II.
"Now, Joan, I think the table looks as if a butler had set it," said Tom, as he arranged the napkins in little hillocks.
"You are awfully good to me, Tom. Indeed, I couldn't keep house without you. I hardly knew a carafe from a finger-bowl until you taught me. Aunt Jane never thought or cared for such things."
"Aunt Milly never thought or cared for anything else," said Tom. "If I've taught you some things, you've untaught me more, Joan. Anyhow, what good does it do a man to know how to serve a dinner? It doesn't help me to sledge."
"Perhaps it does. Father said yesterday that you were more accurate in sledging than any man on the works."
Tom glowed with pleasure. "Did he say that?" he said, eagerly; then he laughed. "Suppose a year ago any one had told me I should blush with pride at praise for sledging! By-the-way, I want to remind you, Joan, you mustn't yawn in his lordship's face this evening when you begin to get sleepy. If I know him, he wouldn't like it at all, and it's not polite. I've told you that so often, why don't you stop it?"
"I can't," said Joan, sorrowfully. "I have tried to close my mouth and let it go out at my ears, as you said, but I feel as if I were turning inside out like a popcorn."
"You had better turn inside out than be rude, Aunt Milly would tell you. Joan, do you know we have both changed in this year? Here we are, you sniffing at Aunt Jane's housekeeping, and I at Aunt Milly's eternal little fixings. I don't say that was nice of us, but it does mark a change. You know we have thought our respective aunts perfection."
Joan looked troubled, and was attempting an explanation—she could not think so fast as Tom—when the front door opened, and her father's voice announced the arrival of their expected guest. Joan paused to give a quick glance around the room. Everything was ready: the dinner, she knew, prepared to serve in a moment; the baby in bed; the little boys—externally—in perfect order. "Tom, do you think they'll behave decently?" she asked, with a young mother's anxious glance at the boys.
"I don't see why they should," Tom rejoined, cheerfully—"they never have."
"Indeed, Tom, Robert sometimes makes me doubt the efficacy of prayer. Every night he asks God to make him a good boy, but I don't see any improvement in him. Do you?"
Joan spoke earnestly, but Tom laughed. "Don't you worry, Joan. Uncle is a man of the world: he always understands everything."
If Bishop Hegan did not understand everything, he understood a great deal with no questions asked, and he nodded silent congratulations to his brother across the dinner table. When the meal was ended the Bishop said:
"I think I will go to bed with the chickens and the children," said Bishop Hegan. "I am a tired man to-night. Tom—young Tom, I mean—suppose you come help me to take off my apron. Lord Bishops wear aprons, Tom, don't they?" He looked at his nephew with a twinkle in his eye.
"I don't know, sir; I never unfrocked one before," retorted Tom, and then gasped at his own audacity. He would never have ventured so reckless a jest with his father. The Bishop was different somehow—more like himself, and in a degree like Aunt Milly. As he led his uncle to his room, Tom felt with a pleasurable excitement that it was to be a brief return to the world from his work-a-day life.
"Suppose we talk about Joan," said the Bishop. "She looks well—very well—quite like a little milkmaid."
"That's just the trouble," said Tom, plunging eagerly into the subject, as one near to his heart. "Why, uncle, she's a perfect tomboy. Do you know, Joan is seventeen years old, and there's not a romance in the house she hasn't read, and not a tree in the country round that she can't and don't climb. You heard her change the subject when father asked where the cherries came from that we had at dinner."
"No," answered the Bishop. "You see, I am not sufficiently a member of the family to take in all these shibboleths."
"They came from a tree she was ashamed to say she had climbed. Those cherries—I recognized them—are almost never gathered, because there's not a boy around here who likes to climb that tree. Do you think she ought to run wild like that? I don't mean she doesn't do finely at home, for she does—just as well as she can—that is—" Tom's truth forced the amendment. "Father's awfully good to her. He keeps a chair by his study desk for her, that she calls her thinking-chair, and when she's in any home trouble she slips in there and sits by him to think it over. Sometimes she consults father, but as often she doesn't say a word. She seems to get help from him without that. I suppose you have seen how very fond they are of each other."
