THE GILPIN PLACE.
"This is the Forest of Arden."
Rosalind, walking in the garden next morning, heard her name called from the other side of the hedge.
"Is that you, Maurice?" she asked, bending to peep through the narrow opening where they had first become acquainted.
"Yes; don't you want to go up to the Gilpin place?"
"I'd rather go there than anywhere," Rosalind assented eagerly, "I am so interested in Aunt Patricia and the ring."
"The house is closed, you know, but the grounds are pretty. I'll meet you at the gate whenever you are ready," Maurice answered.
He considered Rosalind his special friend by right of first acquaintance, and had no thought of allowing Katherine or Belle to get the advantage of him, and for this reason he had planned the expedition. He also wished to talk over "As You Like It" without interruption, and was decidedly provoked when she called to Katherine, who was shelling peas on the side porch, "We are going to the Gilpin place; can't you come when you have finished?"
Katherine, who had tried in vain to find out from Maurice where he was going, was more than delighted at the invitation.
"It would have been nicer if we had stayed to help her," Rosalind remarked, as they walked up the street.
"Girls' work," Maurice growled.
"Well, I am a girl. And why shouldn't boys shell peas? They eat them."
Maurice scorned such logic, but her eyes were so merry it was with an effort he kept himself from smiling.
"Katherine is such a bother," he said.
"I like Katherine; she is so pleasant," Rosalind observed, with a side glance at her companion.
"Perhaps you'd rather go with her and have me stay at home?" he suggested, with much dignity.
"And shell peas?" Rosalind laughed.
What a provoking girl this was! And yet he liked her, and somehow at the vision of himself shelling peas he couldn't help laughing, too, and thus harmony was restored.
After climbing the hill, a good deal of exertion for Maurice with his crutch, they paused to rest on the steps leading up from the gate of the Gilpin place.
Rosalind, looking at the dignified mansion among the trees, felt the atmosphere of mysterious interest that always surrounds a closed and deserted house, particularly an old one upon which several generations have left their impress. She thought of the young and lovely Patricia, and the sailor lover who never came back.
"Do you know, I feel very sorry for Aunt Patricia, Maurice. To have some one you love never come back—it must be very hard. I can understand a little now since father and cousin Louis went away. Miss Betty said she bore it bravely, too."
"It was a long time ago," said Maurice, feeling that it was a waste of emotion to grieve over things that had happened so far back in the past.
"But there is the ring. It is not so very long ago since that was here. Don't you wish we could go into the house and look for it? I believe it is there somewhere;" Rosalind spoke with assurance.
"But they searched every nook and cranny," said Maurice.
"If it were in a story, there would be a secret drawer somewhere. I wonder if Aunt Patricia isn't sorry it is lost." Rosalind sat in silence for a few moments, looking down at the town. "I like Friendship," she said. "There are a great many interesting things happening here, more than ever happen at home."
The Gilpin house stood on an elevation of its own, from which the ground sloped gently in all directions. Its late owner had cared little for flowers and shrubs, but had taken pride in his trees, which still preserved the dignity of their forest days. At the back of the house there was a view of the little winding river, and halfway down the slope a once flourishing vegetable garden had turned itself into a picturesque wilderness of weeds. The charm of it all grew upon Rosalind as they walked about.
"I should like to live here, Maurice. I like it better than our garden—grandmamma's, I mean. Let's sit on the grass, where we can see the river."
Not far from them was the rustic summer-house which Miss Betty had called Patricia's arbor.
"Maurice," Rosalind exclaimed, with conviction in her tone, "this is the Forest of Arden."
"You talk about it as if it were all true, instead of only a story," said Maurice.
