The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Four Corners, by Amy Ella Blanchard

THE FOUR CORNERS

The Corner Series
THE FOUR CORNERS
BY
AMY E. BLANCHARD
Philadelphia & London
George W. Jacobs & Company

Copyright, 1906,

By George W. Jacobs & Company

Published August, 1906

All rights reserved

[CONTENTS]

[ILLUSTRATIONS]

[CHAPTER I]
A NEW SONG

The town itself was one that stood at the foot of Virginia's blue mountains. The house where the Corners lived was on the edge of the town, facing a street which ended at the front gate. At the side of the garden another long street wound its way uphill and was called the old County Road when it began to go down grade. The house was a rambling old affair which had not been painted for some years and was, therefore, of an indescribable hue. One wing was shut up, but the remainder was made excellent use of by four lively girls, of whom the eldest was Nancy Weston. She was variously known as Nan, Nance or Nannie, though she greatly preferred Nannette and sometimes stealthily signed herself so. When she was, as her Cousin Phil expressed it, "on the bias," he often delighted to tease her by calling her Sharp Corner, but her Aunt Sarah often declared that West Corner suited her perfectly since from that quarter sprang up the briskest, as well as the most agreeable, of breezes.

Next to Nan came Mary Lee. She was always called by both names as is a Virginia custom. After Mary Lee came Jacqueline, or Jack as she was called, and her twin sister, Jean. Mary Lee was very unlike Nan, and though there was less than two years difference in their ages, she seemed the older of the two. She was less impetuous, more quiet and reserved, though more self-absorbed and less thoughtful for others. Neither was she so original as Nan and generally followed some one's lead, most frequently that of her Cousin Phil Lewis who was her special comrade, for Mary Lee adored open-air sports, especially boyish ones. Nan liked these intermittently, though when she did enter into them she was liable to be more daring and impetuous than her sister.

Phil lived scarce a block away and, since the confines of his own dooryard were limited, he preferred to spend much of his time within the larger range of his cousins' three acres. He and Mary Lee were about the same age and had many tastes in common; both were devoted to animals, and had a tendency to fads over which they became very enthusiastic for the time being. Phil was a wiry, dark, little fellow quite Mary Lee's opposite, she being fair-haired and blue-eyed with a slow drawl in speaking. Nan spoke more nervously when she was excited, though she, too, spoke with a lingering accent upon certain words. Nan's eyes were sometimes a grayish blue, sometimes almost a hazel, and at times showed the color of deep and tranquil pools of water, an indescribable hue. Their expression changed as did their color and when languidly drooped under their long dark lashes, seemed those of a sentimental romantic maid, but, when in moments of excitement, Nan opened them wide, they glowed like two stars. Her eyes were Nan's best feature. She did not possess a straight nose like Mary Lee's nor such a rosebud of a mouth, but her flashing smile showed even, white little teeth, and the oval of her face was perfect.

The twins were much alike in coloring and feature, but in expression were so different that even the most casual observer could not fail to distinguish Jack from Jean. They had blue eyes like Mary Lee but were dark-haired like Nan. Jack was, as Aunt Sarah Dent expressed it, "a pickle." She had a dreamy pathetic countenance and wore a saintly expression when she was plotting her worst mischief. At her best she was angelic; at her worst she was impish, and just how she would eventually turn out no one could foretell.

Jean was a sweet-tempered, affectionate child, gentle and obedient. Once in a while it seemed as if she felt it a duty to be naughty, but the naughtiness was always as if it were a pretense, and was more of a bluster than an exhibition of actual original sin. "There is no mistake that Jack is full of the old Adam," Aunt Sarah was wont to declare, "but Jean always acts to me as if she wasn't quite sure that she ought to be human."

Nan was overflowing with sentiment, a lover of music, books, and pictures, yet liking nothing better than to whirl in and help in domestic emergencies. She had much inventive and mechanical talent which most of the others lacked. She was usually the sunniest and most sweet-tempered of persons, but had her moody days when she "flocked by herself," and liked to brood upon sombre subjects or weave lugubrious ballads which she set to melancholy tunes. These moody moments occurred but seldom and were generally the outcome of hurt feelings after some teasing bout with one of her sisters or some contrite condition following a deserved lecture from her mother or her Aunt Sarah.

Aunt Sarah Dent often came to make long stays with the family after the death of the children's father. A small life insurance and the little place at the end of the street was about all that was left to their mother. Aunt Sarah had a modest income of her own which she cheerfully added to the family exchequer and, therefore, her coming usually meant some added comforts, so they managed fairly well. A woman came in to wash and clean, but the rest of the work was done by the family with the assistance of a half-grown colored girl, and an old negro man, Landy by name. It was supposed that his name in its beginning had been Philander, but he had forgotten and no one else knew. He was a little bent, dried-up old darky, but was tough and wiry and could accomplish more than many younger ones of his color, whom he scorned openly.

Add to the family an old mule named Pete, a handsome Angora cat called Lady Gray, and a mongrel dog whose name was Trouble, and you have its membership.

It was one afternoon in late summer that Nan, having been called Sharp Corner more times than her temper would amiably permit, had gone to a haunt much favored by herself. This was at the extreme edge of the place, a little nook where the orchard ended and a few stunted pines lapped over into the next field. The field had not been cultivated for some time and was overgrown with weeds and a young growth of pine and fir trees. It was rather a desolate spot, for the nearest house was hidden in summer by a thick grove, and the slope of the hill prevented the road from being seen from this point.

Creeping through the rail fence Nan felt that she had placed herself outside trammeling conditions and made her way to where a fallen log, covered with moss, invited her. This was Nan's piano. She seated herself upon a pile of sticks and stones which she had heaped up before the log. In front of her she had constructed a sort of rack, using a bit of wood which she had nailed to the log. Against the rack she placed a newspaper clipping which she secured from blowing away by means of a pin. After a few graceful sweeps of her hands up and down the pretended key-board, she wailed forth to a silent accompaniment:

There was more of the song but Nan sang the first stanza over and over again. At the close of the performance her eyes were full of tears and her voice vibrated with emotion as she quavered forth: "Little Jamie." A flock of crows in the field beyond rose from the stubbly undergrowth with solemn caws and sailed off to the grove beyond. The birds of ill-omen exactly suited Nan's mood. She took an æsthetic delight in their presence. They seemed to be applauding her. She went to the other side of the log and lay down upon the dry pine needles, her head against the log and her eyes fixed upon the blue sky. Her thoughts were with the verses she had cut from a country newspaper. She thought they were delightful, and her fancy brought before her an orphan boy tattered and torn but beautiful as a dream. She felt all the enthusiasm of a true composer as she hummed over the tune she had made.

"I will publish it some day," she said. "The next time everybody is busy and out of the sitting-room, I will try to write it so I will not forget it. I think, myself, that it is lovely and I ought to get a great deal of money for it, enough to buy a piano."

The possession of a piano was Nan's dearest wish. The only musical instrument of which the family could boast was an old wheezy melodeon which stood in the sitting-room. It skipped notes once in a while, especially in its middle range, and was at once a source of pleasure and disappointment to Nan. Her Aunt Sarah declared that it drove her wild to hear Nan try to pick out tunes on it, so the girl usually had to be sure of having the place to herself before she dared to make attempts at music. Feeble little attempts these were, for she knew scarce anything beyond the mere rudiments. But to a great love of music she added a true ear, a good memory, and boundless ambition and perseverance.

"It will be autumn soon," Nan went on to herself, her thoughts still wandering in a vague dream. "I think I like autumn best of all seasons. I'd like to write poetry about it. When I am a great musician, I will write a piece of music and call it 'Autumn Whispers,' and it will sound like the wind in the trees and the corn shocks. Then I will write another and that will be called 'Autumn Secrets.' It will be about golden sunshine and shining red leaves and little pools of water in the hollows that look as if a piece of blue sky had dropped in them. I wish I could write music that would be a picture and a poem, too; it would be nice to have them all together. Trouble, where did you come from? I know Phil is around somewhere," she exclaimed, suddenly, sitting up very straight. "I don't want him to find me here. He has called me 'Sharp Corner' once too often to-day."

She jumped up and bending low, ran along the line of fence toward the hollow which intervened between this and the next rise of ground. Trouble stood still for a moment, uncertainly looking after her, then he trotted off in an opposite direction.

Pursuing her way, Nan reached the small stream which ran through the hollow. Ferns and mosses were here in abundance. Here and there a cardinal flower flaunted its red banner. Low aground trailed the hedge bindweed, and in the field beyond a slim spire of goldenrod showed itself. This attracted Nan's notice. "I said it would be autumn soon," she said, "for there is the first goldenrod of the season. I must get that piece for Aunt Sarah, though if she has an idea of where it came from, she won't have it." She gave a hasty glance in the direction of the house beyond sheltering trees as she gained the other side of the brook to gather her ambitious spray of goldenrod, for that house set in the grove of oaks belonged to Grandmother Corner, whose grandchildren were strangers to her. The running brook was the barrier which they seldom crossed and, when they did, it was secretly. The big buff house was closed, the green shutters tightly fastened, the door boarded up and the gate locked, for its owner was abroad. With her daughter Helen, she had been in Europe ever since Nan could remember.