The Bishop was winding his watch, and looking about the bedroom to which Tom had led him. "That's nice," he said. "Where's your thinking-chair?"
The question came so suddenly, and the look which went with it was so kindly searching, that Tom stammered out the truth with a rush: "Father and I are not confidential like that. But it's a mercy that Joan is his favorite. You see, she's so dreamy she's apt to blunder, and if she were not a favorite with him it would be frightfully hard for her."
"Is it frightfully hard for you?" asked the Bishop.
"Sometimes," said Tom, truthfully. He spoke candidly, but with a reserve which his uncle respected.
"Wouldn't you miss Joan sadly if she were to be sent away?" he asked. "You seem to depend on each other."
The older man noted the swift change in the young face near him.
"I can't think about that. No human being knows what Joan has done for me this year. She seemed always to divine just when I couldn't stand things any longer, and there she is by me. I suppose I shouldn't let her be around those rough furnaces so much, but I never can send her away. It made me ashamed the other day when I found she could stand as much of the furnace gas in her lungs as I. You see, she always comes at the worst times to bring me lemonade or something of that sort. The thirst in those gases is awful."
"Yet you think she ought to go elsewhere?"
The answer came unhesitatingly: "I know it. This is no way to bring up a girl."
"I'm not so sure," said the Bishop, easily. "It depends on the girl."
But Tom, his tongue once loosened, went on: "Now if she could spend one year with Aunt Milly—"
The Bishop's mouth twitched. "Well, now, it would be rather funny, wouldn't it, to have the life here curing what was bad for you in your Aunt Milly's training, and Aunt Milly's training curing what is bad for Joan in the life here; No, no; your Aunt Milly would suit for some girls, but not for Joan. She is a little oddity, and not very strong in body. She needs odd treatment. Your father sees that. Let her read and climb all she chooses, but a governess with no domestic authority might be an advisable addition to the family. I'll suggest that to your father; and tell him too that while Joan talks more carefully than a year ago, she has to-night informed me that the baby is the 'very spit of father.'" The Bishop smiled at the memory. "That won't do, of course. Why haven't you talked Joan over with your father?"
"I should as soon think of advising the Pope, uncle. My father," he added, with a little unconscious wistfulness that caught the listener's quick ear—"my father is the finest man I know, but he is not easy to talk with, as you are."
The unconscious comparison did not offend the Bishop. He sat thoughtful for a while before he replied. "I want to tell you something to remember," he said at last. "Some day you and your father will come together, and be all the closer for the momentum you get by being separate now. I know he is a silent man, but wait until you get at what is behind his silence, as I have. Did I ever show you any of his letters to me? I suppose he lets himself out in them as nowhere else, and some of them I have laid away for you children when you are older. Let me see; I think I can show you a part of one now. It struck me as so true I almost stole it for use in a sermon." He drew out some letters from his pocket, and choosing one, he turned it down between certain lines and handed it over to his nephew. Tom read with interest that grew intense as he went on.
"I am sure we both agree," the letter ran, "that the man who earns his education, and his right to eat bread and live, by the sweat of his own brow, has an enormous pull over the man whose education and buttered bread and honey are all paid for by somebody else. At the same time my boy has worked so finely, so manfully and earnestly, at the furnaces this year, I think, and you, my dear brother, will be glad to learn this, that by the coming fall I can venture to send him—"
"Where?" asked Tom, devouring the turned-down page with hungry eyes. His fingers trembled to lift the sheet.
"Dear! dear!" said the Bishop, innocently, taking the paper and folding it away. "Did I leave out something I ought to have folded down? Well, don't ask me any questions. Don't ask me. It's a very imprudent person who tells names and tales the same day. I don't think I left out the name of the college, did I? Now, my boy, be off, before my waistcoat is. How could you respect my cloth if you should see me in flannel? I must go to rest if I mean to climb that cherry-tree with Joan to-morrow, and I certainly mean to try."
