said the Grey mother. "And we're going to drink your health from the cup from which Washington pledged the Grey of that day."

She did not care to discuss that ten days distant celebration, glad as she was that Wythie was to be so safely happy.

It was such a very short time to keep the circle in the little grey house unbroken, and those ten days sped like swallows over the old roof.

There had been stirring discussions as to the manner of Oswyth's marrying; only one thing had been settled from the first: Wythie insisted on a perfectly simple wedding, and on being married in her beloved little home.

When it came to inviting and omitting, the matter grew difficult. The Greys suddenly realized how long was their list of friends with a claim, once they admitted the claim of any outside the most strictly limited circle of relatives and intimate friends. Hester and Frances must be present, yet why not with them the Fayre girls and young men with whom Wythie had played from the day when her shoes were guiltless of heels and more than liable to bend around the ankles?

It ended in asking so many people that it was "a question as to how they could be nearer present than under the apple-trees," Prue said, and her remark solved the problem. It was June, and all the doors and windows of the little grey house could be thrown open to its warmth. Like all early houses the grey house had many doors, letting its guests step forth under its trees with but a brief delay upon broad flagstone steps. Wythie was to be married in the big wainscotted room in which her father had spent most of his dreaming days. Hester, Frances, Rob, and Prue, with the help of Bruce and Bartlemy, with Lester, had covered the walls between wainscotting and low ceiling with mountain laurel, and the effect was most beautiful.

The old clergyman who had baptised and catechised Wythie was to marry her, and Dr. Fairbairn was to give her away. Rob and Prue, in pale green gowns, were to be Wythie's bridesmaids, the other two Rutherfords supporting Basil. Wythie had begged that Polly might be flower maid, not in a bridal procession, since there was to be none, but carpeting with rose leaves the place where she and Basil were to stand while the Fayre young people sang the Lohengrin march without accompaniment.

Wythie had stood out for sentiment, and her wedding-gown was a frail muslin of the first Oswyth's, wrought with that other Oswyth's needlework, made, so tradition had it, for her own bridal which was never to be. Over it fell from the crown of Wythie's fair head to her little feet a priceless old veil worn for three generations by many brides of the Winslow race. Her only ornament was Basil's gift of his mother's pearls, on the back of whose clasp he had had engraved the poem which he and Wythie had read in the garret on the day of their betrothal, the stanza written to the Oswyth of long ago.

Wythie, ready for her bridal, stood for the last time before the mirror of the room which she and Rob had for so long shared through their happy childhood, their anxious, yet happy young girlhood, and through the perfect sympathy of their dawning womanhood and grown-up love. It seemed to Wythie, as her hands smoothed her frail old gown, that in some mystical way her dream had been fulfilled, and that in her that earlier romance was perfected.

Then she turned to her dear ones. Prue stood tall and beautiful in her mermaid-tint of robe, smiling, glad of Wythie's joy, yet moved. But Rob's cheeks were crimson in her effort for self-control. Say what one would, this was separation, and though the new home was so near she was giving up her Wythie. Mrs. Grey smiled at Wythie bravely, saying as she met her imploring eyes: "My darling, you have been all that a girl could be to her mother; I am glad to give you to Basil to be all that a woman can be to her husband."

But Wythie threw herself into her arms, crying: "Don't give me, Mardy; I can't be given. I must still be a daughter of the little grey house."

"Now, Wythiekins, don't be a goose! We couldn't get rid of you if we would," said Rob sternly. "It's lovely to have a brother. There's the chorus, the wedding march. Trot along Wythie!" And she hurried the little bride from the room, imploring all the powers that be to help her to drive back the sob then choking her and all succeeding sobs.

There was not a formal entrance. Before the guests realized that they were coming, Oswyth and Basil stood in their places on Polly's fragrant carpet, with Rob and Prue and Bruce and Bartlemy on either hand, and with Mrs. Grey, Commodore Rutherford and Cousin Peace as near as they could get, and with Polly looking up into the clergyman's eyes with such a solemn face that those who were not too deeply interested to notice her, wondered if she were going to forbid the bans.

A few words, the promises asked and given, and Oswyth Grey was Oswyth Grey no more. Young Basil Rutherford, carrying himself proudly, humbly erect, turned to lead down among his friends his little wife.

Rob did not know how the next half hour passed; she helped Wythie into her travelling gown and for one, long moment, the sisters clung to each other. For whatever happiness the future held, this was a sort of parting, and the little grey house had given up its eldest daughter.

Mrs. Grey followed Basil and Wythie out on the steps, tears in her eyes and smiles on the lips which kissed and blessed Wythie clingingly. A crack of a whip, Myrtilla Hasbrook's baby Betty upset a basket of rice, and Wythie was gone.

Rob, seeking for a spot in which to hide till she could be sure of herself, came upon Polly crying her eyes out in the hall closet, with Bruce trying to comfort her.

"Oh, Rob, oh Rob!" sobbed Polly. "The only thing that I can think of to make me bear it is that I'm so thankful it isn't you!"

---

[CHAPTER SIXTEEN]

ITS DENIAL AND ITS GIFT

Bartlemy was painting Prue. Not that there was anything novel in this; he had been painting Prue at every opportunity since he had first known her, but this attempt was an ambitious one, not a portrait, nor a study of the single figure in some pretty pose as usual, but a larger canvas and a difficult composition.

Under the splendid trees of the hill place where the little Hasbrooks and their mother were reigning what Aunt Azraella might have considered a reign of terror, Prue posed for Bartlemy with the four children around her whose eager hands she was filling with daisies. The picture was to be called: "My Lady June," and on it Bartlemy built high hopes of early fame. It was progressing slowly; neither bribes, threats nor prayers could keep Ted and Bobby Hasbrook still long at a time; Doris was an ideal model, but lively little Betty was as reliable as a butterfly, and Bartlemy had to take what he called "snap-shot strokes" on her restless little figure.

The picture bade fair to be something well worth doing if Bartlemy proved equal to his own conception. Prue, lovely beyond words in her floating white draperies, swaying downward to the children as she enriched them with the dower of June, was like the incarnation of the summer-time, so exquisite that the young artist had to fight to keep his hand steadily at his work, and his mind from wandering from Prue as a model to the Prue whom he daily feared more and more beyond his reach.

Basil newly married and engrossed in his happiness, Bruce working hard under Dr. Fairbairn's strict requirements left Commodore Rutherford very much to the society of his youngest son, between whom and the big sailor there sprang up a beautiful intimacy of friendship, founded on their differences. Bartlemy was sufficiently an artist to talk of himself quite simply, and he and his father had discussed the probability of Prue, at some future day, making him happy as Wythie had made Basil.

"You are only a boy, my great son, but I think you know perfectly well what you will want when you are ready to take it, and though you are so young I should be delighted if beautiful Prudence cared enough for you to wait for you. It would not necessarily be long; you have as much to start upon as Basil has," said this comrade-father, wise in reading the set of tides and winds. "But, my son, though Prue is fond of you in her frank sisterly manner of established custom, it is Arthur Stanhope whom she will marry, and not my boy, who must find his consolation in the galleries of Europe as many another disappointed artist has found it before him."

"Not without a try at a better fate, father," said Bartlemy with a certain compression of the lip that meant determination.

Prue, bending forward that day, under the glorious trees, amid the waving grass, and holding out the daisies to wriggling Bob and Ted, felt the determination and preoccupation of the painter's mind, and dreaded a scene that would be painful to them both. So she chatted on in a ceaseless flood of varying topics, wondering if this really could be only Bartlemy with whom she felt so ill at ease.

