[CHAPTER II.]
THE HONORARY MEMBER.
The Miss Isabel for whom a fifth box in the post-office would be necessary lived in a charming old house, which had been built when Washington was a little boy. It had a large, old-time garden, deliciously fragrant of box, syringas, and spicy border pinks, which the children thought the utmost perfection of all that a garden should be, and wherein it was their delight to wander. Miss Isabel was the youngest and only surviving member of a merry band of brothers and sisters, and she seemed too small to live alone in the great house, with its big, empty rooms filled with the saddest and only real ghosts—the memory of those who had occupied them, the echo of feet which had ceased to walk the earth, and voices silenced by the green grass pressing on the lips that death had sealed; and had she been other than Miss Isabel she would have been melancholy; but being Miss Isabel she was as sunny as the day was long. Her gentle life was too full of care for others' sorrows to find time to think of her own, and she was too loving a little soul to ever lack love. The children worshipped her; she was their playmate, counsellor, and ideal. They had the vaguest ideas as to her age, supposing that she must be pretty old, in spite of the fact of her playing with them almost like one of themselves, for they could not remember her other than she was then; but one does not have to live long in order to be always grown up in the memory of little persons of eleven years and less, and in truth Miss Isabel was still young.
The children understood that at some time in her life Miss Isabel had not expected to live alone in the big homestead, but had looked forward to a newer home of her own, and that at the last moment something had happened to prevent her marriage.
Their elders said Miss Isabel had had "a disappointment," and the children, especially Margery, looked at her with pitying wonder, speculating on how it felt to have such a disappointment that it was spoken of as if written with a big D, and feeling, judging from their own sensations when something failed to which they were looking forward, that it must be very dreadful.
It cleared off warm and beautiful after the rain, and in the afternoon the flowers and grass looked a week farther advanced than before the storm, and the discouraged robin darted at the worms in the soft earth with jubilant chirps, and retired to the elm to sing and swing in ecstasy. As soon as school was over the children started for Miss Isabel's. She met them on the broad door-stone, looking, in her soft pink muslin, like an apple-blossom that had drifted there.
"Oh, how pretty you are!" cried Trix, giving her an enthusiastic and damaging hug, to Margery's mute amazement. It was a perpetual wonder to her how the others could fondle Miss Isabel so recklessly. If Margery threw her arms around her or kissed her, it was when she had her all to herself, and though she laid deep schemes to walk near her, and sit where she could see her, and often stroked her gown softly on the sly, she never flew to her as Trix and Amy did. She was sometimes afraid that Miss Isabel would think that the others loved her more than she, but she need not have feared; Miss Isabel understood Margery.
"We've come to tell you the nicest thing." "We've made you an honorary member." "Margery's thought of something fine." "We're going to have a club," began all four at once.
"Dear me!" cried Miss Isabel, laughing; "I shall never be able to listen to four at one time. Even a quadruped couldn't do that, you know, because he has four legs, but not four ears."