Bishop Hegan was always as good as his word, generally a little better; therefore the next morning he and Joan and the little boys and Lolly and the baby were all established under the spreading branches of the cherry-tree—Joan half ashamed of the tree's proportions, but wholly happy.
"Do you always move in a caravan like this?" asked Bishop Hegan, "I felt like Father Abraham establishing a tribe as we trailed over the fields. I don't remember asking any one but you to accompany me, Joan."
"They always come too," said Joan, simply, "wherever I go. Do you really want to climb this tree, godfather? It would be a nice way for you to celebrate the Fourth of July, wouldn't it?"
"For me, as a kind of mild and clerical dissipation, I suppose," laughed the Bishop. "Bless my soul, I don't believe there is such an unpatriotic man in America as I! Last Fourth of July I forgot to celebrate at all, and here's another Fourth hours old before I realize its birth."
Joan looked at her uncle with round shocked eyes. "Why, godfather! I didn't know you'd think that a right way to feel. I make our children pray every night for our country and the President and our continued independence."
The Bishop could not restrain a smile. "My little Joan of Arc," he said, and the words struck a chord of memory with them both. "How is it with Joan of Home?"
Joan shook her head sorrowfully. "Not very well. But indeed I am trying. I keep your letters and read them over, and I say, 'Joan of Home' every time I look at my lovely Joan of Arc; but I don't see yet why you told me to do that, godfather."
"Yes, you do," said the Bishop; "at least your heart has seen, if your mind has not. What do you think as you look at the Maid?"
Joan's eyes kindled; her voice rang: "That I would love to buckle on my armor as she did, and fight for my country as she fought."
Again the Bishop had to hide a smile. "Well, don't you?"
Joan stared. "I am so stupid, godfather. I don't understand you."
"Why, sometimes I think every woman is a fighting patriot, all day and every day. Don't you buckle on your armor every morning and war with the butcher, the baker, and candlestick-maker to defend your little country in this direction and that? Every family is a small state to be governed. Don't you know that?"
Joan's face fell. "Godfather, I don't like that idea," she burst out. "There is nothing glorious in what I am doing. Of course I love helping father, but the dear children and the tradesfolk almost fray me out sometimes. I only war in the way you describe because I know I ought to."
"That's a good enough and glorious enough reason," said the Bishop. "Don't you fret, my little girl. If the chance of any kind of glory ever comes your way—and your cruel old godfather prays it never may—you won't find yourself ill prepared to meet it, if you take care of the peace duties and let the glory take care of itself."
"Yes," said Joan, humbly, "I will try. I am trying to talk better than I did, as you wrote to me I should. Do you think I have improved at all? I know I did sometimes talk to beat the band."
"Well, the last remark was not wholly guiltless," laughed the Bishop. "But never mind. You are doing very well in all ways. What a sweet-tempered child you are making of Teddy! Hear the boy now."
"Bumble-peg, bumble-peg," Teddy was calling to Robert. "Yeth, I want to play it. Oh, come an' leth play bumble-peg. What ith it?"
"He gets that from you, dear godfather," said Joan. "I don't believe there's another bishop in the world that would go out to climb trees with his niece."
"I haven't climbed yet," said the Bishop, looking up at the spreading branches and the huge bare hole of the old tree. "My dear, where do you get your first foothold?"
"Here," said Joan. "I'll show you, godfather. But you mustn't tell Tom. It was half mean of him to tell you on me about climbing this tree."
She had led her uncle to the back of the old tree, where the underbrush clustered thickly, hiding a set of heavy iron pegs, which she had driven into the trunk, one above the other, until they were like an irregular set of steps.
"I did that with a great iron hammer," said Joan. "It took a whole morning. I stood on one as I drove in the other, and I never felt so much like my Joan of Arc as then."
"I should think so," said the Bishop, looking up at the iron perches. "Personally I should think it would have been easier, and certainly more school-girlish, to content yourself with candy at home."
