“The poor, poor Cub!” ejaculated Brooke at last, half laughing, and then stopping short, for looking up, she saw tears trembling on her mother’s lashes. “If it were only long ago, we would buy him a horse, and spear, and shield, and smuggle him outside the castle walls at night, and let him gallop away to seek his own fortunes. Do you know, little mother, that, in spite of all the liberty I have, and money in my pocket without the asking, I sometimes feel choked and tied down like this bad boy of ours? It was only an hour ago, when I was sitting in that beautiful picture gallery, that it came over me how so many of the things we do every day seem unreal and like a useless dream. We ourselves arrange or else blindly submit to customs that keep us apart instead of bringing those who love each other together, until life gets to be like those stupid gas fire-logs yonder, all for show—a little feverish heat and unwholesomeness as a result instead of the true thing, though to be sure real logs are more trouble and a greater responsibility to tend.
“I want to be something more than furniture in our new home, if it is ever finished, and we succeed in getting out of what Lucy Dean calls this ‘elaborated parlour-car method of living.’ Yes, mother, I’m getting what you call a restless streak again. I think I’m going to pick up my brushes”—and then a serious, almost sad expression crossed her face as she added, “if they will let me.”
“So Cousin Keith’s going away,—going to be married! I wish she could have done the second without the first. I like to think of her at the farm just as she used to be. You know it’s my farm now, and I’ve always planned to go back there some summer, and really work, for if anything could put life in my brush, it would be to live in my ‘River Kingdom.’ I’d much rather do that than have a large country place, such as father plans, though of course Gilead is too quiet and out of touch with things for him, and the farm is too small a bit for his energy to work upon. Cousin Keith has been very thrifty,—‘five cows, a farm horse, chickens, ducks, seed potatoes, cordwood, etc.,’ (all mine, too, because the deed says ‘inclusive of all live stock, and furnishings’). Last of all she lists ‘Tatters, the family dog, whose race has been on the soil as long as we ourselves; if he can’t transfer himself to the newcomers not of the name, Dr. Russell has promised to take him down to Oaklands. Please understand, Cousin Pamela, that Tatters doesn’t rank with live stock,—he is a person, and must be treated as such!’”
“Tatters!” repeated Brooke, looking involuntarily at the artificial fire, so surely does visible heat draw the outward eye when the mind’s eye is a-roving. “That was the name of one of the dogs they had that autumn when I spent that lovely month there, and played at gypsy every day. But he must be very, very old now. Yes, you shall be well treated, old fellow, and not ‘transferred’ to anything or anybody against your will.
“Mother, do you know I think that if only Cousin Keith were not going away, it would be a fine thing to send the Cub to Gilead for a while, until he pulled himself together, and then some not overzealous tutor with a fondness for walking might be found for him.
“What is it?” asked Brooke, reading the confusion in her mother’s face. “You have answered him already and told him that he may come? Good! now we will act together. You take father quite too seriously; if he really understood just what we both wish to do and be, I’m sure that he would be the last one to hinder either, but we haven’t let him see. How can a man who has lived his own life so long possibly understand women unless they give him the clew, and whisper ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ when he gets off the track?
“No one, since ever I can remember, has been allowed to let father even think that he can make a mistake; consequently he really believes he cannot err, and I don’t think that he is wholly to blame for it. I’m going to beg for the Cub’s liberty the minute father comes home, and more than that, I’m going to tell him that we four have been groping round in opposite directions, and that he simply must come into our lives, and let us do for him, or take us into his—that the ‘some day’ when he will have time to listen must begin this very night!”
“Dinner is served!” said the reproving accents of the waiting-maid, letting drop the portière as she spoke, and both women glanced in surprise at the clock that was striking eight.
“Eight o’clock already, and I’m in my street gown,” said Brooke, gathering up her possessions, and making sure that the silk-bound catalogue was in her muff.
“Eight o’clock, and your father has not yet come home!”