Sometimes Nan would push her way through the hedge which surrounded the lawn, plunge through the long grass and stand staring up at the silent house where her father had been born. Certain accounts given by old Landy made her believe that it was of palatial magnificence and she longed to see its interior. Once when the care-taker had made one of his infrequent visits, one of the lower windows was opened, and Nan who had long watched and waited for such an opportunity, tiptoed up to peep in. At first she saw nothing but ghostly sheeted furniture and pictures shrouded in muslin cases, bare floors and uncurtained windows. She was about to creep away disappointed when she saw the man upon a ladder uncovering a picture. It was of a stately lady in a velvet gown, the slender fingers half hidden by costly lace, and Nan gazed with all her eyes at the haughty face. Was it her grandmother's portrait, she wondered. She watched till the man readjusted the covering and then she crept away dreaming of a day when she might see the original of the portrait and when she might be allowed to walk through those silent rooms again restored to their former splendor.

On this afternoon, however, she did not go near the house, but followed the stream for a short distance, crossed back again and came around the other side of her own home garden where old Landy was at work, talking to himself as was his wont.

"Reckon dese yer vines is done fo'. Clar 'em erway. No mo' beans on 'em. How co'n comin' on? Get a mess offen dis row by Sunday. Tomats plenty. Melons gittin' good an' ripe." He stooped down to tap a large melon with his bony knuckles. "She jest a bus'in' wid sweetness by 'nother week. Um, um, she fa'r make me dribble at de mouf to look at huh."

"Who-o-o!" came a long-drawn owlish cry from behind him.

"Who dat?" cried Landy, pulling himself erect from his contemplation of the melon. "Whicher one o' yuh chilluns is it? Hyar, yuh, Jack er Phil er whomsoever yuh is, git outen fum behin' dat co'n brake. I sees yuh."

A suppressed giggle from Nan made known her whereabouts, and she arose up from behind the tall tasseled corn. "You didn't see me or you wouldn't have called me Phil or Jack, but you heard me, didn't you? Did you think I was a real sure enough owl, Unc' Landy?"

"Humph! I knows ole hooty-owl better'n dat. I knows yuh is a huming varmint."

"Oh, Unc' Landy! the idea of calling me a varmint. I am not one at all."

"Den wha' fo' yuh grubbin' roun' in de gyardin' stuff lak ole mole?" he asked chuckling.

"Same reason you do; to see how it is getting on. When will the watermelons be ready to eat? It seems to me they are very late this year."

"Dey is late. I say dey is, but nex' week, ef de Lord sees fittin', we bus' open dis one. She de fust to be pick. I layin' out to lif huh fum huh sandy baid nex' Tuesday."

"And we'll have it for dinner. Oh, my! I wish it were ready now. Did they used to have a watermelon patch over at Grandmother Corner's? There isn't any now."

"How yuh so wise?"

"Oh, I've been all around the place. I know just where the garden used to be."

"Yo' ma say yuh chilluns ain't to ha'nt de ole place."

"I know and I don't haunt it; I just go there once in a while. I haven't been for a long, long time. I don't see, anyhow, why we can't go when it was father's home."

"Yuh nuvver sees yo' ma er yo' auntie cross de brook."

"No, but then——"

"Den wha' fo' yuh do what dey don' do?"

"I do lots of things which they don't do and they do lots of things I don't do; that's no reason. When do you reckon my Grandmother Corner will come back?"

"Das mo'n any huming know, I tell yuh, honey. She done taken huh disagreeables an' huh hity-tyties long wid huh. Das all I kyar to know. She want de yarth an' all dat derein is, das what she want; mebbe she fin' it off yandah in dem quare countries, but she don't git back dem ha'sh words she speak to yo' pa on his las' day. Dey a-follerin' huh an' a gnawin' an' a clawin' at huh heart. She cyarnt git rid o' dem wha'soevah she go, though she try to flee fum 'em."

The picture of her grandmother's fleeing from place to place pursued by bitter words in the form of skeleton-like creatures who gnashed their teeth and clawed with bony fingers took hold of Nan's imagination. Her mother never mentioned Grandmother Corner's name, and from old Landy Nan gleaned all that she knew of her. Heretofore, what had been told her did not cause her to give much love to this unknown grandmother, but now she began to feel rather sorry for her. "I wish you took care of the big house," she said, "for then you could let me go in there to see the pictures and beautiful things, and I could play on the piano."

"Humph! I say let you in. Ef it depen' upon ole Landy yuh ain' nuvver go inside de do'. Nobody tell me go but onct. I ain't nuvver pass my foot ovah de do'-sill agin whilst I lives on dis yarth."

While he talked Landy slashed away at the dead vines vindictively. As he clawed at them with his lean black fingers he made Nan think of the bitter words which pursued her grandmother. They must appear something like Landy, only more bony and wicked-looking. Nan laughed at the conceit.

"'Tain't nothin' to larf at," grumbled Landy. "Dese yer fambly q'urrels is turrble things. Yo' pa know yo' gran'ma don't like be crossed 'bout de proputty, but he feel lak he bleedged to say what he think, an' she tu'n on him an' de las' word she uvver give mek him have de heart-ache. Yo' ma ain' fergit dat, an' das fo' why she don' lak you chilluns to go trespassin' on de ole place. Hit yo' gran'ma's an' she got full an' plenty whilst yo' pa what oughter had his share done got nothin' ter leave yuh-alls but dis little ole place. Das why I laks ter mek hit smile an' see de melons grow plum big an' de co'n-fiel' lookin' prosp'ous. Yo' gran'pa mean yo' pa to hev his shar' but de ole lady hol' on to uvvry thing whilst she 'bove groun'. Nemmin', yuh-alls has full an' plenty to eat. Ain' de tomats jest a-humpin' deyse'fs? Yo' ma has pickles an' cans o' 'em fo' de whole wintah, dey so many."

"I like the little yellow ones best," remarked Nan, who was tired of the old man's long monologue. He was given to reciting these bits of family history to her though to no one outside the family itself would he have breathed a word. "I think these make the very nicest preserves," continued Nan, "and I like them raw, too. I always feel as if I were eating golden fairy fruit only they aren't sweet like I imagine fairy fruit would be." She stooped to gather a tiny red tomato from the vines at her feet. They used to call these love-apples, Aunt Sarah says, and they thought they were poisonous. "I am glad they found out it wasn't so," she said, popping the red morsel into her mouth. "What are you going to do now, Landy?"

"Gwine tek a tu'n at de fence." When Landy's other occupations did not demand attention there was always the fence to turn to; something upon which to exhaust his energies. It was patched and mended beyond hope now, Mrs. Corner thought, and the repairs were creeping from the side to the front, for Landy had frequently "borrowed from Peter to pay Paul," and when a paling was missing from the front he had always promptly supplied it from the sides, replacing it by a board, a post, or whatever came handy, so that the two side fences presented a curious style of building. White, green or gray boards took their place as occasion required. Tops from empty boxes set forth some address in staring black letters, a bit of wire fence was hitched to a cedar post on one side and an old bed-slat on the other; but the fence served its purpose to keep out wandering cattle from the garden which was Landy's pride. And though Mrs. Corner sighed when she went that way, there was no money to be spared for new fences so the old one was eked out from year to year.

Leaving Landy to work upon the fence, Nan supplied herself with more small tomatoes and went up to the house thinking of the grandmother across seas and determining to curb her own tongue lest it lead her into such trying ordeals as the being haunted by bitter words.

[CHAPTER II]
THE FAIRY GODMOTHER

As she entered the long living-room, Nan found it deserted except for the presence of Lady Gray, who sleepily stretched out her paws on the broad window-sill where she was taking a nap, and winked one eye at Nan. "Nobody here, at least nobody who counts, if you will excuse the remark, Lady Gray," said Nan, "so I can try my song."

She went to the corner where the melodeon stood. It was piled high with a variety of things; her mother's work-basket, Aunt Sarah's knitting, a scrap-book, and some sheets of paper from which Nan was taking cuttings, the twins' dolls, and a pile of books which she herself had taken from the shelves. All these had to be removed before the song could be tried.

The warm summer sunshine sifted in through the vines that covered the western windows and disclosed the dinginess of the room. An old-fashioned paper, discolored by time, covered the walls; its green and gold had been pleasant to look upon in days gone by, but now it was patched and streaked. Upon the floor was a worn carpet; handsome old mahogany furniture which had lost its polish gave a well-filled appearance to the room, though the springs of the long sofa had been greatly weakened by frequent jumpings upon them, so that the seat of the sofa presented an uphill and down-dale surface, not rendered more inviting by the neutral-toned, frayed upholstery.

A tall secretary with a beautifully leaded glass top had been chosen by some yellow-jackets as a place for building purposes, and they were droning about their mud-bedaubed residences along the edge of the secretary's top.