"See here, boys, I'm going to chloroform you the next time," cried Bartlemy at last. "How do you think I can paint a perpetual motion—let alone two motions? Oh, say, Betty, now don't jump out of the picture like that, not even if you do want to reach that tassel grass!"

"Betty, Betty, try to be quiet!" begged Prue. "Poor Bartlemy! he can't paint, and you will have spoiled our beautiful picture!"

"It's so hot!" sighed Betty.

"Yes, and what do we care for pictures? You can get better ones'n this'll be at the grocer's, swapping for soap wrappers," grumbled Bobby.

"'N Doris wants to finish Tobias' collar, though she's too polite to say so," added Ted.

"Doris is a comfort, a model model," said Bartlemy. "We might as well let the kiddies off, Prue; they've stood it as long as they can, and the rest of the time they would be no good. I've got what I wanted most to-day, and can work it up without models for a day or two."

The children had scattered at the first suggestion of dismissal, all but Doris, who paused to pick up some tubes and a brush which Bartlemy had dropped before walking sedately away to resume the collar which she was making for old Tobias, who found his declining years sunshine-flooded by the coming of this little maid.

Bartlemy set his boxes in order, and folded up his easel, then he looked up at Prue, who said hastily: "I think I'll go on up to the house and see Myrtle Hasbrook for a little while."

"No; don't, Prue. Let me tell you what I was thinking," said Bartlemy. "I was thinking," he continued, disregarding Prue's gesture of dissent, "that I should like to paint you as Romola."

"Romola? Among these Connecticut hills?" laughed Prue.

"No, indeed, but Romola in Florence," said Bartlemy. "Get an old Florentine costume, and the Florentine background, and wouldn't you make a dandy model for Romola?"

"It's not very easy to get the Florentine background—" began Prue.

"Perfectly easy," said Bartlemy eagerly, interrupting her. "Prue, I'm going over this autumn. I have enough money to afford never to sell a picture—as much as Bas has. Come with me to Florence; let me show you, let us see together for the first time the pictures we all dream of, and let me see the people in the galleries turn away from the Titians, and the golden hair which Henner paints to look at the golden-haired American girl, more beautiful than any of them, my pride, my model, my inspiration, my——"

"Bartlemy, wait!" cried Prue in distress, hardly knowing this eager, earnest pleader for her old chum. "I may go to Italy, too—not this autumn, but by spring. We are such old friends that I can tell you, and you'll understand, though I would not have any right to speak of this to any one else. Perhaps you may paint me as Romola in Florence, if we meet there. I want to go to Europe to stay for a long time—on my wedding-trip. Arthur Stanhope—Oh, Bart dear, please don't look so hurt. He hasn't told me that he cares for me, not yet, but I know that he does care and will say so, and I shall go to Italy with him, not with my dear old chum, Bartlemy. But I'll see you there, and you shall paint me as Romola, Bart dear. I'd love to be painted as Romola, not Romola in black and serious under Savonarola's influence, but radiant, beautiful, golden-haired, young Romola, as she was when Tito found her."

"And you'll always care for me; why don't you add that, Prue—it's what girls say in novels when they don't care a hang for a fellow," muttered Bartlemy.

"Oh, I do care for you, I shall always care for you," protested Prue eagerly. "I didn't say it because I know you are sure of it! Aren't you my special property, the member of Battalion B that belonged to me, just as Basil and Bruce belonged to Wythie and Rob?"

Bartlemy looked up at the girl with a new anxiety that made the noble lad forget his own misfortune for an instant. She spoke like a child, with entire unconsciousness of the sting this assurance must bear for Bartlemy.

"Say, Prue, you are fond of Stanhope? You—you aren't making a mistake, are you? Because if you are I should think you would see what all this is to me," he said. "I don't understand how you can help knowing that kind of caring doesn't comfort a fellow much, not if you've felt the other kind of love yourself."

"I'm not making a mistake, Bart dear. I'm as fond of you as I can be, but Mr. Stanhope is ever so much older than I am, and it's quite, quite different. We are chums, Bart, and we shall be always, shall we not?" Prue held out her hand with a cheerful kindness that made Bartlemy catch his breath as he took the little white thing that seemed to understand as well as the girl's brain did what she was denying and what she was offering him.

"It isn't likely that I shall change much to you," he said, and even Prue saw the mute misery he was trying to hide.

"It's only because I am pretty and you are an artist, Bartlemy; if it wasn't for that and my being the youngest, the one you always walked and talked with most, you would not care more for me than for Rob—everybody admires Rob. You mustn't imagine that you are unhappy, Bart dear, because that would distress me beyond anything. You won't mind, will you? And if we should be in Florence we'd have the nicest times, don't you think we should? I mean if we met there? Because we're like Joe Gargery and Pip: 'Ever the best of friends,' aren't we, dear Bartlemy—chum?" And Prue smiled, radiant in her beauty with the breeze dappling her faultless face with the shadows of the branches. She thought privately that she was showing wonderful skill and insight in the difficult task of adjusting her best friend and first lover, tactfully giving him the clue to their future intercourse.

Bartlemy seemed less pleased with the interview. He was wise enough to see that no mere protestations on Prue's part could so effectually deny him hope of winning her as did her careless indifference, her childish lack of understanding of how hard it was for him to stand there with her smiling at him, forever out of reach.

"I think I'll go home, Prue," he said a trifle unsteadily. "You're going up to Mrs. Hasbrook. Good-bye, Prue."

"Good-bye, Bartlemy? Well, till to-night then. We shall see you after tea. Good-bye," said Prue still smiling, but with a troubled look creeping over her face as she watched Bartlemy gather together his painting tools and walk slowly down the hill without looking back. For she guessed that the picture would never be finished; that for the young painter of whom she was, in her insufficient way, so very fond, "My Lady June" would remain but a sketch upon the canvas, symbol and reminder of his first romance.

Bruce went alone to the little grey house that evening. Bartlemy remained with his father till late at night, and when they parted with the handshake which spoke them friends as well as father and son, it was arranged that Bartlemy should at once go away to begin the European study to which he had been looking forward throughout his college days, though then he had not meant to go alone.

Commodore Rutherford was to go with the lad as far as England, possibly into France. It was all so sudden that the Greys had hardly time to adjust their minds to the fact that Bartlemy was going before he came to say good-bye. Basil and Wythie were at home and this first real break in the sextette of beautiful comradeship, as well as their disappointment in its cause, threw a shadow over the other five who without Bartlemy would be so incomplete.

Wythie and Rob kissed the tall boy with tears which they did not try to keep back, and the dear Grey mother held him close.

"Good-bye, my dear; good-bye, dear Bartlemy," she whispered. "I am so sorry, but I fear we can do nothing but be sorry. Learn to be happy; one disappointment in the beginning of life will not harm, but will strengthen you, and remember we all love you, and shall watch your every step with anxious pride."

"Good-bye, Mardy Grey. The little grey house has given me much, but it has denied me its best gift," said Bartlemy. He looked once more at Prue, standing a little aloof, pale, sorry, ashamed, but not relenting, and last of all he took her hand without a word. The door closed behind him, and with his footsteps down the flags died away the last echo of the unbroken tramp of Battalion B, which had brought cheer to the little grey house for more than four years.

"For just you and Basil can never be the battalion," said Rob reproachfully to Bruce, as if it were his fault.

