Brenda's Ward / A Sequel to 'Amy in Acadia'

by Helen Leah Reed

"Your father has to go to South America on very important business. It is too long a journey for me, although I am much stronger than a year ago. We think the wisest plan would be for me to go to Boston to be near you and Lucian, and I am writing Mrs. Weston to see if we may not engage her apartment for the next six months."

"Hurrah!" cried Martine, turning to Brenda, who had just finished reading the letter Mrs. Stratford had written her. "Of course you'll say 'yes.' Oh, how perfectly happy I shall be to have mother with me."

"Of course I will say 'yes.' But please spare my feelings; if you are too happy you will forget to miss me."

"Oh, never, never; but then mother must be feeling much stronger, and I have seen her so little the past few years. She has been under the doctor's care or travelling, and our Chicago house has been closed so long, and hotels are so unhomelike. But now, with this apartment to ourselves, and Lucian coming in from college—oh! it will be delightful."

Again Brenda protested that Martine was unfeeling in counting her out so completely.

"But I can't count you in, when you calmly and deliberately plan to turn your back on Boston and me. You know that I shall miss you, but to have mother here—of course that makes all the difference in the world."

For the Christmas holidays Lucian and Martine joined Mr. and Mrs. Stratford in New York. A day or two after Christmas, Mr. Stratford sailed for England, whence he was to embark for South America. Martine could but notice that the sadness that her father showed during these last days seemed due to something besides the fact that he was to be absent from his family for a few months. He had often before gone on long journeys, but usually he made an effort to have his departure particularly cheerful.

"Your father is worried," her mother said; "his business is not going just as it should. He hopes that this visit to South America will straighten out some things. If it does not—well, we needn't talk of the future now. I am glad that we are all together this Christmas. You and Lucian must do all you can to divert your father, he has so much to trouble him."

Martine took this advice to heart, and though Mr. Stratford spent some hours each day downtown, after luncheon she always insisted that he must entertain her. By this she meant that she must entertain him, and in consequence she thought out all kinds of odd ways of amusing him. One day they sailed on the Ferry to Staten Island to visit Sailors' Snug Harbor. Another afternoon they went up to Van Cortland Park to see the old Van Cortland house. One day they wandered for an hour in the Bowery, but Martine admitted that this wasn't as entertaining an expedition as she had imagined it would be from the accounts she had read of it. The shops on the whole seemed commonplace, and the crowded cross-streets of the East Side looked far more interesting, as she caught glimpses of them in passing.

She had to let these glimpses satisfy her, as she had promised her mother not to explore any out-of-the-way corners of the tenement district; and so obedient was she in this that she would not even go inside a certain Bowery pawnshop in whose windows she saw a fascinating little guitar. Instead she urged her father to price it, and when he came outside with it under his arm she accepted it with delight.