A handsome centre-table with claw feet was littered with books and magazines. A set of chairs in about the same condition as the sofa evidenced that a constant use had been made of them. The shades at the windows were in a more or less worn condition. Over the mantel hung a portrait of a man in gray uniform, one hand on his sword. His eyes were like Nan's.

Nan began industriously to pick out her tune by working the pedals of the old melodeon vigorously, an operation which was followed by a long-drawn wheezing complaint from somewhere in the interior of the instrument. But Nan did not perceive any reason for amusement; she carefully wrote down her notes one by one, saying aloud "D, d, f, a,—I wish that note would sound. I think it must be a—b, a,—I wonder if it is a; it comes so often, too, I ought to know. Oh, dear, e is out of order, too. Let me see, where was I? Oh, yes, 'blue his eyes,' it is eyes that ought to be e. I reckon I'll know what it is anyhow, even if I don't get it exactly right. 'Blue his eyes,'" she sang softly.

"Nannie," came a voice from the window, "do shut up that dreadful wheezing thing; I want to take a nap."

Nan jumped up and closed the melodeon with a bang. Why was it that Aunt Sarah always wanted to take a nap when she was "composing"? It was always so. Aunt Sarah might go days and never think of napping in the daytime, but let Nan but send forth one note and, if Aunt Sarah were anywhere within hearing distance, there came the order to stop. "I wish I could have it all to myself somewhere out of the way," she said. "I'll ask mother if I may get Landy to take it over in one of the old rooms, or up in the attic or somewhere so nobody will hear me."

Acting upon this idea she sought out her mother who was busy at her sewing-machine. Mrs. Corner looked up brightly, though she did not stop her work when Nan appeared. "Well, daughter?" she said.

"Oh, mother, mayn't I have the old melodeon all to myself somewhere; over in the barn, or in one of the shut up rooms of the wing or in the garret or somewhere so nobody can hear when I am playing?"

"Playing?" An amused pucker came around Mrs. Corner's eyes. "It is truly playing that you do with it. I don't see how I can let you have it, for it is so useful to pile things on in the living-room."

"But mother, a table would do just as well."

"If one had the table."

"I'm sure there must be one somewhere in the garret."

"None that is whole."

"There's one that is only a little rickety in the legs, and Landy could mend that."

"Landy has no time for such things, at least, unless they are absolutely necessary. He has all that he can do."

"Oh, but I do want it so very much. Aunt Sarah always wants to take a nap the minute I begin to play and I always have to stop."

Mrs. Corner smiled again. "I'm not surprised. Don't be unreasonable, Nan. You know it is trying to hear any one wheeze out impossible tunes with one finger, or make distracting discords which are agony to a sensitive ear. You are getting too big to want to drum."

A lump arose in Nan's throat. She was shy of divulging her ambitions. Her mother did not understand that she did not want to drum, but that this was a serious matter. She would not explain, however, but she hurried away with a sense of being aggrieved. Mary Lee and Phil were at that moment deeply interested in watching a family of tadpoles which were about to lose their tails. The two children kept them in an old half-cask and spent many moments in bending over it. Jack and Jean were playing house with paper-dolls in the orchard. No one wanted Nan and she did want her music. She made one more attempt, returning slowly to her mother's door. "If you only just knew, mother, how awfully much I want it, you'd let me have it."

Her mother stopped stitching. "Poor little girl," she spoke sympathetically, "I wish you could have lessons, and that I could give you a good piano to practice on, for I do appreciate your love of music, but dear, I don't see that your efforts on that old worn-out melodeon will bring you the slightest reward; in fact, I have heard it said that it is not well to allow a child to practice on a poor instrument. Now, be reasonable, darling, and don't want impossibilities. You know mother would give you your every heart's desire if she could."

"I know," said Nan weakly as she turned again from the room. A sudden inspiration had seized her, and her heart beat very fast as she made her way back to the retreat in the pines and from there to the hollow and on to the very threshold of the house at Uplands, the old Corner place. She tried the door but it did not yield to her efforts. From window to window she went making an effort to open each. To the side door, the back door and around to the porch on the north side. There were side lights to the door here, and, shading her eyes, Nan tried to peer through into the dimness.

Nan thought she heard sounds within and felt a little scared, then all at once she saw a form in black garments flit across the hall, and with a suppressed scream she turned and fled, crashing through the weeds and underbrush, leaping across the brook and reaching her retreat frightened and wondering. There could be no mistake; some one was certainly there. Was it flesh and blood presence or some ghostly visitor? Uplands had the reputation of being haunted and Nan really believed she had seen the ghost of her great-great-grandmother.

She sat quaking and yet half trying to make up her mind to return for further investigation when a shadow fell across the spot where she sat, and, looking up, she saw a strange little lady standing before her, looking down at her wistfully. The lady was all in black and though her face was young, and her cheeks showed softly pink, her hair was very white. Nan had not seen her approach, and it appeared almost as if she had dropped from the skies. "Who are you?" inquired the little lady.

"One of the four Corners," returned Nan with a sudden smile.

"Which one?"

"Nan."

"I was sure of it. And why were you trying to get into that house?" The little lady nodded toward Uplands.

"Because it is my grandmother's and—and——" She glanced up shyly at the stranger.

"Go on, please," said the lady, taking a seat on an end of Nan's pretended piano. "Did you want anything in particular?"

There was something compelling in the lady's manner, and Nan replied, "Yes, I did. I know I really ought not to have gone, for mother doesn't like us even to cross the brook. She never actually forbids it, but she looks distressed if she finds out that any of us have been over, but I wanted awfully to see if I could get in and try to open the piano. It seems so perfectly dreadful for it to stand there month after month and year after year, no good to anybody, when I'd give my right hand to have it."

"If you gave your right hand for it," said the lady, suddenly dimpling, "you could only play bass, you know, and I don't believe you would care for that."

Nan laughed. "No, I wouldn't. I like the fine high notes, though sometimes I think the growling bass of the organ at church is beautiful. It makes me think of what it says in the Psalter: 'The noise of the seas, the noise of the waves, and the tumult of the people.'"

The lady nodded understandingly and was silently thoughtful for some moments, then she said, "This is a nice little spot." She put her hand upon Nan's improvised music-rack. "What is this for?" she asked.

Nan blushed. "It's just to hold up the music, you know. That's my piano where you are sitting."

"Goodness!" cried the lady, jumping up. "How undignified of me to sit on a piano. Please pardon me; I didn't know."

"Of course not." Nan's eyes grew starlike. It was not only very delightful but very exciting to meet one who so perfectly understood. "You see," she went on, "all I have at home is a dreadful old melodeon that skips notes and wheezes like our old Pete; he has the heaves, you know."

"Poor old Pete," said the lady, with a tender retrospective look in her eyes. "You have the melodeon, yes, and then?"

"Aunt Sarah always wants to take a nap the minute I begin to play, and to-day," her voice dropped and she went nearer to her visitor, "I had made a new tune and I did so want to write it down. I came out here first and tried it; it sounded very well, I thought, but I had written only a little of it when I had to shut the melodeon. Aunt Sarah always does have such inconvenient times for taking naps," she sighed.

"Won't you let me hear your song, or your tune?" said the lady, politely seating herself with an expectant air upon a stump further off.

Nan's cheeks grew redder. She did not like to seem ungracious to this stranger who showed such an unusual interest in her performances and yet her only audience heretofore had been the creatures of the field and the air. "No one has ever heard it but the crows," she said hesitatingly, then impulsively: "You won't laugh?"

"Indeed no, of course not," returned the lady with some real indignation at such a suspicion.

Nan sat still long enough to screw up her courage to the active point, and then drawing from her blouse a bit of paper, she seated herself before her log-piano and began her song. The lady, with cheek in hand, leaned forward and listened intently. Once there was a slight flicker of amusement in her eyes, but for the most part her face was tenderly serious. At the close of the song she said gently: "Thank you, dear. I think that is a very sweet little air for one so young as you to think of. May I see?" She extended her hand for Nan's half-written song. "How will you finish it?" she asked.

"I don't know. I'll have to wait till Aunt Sarah goes out or goes away. I hope I shall not forget it before then. I'll sing it over every day and then maybe I won't forget."

The lady looked at her thoughtfully for a minute. "Can you keep a secret?" she asked suddenly.

"Oh, yes. Why, nobody, not even Mary Lee, has an idea about this." She waved her hand to include her music-room retreat.

"Then promise not to tell a soul."

"I promise." Nan's eyes grew eager.

"I am your fairy godmother, and if you will meet me under the sunset tree to-morrow morning at ten o'clock, I will conduct you to a place where you can finish your song undisturbed, for I guarantee Aunt Sarah will not be caught napping within hearing of you and the melodeon."

"Oh, how perfectly delicious," cried Nan, her imagination all afire. "I'd love that. Where is the sunset tree? It is such a lovely name for it."

The lady pointed to a huge oak just across the brook. "It is called that because one can see the sunset so finely from there. Have you never been up to look at the sun go down behind the hills? There is one little notch between the mountains over there and at a certain season of the year the sun drops right down into it."

