The Little Grey House

by Marion Ames Taggart

Mrs. Silsby had bestirred herself so energetically that Rob's childish audience was not only secured for her at once, but exceeded by five the twenty she had hoped to get. Mr. Grey said children were showered upon her as if she were a foundling asylum.

Their ages ranged between eleven and six, the average being eight, and Roberta wondered how she was ever going to interest them, restless as so many butterflies, and inclined to approach suspiciously an entertainment which they suspected of being improving, and very possibly additional lessons under a hypocritical disguise. But they were worth winning, for all of the audience was paid for in advance, and bewildered Rob found a hundred and twenty-five dollars in her hands, which was all her own.

Mrs. Silsby managed the financial end of Rob's enterprise, as she had its other details, which was lucky, for Rob would never have dared to offer course-tickets to her stories, with no rebates for absences. But Mrs. Silsby said five dollars was so absurdly little for twenty entertainments that nothing else was to be considered, and Rob yielded, suggesting only that at the top of her little programmes were printed: "Mrs. James Silsby presents Miss Roberta Grey," after the fashion of a great New York manager, and that at the bottom be added: "Treasurer and Press Agent, Mrs. J. H. Silsby."

There was some difficulty about Rob's title. Every lad and lassie in her audience—all of whom she had known from their cradles—hailed her "Hallo, Rob," when they met in the highway, but as a Scheherazade the case was different, and her scant dignity of sixteen needed re-enforcing.

Mrs. Dinsmore, the lawyer's wife, who was a great stickler for propriety, insisted that her two hopefuls should say "Miss Roberta," and advised Rob to exact this title from the others. But Dorothy Dinsmore herself settled the question by refusing to consider it.

"I wouldn't say Miss Roberta for anything, mamma," she declared. "I might say Roberta, but I'd rather say Miss Rob, if I must do anything silly, because you can just slide over that, and say ''S Rob'—and it wouldn't make much difference."

"I would rather be called Rob than Srob," laughed Rob. "Oh, let them go, Mrs. Dinsmore! It's going to be as nice a time as I can make it for them, and I suspect it will be nicer if we don't try to make them forget I'm just a bigger child than they are."

The result was that at Rob's first recital, though the children began decorously in their places, dubious as to what was to befall them, they soon discovered that it was not a prim teacher, but "just Rob Grey," the Rob Grey they had always known, who was telling them the most delightful story they had ever heard. It was a story as full of magical impossibilities as the fairy-tales that the girls loved, and as full of the clash of arms, and the fury of battle, and the prowess of knights as the boys could ask.

And behold, before she was half-way through, each of the twenty-five of her audience had left his seat, and the children were hanging, entranced and adoring, on the back, arms, and rounds of her chair, huddling at her feet and leaning on her knees, and she knew that she was succeeding beyond her fondest hopes.