"But it is true—one kind of true. Cousin Louis explained it to me once—ever so long ago, when I had a sore throat and couldn't go to the Christmas tree, at the president's. I cried and was dreadfully cross, and wouldn't look at my Christmas things; and after a while he asked me if I should like to live in the Forest of Arden. I was so surprised I stopped crying, and he told me that when we were brave and happy, we made a pleasant place for ourselves, where lovely things could happen, and when we were cross and miserable we made a desert for ourselves, where pleasant things couldn't possibly come about, just as if you want flowers to grow, you have to have good soil.
"Cousin Louis can tell things in a very interesting way, and by and by I began to feel ashamed, and I made up my mind to try it; and when I told father, he said he would try too, and we found it was really true, Maurice. He and Cousin Louis and I—oh, we had such good times! We even told the president about it, and Cousin Louis said he was going to start a secret society of the Forest of Arden. Then he was ill, and everything stopped.
"I know it isn't easy to stay in the Forest always, particularly when you are dreadfully lonesome, but the magician says if you keep on trying you will find the good in it after a while."
"How can there be good in bad things?" Maurice demanded.
"Did you read what was in my book? I know it by heart. 'If we choose, we may walk always in the Forest, where the birds sing and the sunlight sifts through the trees, where, although we sometimes grow footsore and hungry, we know that the goal is sure.' That means it will all come right in the end. Don't you know how, in the story, the people who hated each other all came to be friends in the Forest?"
The sun travelling around the beech tree encroached upon their resting-place, and Maurice proposed moving farther down the slope. "Tell me about the secret society," he said, as they again settled themselves.
"It was a very nice plan," Rosalind answered, clasping her knees and looking up into the tree top. "He told me about it one evening when he wasn't well and had to lie on the sofa, while father did the proofs. Only those could belong who made the best of things and knew the secret of the Forest. We were sure the president would join because he had had a great trouble and was very brave; and there was Mrs. Brown, who had lost all her money, and kept house for us. Then, I didn't have anything much to be brave about, but I have since, for I did so want to go with father and Cousin Louis. Perhaps that doesn't seem much," she added apologetically, "'but small things count,' Cousin Louis said."
"I should think it might," Maurice agreed.
"Aunt Patricia could have belonged," said Rosalind, her eyes still in the tree top. "I wonder if she knew about the Forest?"
Maurice felt stirred by the picture her words called up of a great company of people all bearing hard things bravely. "There is Morgan," he suggested. "It must be hard to be deaf, yet he is always cheerful."
"Yes, indeed, he could belong. He knows the secret of the Forest. And Maurice, you have a beautiful chance to be brave."
Maurice's face grew red, he pushed his crutch impatiently from him. "I haven't been brave," he said.
"No, you haven't," Rosalind acknowledged frankly; "but then you did not know about the Forest. Maurice, let's start a society, you and I, and perhaps some of the others will join. The magician will, I know."
A shrill whistle was heard at this moment.
"It is Jack," said Maurice; and sure enough that individual presently appeared and dropped down beside them, breathless from his run up the hill.
"What are you two doing?" he puffed.
"Talking. How warm you are!" and Rosalind offered her broad-brimmed hat for a fan. "Have you seen anything of Katharine?"
"She and Belle are on the way. Say, what were you talking about? It seemed to be interesting." Jack rolled over on his back and blinked at the sky.
Rosalind looked at Maurice. "Would you tell him?"
"No," was the prompt reply, "he wouldn't care for it." He felt certain harum-scarum Jack would only be bored by the Forest, perhaps would make fun.
Jack turned his face to Rosalind, "Tell me," he urged; "Maurice doesn't know what I like."
"I will, then, as soon as the girls come."
It was not long before Belle was heard calling, and she and Katherine came running across the grass and joined the group under the tree.
"We are waiting for you; Jack wants to hear about the Forest," said Rosalind.
"Yes, you promised to tell us what you meant, and how Morgan came to know about it." Belle cast her hat on the grass and shook back her hair.
Maurice looked discontented. Jack and Belle would think it silly, and Katherine wouldn't understand.
