BETTER THAN DREAMS.
| "I like this place, |
| And willingly could waste my time in it." |
The engagement of Miss Betty Bishop and Dr. Hollingsworth was announced. As Miss Betty said, there was no use in trying to keep it a secret with Mrs. Parton spreading her suspicions abroad.
"If you had confided in me and asked me not to tell, I shouldn't have breathed it," that lady protested.
"Oh, yes, you would," Miss Betty said, laughing. "You know you tell everything; but, after all, there's no harm done, and no reason why it should not be known. I don't blame people for being surprised, either. I am surprised myself, and I see the absurdity, but—"
"There is no absurdity about it. I am delighted. Dr. Hollingsworth is charming. I'd be willing to marry him myself if it wasn't for the colonel, and you are going to be as happy as happy can be." Mrs. Parton laughed her pleasant laugh, clearly overjoyed at what seemed to her the good fortune of her friend.
Rosalind first heard the news from Belle. "Why," she said, "if he marries Cousin Betty, the president will be related to me."
"Let's frame Dr. Hollingsworth's picture and give it to her," Maurice suggested.
This was hailed as a brilliant idea, and that afternoon the five might have been seen in the picture store in search of a frame for the stolen photograph. It was an excellent likeness of the president, and an equally good one of black Bob, who, happening to pass at the critical moment, had been included unintentionally.
The proprietor of the store, getting an inkling of the joke, hunted up a small frame which, with the help of a mat, answered very well. Then the Arden Foresters proceeded to Miss Betty's, where they delivered the package into Sophy's hands and scampered away, their courage not being equal to an encounter with her mistress.
At the bank gate they separated, Belle going in with Katherine to practise a duet they were learning, and Jack hurrying home with the fear of his Latin lesson before his eyes. Maurice walked on with Rosalind.
"Come in for a while," she said.
The air was crisp, but the sunshine was bright, and the bench under the bare branches of the white birch seemed more inviting than indoors. As they took their seat there, Rosalind said gayly, "Father will be here this week. We are not sure what day."
"And then you will have to go," Maurice added discontentedly.
"Yes, and I am partly sorry and partly glad. I am so glad I came to Friendship, Maurice. Just think how many friends I have made!"
"How long ago it seems—that day when you spoke to me through the hedge. You must have thought I was a dreadful muff," said Maurice.
Rosalind laughed. "I thought you were cross."
"I was in a horrid temper, but I didn't know how horrid until you told me the story and I read in the book what your cousin wrote about bearing hard things bravely. I suppose if it had not been for you, I should have gone on being a beast."
"I was feeling pretty cross myself that day. I didn't know then what a pleasant place Friendship is. I think I have found a great deal of joy by the way, as Cousin Louis said," Rosalind continued meditatively.
"And I thought my summer was spoiled," Maurice added.
"It just shows you can never tell," Rosalind concluded wisely.
"Are you sure you won't forget us when you go away?" Maurice wanted to say "me," instead of "us," but a sudden shyness prevented.
"Why, Maurice, I couldn't! Especially you; for you were my first friend." The gray eyes looked into his frankly and happily.
After Maurice had gone, Rosalind still sat there in the wintry sunshine. Things seemed very quiet just now, with Uncle Allan away for a week and Aunt Genevieve not yet returned. She and her grandmother were keeping each other company, and becoming better acquainted than ever before. Mrs. Whittredge's glance often rested upon her granddaughter with a sort of wistful affection, and once, when their eyes met, Rosalind, with a quick impulse, had gone to her side and put her arms around her. Mrs. Whittredge returned the caress, saying, "I shall be sorry to give you up, dearie."
On another occasion Rosalind had told how surprised she had been to find that her grandmother did not wear caps and do knitting work. "But I like you a great deal better as you are," she added.
Mrs. Whittredge smiled. "I fear I am in every way far from being an ideal grandmother," she said.