"I have never seen it," said Nan, regretfully. "I wonder why no one ever told me about it. I think sunset tree is such a lovely name and it is just the spot for a trysting place. It would be a lovely secret, but I never had a real important one from mother before. I shall have to tell her about going up there; not right away, but some day. It always comes out sooner or later and I would rather tell just mother, if you don't mind."

"So you may. I'm glad you feel that way about it. Little girls should never have secrets they cannot tell their mothers. In three days you may tell her, if you think it would be right to keep silence that long."

"Oh, that will not be very long. I could keep the secret longer if you said so."

"That will be long enough. Now, shut your eyes while you count one hundred slowly or the queen of the fairies will not let me appear again. The spell will be broken if you so much as peep, or if you do not count aloud."

Nan closed her eyes very tight and began to count. She gave a little interrupting gasp as she felt a light kiss on her cheek, but she kept steadily on till she had reached the desired number. Then she opened her eyes and looked around. There was no one in sight. The afternoon sun was sinking behind the trees, and the cows were returning home along the county road. With the weight of such a secret as she had never before carried, Nan ran home in a happy tumult of excited expectation. At the back of the house she came upon Mary Lee and Phil still absorbed in their polywogs.

"Come see," cried Mary Lee, "they are too funny for anything, Nan. They are the interestingest things I ever saw."

Nan went up to look. "What is so wonderful about polywogs?" she asked.

"You'd think yourself wonderful," said Phil indignantly, "if you could change yourself from a swimming beast into a hopping one and be as awfully amphibious as they are."

Nan laughed and drew her finger slowly through the water in the cask. "They aren't half so wonderful as fairies," she said. "They can change themselves into all sorts of things."

"Oh, pshaw! Everybody knows that there are no real fairies. These can really change before your very eyes; we've watched them from day to day, haven't we, Mary Lee?"

"Yes, we have," was the answer. "Nan always likes foolish make-believe things, but we like the real ones."

"Fairy godmothers are real," Nan answered back over her shoulder as she left the pair discussing the proper treatment of their present pets. They paid no attention to her speech and she laughed to herself, exulting in her secret. Before she reached the house she heard a wail from the direction of the orchard, and perceived Jean sitting on the ground under a tree. As Nan approached, she whimpered softly.

"What's the matter, kitten?" asked Nan.

"Jack was pretending I was a calf," said Jean, mournfully, "and she hobbled me to the tree so I couldn't get to my mother, and now she's gone off and I can't get the rope untied."

"Poor little calf, and the cows all coming home, too. Never mind, I'll untie you. Where is Jack?"

"She was going for her cows, but I reckon she's done forgot it."

"Don't say done forgot; that sounds like Mitty and Unc' Landy."

Jean hung her head. She was used to these chidings from her eldest sister. She had a curious babyish way of speaking, not being easily able to make the sounds of th or qu. "I know it isn't crite right," she said, "but I forget sometimes."

Nan put her arms around her. "Of course you do. We all forget some things sometimes. Come with me and let us hunt up Jack. I'll venture to say she's in some mischief."

She was not far wrong in her conjectures, for after a half hour's diligent searching, Jack was found. She had discovered a can of white paint, supplied by Aunt Sarah for the betterment of the front fence which Landy had proudly commenced to adorn with a shining coat of whiteness. He had been called away when he had made but little progress and Jack had taken up the job with great glee. She was in the height of her enjoyment, daubing on great masses of white which dribbled down the palings wastefully. The child herself was smeared from hair ribbon to shoe-strings and was a sight to behold.

"Jack Corner!" exclaimed Nan. "You dreadful child! Just look at you, and, oh, dear, how you are wasting paint. It won't begin to be enough to finish the fence the way you have been using it. Unc' Landy will give you Jesse."

"Some one's always giving me Jesse," complained Jack. "You all keep saying Unc' Landy has so much to do and I am only helping him."

"Pretty help, using up the paint and ruining your clothes. March yourself straight into the house, miss." Nan took hold of Jack's shoulder which was twitched away, and with a vicious fling of the dripping brush directly at Nan, Jack turned and fled.

"She is the most trying child," said Nan, deftly dodging the brush, though not without receiving some drops upon her frock. "I declare, there isn't a day when she doesn't do something dreadful."

"She just fought she was helping," put in Jean, always ready to defend her twin by imputing worthy motives to her performances.

"Maybe she did, but it's pretty poor help," said Nan, stooping to pick a plantain leaf with which to wipe off the worst spots from her skirt. "Aunt Sarah was so good as to buy the paint. I know she went without something to do it, and now for Jack to do her so mean as to play this scurvy trick is too bad. I'm all done out with Jack. It's lucky we found her when we did or there wouldn't have been even as much paint as there is. I must go tell Unc' Landy at once. Maybe he can scrape off some of this before it dries. Help indeed! It gives him double work." Her last words were spoken to thin air, for Jean had hurried off to comfort Jack and Nan was left to break the news to Unc' Landy.

[CHAPTER III]
NAN'S SECRET

When Nan opened her eyes the next morning it was with a consciousness that something pleasantly exciting was to happen, and she lost no time in hurrying down-stairs and, after breakfast, in getting through her prescribed duties with more than usual haste. Her mother smiled to see that she was so eager and businesslike and that her moodiness of the day before had departed, while Aunt Sarah said: "I hope your fancy will not lead you to try the tune the old cow died of to-day, Nannie."

Nan smiled but made no reply. What matter if Aunt Sarah did cast slurs upon her musical attempts? There were persons in the world who took them seriously, and she felt a thrill of satisfaction as she thought of the soft white hair and blue eyes of her fairy godmother.

It was with some difficulty that she was able to reach the sunset tree without being seen. Jack, in penitential mood, and Jean looking for sympathy, followed her everywhere, and it was not till she had robbed a rose bush of its red berry-like seeds and had constructed a wonderful set of dishes, a lamp, and a whole family of people from the berries, that the reward of her ingenuity came to her in the delight of the children over these novel toys and in their content with a corner of the porch for a playroom. After seeing them well established, Nan set off.

"I've dusted the living-room, made my bed, picked up after Jack, and I believe that is all," she told herself. "There's Phil coming, I am thankful to say, so Mary Lee will not tag me." She paid no heed to the question, "Where are you going?" which Mary Lee called after her, but kept on till the barn hid her from sight. She hoped she had not kept her friend waiting and that she would not become impatient and leave, for it was after ten. But as she came up to the tree she saw the sombre little figure sitting quietly there. "I was so afraid you couldn't wait," said Nan breathlessly. "The children were so tiresome and wanted all sorts of things done for them so I couldn't get away before."

"There's plenty of time," replied her friend. "Sit down and cool off; you've come too fast in the hot sun. Tell me about the children."

"Jean is a dear, and Jack can be perfectly fascinating when she chooses. They are the twins, you know. Jack's name is Jacqueline. Aunt Sarah says she was mixed together with more original sin than any of us, and if there hadn't been a lot of angel used in her make up she doesn't know what would become of her. She is simply dear this morning, but yesterday afternoon!" And Nan gave an account of Jack's muddle with the paint.

Her companion laughed. "She must keep you in hot water," she said. "Tell me about Mary Lee."

"Oh, do you know there is a Mary Lee?" said Nan in surprise. "But of course everybody knows us. She is named for our mother, and I am named for papa's sister Nancy Weston who died. We called Jack and Jean after papa. His name was John and Jean is the French for John, only we give it the Scotch pronunciation. Papa was always called Jack and so Jacqueline is called that."

"Yes, I know—I mean I see," returned her companion. "Come, now, shall we go on? Are you ready to be conducted to the place of your desires? You must go blindfolded."

"How lovely! That makes it so deliciously mysterious. I hope I shall not fall and bump my nose."

"I'll take care that you do not. Let me tie this ever your eyes." She drew a soft silken scarf from a bag she held, and made it fast over Nan's eyes. "Can you see?" she asked.

"No, indeed, I can't. Not the leastest little bit."

"Now give me your hands. There, I'll put them around my waist and you will walk just behind me."

Their way was made very cautiously and slowly and at last Nan set foot upon a board floor. "Now I can lead you," said her guide. "One step up, please."

Nan was led along the floor for some distance making one sharp turn, and then was gently forced to a seat. "There," said her guide. "Sit here perfectly still till you hear a bell ring; then you may untie your scarf, but you must not leave the room till I come for you."

Nan sat very still. Presently she heard a light footstep cross the floor, then a door closed and after a few minutes a bell in the distance tinkled softly. Up went her hands and the scarf was withdrawn in a jiffy. She found herself sitting before an open piano. On each side of her were set lighted candles in tall brass candlesticks. Into the room no gleam of daylight made its way. In the shadowy corners were sheeted chairs and sofas and on the wall were covered pictures. Nan recognized the place at once. It was the drawing-room of her grandmother's house and over the mantel must be the very portrait she had once gazed upon with such delight. Now it was screened from view. "I just wonder who in the world she is," exclaimed Nan thinking of her guide. "I'd like to know how she got in here and all about it. Perhaps she is some of our kinsfolk who has come down here to look after something for grandmother. I'm going to ask her."