"Maurice knows about it, and perhaps some of the rest of you have read the story of the Forest of Arden," began Rosalind.
Belle had, but Katherine and Jack had not so much as heard of it, so Rosalind told the story of the banished Duke and his followers who lived in the Forest, and were happy because they had learned to make the best of things and to find good even in trouble and disappointment; how Rosalind, the daughter of the Duke, was also banished, and with her cousin and the clown went to seek her father in the Forest; how Orlando, turned out of his home by his cruel elder brother, also went to the Forest in company with his old servant Adam; of their adventures there; and how finally the wicked Duke and the heartless brother, who were pursuing the runaways, came under the spell of the same Forest and repented of their evil deeds; and the story ended in forgiveness and love under the greenwood tree.
It was just the day and place for the story. The joyous, lavish beauty of summer was everywhere around them, and as Rosalind told it her eyes took on the look Belle had described to her father. There was silence after she finished. Jack lay with his head on his arms, looking out on the river; Maurice was drawing beech leaves in his note-book, the discontent all gone from his face; Belle absently plaited the hem of her dress; while Katherine twisted a wreath of honeysuckle around her hat.
"Is that all?" Belle asked, after a little.
"That is the story; then I was telling Maurice about the meaning Cousin Louis found in it."
"Tell us that," said Jack.
Rosalind explained the Forest idea, and the plan for a secret society. This at once appealed to Belle.
"That would be fun," she exclaimed. "We could have 'The Forest' for a watchword, and hold meetings out of doors somewhere."
"Yes; 'under the greenwood tree,'" said Maurice.
"I don't understand," said Katherine. "What are we to do?"
"We promise to bear hard things bravely, and—"
"Let's be like Robin Hood," Belle interrupted, "and help down-trodden people."
"Do you know any?" asked her brother, turning over.
"Jack makes me think of the dormouse in 'Alice,'" laughed Rosalind. "He is always going to sleep and waking up."
"I'll tell you!" cried Belle, "let's search for the ring."
"But we don't know where to look," said Katherine.
"A thing isn't much lost if you know where to look, goosie," answered Maurice.
"You see, it is partly pretend," Rosalind explained. "I think it is a beautiful idea, don't you, boys?" she asked.
"Maurice, are you going to promise to bear hard things bravely?" Jack asked, with a quizzical look. It seemed to tickle him greatly, for he went off into a fit of laughing. "'See, the conquering hero comes,'" he hummed.
Maurice pave him a thump with his crutch. "You aren't much of a hero, either," he said. "Who took the roof off when his tooth was pulled?"
"But that hurt," said Jack, still laughing.
"I am willing to own I have been making an awful fuss, but someway I hadn't thought about it, and I am willing to try if the rest are."
"But I haven't any trouble," said Katherine.
"Everybody has hard things to bear sometimes," replied Rosalind.
"Doesn't Maurice ever snub you?" asked irrepressible Jack.
"What shall we call our society?" Rosalind inquired, looking around the group for suggestions.
Maurice tore a leaf from his note-book and divided it carefully into five parts, handing a slip to each of his companions.
"Now be still for a while and think, and then write down a name."
All was quiet for a time. "Now," said Maurice, "what is yours, Rosalind?"
"The Secret Society of the Forest," said Rosalind.
"Sons and Daughters of the Forest," announced Belle.
"The Forest Society," said Jack.
Katherine had not been able to think of a name. Maurice's was "The Arden Foresters," suggested, he said, by Belle's "Robin Hood."
"I believe it is the best," said Rosalind, and so they all agreed finally, and the new society was named.
"Now we must have a book and write in it what we promise," said Belle.
"Let's appoint Rosalind and Maurice to draw up a—what do you call it?" suggested Jack.
"I know," said Belle; "a constitution."
"I meant to go into Patricia's Arbor, and I forgot," remarked Rosalind, as they walked home together.
"I thought I saw some one sitting there when Belle and I passed," said Katherine.