"I know," said Joan; "but then I never did care for candy. I always loved the works of nature better than the arts of man." She spoke so sweetly and simply that though he really started at the last words, Bishop Hegan could not find it in his heart to laugh at them. He set his foot on the first iron peg, which at once yielded under his weight.
"Dear! dear!" he said, drawing back; "my rotundity or the weight of my divinity is too much for your ladder, Joan. No wild celebrating for me to-day. By-the-way, why aren't you children blowing off your fingers and your heads on this glorious Fourth? You, of all people, Joan, should not have a toe or finger left."
"Father doesn't allow fireworks here," said Joan; "you see, he can't make any exceptions for us, as we live on the works. There are never holidays for furnaces, and he can't very well allow the furnace-men to be playing at fire-crackers. Somehow I like it quiet this way much better. We can feel the day more solemnly than if we were playing all the time. I think if everybody would try to do something patriotic on the Fourth of July it would be beautiful, and ever so much better than firing off shooting-crackers. But then it's awfully hard to find patriotic things to do. I've tried every year, and I have never found one yet."
"And then most of us find more satisfaction in shooting-cracker patriotism," said Bishop Hegan, dryly. "Now, little girl, up with you; let me see how you can climb."
SHE SWAYED FROM BRANCH TO BRANCH.
He expected a pretty sight, but Joan's climbing was something more than that. She not only swayed from branch to branch, but fitted her slender body against limbs too large to grasp, crawling out on their limits as the tree-toad crawls. For the pure joy of motion, she worked her sinuous way to the tree-top, where no cherries grew, and back again to the limbs where they hung in clusters, which she flung down, laughing. It was not the fearless climbing of a hardy boy, but the poetry of climbing as a delicate girl might be expected to climb, but as the on-looker had never seen one venture to attempt. He felt that in a way it was scarcely human, and was glad when Joan, flushed but not breathless, dropped again at his side.
"Thank you," said the Bishop, as if he had witnessed a special benefit performance. He kept watching the young girl as she walked home quietly by his side.
"Aunt Milly!" he thought. "Fancy this bit of oddity shackled in her house! But she climbs entirely too well. Egad! it's a professional wood-nymph. She must have a governess. I wonder if she is all heroics, or if we have a mute inglorious Jeanne d'Arc in our midst. I almost wish we could prove the child."
"Come, children," said Joan, interrupting the thread of her uncle's thought. "Come, stir your little stumps. We are late for lunch, and I'm hungry. No, Lolly, it won't hurt Ted to run a little. You know, nothing ever hurts our boys. I declare, rattlesnakes run from 'em."
"She's just a little child, after all," decided the laughing Bishop, "Upon my word, I think I caught her heroics for the moment."
"Come on," said Joan, urging on the little ones. "Come on. Father must be at home by now."
She stopped short, suddenly listening, her eyes dilated. Across the fields, blown to them on the wind, came faintly the sound of a sharp shrill whistle, thrice repeated, then silence, and the same signal again.
"It's for father," said Joan, breathlessly. "Something has happened at the works."
All over the great iron-works men were hurriedly calling inquiries to one another as the shrill insistent whistle rang out with that note of alarm which danger signals seem to gain, or which the ear hears in them. The busy place roused as a humming beehive is roused by a sounded gong. All those who could, or who dared to leave their work, ran in the direction where they saw others running. Tom, dressed in his rough overalls, and with face and hands grimy from the great furnace stoves for which he was responsible, was by that responsibility tied to his post until he could leave everything in safe order. He was almost the last man free, and not until long after his patience was exhausted was he able to follow the straggling procession that led to the new fire-proof stock-house in process of erection. As he ran, Tom learned by snatches what had happened. Those dreaded poisonous gases that are the curse of the furnace-man had been insidiously leaking out from the neighboring furnace pipes, and creeping up under the iron roof of the stock-house. There they had collected as in an ether-cone, waiting to do their mischievous work. So slowly and so imperceptibly had they gathered, the men working in under the roof, riveting the huge iron girders, had labored on unconscious of the enemy surrounding them. They were not "iron-men" proper, and so less inured to the gases and less aware of their danger, the peculiarity of which is that the gases do their deadly work so swiftly when once taking hold that a man is unconscious before he knows he is actually attacked. Tom remembered one poor fellow who was sitting on a high wall eating his poor dinner-pail meal, when the gases found and caught him. It was Tom who had discovered him lying at the foot of the wall, a bit of bread still in his hand, and—Tom did not care to remember the rest, and he was glad when he reached the stock-house to see that a piece of tarpauling had been laid over a huddled something on the ground outside the house.
