"Yes, I know now. Gussie told me how it was when I spoke of Marie's being cross, but we never touched a thing; we just looked, didn't we, Allee? Marie had the tooth-ache, and that's enough to make anyone ugly. I got her some funny stuff that a shoemaker in Parker gave me once when I had the tooth-ache. After that she was a little pleasanter to us—that is, for a time. It did stop the aching right away, but it took all the skin off her cheek where she put the medicine—it is to be rubbed on outside. I forgot to tell her it would do that, so she didn't like it very well when her face began to peel off, 'cause she is going to the theatre tonight with her beau. But when she jawed about it, I told her I'd rather have a skinned face and a chance to go to the theatre, than an aching tooth any day of the week, and fin'ly she decided she would, too. I guess I'll like her in time, but I like Gussie better. Then we went on downstairs and 'xamined the rooms on that floor. The big front room is awfully pretty, and so is grandma's room where she sews, but the other three bedrooms are very bare and ugly-looking. Is that where you're going to put us, grandpa?"
"Peace!" shrieked the sisters in horrified chorus.
"Yes!" roared the delighted President, and even Mrs. Campbell joined in his merriment.
"Well, I s'pose it is healthy," Peace reluctantly admitted; then as if divining a joke somewhere, she smiled serenely and continued her recital. "We looked through the parlor and library and dining-room and where you put company when they come, and then we came to the kitchen. We got there ahead of Gail all right, for Gussie was just making some pies and reading a book at the same time."
"A book!" echoed Mrs. Campbell, a slight frown gathering on the usually placid forehead.
"Yes, it was a pome of some kind that she was trying to learn. She wants to be a neducated Swede. She got through High School, but she wants to know more'n that, so's she can be a teacher some day. That's how she comes to be cooking for other people. She is a good cook and can make pretty good money that way. She isn't a big spender, so every month she can put away 'most all of her wages towards going to Normal School. I always thought Normal School was where they sent bad boys and girls who couldn't be good at home, but she says I mean Reform School. I guess she'll get to Normal School all right. I told her Gail would help her with her lessons when they got too hard for her alone, 'cause Gail's to go to the University right away; but I didn't think Faith would be much good at that, as long's she isn't quite through High School herself. I told her Faith could make lovely fancy things to eat and would like awfully well to teach her when she had any spare time, and Gussie says she'll be tickled to learn, 'cause she is only a plain cook and not up on frills yet."
Faith and the President exchanged comical glances across the table, but Peace was too much interested in her cake and fruit to notice what was going on around her, and blissfully continued, "We went down in the basement, too, and saw that boy from Benton's. His name is Caspar Dodds. His father is dead—what a lot of dead folks there are in this world!—and he has to earn money to take care of his mother and two sisters. She does plain sewing, and I promised you'd hire her sometimes, grandma. They live on Sixteenth Street, just at the corner where the Pendennis car turns off from the bridge. He told me how to get there. He's going to night-school so's he can learn the education he's missing daytimes, and says he gets along well in everything but algebra. I guess that's how he came to speak to Hope about it. I told him she'd be glad to help him with 'xamples he couldn't do, 'cause she was Professor Watson's star scholar in that. Gussie told us about the kittens, too, so I knew Hope would be down to find them, and that way she'd see Caspar. She must have come along right after us or she wouldn't have found him, 'cause he was 'most ready to go when we went out to the barn.
"Jud had just brought in the horses from exercising them, and I told him I guessed likely we'd help him at that job after this, for all of us like to ride. At first he wasn't going to let us see the horses and we had to do a lot of talking 'fore he'd give in. He used awful poor grammar, and when he told us the stable wasn't the place for little girls and that we better go in the house and learn to cook like Gussie, I asked him why he didn't get some books and learn to speak right like Gussie, instead of sitting on an old box and reading yellow newspapers—well, it was yellow, just as yellow and musty and old as it could be! And he's too nice looking to be nothing but a horseman all his life. When I told him that, he got interested and fin'ly showed us some books he was trying to study, but he can't see sense in the grammar. Gussie promised to help him, but she never has much time for such things, and he thinks she thinks he's a plumb dunce. I promised to ask her if that's the way she felt, but he said I mustn't; so I did the next best I could think of—I told him Cherry would study grammar with him. She uses the same book he has in the barn, and—"
"Peace Greenfield, did you really tell him that?" gasped poor frightened Cherry, looking as if she had just heard her death sentence pronounced.
"Why, yes! I thought you'd be glad to help him out that much. I haven't got as far as grammar in school yet, or I'd teach him all myself; but I promised to talk proper grammar to him, so's to help all I could. What do you look so scared about, Cherry? He really wants to learn; he ain't fooling. And he's an awful nice man. He showed us the squirrels' hole in the vacant oak by the barn—I mean the hollow oak—and took us down to the boat-house on the river. You never told us anything about the river being so near here, grandpa. And he pointed out the University buildings through the trees, and promised to show us around the grounds right after lunch if you didn't have time to bother. He let us go up in the barn loft and says if you're willing, we can have a playhouse up there in the part with the window that looks out over the river. Then he pulled out his watch to let us know it was lunch time, but we told him right square out that there was one more thing we wanted to see, lunch time or no lunch time, and that was the horses. So after he grumbled some more about children being such nuisances, he took us downstairs again, and showed us your Marmalade and Champagne. Oh, but—"