Wythie and Basil went away to their new home and Bruce went with them. Bartlemy was to start on a train that stopped on signal at Fayre at half-past three in the morning. It was a dismal going away, and the Greys remembered how much they should miss not only Bartlemy but the kind Commodore whose very voice was a cordial. He would return in two months, leaving Bartlemy abroad to study.

"Of course time, and the work he loves so much, and the glorious pictures and architecture he is to see for the first time, will heal Bartlemy's wound, Rob," said Mrs. Grey, as she and her second daughter lingered after Prue had gone soberly up-stairs, leaving them to themselves. "And Rob, only fancy! I have had a letter from Arthur Stanhope in the last mail to-night announcing his coming here to-morrow, avowedly to ask little Prudy to marry him. I must take to cap and spectacles, for she is my baby—yet after all, she is eighteen."

"To-morrow! The very day poor Bartlemy sails! It is altogether too much like that game you used to play with us when we were babies, sticking bits of paper on your finger-tips, and crying: 'Fly away, Jack, fly away, Jill! Come again, Jack, come again, Jill!' I do think he might have waited! Yet how could he know?" cried Rob.

"It is a good letter, manly, straightforward—I left it up-stairs, or I would show it to you," said her mother with a half laugh at Rob's vehemence. "He says he will not assume that I know that he wants to marry our Prue, though he feels sure that we must have seen how profoundly he admires her. He wants me to receive him to-morrow with the intention of asking her to marry him. I suppose I must say yes, Rob?"

"I suppose you must, Mardy. Really, I can't feel about Prue's marrying as I did about Wythie's," said Rob. "Though I do feel very badly that it isn't dear old Bart."

"And I feel much more about it, in a certain way," returned her mother. "Wythie's marriage held no risk; it was the natural and lovely outcome of a charming romance, but Prue, foolish, ambitious, beautiful Prue is going into a different world from ours, and I am less sure of her fate."

"She wouldn't be satisfied in our world, Mardy; she never was. So isn't it best to be glad that another has opened to her?" suggested Rob.

"Wise Robin!" smiled her mother. "I suppose it is."

Mrs. Grey had telegraphed to Arthur Stanhope her permission to come, as he had asked her to do. A box of rare and costly flowers preceded him, and Prue was making herself ready to receive him with triumph in her eyes, and without a shadow of doubt or regret to confirm her mother's fears. But she was so young; did she really know what she wanted? Mrs. Grey could not answer her own question. It lurked behind the eyes smiling at Prue in the glass as the girl made herself ready to receive her coming fate. She turned to meet the eyes with a little laugh of satisfaction, pardonable to the possessor of such beauty as she had just been contemplating.

"I think we weren't half sympathetic enough with Lydia in having a young man come out from New York to see her—it's really very nice, Mardy," she cried, shaking out of its box a single pink rose from among the many long-stemmed beauties filling the room with their odour. "I suppose you and Rob, and Wythie, if she were here, would rather have one of those old-time blush roses from the bush some one planted ages ago," Prue continued, "but I wouldn't; I'd rather have this magnificent thing that came from a hot-house after ever so long cultivating and selecting to make it what it is."

"Only that you may be good and happy, Prudy; that granted, your mother will not quarrel with you for loving the splendours of a world that never for a moment has appealed to her," said Mrs. Grey gently.

"Kiss me then, you dear, sweet mother," said Prue. "It's a pity I'm not like you, but I am a worldly Prudence—oh, I never thought of it before! Why did you name me Prudence if you did not want me to love this world's goods prudently?"

"It has always seemed to me imprudent to love them, Prue. But here's your kiss, my baby, and all good attend you, darling."

The faint blush tint of her floating gown, deepening into the pink of the rose he had sent her seemed to Arthur Stanhope, as Prue glided into the room, like the dawn, for he saw that she had come to fulfil his dreams.

It was moonlight, and Rob, sitting chin in hand by the window which Wythie had loved best in the room that had been theirs, saw her younger sister walking in its rays, and knew that she alone was now wholly the daughter of the little grey house.

The next morning saw Prue stirring early in a rapture of plans and gratified desires which the day was not long enough to allow her to tell to her mother and to Wythie and Cousin Peace who came in to wish joy to little Prudy.

The girl walked on air and the air was rainbow-tinted. Arthur's aunt, one of the leaders of the best social set in New York, had sent a loving note to the girl whom he had chosen, asking her to come to her at Newport for August, and then to go with them to the Berkshires, to her other house, for the supplementary season there.

"Only fancy," cried Prue, lifting her arms in a rapture that seemed to call upon all the world to witness and to share it. "I, I, Prue Grey, who used to go to school shabbily clad, who had to look at goodies in the shops till my mouth watered, I am going to Newport, to the Berkshires, to walk on velvet and to eat off of gold plate like a queen, and to take my place among everything and everybody I want! Oh, it is a dream! It can't be true!"

"But your blood is the best in the land; you talk as if you were a beggar maid, and Arthur Cophetua!" cried Rob indignantly.

"He is giving me everything I want," said Prue. "He thinks he is not worthy to untie my shoe, so don't be afraid that he undervalues me."

"Wouldn't you rather be all alone, just with him this summer when you are first engaged?" asked Wythie timidly. She really felt afraid of this new Prue who swept everything before her like an empress.

Prue laughed. "You dear, sentimental little Wythie-goose!" she cried patronizing her favourite sister. "Of course I wouldn't! I wouldn't rather anything were anyway but just as it is! But I'll tell you what Arthur says—he says I'm so pretty he would not dare to let them all see me unless I had first promised—Oh, no; I won't tell you, either—it's silly!"

"We might conjecture what you had omitted—let me see—three words, I should think," remarked Rob.

"Dear little Prudy, I hope you will be happy every minute of this life that you think is to prove fairyland to you," said Cousin Peace gently.

Suddenly Rob seemed to shake herself mentally. "I really don't see why we all have an ill-concealed feeling that Prue is liable to be anything but happy!" she cried. "It is all because we love Bartlemy, and our thoughts are following him across the deep. Of course you will be happy, Prudy, and of course it is fine to be going to Newport and way stations, dancing and looking lovely with nothing to distract your attention from newly-found bliss, 'with the world so new-and-all,' as Kipling says. You are going to enjoy your little eighteen-year-old self till you won't believe it's you. And Arthur is a nice fellow, who has behaved beautifully all through this trying period, and I'm glad you are to be set in such a way as to show our jewel to her best advantage. We are envious old foxes, looking at your grapes! Ask us, Wythie and me, to your splendid mansion—when you get one—and you'll see how worldly we shall be, too!"

Prue laughed, but she did not need Rob's consideration. She had been too engrossed in the wonderful splendour awaiting her to be sensitive to the misgivings of her family. And after all why should she not be happy who had always longed for luxury, and to whom poverty in the old days had been more irksome than to her sisters?

"I'll ask you," she said, "to my fine mansion, to my box at the opera, to drive behind my splendid horses, to dine with my brilliant friends. Oh, girls, won't it be lovely?"

Prue ran down-stairs to meet Frances and Hester, whom she saw coming, and to tell them of her glories before any one else could take the edge off of her tidings.

"I wish she realized more, were less young. She seems scarcely different than when her father bought her that little blue silk parasol in her third year, and she refused to eat except beneath its shade," said Mrs. Grey.

"She was not unhappy after she got used to the parasol, although it no longer held her spellbound, Mardy," said Rob, the philosopher. "Why should she be unhappy after she has grown accustomed to a million? Prudy is so happy now that her parasol would not interest her. Let us believe that by and by she will be so much happier than now that this beginning too will be forgotten in greater bliss."