Having made this decision, she turned her attention to the piano. In spite of long disuse it gave forth mellow and delightful tones as she touched it softly. It seemed very big and important after the little melodeon, but soon the girl gained confidence and became absorbed in writing down her little song which she did note by note, calling each aloud. "I am not sure that it is just right," she said as she concluded her task, "but it is as right as I can make it."

She arose from her seat and tiptoed around the room, lifting the covers from the shrouded furniture and getting glimpses of dim brocade and silky plush. Then she went back to the piano. All was so still in the house that Nan felt the absolute freedom of one without an audience. She touched the keys gently at first, but, gaining confidence and inspiration, went on playing by ear snatches of this and that, becoming perfectly absorbed in the happiness of making melody.

She was so carried away by her performance that she neither saw nor heard the door open and was not aware of any one's presence till a soft voice said: "I declare, the blessed child really has talent."

"Oh!" Nan sprang to her feet. "Were you listening?"

"I have been for a short time only. How did you get along with your song?"

"Pretty well. I don't know whether it is exactly right. I don't know much about time, and sharps and flats."

"May I see? Perhaps I can help you."

Nan timidly held out her little awkwardly written tune and the lady scanned it carefully. "You haven't your sharps and naturals just right," she remarked. "You see this is the sign of a natural," and taking Nan's pencil she made the necessary corrections, then sitting down to the piano she played the simple air through and afterward went off into a dreamy waltz while Nan listened spellbound.

"Please tell me who you are," the child cried when the music ceased.

"I did tell you. I am your fairy godmother. You may leave out the fairy if you like, for I am quite substantial."

"Are you kin to—to grandmother? Did she send you?"

"She did not send me and has no idea I am here."

Nan stared. "I know, of course, just where I am," she said. "This is Grandmother Corner's house. I saw into this very room once and I saw that," she indicated the portrait. "I just saw it for a minute and I do so want to see it real good. Could I?" she asked, wistfully.

"Why do you want to see it?" asked her companion.

"Because I love it. Oh, I know, I know," she went on hastily. "Landy has told me."

"Has told you what?"

"I can't tell you unless you are kinsfolk."

"You can tell me anything because there is nothing I don't know about this house and those who used to live here."

"Oh, then, you know how cruel my grandmother was to papa, and how she couldn't bear his marrying mother."

"It wasn't because it was herself," put in the other eagerly. "There was no objection to Mary personally, but she hated to give him up to any one. She would have felt the same way if he had wanted to marry a princess. She never did get over the fact of sharing him with some one else; she never will."

"I didn't know all that, but I knew about the bitter words and how they have been haunting her, and I feel so very sorry for her. I know it would break my mother's heart to lose one of us," said Nan, "and if she had been cross to us and anything had happened that we were hurt meantime she would never forgive herself. Why, when Jack has been her naughtiest, mother never misses kissing her good-night. Last night Jack had to be put right to bed for punishment and before I went to sleep I heard mother in the nursery and Jack was crying, then when mother came to kiss me good-night I saw she had been crying, too. She is such a dear mother."

"She must be," said the little lady, her voice a-tremble, "and you are right to feel sorry for your grandmother. She needs all your love and sympathy."

"I wonder if I shall ever see her," said Nan wistfully.

"I hope so. I think so."

"And may I see the picture?"

"It is too high to reach, I am afraid."

"Oh, but I can get a pole or something and lift up the cover," said Nan, quick to see a way.

"Run, then, and find one."

Nan disappeared and soon returned with an ancient broom, the handle of which was used to lift the cover sufficiently so that by the dim light of the candles, which her friend held high, Nan beheld the portrait again.

"Thank you, so much," she said gratefully. "I am very glad you are kin of ours, even if I don't know who you are. I love you and I am going to try to love my grandmother."

The little lady suddenly put her arms around her and held her close. "You are a dear, dear child, and I love you, too," she said. "Some day you shall see me again. Kiss me, Nancy."

Nan held up her sweet red mouth to receive the warm kiss. "I shall be seeing your grandmother before long," said her friend, holding the girl's hands and looking tenderly at her.

"But she is in Europe."

"And are there no steamers that cross the ocean?"

"Are you going there, then?"

"That is my intention."

"Then, are you going to tell her about me? Will she care to know?" Nan paused before she said hesitatingly, "Would it make her very mad if I sent a kiss to her?"

"Dear child, no. It would make her very glad, and would help to ease her sad heart, I am sure."

"Then I'll do it. Take this, please." Nan pressed a hearty kiss on the lady's lips. "Then," she added: "I must tell mother, you know."

"Of course. You may tell her day after to-morrow that you met your godmother."

"My fairy godmother."

"As you like. Now you must run along. Good-bye till we meet again. One more kiss, Nannie, for your Aunt Helen."

"Oh, yes, I always forget her. I was so little when I last saw her, you know. But I'll send her a kiss if you want me to. Good-bye, dear fairy godmother. Ask the queen of the fairies to send you this way soon again."

The candle-lighted room, the little white-haired figure, the shrouded portrait all seemed unreal as Nan stepped out again into the bright sunlight. She longed to tell her mother all about it, but she reflected that the secret was not all her own and determined to be silent till the time was up. Only one question did she ask and the answer almost made her betray herself. "Mother," she said when her mother came to say good-night, "who was my godmother?"

"Your Aunt Helen," was the reply.

Nan sat straight up in bed her eyes wide with surprise. "Why, why," she stammered, but she immediately nestled down again.

"Did you never know that?" asked her mother.

"If I did I forgot," replied Nan, and she lay awake for a long time thinking of the strangeness of the morning's experience. She could scarcely wait till the time rolled around and brought her to the day when she could tell her mother the story of her secret meeting. It seemed to her that since the day before yesterday her mental self had grown prodigiously. Mary Lee, a year and a half younger seemed now such a child, although heretofore she had been considered the more mature. Once in a while the two had discussed their grandmother and the Corner family, but Mary Lee was not greatly interested in the subject and had concluded the conversation by saying: "I don't care a picayune where she is or what she thinks. She has never done anything for me and she might as well be out of the world as in it, as far as we are concerned. I'm never going to bother my head about her, and I don't see why you want to, Nan."

This crushing indifference satisfied Nan that Mary Lee was not to be confided in when the silent house at Uplands, like a magnet, drew Nan toward it, and she was rather glad that she did not want to tell any one but her mother, for had a sympathetic spirit been ready to hear the secret would have been hard to keep.

When the eventful day came she followed Mrs. Corner from dining-room to pantry and from pantry to kitchen waiting for a chance to give her confidence. "When shall you be through, mother?" she asked. "It seems as if you had so much more than usual to do this morning."

"No more, than always," returned her mother. "Why are you so impatiently following me up, Nan? What is it? Can't you tell me now?"

Nan glanced at Mitty and the washerwoman who were eating their breakfast. "It's a secret," she said in a low tone, "a very important secret."

Mrs. Corner smiled. Nan's secrets were not usually of great importance except in her own estimation. "Well, I shall be in my room as soon as I give out the meal and sugar; you can come to me then, if you can't tell me here. Suppose you pass the time away in looking up Jack. It is about time she was getting into mischief again. She always chooses Monday morning for some sort of escapade; I suppose keeping bottled up over Sunday is too much for her."

"I'll go see where she is," agreed Nan. "She won't be painting the fence this time, I know."

Jack was discovered before a tub in the wash house. In the absence of Ginny, the washerwoman, at breakfast, she had seized the opportunity of taking her place and was about to plunge her best muslin frock into the water with the stockings and underwear when Nan came upon her. "Jacqueline Corner, what are you up to now?" cried Nan, snatching the frock from her.

"I'm just helping Ginny to wash," replied Jack with her usual air of injured innocence when discovered under such circumstances.

"You were just helping Landy when you wasted the paint and ruined your blue frock," said Nan sarcastically. "Walk yourself right out of here. Ginny is perfectly capable of doing the washing without your assistance. Besides that lawn frock doesn't go in with black stockings; a pretty mess you'd make of it. Ginny won't thank you for mixing up her wash when she's sorted it all out. Try your energies upon something you know about, young lady."

Jack flung herself away. "You're always saying I mustn't do this and I mustn't do that," she complained. "You're a regular old cross-patch. You're not my mother to order me around."

"Mother sent me to see after you, so there," returned Nan. "I'm next to mother, too, for I'm next oldest. Where's Jean?"

"I don't know and I don't care," returned Jack, sullenly.

"Who's a cross-patch now? Here comes Ginny; you'd better make tracks out of here."

Jack fled and Nan returned to the house to find her mother ready to sit down to her sewing. The girl carefully shut the door and then established herself on an ottoman near her mother. "What does my Aunt Helen look like?" she asked abruptly.

Her mother looked up in surprise. "That's the second time lately that you have asked me about your Aunt Helen. Why this sudden interest, Nannie?"

"I'll tell you presently. It's part of the secret."

"Oh, it is. Well then, Helen has dark hair and blue eyes, a fair skin and little hands and feet. She is quite small, not much taller than you."