"Father is here," thought Tom, "or that would have been left out to gape at."
But it was not his father who was standing by the tarpauling. It was Bishop Hegan, who looked up at Tom as he would have hurried by, and beckoned to him. "Find Joan and the children," he said. "They outstripped me, and are here somewhere. Take them home. I must stay here by this poor thing. They say his wife is coming."
Bishop Hegan's face was white with pity. He took a step to the open building, and pointed up significantly. Tom lifted his eyes, and then ran forward where the crowd surged inside.
There had been three men working on the girders; now there were but two, still hanging, no one knew how, astride the great iron ribs sixty feet above the terrified eyes that watched them. They were both unconscious, as was yet another poor fellow who had tried to climb to his comrades' aid, and almost reached them, but turned back just in time, gasping and fainting. Half-way down the wall he was with difficulty rescued and lowered to safety. No one else was volunteering for the dangerous task. To climb those high sheer walls, mounting from ladder to brace, from brace to bracket, was no easy task at best for the coolest heads. The danger doubled when one climbed with nerves unhinged. Outside the building there were scaffoldings in place against the unfinished walls, but the braces on the steep roof had been removed, and to reach the unconscious men from there meant working unstayed on the verge of a precipice, and delving a way through iron plates. There seemed no choice but waiting in sickening suspense for a second tragedy, to be followed by a third.
Under the open windows and along the wall of the house Mr. Hegan was pacing up and down with an excitement which his son had never before seen. His men left a way for him, and watched him with a rude affection. Stern as he was, the safety of his men was dear to him, as they knew. He had vainly striven to raise a rescuing party, but the men hung back, he saw, in earnest. His helplessness seemed to hurt bodily.
"If I were only twenty years younger!" he was groaning as he walked.
"I am that, father. What shall I do?"
Mr. Hegan started and stood still, looking at his son in the first flush of his young manhood. He settled back against the window-frame with a deep breath.
"No," he said, hoarsely, uttering perhaps the first untruth of his manly life. "Any attempt is useless. It is throwing life away. I absolutely forbid it."
As if with a flash of memory, Tom's mind went back to that scene a year before, of which this seemed a repetition. Then, on this same historic July day, he had, with a curious appropriateness, made to his father his declaration of independence, but had met an inappropriate defeat. Then, too, they had stood, as now, by an open window, and, moved by an instinct of repetition, Tom turned to stand exactly as he had before stood, leaning against the opposite side of the frame. As he did so, he saw with what he knew was a foolish but uncontrollable flush of exultation that his eyes were on an exact level with his father's. One ambition he had achieved, but along with this growth had come another so much more important that Tom forgot all else in the exhilaration of its discovered possession.
"Father," he said, in a low tone that none the less rang with determination, "last year I didn't dare to disobey you, because I was afraid, but now—I'm not a bit afraid of you."
Mr. Hegan leaned quickly forward, and laid his hand on his boy's shoulder with a fatherly touch and an anxiety in his eyes that made Tom's heart beat high.
"I must try it, father," he said, gently, answering the questioning look. "There isn't a man here who can stand the gases as I can. I'm used to them."
Mr. Hegan bowed his head. He tried to reply quietly, but his voice broke. "You are a man," he said; "your own master. I haven't the right to say no if your courage says yes. God go with you!" He held out his hand, but turned away as if he could not see the boy's first step toward danger.
