Mr. Van Silver promised to do this, and soon after took his leave.
Adelaide had not intended to tell Jim anything of the suspicion which had fallen upon the trainer, but Jim had left his bedroom and come out upon the landing to listen to the music, and had overheard all of Mr. Van Silver’s account.
When Adelaide went in to kiss Jim goodnight, she found his cheeks hot and his eyes quite wild. “You will go to Mr. Mudge right away, will you not, sister?” he urged. And he was not at all satisfied when Adelaide assured him that this was not necessary, as Mr. Mudge had promised to call on Mr. Van Silver on the following day.
The next day Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong arrived, and Jim’s delight threw him into a fever of excitement. Such alternations of happiness and worry were bad for the boy, who needed calm, and Mr. Armstrong wished to remove him to Old Point Comfort, but Jim begged that he might not be taken from the city until the closing exercises of the Cadet School. “I shall be well enough to attend them, I know,” he pleaded, “and I want to see sister graduate, and to know how the mystery turns out, and whether Terwilliger is all right.”
To gratify the boy Mr. Armstrong took furnished apartments fronting on Central Park, and Mrs. Armstrong devoted herself to the care of her little invalid, while Adelaide returned to school.
Commencement was near at hand, and Adelaide felt that she must work hard to pass the final examination creditably. Our life at Madame’s was not all frolic, though I am conscious that my story would seem to indicate that such was the case. Naturally, a full report of the solid lessons which we learned would make a very stupid story, but the lessons formed our daily diet, and the scrapes and good times that I have chronicled occurred only at intervals.
We had what Milly called a thousand miles of desert, without even the least little oasis of fun, between the Inter-scholastic Games and the examinations. Winnie had taken a fit of serious study, and when Winnie studied she did it, as she played, with all her might. Our only lark for quite a time was a house-warming which we gave the Terwilligers. Polo told us how she was fitting up the little flat of three rooms with the assistance of her brother, and it certainly seemed as if the cloud which had shadowed her had drifted away. The largest room was the kitchen, also used as a dining-room. Adelaide had provided a range, and many other things, with the rooms. The cadets clubbed together and made Terwilliger a handsome present in money, with which he purchased a lounge, which served for his own bed, and an easy chair for his mother; and our King’s Daughters Ten provided all the tinware and crockery. Madame sent down a nice bedstead and some bedding. Professor Waite contributed a neatly framed portrait of Polo, and Miss Noakes gave a box of soap. Polo purchased the table linen, towels, etc., with her own earnings, and Miss Billings hemmed them and the curtains, which were made of cheese cloth. Mrs. Roseveldt sent her carriage to take Mrs. Terwilliger from the hospital to her new home and gave a carpet, and Mr. Van Silver ordered a barrel of flour and a half ton of coal. Mrs. Armstrong selected a lamp as Jim’s present, and took the two children from the Home to one of the large stores and provided them well with clothing for the summer before delivering them to their mother. It was a very happy and united family that met together that evening in Adelaide’s tenement, and Mrs. Terwilliger, who had not been credited by her acquaintances as being a religious woman, exclaimed reverently, “It seems to me we’d orter be grateful to Providence for all these mercies;” and her son responded emphatically:
“Grateful to Providence? You bet your life, I am!”