"It all sounds right," said Nan reflectively, "except the hair. Is she quite old, mother?"

"She is younger than I."

"Oh, then, of course, it is some one else, only my little lady has a very young smile. Maybe she isn't so awfully old. Could any one younger than you have real white hair, mother?"

"Why, yes, I have seen persons much younger whose hair had turned quite gray. Sometimes hair turns gray quite suddenly from illness or grief or trouble."

"Could Aunt Helen's hair be gray by this time?"

"It could be, though it was dark when I saw her last."

Nan pondered upon this and then said: "Well, anyhow, whoever it was, she told me I was to tell you that she was my godmother. Did I have two godmothers?"

"Yes, but I was one. What is all this about? Whom have you seen, and where did you see her?"

Nan launched forth into her story, her mother listening so attentively that her sewing lay untouched in her lap. When Nan had concluded, Mrs. Corner picked up her work again, but she was so agitated that she was unable to thread her needle.

"Who was she? Who was she?" queried Nan.

"Your Aunt Helen, without doubt."

"But I thought she was in Europe with my grandmother."

"So I thought. She evidently came over on some matter of business, leaving your grandmother there."

"Are you sorry I saw her, mother?" asked Nan, leaning her elbows on her mother's lap and looking up into her face. "I told her I ought not to go to Uplands because you don't like us to. Are you sorry I went? Are you angry, mother?"

"No, I think I am glad, Nannie."

"Then I am glad, but why didn't she come to see you when she was so near? Did she say mean horrid things, too? I can't imagine her doing anything hateful and mean."

A pained expression passed over Mrs. Corner's face. "What do you know about that sad time, Nannie? I have never mentioned it to you children."

"No, but Unc' Landy told me grandmother said bitter things. I know you didn't though."

Mrs. Corner sighed. "I said one thing, Nannie, that I have often regretted since, and it is because of it that your Aunt Helen did not let me know of her being here. It was in a moment of deep distress. I was hurt, indignant. I felt that I had been left desolate with insufficient means to support my children, and in the only interview I had with your grandmother I said, 'I hope I shall never again behold the face of one of the Corner family except the children of my beloved husband who bear his name.'"

"I don't blame you," said Nan, taking her mother's hand between her own. "They were horribly mean to go off with their money and not give you a penny. They ought at least to have let you live in the big house and use the piano."

Her mother smiled. "That is the way you look at it. Well, we get along somehow without them, thanks to Aunt Sarah. I am sorry I did not try to be more friendly to Helen. She was dominated by her mother and it was no doubt a choice between her and you children. She was very fond of you as a baby and she has not forgotten. Her mother's sadly jealous and envious spirit is what has made all the trouble."

"I was four years old when they went away," said Nan. "I don't remember them at all, though I remember dear daddy perfectly."

"Let's not talk of it any more," said Mrs. Corner.

"Aunt Helen said we might see each other again some day. Do you suppose they will come back and will be nice to us and let us go up there sometimes?"

"We cannot say. I do not look into the future to find such possibilities, Nannie. You must not build too many air-castles."

"Oh, but I like to," replied Nan. "It's lots of fun to do it and if they don't amount to anything I've had the fun of the building and nobody's hurt when they tumble down."

"In that case I suppose it doesn't make much difference, and when one is naturally a castle-builder it is hard to give up the habit."

"It isn't as bad as sucking one's fingers as Jean does, for it doesn't put my mouth out of shape; it only amuses me and I often forget my castles an hour after they are ten stories high. I suppose I am not to tell the children about Aunt Helen."

"I think I wouldn't yet."

"No," said Nan with a mature air. "I think it's best not. They mightn't understand. Besides, as she isn't a polywog nor a newly hatched bird, Mary Lee wouldn't be very much interested in her."

[CHAPTER IV]
A MOTHER'S SECRET

The first days of autumn brought back school days. Aunt Sarah had gone to visit a nephew in lower Maryland, leaving behind her mementoes in the form of the coat of paint for the front fence, a new cover for the living-room table, and many stitches put in made-over garments for the children. She had further dispensed her bounty in a direction of which the children as yet knew nothing, and it was Nan who first heard of it from her mother.

Aunt Sarah's absence was felt in more ways than one. Mrs. Corner was her favorite niece. A tiny grave in the old churchyard marked the resting place of her namesake, Nan's elder sister, who was her mother's first-born and who lived but three short months. It may have been that Aunt Sarah's heart went out more tenderly toward her own sister's child because of this loss which was so heavy a grief to them both, but whether it was because of this bond between them or because they mutually loved and respected each other, it is true that any sacrifices which Miss Dent felt she could make she made for the Corner family, and when she was with them no task was too heavy for her, and her wise counsel and helpful hands were greatly missed by Mrs. Corner.

It was just after Aunt Sarah's departure, and while school was still a novelty, that Nan, running in to tell her mother of the day's doings, noticed that Mrs. Corner was sewing not for one of the children but for herself. This was so unusual that Nan remarked it, and forgetting her school gossip exclaimed, "Why, mother, you are making a new frock! Where did you get it?"

Her mother dropped her work with a sigh. Nan noticed that the dear face was pale and sad. "Aunt Sarah gave it to me," was the answer. There was silence for a few moments after this, while Mrs. Corner went on with her work of measuring off the black breadths. "I have something to tell you, little daughter," she then said. "You had a secret to tell me a little while ago, and now I have one to tell you." She paused. "It isn't a happy secret, Nan," she went on, "but as you are my eldest and my staff to lean upon, you must try to help me bear it without rebelling."

Nan grew very sober. This was such a melancholy beginning that she feared what might follow, but being a young person who never thrust aside unpleasant things when she knew they must be met she said firmly, "Don't bother about me, mother; I'll be as brave as a lion."

The scissors snipped along the edges of the pattern while Mrs. Corner bent over her work. Presently she said, "It is this, Nannie: that I must leave you for awhile."

All sorts of notions flew to Nan's mind. Was her mother perhaps going to Europe to hunt up her Aunt Helen? Was she going to see Cousin Henry Dent in Maryland? "Oh, mother," she cried, "tell me quick. Where are you going?"

"I am going to the Adirondacks, Nannie."

"The Adirondacks?" Nan looked the surprise she felt. "Why in the world are you going there? You don't know any one up in those regions, do you?"

"No, and that makes it harder. I am going for my health, Nannie."

The blood forsook Nan's cheeks. She felt as if she were sinking down, down, and it took all her effort to check a rising sob. All she did, however, was to hold her nether lip closely between her teeth and to draw a quivering sigh. Then she gasped out: "Oh, mother, mother, it doesn't mean—it can't mean——"

"It doesn't mean anything very serious—yet," said Mrs. Corner dropping her scissors and sitting down by Nan's side. "But the doctor says if I go now the tendency will probably be overcome. If I stay it may mean that the disease will get the better of me, and dear Aunt Sarah has made it possible for me to go. Only a few months, Nan, and Aunt Sarah will come and stay with you while I am away. Now, I want you to stand by Aunt Sarah. She has made, and will continue to make every sacrifice for your mother, and you must make sacrifices for her."

"Oh, I will," cried Nan. "I won't touch the melodeon, and I won't nag the others any more than I can help. Aunt Sarah is good. Oh, I know she is so good, but she isn't—she isn't—you." This time the tears would have their way and they began to course down Nan's cheeks though she sat up straight and tried to blink them away. "And—and"—she went on, "she doesn't—it's hard to make her understand things like it's not always being a waste of time to do what you like and all that."

"I know, but, dear, remember that persons are very likely to respond to what you expect of them, and you will find Aunt Sarah very sympathetic if you take her the right way."

Nan was not at all sure that she could find that right way but she did not say so. She only looked at her toes very mournfully and wondered if it had happened to be Aunt Helen instead of great-aunt Sarah who was to be left in charge whether she would have minded it so much.

"No mother could have had my interests more at heart," continued Mrs. Corner. "Think how she has toiled and sacrificed herself for me, and it is entirely due to her that I am able to go, for not only has she provided the money for my journey, an expensive one, but she has thought of a way to pay my board while I am away, and it is just here, Nan, that I shall have to depend upon you to stand by Aunt Sarah. Cousin Tom Gordon's two boys are to board here and go to school. They want to prepare for the University and it seems a godsend that they are coming this year, for it will make my going away possible. Of course this is a new element. Two boys coming into a family will make new conditions and you must consider that Aunt Sarah is very unselfishly and devotedly undertaking a greater responsibility than we have any right to ask of her. So, Nan, try to play the part of peacemaker always. Be the sweetener of tart speeches; be the sunshine that drives away the clouds. Aunt Sarah loves you and appreciates you, though she has a little crisp way which your over-sensitiveness finds harsh. Never mind that. Be patient and wise and sweet, so will you help your mother and bring her back speedily."

"I'll try, oh, I'll try," said Nan. This was a secret indeed. What plans! What changes! "When do the boys come, and when do you go?" she asked.

"I go next week. Aunt Sarah will try to be here before I leave and before the boys arrive. They expect to get here on the fifteenth."