"Prue is one of the Grey girls, your daughter, Mary; I am sure wealth will not spoil her, and only think, with her great beauty and her great wealth what royal opportunities she will have for doing good!" added Cousin Peace. "Dear little golden-haired Prudy! She is only very young, and that will be but too soon corrected in her."

"Walk up the street part way with me, Robin; my husband will be waiting lunch for me," said Wythie with such a happy smile that Rob remarked, as she snatched a parasol:

"Dear me, how fine that sounds! Happiness seems to be a drug in our market. I'll come, Mrs. Rutherford; Hester and Frances will have to listen to Prue a while but they won't mind."

---

[CHAPTER SEVENTEEN]

ITS ADAMANTINE DAUGHTER

"'It's we two, it's we two, it's we two for aye,'" sang Rob to a slight, inconsequent tune of her own making. "We are the only Grey girls left, Mardy, the only reliable daughters of the little grey house. What with Wythie so very young-matronly and preoccupied in her home, and Prue shining at Newport and writing us of the cotillions and general splendours, and of admiration enough to turn any head, I begin to feel like Holmes' Last Leaf."

"Why, that's a rather dismal ending to a speech that began in such a contented little chant," said Mrs. Grey, looking up from her desk with her pen marking the point half-way up her column of accounts at which she had suspended addition.

"Oh, no; it's not a withered, dun leaf; it's a flaming maple," returned Rob. "But it is queer to be the spinster Miss Grey, with one's sisters married and gone—gone at any rate, and as good as married. The house is quiet, and—and—well, spacious."

"Lonely, Rob?" suggested her mother.

"No, Mardy; not lonely with you, but I feel, as near as I can express it—shrunken," said Rob thoughtfully. "I miss the girls, of course, but there is something sweet about this solitude of two, as the French say—like being an only child."

Mrs. Grey looked at Rob consideringly, wondering how long she could keep this daughter, if not the one dearest to her motherly heart, certainly the one that she could least well spare. The girl's face was not less brilliant, but it was quieter; the quick tongue had learned the curb, and there was a softer, more womanly look around the sensitive lips which always seemed ready to laugh or to quiver because the upper one was so short. "Wythie is as pretty and sweet as a dove, and Prue is rarely beautiful, but to my eyes Rob is the prettiest of the Grey girls, the one whose face has most power to charm," thought the mother for the unnumbered time as she looked at her. She dared not allude to Bruce. She believed and hoped that sooner or later Bruce's quiet persistence and devotion would win from Rob its reward, but the girl sprang to arms so quickly at a hint of such a possibility that her mother dared not suggest now that Rob, too, might slip away from the little grey house.

Instead, she asked: "Aren't you going up to see Wythie a moment before you go down to Charlotte's?"

"Yes; Wythie wants advice on the curtains for the Commodore's room," said Rob. "Much as we all like and enjoy Commodore Rutherford, I wonder if Basil and Wythie don't half dread his coming back? Love is selfish; not one bit noble, no matter what the poets say. Wythie flies to hug me when I come in, but I always feel sure that she likes to have me shut the door and leave Basil and her to themselves."

"Why, Robin!" remonstrated her mother.

"Oh, well; it's all right. We made up our minds to that, I suppose, when we let her go. She loves me just as well as ever, but she isn't my Wythie altogether, as she used to be—she's my exclusively-and-happily married sister. Home is home, Mardy, and every one, who doesn't belong inside it, no matter who she may be, is an outsider. Very likely I shall feel just the same when I have been longer alone with you."

"If ever you marry, dear, I shall pray you to come here to live, and let me have a corner in your home, otherwise the little grey house would be left bereft, indeed. Would you mind letting your Mardy Grey stay with you, and should I be an outsider?" asked Mrs. Grey.

"You are the very inside and core of my heart, Mardy, as you well know, and those are the only terms upon which I would marry—if I could marry. But I won't marry, Mardy; I never, never will! I don't want to. I want to be Rob Grey, just nobody but Rob Grey of the little grey house to the end." And Rob dropped a kiss on her mother's glossy brown hair as she went out of the room to get her hat for her call on Wythie. "You could not be any one better or more beloved," her mother called after her, and resumed her accounts.

Rob went up the street in the bright September sunshine, wondering at her vague dissatisfaction, which made her feel unlike her usual blithe self. It was worse than foolish, she told herself, but Wythie's blissful contentment had a bad effect upon her mind.

Basil faithfully retired after breakfast to the room which had been set apart for his use and wrote till luncheon, resisting the strong temptation to watch his girl-wife busying herself about her morning household cares. So Rob did not expect to find Basil when she came in by the side door, and followed the sound of Wythie's voice to the library. She did not expect to find Bruce either, yet there he was, at the hour when he was usually busiest, for Bruce was working in earnest at his profession, and Dr. Fairbairn told enthusiastic stories of his assistant's natural gift for healing and of his untiring industry.

Rob halted a perceptible instant on the threshold before entering; she had avoided Bruce of late, feeling an electrical atmosphere surrounding him.

The "Hallo, Rob!" with which he greeted her sounded safe enough, and Rob returned it cheerfully as she entered.

It was a beautiful room, high ceiled and dignified, and its appointments were perfect. Rob looked around it with new satisfaction, seeing anew, as she did at each visit, how quietly fine and tasteful was Oswyth's home.

"I'm so sorry that I made you come up here first this morning when you were in a hurry to get to Cousin Charlotte's, Rob," said Wythie. "You know I thought Frances was going to town on the 1.53 train, but she went this morning, so I had to decide the curtains for myself and give her the sample. I took the autumn-tinted fabric. Basil says he is sure father would prefer it, and I want the room to be what he likes, although he won't be in it long, and nobody knows how soon he will get back here. Aren't you going to stay with me, or haven't you settled Cousin Peace's problem?"

"If you're going down to Miss Charlotte's I'll take you there safely, Rob. I've got to meet the doctor at the new family's, four doors below her," said Bruce rising.

Rob flushed; she had been long trying to avoid these solitary interviews with Bruce, and now Wythie had made it impossible for her to escape this walk without being downright rude. She arose with a reluctance that every muscle betrayed, and said: "I suppose I must go if you don't need me, Wythie. Cousin Peace is waiting for me; I told her I would hurry down as soon as I had seen your samples once more."

"Basil and I are going to drive over to the lake this afternoon; be ready by three, and tell Mardy," said Wythie nervously. Her experienced eye detected a look in Bruce's that spoke of determination, and in Rob's an expression of defiant fear.

She watched them off down the long walk under the heavy trees that shaded the approach to her new home, clasping and unclasping her hands in a panic of foreboding. It took all her strength of mind to keep her resolution not to disturb Basil during his working hours; she longed to rush to him and say what she could now say only to herself and the carved chair upon which she was kneeling by the window: "Oh, dear, oh dear! He is going to tell her he cares for her, and she is going to be horrid! Oh, Rob, how can you, when he is such a dear boy, and you know you will never look at any one else! it isn't like Prue. Oh, I wish Basil were here!"

Wythie's forecast was proving entirely correct. Bruce walked down to the gate without a word, and Rob kept at his side with a most forbidding expression on her face, which seemed to have had all its ripples and sunshine frozen in Wythie's library.