Rosalind thought of all this, her eyes on the dismantled garden. The flower beds were bare, the shrubs done up in straw, the fountain dry, and yet something recalled the summer day when she had sat just here learning her hymn. She remembered her old dreams of Friendship, and now she decided that the reality was best. She shut her eyes and tried to think just how she had felt that Sunday afternoon.
"What is the matter, little girl?" The magician's words, but not his voice; nor was it his face she looked into.
"Father!" she cried,—"you dear! Where did you come from?"
It was some time before any connected conversation was possible.
"Why, father, how brown you are!"
"And Rosalind, how tall you are, and how rosy! To think I have lost six months of your life!"
"And I want to tell you everything just in one minute. What shall I do?" Rosalind said, laughing, as she held him fast.
It did indeed seem a task of alarming proportions to tell all there was to tell; Rosalind felt a little impatient at having to share her father with her grandmother that evening. And there was almost as much to hear,—of Cousin Louis, whose health was now restored, but who was to spend some months in England, of their adventures, and the sights they had seen.
"We shall want something to talk about when we get home," she was reminded.
It would have been plain to the least observant that Patterson Whittredge's life was bound up with that of this little daughter. As he talked to his mother, his eyes rested fondly on Rosalind, and every subject led back to her at last.
Rosalind, looking from her father to her grandmother, noted how much alike were their dark eyes, but here the resemblance ended. Mrs. Whittredge's oldest son, although he might possess something of her strong will, had nothing of her haughty reserve. His manner, in spite of the preoccupation of the student, was one of winning cordiality. Older and graver than Allan, there was yet a strong likeness between the brothers.
Rosalind could not rest until she had taken her father to all the historic spots, as she merrily called them,—Red Hill, the Gilpin place, the cemetery, and the magician's shop, of course.
"Friendship has been good for you, little girl," he said, as they set out far a walk next day.
"I used to think that stories were better than real things, father, but it isn't so in Friendship. At first I was—oh, so lonely; I thought I never could be the least bit happy without you and Cousin Louis; but the magician and the Forest helped me, and since then I have had a beautiful time. I love Friendship. I almost wish we could live here."
"And desert Cousin Louis and the university?"
"No, I suppose not; but we can come back in the summer, can't we? And, oh, father dear, you'll join the Arden Foresters, won't you?"
As they walked up the winding road at the cemetery, Mr. Whittredge heard something of those puzzles which had so disturbed Rosalind's first weeks in Friendship, beginning with the story of the rose.
"It's funny, father, but I hadn't thought till then that grown people had quarrels. I might have known it from the story of the Forest; I remembered that afterward, and how things all came right."
"Poor little girl! You should have been warned; and yet in spite of it you have learned that realities are better than dreams."
"Father," Rosalind asked abruptly, "why was it you did not come to Friendship for so many years? Did not grandmamma like my mother? I think I ought to know."
Mr. Whittredge smiled at the womanly seriousness of the lifted face. "I think you ought, dear," he answered.
With her hand clasped in his he told her the story briefly, for even now he could not dwell upon it without pain, and as Rosalind listened she discovered that she had already heard a bit of it from Mrs. Parton and Mrs. Molesworth at the auction.
"We must try, you and I, not to think too hardly of grandmamma now. She has suffered a great deal, and it was your mother's earnest wish that the trouble might be healed if the opportunity ever came." Patterson said nothing of his own struggle to forgive his mother's attitude toward his young wife.
"I think, father," Rosalind said, "that perhaps grandmamma is sorry. One day, not long ago, I saw her looking at mother's picture. She did not know I was there. She took it from the table and held it in her hand, and I am sure she was crying a little."
That was a happy day, for now they put aside sad memories, and turned to the merry side of life, Rosalind kept forgetting that her father had been in Friendship before, and continued to point out objects of interest with which he had been familiar long before she was born. So full were the hours that it was growing dusk when they turned into Church Lane to call on the magician.