Tom grasped the hand, but did not move. "Father!" he cried, in a gasp. "Look! It is Joan!"
JOAN WAS DRAGGING HER LITHE BODY ALONG THE IRON BEAM.
Mr. Hegan turned. Tom was pointing up, not at the endangered men, but to a spot on which every eye was now fixed, and to which all were pointing in turn. Further along the building and close under the roof was a small opening, left for some temporary purpose, and through this opening, by which no man could have entered, appeared the slight shoulders and the dark head they all recognized. With strong motions of her slender arms, Joan was dragging her lithe body into the building, until she lay at last flattened on the wide iron beam that separated wall from roof. From there she began to work her way along the beam towards the girder where the men still hung. Her progress, like that of a measuring-worm, was slow but sure. A light rope was coiled round and round her waist.
"She will tie them to the girders," shouted Tom. "Take courage, father; she can stand the gases as I can. Who goes up with me?"
"My goodness!" murmured the father. "Both my children!" But in a moment he was himself again—the master, the director. He stepped forward, as a captain reviewing his troops.
"Volunteers!" his commanding voice ordered, and from the mass of reluctant men sprang a dozen, stung to tardy courage. Mr. Hegan rapidly divided his forces. Half were to go with him to the outer walls and the roof, half to follow Tom, already on his way up the inner wall to Joan.
If Joan had stopped to ask herself how she came to be where she was, she could hardly have told. From the moment when she reached the stock-house and saw the poor souls dangling, as it were, between life and death, her brain had worked like a fire. She saw the small opening under the eaves, and remembering the scaffolding on the outside, realized that she could make the height of the walls in pure air. To her the gases were less terrifying because she had formed the habit of visiting Tom when the air was most foul, to carry him cooling draughts. Almost instinctively she caught up a rope, and winding it about her waist, ran to the outer wall, where she was quite alone. Never before in her childish life had she felt so little the need of advice and instruction. As each move occurred to her, she followed it instantly, and with a concise certainty as unusual to her as it was exhilarating. Never before had she climbed with such careful precision or so rapidly. Her whole soul was absorbed in the impulse of succor, which steadied while it inspired her. She did not stop to count the cost, because cost did not exist for her. Once only did she remember herself and her danger, and that was when some instinctive feeling drew her eyes down to the rescuing-band swarming up to her aid. After that one look she did not venture to measure with her eyes the dreadful distance below. She was soon on a level with those she came to reach, and breathing the same air they breathed. Used as she was to the gases, their poison was affecting her. Her breath began to come heavily, and her eyes were now and then playing her false. Joan grasped her dulling senses as with physical hands and forced them to her service until she reached the girder. To climb out upon it and to lash the men in place were all that remained for her to do. Then, if she had the strength left, she would also lash herself, and—she realized dully that she had reached the first victim.
He had fallen forward, and was caught by the breast and between the arms in the frame-work. Joan twined the rope about him and the bar, and with the loose end passed on, crawling to the next man, who lay less dangerously. He was supported astride the girder as by a miracle of balance, his back against an iron bar, his head dropped on his breast. A strange throbbing sound was troubling Joan's ears, and seemed to her to dim her powers, and make the knots her stiffened fingers tied yet more difficult. Her sight, too, was growing dimmer, as the throbbing entered into her brain with hard metallic crashings that increased in force and volume, paralyzing the will-power to which she now felt herself clinging but feebly. She tied the last knot about the unconscious man, and felt herself then stupidly trying to wind the rope's end about her own waist. The clashing in her brain grew terrible. It was like an acute suffering, than which a fall to the depths below was preferable. But, painfully forcing herself to what was now a mere duty of self-preservation, she feebly plucked at the rope, her body swaying back and forth on the girder. Suddenly she realized her swaying motion, and righted herself with a start that roused her to a full, if momentary, consciousness. She had no longer the power to even toy with the rope or stop this swaying, which she knew had begun again. The terrible crashing sound was an unbearable uproar in her ears and brain. Her head fell forward helplessly; she felt her body following, and with a great human cry of mortal fear she struggled desperately against the sinking impulse which was dragging her down, down—
A strong rough grasp was about her waist, catching her back. Tom's voice was crying her name in her ears, and a moment later the iron roof, yielding to the brave attacking of sledges and crowbars, opened above their heads. But to Joan's sick and giddy senses it was the heavens that were parting, with a tearing, rending sound, and a glory of inrushing sunlight told her that all was over. She closed her eyes, wondering vaguely at the painlessness of death, and while thus wondering lost consciousness.