For a few paces down the street Bruce preserved this silence, then suddenly he halted, and turned on Rob fiercely. "Look here, Rob," he said. "You've been trying to keep out of my way, and I suppose you think I'll take that for my answer. But I won't! Are you going to marry me?"

"No, indeed I am not," retorted Rob with equal emphasis.

"Why not?" asked Bruce, walking on as if disposed to argue it.

"Because I do not want to," said Rob, evidently not inclined to discussion.

"But you care for me," insisted Bruce.

"Do I? Well, I shall not very long if you bother me about such things," said Rob.

"I want you, Rob," said Bruce with a break in his voice that softened Rob a little.

"I wish you wouldn't; it is so unpleasant," she said.

"Rob, dear, from the first moment that I saw you I cared for you in a boyish way. And now that I am a man you have grown to be so much a part of every hope I have, every thought I think, every effort I make that to tear you out of my life would leave a crippled Bruce Rutherford forever. I don't mean to appeal to your pity, of course, but it's the simple truth that my future lies at your mercy. It's not going to be with me as with Bartlemy. I don't mean that Bart wasn't in earnest and that Prue did not hurt him, but he has the artist nature, and he'll pull through. I'm a fellow of one idea, and it wouldn't be easy to uproot me and make me grow in new soil. Somehow, I can't imagine living without you, Rob. What's the use of my telling you all this, when you know me better than I know myself, when I've never had a secret from you in all these years of our fine friendship? You know what it will be if I have to try to limp along without you. You helped Hester with the Green Pasture's; why do you want to cripple me worse than that poor little chap you've got there is crippled? Can't you imagine what it means to me even to think of losing you, Rob?"

Bruce held out his hands with an appealing gesture, and Rob saw them, the strong well-shaped, true doctor's hands, tremble.

"Oh, don't Bruce," she begged faintly. It was harder than she had thought it would be, and all the courage and defiance with which she had set out had ebbed away.

"Then why, why are you treating me as you do?" demanded Bruce. "There isn't another fellow whom you know and would rather have—there's no Arthur Stanhope in the way of this Rutherford wooer. And I'm sure you love me, Rob, though you don't know it, or won't admit it."

This was an unfortunate remark for Bruce. It sent Rob's head up in the air again, and awoke her spirit of resistance.

"I freely admit being fond of you, Bruce, but you are not satisfied with my affection. You want me to marry you, and I don't want to marry. Of course there isn't any other I want—but that would be quite as true if you omitted the other:—There isn't anybody I want, you or another. I tell you I don't want to marry; I'm sick of hearing of marrying—Wythie, Frances, Bartlemy, you, even Prue, all wanting to marry some one! Hester is the only sensible person. Won't you please, please, Bruce, try to be reasonable? Can't you see how unpleasant it makes things? I have to dodge you for fear you'll make love to me, and we used to be so happy and affectionate and comfortable! It's all your own fault. For pity's sake believe me, Bruce, and let's be happy again! I won't marry, I can't marry, I don't want to marry, and all you are doing is spoiling a chumminess that is as much nicer than sentimental fussing as roast beef is nicer than white of egg, beaten to a stiff froth." And whimsical Rob stopped to laugh at her involuntary quotation from the cook-book, though her eyes were brimming.

Bruce looked at her and to her great relief his face cleared up, though she might have felt less cheerful if she could have read his mind.

"You're only a fledgling still, Roberta," he said to her manifest annoyance. "You are unable to diagnose your own symptoms; as a physician-to-be I think I know you better than you know yourself. Very well, then; so be it. I will stop pestering you, and you shall get back your old-time comrade as near as I can recall him. Of course we are both going to remember that we are man and woman, even though we are young ones, not boy and girl any longer, and of course you cannot quite forget that I love you. But there is no help for that; we'll go back to the old ways as near as we can. So don't dodge me any more, Roberta, and I'll curb my impatience."

Rob looked at Bruce sidewise and most doubtfully. "You mean mischief," she said. "You always did when you were too good and yielding."

Bruce laughed outright. "I mean beneficiently—to us both," he said. "'You'll love me yet and I can wait your love's protracted growing.' We always loved our Browning, you know. Here is Cousin Charlotte's gate. Run in, little Robin, and don't worry. If I had lost you I couldn't meet the doctor down yonder and go on with my work—I'd be—well, never mind all that! We're not to talk of these things, and I hope I'd be man enough to live my life to some purpose if I lost my eyes, and limbs—or even you! But it would take time, to face my maimed life. It seems queer to find you, clear, decided, sane Rob, trying to fight against happiness, and not understanding yourself! Good-bye, Robin dear. When you see me again it will be your old chum Bruce, so don't run away from him. Good-bye."

Bruce took one of Rob's hands—the left one nearest him—shook it kindly, raised his hat and walked swiftly away, leaving Rob to go slowly into Cousin Peace's pretty house with a new sensation of bewilderment and defeat subduing her into a person whom she did not in the least recognize as confident Rob Grey.

Lydia opened the door and Rob amazed her by exclaiming: "Why I forgot all about you, Lyddie; you're another!"

"Another what, Roberta?" Lydia asked with her customary gravity.

"Another who has lately married. It doesn't matter; I had been reckoning up how many seemed to have been stricken with the epidemic; that's all," said Rob.

"What you are meant to do, you do, Roberta, and it's not an epidemic," returned Lydia. "It is a state of great blessedness when the brethren dwell together in it in unity."

The sound of a piano ceased from within and Polly, growing taller and with an awakening look on her pale face, rushed out to greet Rob with the ardour of her intense and hidden nature. Rob folded the little girl in her arms with more than usual tenderness.

"Dear Polly, did Cousin Peace think I had broken my promise? I had to go to Wythie's first, you know," she said.

"No; we weren't looking for you so soon; I thought I should get through practising before you came," said Polly. "Maraine is waiting for you."

Maraine was the title by which Rob had solved the difficulty of what Polly should call Miss Charlotte, "for, though she was not really your godmother—I doubt your having a godmother, Pollykins,—she is near enough a fairy godmother to deserve the name," she said.

"Very well; take me to her, Polly," Rob said now, and followed Polly to Miss Charlotte, whose soft voice and gentle, unseeing face, raised to smile at her, fell on Rob's perturbed spirit like the balm which she always found Cousin Peace.

"What has happened, Robin dear?" asked Cousin Peace instantly. "What troubles you?"

"Nothing worth talking about, dearest peaceful cousin," said Rob.

"Bruce came down with you, Polly said. Did he tell you what has been discussed, and does it frighten you?" asked Miss Charlotte.

"He told me nothing except—Oh, why are we talking about Bruce?" Rob burst out in an hysterical cry that revealed to Miss Charlotte all her troubles.

"Only that it was Bruce's plan which I was to lay before you—Hester wanted me to tell you without waiting for her to-morrow, when she comes out. Bruce thinks that in the course of his reading he has stumbled upon the cause of the lameness, the worse than lameness, of our one boy at Green Pastures. He worked on his idea secretly till he felt that he had his theory and proposed course well in hand, then he laid it before Dr. Fairbairn. The old doctor is most wrought up about it. It involves an operation, which, if Bruce is right, will cure that poor child. The old doctor has called upon several surgeons; some of them laugh at Bruce, with the intolerance of older minds for young ones, but a few—and they are the more important ones—agree with Bruce that, young and undiplomaed though he is, he has hit upon an actual discovery. They are discussing performing the operation on the child—for Bruce could not be allowed to do it, of course—under Bruce's direction, in a sense. It is not fully decided, but very nearly. Curious Bruce did not speak of it himself!"

