Mrs. Grey shook her head. "Come to the commissary department, Adjutant Wythie," she said, with a pathetic smile. "We mustn't forget that Cousin Peace, as well as more turbulent people, must be fed." Wythie followed her mother, and Prue, hastily emptying her last pods, ran after them, the peas dancing up to the edge of the pan as she ran.
"Cousin Peace, I'm glad to get you to myself for a few minutes; you know everything, you have ideas in your finger-tips," said Rob, laying her bright head on Miss Charlotte's knee. "What shall I do to earn money? I'm only sixteen, and untrained. I've read—thank goodness, Patergrey and Mardy took care to give me the best books and a liking for them, and I really do know lots of things other girls don't know, but they know lots of things I don't—schoolbook things, you see. Now, what is there that sort of a young person could do to make her fortune and her family's?"
Miss Charlotte shook her head. "You ought to have special training in something, and, above all, you ought to be older before you begin, Rob dear," she said. "Is there any new reason for haste, any fresh pressure?"
"There may be. Mardy heard that some of her investments might pay less this winter, and you know how she has to struggle at best to keep us warmed and clad and fed," said Rob. "I must help her. If I don't find a way some day to make up to that brave, dear, blessed soul for all her hard times, then I'm not the girl I hope I am. It makes me just wild to be useless! I'll get luxury for her old age if I have to go about with a hand-organ and a monkey! And if I can't grind the organ, I'll be the monkey," added Rob, turning her face up to laugh in Miss Charlotte's face, with one of her sudden flashes of fun.
Miss Charlotte bent to kiss Rob, her favorite—if she had one—among the three young cousins of whom she was very fond.
"You might not get her positive luxury by that desperate measure, dearie," she said. "But you are far from useless. I can no more imagine the little grey house without you than without its foundations. Don't be anxious nor impatient, Robin; you'll find your place when the time comes, and, in the meantime, you don't realize what a sunny bit of courage you are, nor how these Grey people lean on you. I have a strong foreboding, Roberta, that you are going to have your young hands filled very soon, and your work cut out for you—it may be a work that will demand all your strength."
Roberta sat erect, startled. Wythie and she had always felt that Cousin Peace had a gift of foreknowledge almost like second sight; she was so keenly alive to her atmosphere that she felt its changes to a degree that had to blunter folk the effect of prophecy. Something kept Rob now from asking her cousin's meaning. She straightened her young shoulders, and said, instead: "I hope when the time comes I shall not fail them."
And Miss Charlotte, understanding that by "them" she meant her family, said, with entire conviction: "I am certain, my dear, that you never will."
After dinner "Battalion B" came whistling down the road, and stepped, one after the other, over the gate of the little grey house. They had come to get the girls to go rowing with them, but finding Miss Charlotte there they gave up the plan very willingly, for the tall Rutherford boys had long since succumbed to the charm of the sweet blind woman.
"Prue, run up and get the magazine I left in the sitting-room," said Mrs. Grey.