When Joan awoke it was with a warm rain, dropping on her face, and she looked up into her uncle's eyes. He was kneeling by her side, bending over her. On her other side she recognized the physician of the works, and standing at her feet was Tom, his arm about his father's shoulders, supporting him. Mr. Hegan was trembling, and leaning on that support as gratefully and as naturally as if it had ever been his habit to cling to his son. A dry sob of relief broke from her father's lips as Joan opened her eyes.
"Hush!" whispered the doctor, as she looked around her amazed. A rope was knotted about her waist and the pulley block and ropes by which she had been lowered from the roof were still attached to her rope girdle.
"What is it?" she asked, in painful bewilderment. "Oh, what is all this?"
The doctor bent to speak to her soothingly, but Bishop Hegan motioned him back.
"It is your unbuckled armor, my little Joan," he said. "You have had your wish for glory, Joan."
Joan lay still, looking up at him, her eyes growing larger and deepening with intelligence as her memory returned. Suddenly she cried: "I remember now. Are the men safe?"
"They are recovering," Mr. Hegan tried to say, but his voice failed as he spoke.
"And who saved me?"
"Your brother," answered Bishop Hegan. "Six other men ran to your help, but four gave out, and Tom outstripped the other two by yards of climbing. He caught you just as you were falling, and handed you out to a rescue party on the roof."
Joan looked affectionately at her brother. "I'd have done the same for him," she said, simply. Her glance travelled on to her father's white face and shaking hands. She sat upright suddenly, anxious and inquiring. "Why, father dear, what ever's the matter? You are just as white and jumpity as you can be. I never saw you like this. You haven't had any lunch, have you? Well, I think we all had better go home to eat something. I'm awfully hungry myself. Help me up, Tom." The elders hung back as the two young people drew together.
Bishop Hegan held out his hand—the brothers stood clasping each other.
"God bless my boy!" said Mr. Hegan, feelingly. "He has earned his independence, if ever a man did." The Bishop was openly wiping his eyes.
"God bless my little girl! She may be as romantic as a milkmaid, and talk like a sailor-taught parrot if she chooses, with no more scoldings from me. My dear Tom, it's the Fourth of July. Do you remember how one year ago to-day you were laying down the law to the young rebels?"
"Yes, I remember, and to-day they are playing Washington to my King George."
"Well, not exactly," said the Bishop. "You see, you were imposing nothing unreasonable last year."
Mr. Hegan laughed. "Exactly what King George said, I have no doubt. Let me acknowledge it when my reign is justly over. Tom shall go to college in the fall, and Joan—she shall decide for herself on a governess. My two eldest are now a man and a woman, not my children after to-day. Shall we go to luncheon? When the heroine of the hour calls loudly for bread and beef we old folks needn't stop to be sentimental."
"I suppose," said the Bishop, "that Independent States and States of Independence are nearly the same thing. Are we to have a celebration?"
"Undoubtedly," laughed Mr. Hegan. "There are our conquerors calling us. Yes, children, we are coming."
[FREDDY SOLILOQUIZES—JULY 4, 1896.]
He's a very wise man,
The Calendar Man;
He fixes the year just right;
He has a good plan,
As every one can
Discern at the very first sight.
He knows that the very best days of the year
Are Christmas and Fourth of July,
And it would have been very unpleasant and queer
If he'd gone and arranged 'em close by.
But with one in December and the other one now,
The calendar's all right for fun.
There's time to recover from one, anyhow,
Before the other's begun.