"Not a bit; it is just like Bruce to let other people tell even his best friend of his triumphs—and, Cousin Peace, I was not very nice to Bruce," said Rob, with a glow of pride in the clever student, and a humility new and bewildering.

"Oh, dearest Robin, don't be blinder than I, and fail to recognize happiness when it knocks at your door!" cried Miss Charlotte, laying her hand on Rob's. "Bruce deserves the best at the hands of all of us—Bruce is my boy of boys, you knew."

"There's not another boy on earth equal to him; we all know that, not even Basil and Bartlemy, but that doesn't make one love him, does it?" cried Rob.

"It makes us all love him, Robin, and we will let him feel it, quite simply and honestly, as is his right," said Cousin Peace softly. "Whether or not the operation is performed, and whether or not Bruce's theory is correct, the mere fact that he formed it and is clever enough to have thought of it has already won him honour in the eyes of his future associates and it has given him a place among those of his profession who think and discover. Isn't that a great thing for a student to have accomplished?"

"It is fine, Cousin Peace; don't think I am not glad," said Rob feebly. "Is Polly going on well with her music?"

"Better than we expected; she is a faithful little Polly, and works hard," said Miss Charlotte, with a smile that rewarded Polly for aching muscles in back and untrained little fingers. "Mr. Armstrong is coming out especially to see Polly on Saturday. He is greatly interested in her. What about Prue?"

"She goes from glory to glory, revelling in admiration, luxury and all the honey-pots of the world open in a row, pouring their sweetness over her," said Rob. "Mardy will not let her marry till spring, you know, but I suppose she will be with Arthur's aunt a great deal this winter—this aunt took Arthur's mother's place when she died, you remember, don't you? So it is really like letting Prue go to her future mother-in-law. Mardy can hardly help it. Besides, Prue is nearly beside herself with happiness, and the only fly in her honey is that she can't afford to dress like the girls she meets, but even that trouble will drop off when she is Arthur's wife. Isn't it strange that Prue should have got what she wanted, when she aimed at something so far beyond her reach, apparently?" And Rob sighed unconsciously.

"It is a great joy to know that all three of you dearest girls are finding such perfect joy," said Cousin Peace, while Polly climbed into Rob's lap at the sound of the sigh.

"Hester has done a nice thing, did you know it?" asked Rob, as if anxious to get the conversation into safe waters.

"Hester does nothing but nice things," said Miss Charlotte. "What is this particular one?"

"She has persuaded her father to rent three rooms in Myrtle Hasbrook's house for the Baldwins to use when they come to Fayre. Since Green Pastures is succeeding and is a permanent institution Hester made her father see they ought to have a place in Fayre that was their own. By taking Myrtle's rooms they add enough to her little income to secure her. I think Hester is really a magnificent girl!" Rob spoke with warmth, and Miss Charlotte as warmly assented.

"But my dear Robin made it possible," she added, with her loving touch on Rob's hair.

"Oh, I didn't want the house; it wasn't good in me to refuse it," said Rob, rising to go. "The little grey house and Mardy, isn't that enough to satisfy any girl?"

"It is a great deal, but it is natural to want to round our lives, Robin," said her cousin. "I am a happy and blessed woman, dear, and my life was marked out for me when my eyes were closed to all visions, except those of dreams. But I am a happier woman for having my little Polly. Each life has its meaning, every one her limitations and she is a blessed woman to whom the whole meaning of life comes, offered in such love and honour and security that she may take it fearlessly, and through it reach up to the highest ends. To go without bravely and cheerfully when that is one's vocation is noble, Rob, but to receive, gratefully, on one's knees, and to enjoy the fulness of all living is not a thing to turn from, dearie, for in its highest form it is the lot of few."

"You who never married are the best, the most peaceful, the most comforting of women. Even Mardy has had a hard life, in some ways, and does not seem so lifted above sorrow and loss as you," said Rob.

"I am blind Charlotte Grey; set apart, not lifted up, dearie," returned her cousin, who rarely spoke of her misfortune.

Polly looked from one to the other. "Miss Charlotte is the sky, and you are a green field, full of flowers, Rob," she said.

"Little singing Polly!" said Miss Charlotte. "A green field for sweet human joys and nourishment! That is the very point, my children."

---

[CHAPTER EIGHTEEN]

ITS GLAD SURRENDER

"Why does my Robin sit with her 'head under her wing, poor thing'?" asked Mrs. Grey. For Rob had been very silent and distraught for a few days, which was equivalent to being another person than Roberta Grey.

"I think it must be because it's the fall of the year and that my spirits go down with the leaves," said Rob rousing herself. "The thought of the operation on little crippled Jimmy has haunted me—I shall feel better to-morrow when it is over. Or worse," she added as an afterthought.

Mrs. Grey had a suspicion that this did not fully account for Rob's depression. She had heard from Wythie of her fears of Rob's bad treatment of Bruce that morning when they had set out together for Miss Charlotte's, but she was far too wise to ask a question or to hint at a more personal trouble in Rob's mind than the operation pending for little crippled Jimmy. She reflected that there was a remedy for this sort of complaint less difficult than a surgeon's knife, a remedy more likely to be taken when not recommended by onlookers.

Hester and her mother were staying up on the hill, occupying the rooms which Hester's tactful kindness had secured for them in Myrtle's house, thus giving the young widow just the additional income needed to smooth her hard path.

Rob went up to get Hester to go with her to Green Pastures on the morning when the experiment was to be tried which, if it should succeed, would restore Jimmy to his place among fully living people. And which would bring high honour to Bruce, whose theory of Jimmy's trouble was to be worked upon—perhaps this thought, not less than interest in Jimmy, sent Rob's feet rapidly on her way.

They were to operate at nine that lovely late September morning; by half-past ten the girls felt that they might venture to Green Pastures without being in the way. They could not talk on their way over, but hurried along in silence, eyes dilated and breath quick as the thoughts of both concentrated on what might be awaiting them at their destination.

Green Pastures looked cheerful as they neared it. It had undergone improving and enriching at the hands of its young founders, and the old, barren look that it wore in the purely Flinders days had been merged in beauty of flowers and cultivation. Aunt Azraella had endowed it with a fund for keeping it in order, since paralysed Mr. Flinders could never work about his farm again, and Aaron, who had for so long made the hill house conspicuous in Fayre for its well-kept grounds, and who still looked after it for Myrtle, was responsible for the outward well-being of Green Pastures, also.

No one was in sight as Hester and Rob reached the gate, but when its latch clicked there swung around the corner on her crutches one of the children whom it sheltered, and who bore down on the girls with the speed in which she surpassed her comrades in misfortune.

"Oh, say," she called in that New York Eastside accent which is altogether incommunicable by printed signs. "Say, dey's been woikin' at Jimmy an' he's t'rough. Got his senses back all right. He's doin' fine. But, say, ain't it fierce? De knife slipped an' jammed de doctor, de young one, dat frien' er you's. Stuck him right in de hoit. He's huyt somethin' fierce. I heayd he wouldn't git over it." The child's eye gleamed with the fire of the born romancer, but neither Rob nor Hester saw it, nor stopped to remember that this was Nellie, whose tendency to fabricate troubled them more than her lameness.

They clutched each other, and the colour went out of Rob's face, leaving her so ghastly white that Hester put her arm around her and half carried her into the house. Mrs. Flinders was not in evidence, and they pushed open the door of what had been the Flinders' living-room, but which had been appropriated to the children for a play-room because of its generous morning sunshine.

