With that, she ushered the children to seats inside the moving car, and they were quickly whirled away to the corner where stood Teeter's Pharmacy. Here they were helped off by the genial conductor, and Peace led the way up the hill to the beautiful stone house which could be plainly seen from the roadway now, because the thick cedar hedges had all been cut down, and only tall iron palings enclosed the lovely gardens.
Under her favorite oak by the lilac hedge lay the lame girl in her prison-chair, looking whiter and frailer than ever before, and Peace stopped in the midst of a rapturous kiss to ask fearfully, "Have you been sick again?"
"No, dear," smiled the marble lips. "I am a little tired these days, but perfectly well. Whom have you here?"
"Fern and Rivers Dillon. Their mother is dreadfully sick with tryfoid fever and their father is in—well, it's either a jail or a graveyard. I found them crying 'cause Mrs. Burnett had driven them out of the house with the broomstick, and when I took them home to the lady missionaries who are meeting at our house this afternoon, they began planning right away to divide them up among some families of our church. I couldn't bear to think of that, so I brought them up to you. I knew you'd be glad to keep them till the mother gets well, and they don't want to go to the Children's Home a bit. Rivers can't keep still a minute, but I know how he feels. It's the same way with me. At first I couldn't see how any mother would name her little boy such a name as that, but now I know. He upset three vases of flowers in the reception hall, and spilled a glass of frappé down his dress when I tried to give him some to drink, and pulled over the bird-cage, so's the water was all spilled, and stepped into the dog's drinking trough at the back door while I was trying to get them out of the house without the ladies seeing me. He makes rivers out of every bit of water he comes near."
"Doesn't your grandmother know where you have gone?" asked the invalid in surprise, not half understanding what Peace was trying to tell her.
"Why, no! She's one of the missionaries herself. She might think I ought to let her s'ciety look after these children as long as they've got hold of the mother already; but I—they'd be sep'rated as sure as fits, and—just look how teenty Rivers is to be taken away from all his folks at once."
"I don't want him tookened away," Fern spoke up. "Mamma told me to stay with him all the time, and I said I would. He can't talk much yet and there ain't anybody else can tell what he wants, now that mamma is sick."
"Come here, dear." The lame girl held out her thin, blue-veined hands, and little, homeless Fern ran to her with a desolate cry.
Peace was satisfied, and dropping down cross-legged in the grass at their feet, she remarked thoughtfully, "I had to bring them here, you see. Our house is full already, and grandpa says grandma has all she can 'tend to with the six of us. The parsonage is too small to hold any more, and besides, Saint John is away on his vacation, so the house is shut up for a few days. I knew Aunt Pen could mother a dozen, and I knew you'd want her to if she got the chance, so I brought 'em along.
"Isn't it too bad there isn't a nice Children's Home in this state like there is in Kentucky or some place down South, where one lady has forty daughters? They ain't any of 'em her very own. She's really just the matron of the Home, like Miss Chase is of our Children's Home, only they don't call the place a Home. The lady is just like a real mother to them, and she won't let any of her girls be adopted away from her. She just takes care of them until they are old enough to look out for themselves or get a husband to look out for them. Then she takes some more in their place and keeps on that way. And they just love her to pieces. They wear nice clothes and she teaches 'em music and manners and how to keep house and makes useful wives out of them. Oh, that's the kind of a Home I'd like to have here! Then Lottie could live there 'stead of being sent to the 'sylum."