"Such a little while; such a little while." Nan caught her mother's hand and covered it with kisses. "And when shall you be back?" she asked.

"That I cannot say. It will depend upon what the doctors say."

Nan sat holding her mother's hand against her cheek. It would be their first separation and it would be a hard one. Every now and then the tears gushed to her eyes, though she tried to force them back. "Are you going to tell the others why you are going?" she asked.

"No," returned Mrs. Corner slowly. "I think we will not tell them just why." That we gave Nan a sense of partnership in these schemes. It elevated her to a place beside her mother and Aunt Sarah. She was their confidante and it behooved her to adjust her shoulder to a certain burden of responsibility.

"Tell me about the boys," she said. "Are they nice boys?"

"I hope so. If they are not you must try to make them so. Their names are Randolph and Ashby. Randolph is a year older than you and Ashby a year younger."

"Where will they sleep?" asked Nan, coming down to practical things.

"They can have the room Aunt Sarah always occupies and she can sleep in my room with Jean and Jack."

"Will she like that? Couldn't Mary Lee and I go into your room and let the boys have ours? Your room is so big and with two double beds in it we could do very well. Aunt Sarah always likes that southwest room and it would be warmer in winter."

Mrs. Corner looked pleased at this evidence of consideration. "I am sure that would be a much more comfortable plan for all but you and Mary Lee. It would be some trouble to move all your belongings. I thought the other way would be more convenient; still, if you don't mind——"

"Oh, no, we won't let ourselves mind," said Nan; then, a little shamefacedly, "besides, it would seem more like being near you to sleep in your bed."

Her mother gave the hand that held hers a little squeeze. "Now, I must go on with my work," she said. "I shall have to get this done before I go."

"Can't I help?" asked Nan eagerly.

"Not on this, I'm afraid."

"Then I'll do the other things that you do. I'll go see if Mitty has everything out for supper." She picked up the key basket but paused before leaving the room. "May I tell Mary Lee and the twins about the boys coming and your going if I don't tell why?"

"Yes, I shall be glad if you would." And Nan flew to assume the important office of giving information which would cause a sensation.

She found Mary Lee placidly nursing a decrepit duck which had fallen into the slop barrel, showing in her pursuit of dainties an eagerness which did not accord with her age. Having been rescued and well washed by Mary Lee, she was now lying in that young person's lap rolled in an old bit of horse blanket, her restless eyes alone giving evidence of her uncurbed ambition.

"Come here, Mary Lee, I have a mighty big piece of news to tell you," cried Nan. "I'm going to tell you first."

"You come here," said Mary Lee. "I can't put the duck down till she gets dry."

"How ridiculous! As if a duck cared whether she was wet or dry," said Nan, going up and giving the duck a friendly poke, eliciting a remonstrative "Quack!"

"You'd care if you had fallen into a slop barrel and had to be dipped out in a bucket and lathered all over and rinsed off," said Mary Lee.

"I wouldn't be so foolish as to fall into a slop barrel in the first place. Ducks are such greedy things. I don't see how she got up there."

"She walked up a board like anybody," returned Mary Lee.

"Well, anywhere that she could swim would have done for her bath. It was silly to go through all that fuss of bathing her when she's just a duck that loves water like any other duck."

"What is your news?" asked Mary Lee, changing the subject. "I don't believe it's anything much. You always get so excited over trifles."

"I reckon you won't call this a trifle," replied Nan, "when I tell you that mother is going away for weeks and that Aunt Sarah is coming back to look after us, and that Randolph and Ashby Gordon are coming here to board all winter. I should think that was something to get excited over," she said triumphantly.

Mary Lee stared. "You're making it all up just to fool me."

"I'm not, either. What in the world would I want to do that for? It's true, every word of it. You can ask mother if it isn't."

"What's she going for?" asked Mary Lee.

"Oh, just because. Grown people have their reasons for doing things and we can't always be told them," replied Nan, with, it must be said, rather a condescending air.

"Do you know why?" asked her sister, determined upon getting to the heart of the matter.

"Maybe I do, and maybe I don't."

"If you do, I think you are downright mean not to tell me. I'm 'most as old as you, and she's my mother as much as she is yours."

These latter facts Nan could not deny, so she answered weakly, "Well, anyhow, I shan't tell."

Mary Lee was slow to wrath, but once aroused she did not hesitate to speak her worst. She deposited her roll of horse blanket upon the ground and the duck with satisfied quacks waddled forth from the encumbering folds, glad of her freedom. "You are altogether too high and mighty, Nancy Weston Corner," said Mary Lee, quite outraged by Nan's refusal. "You're a scurvy old pullet, so there!"

"I like your way of calling names," returned Nan contemptuously. "I should think any one could tell that you had been near a slop barrel; you talk like it."

Mary Lee did not wait for further words, but fled to her mother, Nan following, taking the shorter way and reaching her mother first. "I tried to tell Mary Lee without saying why," she began breathlessly, "and she called me a horrid name, so I don't know how it will turn out."

"I think we shall have to tell her," said Mrs. Corner. "I did not realize that it might be difficult for you."

"She's coming now," said Nan.

Mary Lee's footsteps were hastily approaching. She burst into the room with, "Mother, is it true that you are going away?"

"Yes, dear child."

"What for? Nan was so mean and wouldn't tell me."

"I didn't give Nan permission to tell you why I was going."

"She needn't have been so disagreeable about it though," said Mary Lee. "Why didn't she say that you told her not to tell?"

"You didn't give me a chance," put in Nan. "You called me a scurvy old pullet before I could explain."

"What a name, Mary Lee," said Mrs. Corner reprovingly. "Where did you hear it?"

"Phil says it."

"Don't say it again. If you lose your temper like that and cannot bridle your tongue, I am afraid your mother will have many sorry moments while she is away trying to regain her health."

In an instant Mary Lee was on her knees by her mother's side. "Are you ill, mother?" she asked anxiously.

"Not very, but I may be if I do not have a change of climate, so I am going to take a trip. I have hardly left this place for eight years and more. I shall come back trig as a trivet, Mary Lee, so don't be troubled about me."

Nan left her mother to explain matters further and sought the twins who were amicably swinging under a big tree. As she unfolded her news to them the point which at first seemed to be most important was the coming of the two boys. Jack objected to their arrival, Jean welcomed it, and straightway they began a discussion in the midst of which Nan left them. Her brain was buzzing with the many thoughts which her interview with her mother suggested. She determined to be zealous in good works, and immediately hunted up Mitty that she might see that all was going well in the kitchen.

Mitty had not much respect for one younger than herself and paid no attention when Nan entered, but kept on singing in a high shrill key:

"Whe-e-en Eve eat de apple,
Whe-e-e-en Eve eat de apple,
Whe-en Eve eat de apple,
Lord, what a try-y-in' time."

"Mitty, have you everything out for supper?" asked Nan with her mother's manner.

Mitty rolled her eyes in Nan's direction, but vouchsafed no reply, continuing to sing in a little higher key:

"When she-e gabe de co' to Adam,
Whe-en she gabe de co' to Adam,
Whe-e-en she gabe de co' to Adam,
Lord, what a try-y-yin' time."

"I want to know," repeated Nan severely, "if you have everything out for supper?"

"I has what I has," returned Mitty, breaking some splinters of wood across her knee.

"I wish you'd answer me properly," said Nan, impatiently.

"Yuh ain' de lady ob de house," returned Mitty, provokingly. "Yuh ain' but jest a little peepin' chick. Yuh ain' even fryin' size yet."

"I think when mother sends me with a message, it is your place to answer me," said Nan with her head in the air. "I will see if Unc' Landy can get you to tell me what mother wants to know." And she stalked out.

As Unc' Landy was Mitty's grandfather, and the only being of whom she stood in awe, this had its effect. "I tell yuh, Miss Nan, 'deed an' 'deed I will," cried Mitty, running after her and hastily enumerating the necessary articles to be given out from the pantry. "'Tain' no buttah, 'tain' no sugah, jest a little bit o' co'n meal. Oh, Miss Nan!"

But Nan had passed beyond hearing and was resolutely turning her steps toward Unc' Landy's quarters, a comfortable brick cabin which stood about fifty yards from the house. The old man was sitting before its door industriously mending a hoe-handle. It was not often that Nan complained of Mitty, for she, too, well knew the effect of such a course. Upon this occasion, however, she felt that her future authority depended upon establishing present relations and that it would never do to let Mitty know she had worsted the eldest daughter of the house. "Unc' Landy, I wish you'd speak to Mitty," said Nan. "She wouldn't tell me what to give out for supper and mother gave me the keys to attend to it for her; she's busy sewing."

Unc' Landy seized the hoe-handle upon which he was at work, and made an energetic progress toward the kitchen, catching the unlucky Mitty as she was about to flee. Brandishing his hoe-handle, he threateningly cried: "Wha' yo' mannahs? I teach yuh show yo' sassy ways to one of de fambly!"

Up went Mitty's arm to defend herself from the impending blow while she whimpered forth: "I done say 'tain' no buttah; 'tain' no sugah; the's a little bit o' meal; an' Miss Nan ain' hyah me."