There, in the flood of September's sunny warmth, in the window sat Bruce, the other two little girls, one on each knee, resting their heads confidingly on his shoulders while, his arms around their thin bodies, he busied himself with constructing something of cardboard for their amusement. Bruce's eyes were bent upon his work, but his face looked peaceful, with a certain strength and proud confidence in the lines of his mouth that told the story of that morning's work. The whole scene was so full of peace and security that Rob's brain reeled, and Hester uttered a glad cry.

At that Bruce looked up smiling, but his face changed as he saw Rob's deathly look, and he set the children down quickly and gently, crossing over to the girls.

"Rob, what is it?" he cried, horrible visions of something tragic in the little grey house or in Basil's home flashing upon him.

Rob put out both hands and seized the lapels of his coat; a faint suggestion of ether about him made her shudder. "She said you were stabbed—in the heart—" gasped Rob. "Bruce, Bruce, I should have died, too!"

Bruce steadied her and turned to Hester for an explanation. "It's that dreadful, horrible little Nellie!" she cried. "She met us at the gate and told us that the knife had slipped and had stabbed you in the heart. I think we must amputate her head!" And Hester, gently disengaging herself from Rob, and with a look at Bruce, ran out of the room. Rob stood with bowed head still holding Bruce's coat, shaking with sobs beyond her control.

The colour mounted to Bruce's temples as he realized that at last Rob knew her own mind, and had surrendered. He did not speak for a moment, but stroked her hair from which her hat had fallen, and which the September wind had whipped into more rings and ripples than usual, steadying himself against the great rush of gladness with which he realized what all this meant.

Rob made a strong effort at self-control, feeling miserably for her handkerchief as she sobbed: "You wouldn't like to have a friend stabbed in the heart yourself, Bruce. And it shocked me."

Bruce laughed outright. "Don't apologize, Rob dearest," he said. "I don't mind." And he wiped her eyes with his own handkerchief in a paternal manner.

"She is a limb, that youngster, to frighten you so, but somehow I can't feel just indignation yet. I never thought I should admire a lie so much," said Bruce. "Look up at me, Rob, and let me see my wife."

"There isn't anything to see," said Rob faintly. "I am numb."

"Poor darling!" said Bruce. "It was a cruel thing! I won't bother you now, dear. Let me put you over in the rocking-chair in the sunshine, and then I'll hunt up Mother Flinders and get her to bring you a cup of hot milk, and I'll give you something to steady you. Dear heart, you didn't know that you cared like this, did you?"

"I didn't," said Rob feebly. "People always care most when you're dead."

"That's bad," said Bruce, "because I am alive, and hope to keep on living. There's enough strength left in you to make a feeble fight against capitulation, isn't there, Bobs Bahadur?" And Bruce lightly kissed the tumbled, reddish brown hair curling up against his arm. "Now sit here, all comfy, my Robin, and I'll bring you something that will set you up again, your old self. Do you want Hester?"

Rob shook her head. "Come back yourself, Bruce, only you, else I shall begin again believing it was true," she said simply, and Bruce left her with a throb of wondering delight that this could be independent Rob.

Bruce hastened back with his restorative, and Mrs. Flinders followed soon with the hot milk. "That is considered the best kind of a restorative after an operation, and you underwent a severe amputation, Rob," said Bruce, holding the cup to her lips, while Mrs. Flinders looked on with grimness, concealing her pleasure that what everybody wanted had come to pass.

"Give me the cup, Bruce; I'm quite able to feed myself, besides it is so hot you would scald me," said Rob, taking it from him. "I am ashamed, Mrs. Flinders; I never went to pieces like that before, but you see it came so suddenly!"

"Of course," assented Mrs. Flinders with entire gravity. "And cripple or not, I think that Nellie ought to be spanked—she can run on her crutches fast enough and lie fast enough to afford a good spanking."

"But not for this offence," pleaded Bruce. "Wait till she lies once more, and then spank her; the beneficent little humbug!"

"If Hester can't make them little angels, as well as improve them physically, Green Pastures is going to prove a pasture full of nettles to her," said Rob, with a return of the laughter to her eyes.

"I have not told you, Rob—your condition drove it from my mind—" began Bruce wickedly, "but the operation on Jimmy is a success. My theory was the right one, and the boy will be able to run about, on crutches maybe, but vastly improved. I really believe that he will be only slightly lame, and not need crutches."

"That means everything for you, doesn't it, Bruce?" said Rob proudly.

"It means a good deal," said Bruce quietly. "Now, Robin, let us fly to the little grey house. I am off duty this morning, and I want to take you home."

"Wait till I find Hester, and smooth my hair," said Rob, going in pursuit of her friend.

"I'm so glad, dearest Rob, I'm so very glad! I don't think I'm going to be a sour maiden lady with no sympathy for romance. I have wanted so much to see you wake up to what you really felt," said Hester, arranging the pins in Rob's wayward locks.

"I think now that I must have known all along, and that is why I behaved so badly," said Rob meekly.

Hester laughed. "I think so too," she said.

"I wish you were not the only one without a share in this epidemic of happiness! France and Prue will be married by spring, even I am doomed, and only splendid Hester, the great-hearted Hester, is left out," said Rob, her arms over her friend's shoulders as she looked into her eyes with joy beginning to illuminate her own.

Hester shook her head. "I am glad and sympathetic; I am even able to understand what it means to you all, but for myself I am satisfied. I would rather help the child waifs than have my own little ones to look after; rather feel that I was doing for others than have the dearest of love to look after me," she said. "I have always been different from other girls, Rob, and my vocation is to be alone, though not lonely. Or, at least, not too lonely. Down in the bottom of my heart I am lonely, but I suspect that there is a lonely spot in every human heart, and that all human beings—or at least most of us—are a little hungry all their lives."

Rob did not answer, except to kiss Hester as she turned away. "You certainly are not much like other girls, my splendid Hester," she said. And she ran away to find Bruce.

"I thought you were never coming," he grumbled as she entered, already claiming her in true masculine fashion.

"Good-bye for to-day, Mrs. Flinders," said Rob, turning back a radiant face to the drab woman regarding her with incredible sympathy concealed beneath her flat chest.

"Good-bye, Roberta, and good luck to you; half you deserve would be enough to set you up for two lives. I'm sorry he can't sense the news I'll tell him, but I'll tell him just the same. He's set a lot by you ever since he got over being mad because you made him do the right thing by you when he run your place on shares, and that's ever since you was good to Maimie. Goodbye, Roberta."

"Mardy, Mardy Grey!" called Bruce in the doorway of the little grey house. "Come and see my beautiful wife!"

Mrs. Grey flew in from the kitchen where she was consulting with Rhoda, and that jovial person was so startled by Bruce's salutation that she followed to peer through the door at the strange lady.

"Rob!" cried her mother, and Rob ran to her, letting herself be gathered in the loving arms and drawn down into her mother's lap in the rocking-chair, half laughing, half crying.

"Oh, Bruce, dear Bruce, I am truly thankful this foolish child has come to her senses at last," cried Mrs. Grey, contriving to hold out a hand, to Bruce and to pull him down for the kiss which she gave him with her heart on her lips.

"Yes, ma'am," said Bruce dutifully. "I thought you would be glad to have such a well grown son who could mend bones and administer drugs when anything happened in the family. To tell you the honest truth Rob came to her senses with such a rush that she gave me no choice today but to accept the offer which she practically made me."

