Her first series was the Arthurian legends; Rob had prepared the first story carefully and told it well, for she loved romance, chivalry, and the poetry of history as every imaginative girl does, and the inspiration of the fifty bright eyes, the eager lips, open as if to drink in her words, made her lose herself as completely as when a few years before, a little girl herself, she had told these stories to her playmates.
Rob came home from her first recital—Mrs. Silsby had perfected her kindness by lending her big parlor for the tale-telling—in the highest feather.
"I'm a mediæval minstrel, a bard, a minne-singer," she declared. "And, best of all, I'm a success. I may become a monologist, at ever so much a night. Why, the children hung on my words—and they hung on my back and arms and knees besides."
Prue, who had a strong sense of dignified propriety, was scandalized. "You don't mean to say, Rob," she exclaimed, "that you let those children swarm all over you? Why, they ought to have kept their seats strictly."
"Well, they didn't; they left them laxly." Rob laughed outright at Prue's horrified face.
"My dear spinster-sister Prudence, children can't half listen if they don't wriggle—they must fidget about, or they get deaf in their brains—not their ears. You used to swarm all over me when I told you stories."
"I was your sister," said Prue, convincingly.
"Yes, you were; I even fancy sometimes you haven't outgrown being my sister," said Rob. "Proper or not, the dear little crowd had a perfectly scrumptious time, and they wanted me to promise to tell them a story every day. You see, I'm already like a sort of serial, which doesn't come out often enough. But the best of it is, I am actually earning money and helping my family."
"You have always been the greatest help, Rob dear," said Mrs. Grey. "You have been our tonic ever since you were old enough to feel sympathy, and that was long ago."
"If I'm a tonic, Wythie must be cold cream, or something healing, and Prue—what is Prudy? Violet extract to keep us dainty, I suspect," said Rob.