"Bruce, you wretch!" cried Rob. "Mardy, that dreadful story-telling Nellie Something, up at Green Pastures, told me that the operating knife had slipped, and that Bruce was stabbed fatally—wouldn't you have been sorry, too, if that were true?"

"I don't understand, but I can safely say yes, I think," said her mother. "Never mind, Rob; what you ought to be ashamed of is having tormented Bruce for so long. You won't take her away from me, Bruce? The one stipulation I make is that you live here. Even that I can't insist on, but I do hope you will let me keep Rob?"

"Why, Mardy Grey, there isn't a spot on earth I love like this little house of yours, and somehow I couldn't imagine Rob anywhere else. Neither of the other girls ever seemed so much a part of the home as Rob is," said Bruce.

"To tell the truth I feel just as you do about it; it seems to me more suitable that Rob should be here with you than that Wythie and Basil should live with me—of course Prue will not live in Fayre," cried Mrs. Grey. "Rob was her father's 'son Rob,' you know, and she seems as much a part of the little grey house as its lichens. Dearest, best and bravest of daughters! I am glad that you know her as I know her, Bruce. Rob could be very unhappy in the wrong hands."

"If these prove the wrong ones, or less than wholly pledged to her welfare, may they wither away!" said Bruce with such entire earnestness that there was nothing singular in the words, nor in the gesture with which he held out his firm brown hands.

Rob raised her head from her mother's lap, "Let's get commonplace at once!" she cried. "I refuse to remain at such an altitude another moment. Mardy, what's for lunch?"

There was ample, fortunately, for even the newly betrothed proved to be unromantically hungry. During the course of luncheon it suddenly flashed upon Mrs. Grey that that night the family, which included the Baldwins, Dr. Fairbairn, and Myrtle Hasbrook, had been invited to the little grey house to listen to the reading of Basil's first novel, of which he had written the final chapter two days before.

"It ought to be good," said Bruce. "He worked on it under the stimulus of his newly married bliss."

"Like the man in Stockton's story, 'His Wife's Deceased Sister,'" added Rob. "I hope he won't share that unfortunate author's fate. Wouldn't it be queer if Basil had written one of the six best selling books occurring in the list of sales in each city in the country in varying heights in the column, but always one of the six?"

"O Phaebus, forbid, Rob!" cried Bruce. "Basil isn't forced to write for money; he can afford to do good work."

"We will have our dearest people here tonight, and we will not only hear Basil's novel, but let them share our new happiness," suggested Mrs. Grey with a smiling look for Bruce's implied criticism.

"That will be a good way of announcing it," said Bruce, taking his hat. "I've got to go now to join the doctor. Mayn't I tell him myself?"

"Yes, and come with me to tell Wythie and Basil; it isn't fair to leave them to learn about it with the others—nor Cousin Peace. What a pity Prue is away!" said Rob, jumping up to go with Bruce. "I'll just look in a moment upon Cousin Peace on my way home from Wythie's, Mardy. And oughtn't I order a stirrup cup for our friends?"

"A stirrup cup, Rob?" repeated her mother.

"Yes, why not, if I am going to ride away from Green Pastures to Gretna Green? Only we may not quite elope," said Rob. "I mean nothing more startling than some refreshments, Mardy."

"Oh dear, oh dear," sighed Mrs. Grey in pretended distress. "The moment a girl is engaged her memory for details fails. Is it possible, Roberta, that you have forgotten that you and I made cake all yesterday afternoon, ordered cream, and prepared for the celebration of Basil's novel?"

Rob laughed, and hastily ran away; she really had completely forgotten, and it was embarrassing. She went from Wythie's raptures and Basil's profound delight, to Cousin Peace's not less genuine though quieter pleasure, and to little singing Polly's unexplained tears—"Singing Polly," they called the child often now, for her voice was becoming daily a more wonderful possession.

The evenings were already growing long, and early that night the curtains were drawn close around the little grey house, and the lamps lighted.

Wythie and Basil came down early, to find Bruce already there. The two brothers, very like in features and colouring, though differing in expression, and almost the same height, stood beside the fire, looking happy and handsome in their white linen—they were the sort of men to whom evening-dress is vastly becoming.

Each thought regretfully of Bartlemy far away, who had missed his prize out of the treasures the little grey house had to give. But it was good that the Commodore had arrived that day, and good to see the beaming satisfaction with which he regarded his two splendid sons, for whom no father could wish a better fate than to have won the two elder Grey daughters.

Wythie and Rob had lain down for a little talk, in the old fashion, on the bed they had shared from childhood. The little talk lengthened out into a longer one than they realized; Mrs. Grey startled them by warning them that it lacked but fifteen minutes to eight o'clock, and that Rob would surely be late.

Wythie helped her to dress in a hurry, just as Rob had always dressed. It was very like old times. Rob could not realize that this was Mrs. Rutherford, not Wythie Grey, helping her, and that her own days of girlhood were numbered.

Frances and Lester came, and Mrs. Baldwin and her husband, to the sound of whose voice Rob's heart went out as she heard it, for he had been her father's chum, and she longed for her "Patergrey's" blessing that night. Hester, Cousin Peace, little Polly, Myrtle, good old Dr. Fairbairn—the sisters recognized these as the knocker repeatedly sounded and the guests came in.

"Only Bartlemy and Prue lacking! If only Prudy could have been as comfortable and conformable as we, Wythie!" said Rob as Wythie dropped over her beautiful hair the white skirt which she was so late in donning.

"It will be all right as it is, Rob dear. We won't regret anything to-night," said Wythie. "But it would have been lovely to have been the three Mrs. Rutherfords!"

"Well, we each could have been only one of them," said Rob. "Just hook my collar for me, Wythiekins, and then run down, for it makes me seem much later when I keep you up here, too."

Wythie did as she was asked, altered a pin in her sister's hair, laid against its unruly beauty the ferns and buds which Bruce had brought her, fell back to look at the effect, and found it so satisfactory that she seized Rob in an ecstatic embrace and then flew down-stairs, remembering for the first time that this had been intended to be her triumph through Basil's genius, and that nobody thought of the novel now.

Rob lingered for some last touches, then looked long and steadily at herself in the glass, holding up the hand that wore upon it the diamond which had been Bruce's mother's. Then she kissed the ring, and leaning forward, kissed the girl in the glass: "Because Bruce loves you, my dear Rob," she whispered. Then she went slowly down-stairs. There was no one there who was not familiarly dear to her, yet she hesitated on the lower step, half shy and frightened. Some one caught a glimpse of her, and said "Here's Rob!" The conversation ceased, and Bruce sprang forward to lead her in. They halted in the doorway, and the loving eyes of her kindred and friends fell on Rob. They saw a tall young creature, all in white, beautiful colour coming and going in the oval cheeks, great, flashing brown eyes ready to laugh or to cry, the sweet, sensitive, coaxing short upper lip quivering, a creature all compounded of mirth and love and tears. Not Prue in all her regal beauty could have looked as Rob looked at that moment.

The Grey mother's heart went out to her in a throb that included all the child's merry, impetuous ways, the young girl's chivalrous courage, the dead father's reliance and help, and, later, the sweet, cheerful, brave, high-minded young woman upon whom she herself had leaned since her day of widowhood, went out in unspeakable love and pride to Rob.

---

She rose and joined the girl still hesitating a moment's space in the doorway. Taking her hand she turned back to her guests, and said with a thrill in her voice:

"Dear people, here is the next mistress of the little grey house."

[END]