"Ef I bus' yo' haid open den mebbe she kin hyah yuh nex' time," said Unc' Landy catching the girl's shoulder and beginning to bang her head against the door.

But here Nan, feeling that Mitty was scared into good behavior interfered. "That will do, Unc' Landy. If she told me, it is all right."

"She gwine speak loudah an' quickah nex' time," said Unc' Landy, shaking his hoe-handle at Mitty. "Yuh tell Miss Nan what she ast yuh, er I'll fetch Mr. Hoe ober hyah agin an' try both ends, so yuh see which yuh lak bes'." And he went off muttering about "dese yer no 'count young niggahs what so busy tryin' to be sma't dey ain' no time to larn sense."

The thoroughly humbled Mitty meekly answered all Nan's questions and Nan felt that she was fortified with authority for some time to come.

Nan was always shocked and repelled by Unc' Landy's methods, and only in extreme cases was she willing to appeal to him. Such appeals, sometimes bringing swifter and more extreme punishment, so affected Nan as to make her avoid Unc' Landy for days. He was always so very tender and courteous to every member of the "fambly" that it seemed almost incredible that he should be so merciless to one of his own flesh and blood, but such was a common attitude of the older negroes toward the younger ones, and his was not an unusual case. When Mrs. Corner was on hand she never permitted the old man to exercise his rights toward Mitty, but once or twice when the girl had overstepped bounds in his presence, he had meted out punishment to her later on, so she feared him while she respected him, praising him lavishly to her boon companions.

"Gran'daddy got a pow'ful long ahm," she would say, "an' man, I say he swif' an' strong, mos' lak angel Gabr'el wid he swo'd an' trumpet. I mos' as feared o' gran'daddy as I is o' angel Gabr'el. Ef gran'daddy call me an' angel Gabr'el blow he trumpet at de same time I don' know which I bleedged to min'. I specs I run a bilin' to gran'daddy fust."

Having established her position in the kitchen, Nan returned to her mother. Every moment seemed precious now, and that night after Mary Lee was asleep, Nan crept softly from her bed and laid herself down by her mother whose arms clasped her close, but who did not allow her to remain. "It is not well for you to sleep with me, dear," she said. "It will be better for us both if you go back to your own room." Nan obeyed, but it was an anxious hour that she spent before sleep visited her. The night hours brought her many forebodings, and she felt that her young spirit was stretching beyond the limits of childhood toward that larger and less happy region of womanhood.

[CHAPTER V]
HOUSEWIFELY CARES

The day for Mrs. Corner's departure came around all too soon. Aunt Sarah was to have arrived the evening before, but up to the last moment she had not come, and Mrs. Corner felt that she could not wait since all her arrangements were made. "I am positive she will be here to-day," she told Nan, "probably by the noon train, and the boys will not come till to-morrow, so you will have no trouble, even if Aunt Sarah should not come till night."

There were many tears and embraces at the last moment. Even Jean's placidity was disturbed and when the train which held her mother, moved out of sight, she flung herself in Nan's arms sobbing, "Oh, I didn't want her to go, I didn't."

Jack rubbed her eyes with none too clean fists and reiterated: "I promised I'd be good; I promised I'd be good." As for Mary Lee she slipped an arm around her elder sister, but "Oh, Nan! Oh, Nan!" was all she could say. Nan herself bravely kept back the tears but her feeling of helplessness and desolation was almost more than she could bear. Mother, who had never left them for so much as a night, gone far away where they could not and should not reach her. No one to advise, to comfort, to sympathize. No one to confide in. It was all blackness and darkness without that blessed mother.

Four very sober children returned to the house to eat their dinner alone. Even the importance of sitting at the head of the table brought no joy to Nan, and the fact that Phil's mother had sent them over a dish of frozen custard brought none of them any great enjoyment.

Mitty had taken advantage of the occasion to announce that she was going to a "fessible." She informed Nan that she had asked Mrs. Corner's consent weeks before and had been told that when the Sons and Daughters of Moses and Aaron had their "fessible" she could go. There was really nothing to say, and Mitty, adorned in a rattling, stiffly starched petticoat over which as stiffly a starched pink lawn stood out magnificently, started forth, bearing her purple parasol and wearing her brilliant yellow hat trimmed with blue roses.

"She certainly is a sight," remarked Mary Lee, watching Mitty's exit. "Wouldn't her feathers drop if she should get wet? Oh, Nan, I do believe a thunder-storm is coming up. Look at that black cloud."

"Now don't begin to be scary," said Nan, coming to the window. If there was one thing above another of which Mary Lee was scared it was a thunder-storm; it completely demoralized her, and she would always retire to the darkest corner, crouching there in dread of each flash of lightning and clap of thunder. Nan scanned the sky and then said calmly, "Well, I think it is very likely we will have a shower; we generally do when the Sons and Daughters have their festival."

It had been a sultry day, and the low-hanging clouds began to increase in mass, showing jagged edges, and following one another up the sky, black, threatening, rolling forms. In the course of half an hour, the first peal of distant thunder came to their ears and Mary Lee began to tremble. "It seems a thousand times worse when mother isn't here," she complained. "It seems dreadful for us four children to be here all alone. Suppose the lightning should strike the house."

"Then mother would be safe," said Nan, exultantly.

"But it wouldn't do her any good if we should all be killed," Mary Lee returned lugubriously.

"Suppose it should strike the train mother is in?" said Jean in a frightened tone.

"Oh, it couldn't," Nan reassured her. "It goes so fast that it would get beyond the storm. The sun is probably shining bright where mother is by this time."

This was more comforting; nevertheless Mary Lee's fears increased in proportion to the loudness of the thunderclaps. "I'm sure we are not safe here," she declared. "It is getting worse and worse, Nan." A terrific crash which seemed to come from directly overhead gave proof to the truth of her words. Jean clung to her and even Jack looked scared. Mary Lee cowered down in the corner and covered her face.

"Come, I'll tell you what we'll do," said Nan, though by no means unaffrighted herself; "we'll do what Aunt Sarah's grandmother used to do; we'll all go up-stairs; it's safer there, and we'll pile all the pillows on mother's bed—we'll pull it into the middle of the room first—and then we'll all get on it and say hymns. There isn't any feather-bed like they used to have, but the pillows will answer the same purpose. Come, Mary Lee." They all rushed up-stairs, and, between thunderclaps, gathered pillows from the different rooms, and then established themselves upon them in the middle of the bed.

"Aunt Sarah said they never used to feel afraid when their grandmother commenced to say the hymns, and she taught me the best one to say. Keep still, Jack, and I'll say it." A second violent crash of thunder drowned her words and Mary Lee threw herself prone upon her face, calling out: "Put some pillows over me so I can't see nor hear."

"We can't; we're sitting on them," returned Nan. "You are perfectly safe, Mary Lee. Now listen and you won't mind the thunder." And she began the fine old hymn:

"God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform,
He plants His footsteps on the sea,
And rides upon the storm."

"It scares me for Him to ride upon the storm," faltered Jean.

"But you know if He is in the storm, He is right here to take care of us," said Nan, reassuringly. Jean was satisfied. Even Mary Lee raised her head when Nan had finished the hymn. "Now it is your turn," said Nan. "What will you say, Mary Lee?"

"I think I like 'Jesus, Lover of My Soul,' but I don't know it very well. Do you dare get down and bring me my hymnal, Nan? I wouldn't ask you only I could no more leave this spot than fly."

"I don't mind, I'm sure," responded Nan readily. "I think the worst is over anyhow." But she had scarcely returned with the book when another loud peal sent her scrambling to her nest in the pillows and it was some moments before Mary Lee could gain courage to sit up and repeat the hymn, which she could not do without frequent peepings at the page before her.

"Now Jack, it's your turn," Nan prompted.

Jack was always ready and she began and said through without faltering the hymn beginning: "Dear Jesus ever at my side." There was a most uplifted and saintlike expression on the child's face as, with clasped hands, she repeated the closing lines:

"But when I sleep, Thou sleepest not,
But watchest patiently."

One would have supposed Jack to be a most lovely and angelic person, and, in truth, for the time being, she was angelic.

Jean's turn came last. "I can't fink of anyfing but 'Jesus, tender Shepherd, Hear Me,' and it isn't bedtime yet," she said.

"Never mind if it isn't," said Nan; "it is quite dark and that will do very nicely." So Jean added her hymn while the storm still raged. However, they were all comforted, and finding that the plan of Aunt Sarah's grandmother worked so well, Nan proposed that they should not stop but should take another round of hymns.

"It would be nicer to sing them I think," said Jack.

"So it would," the others agreed, "and then nobody would have to remember all, for, if one should forget the hymnal will be right here."

"Let's sing 'Now the day is over,'" said Jack.

"But it isn't over," objected the literal Jean. However as this was a general favorite, they sang it through and by that time the storm was passing over and they felt they could safely leave the feather pillows.

"It was a splendid plan," declared Mary Lee. "Once or twice I almost forgot to be afraid, though I do wish Unc' Landy could have been somewhere in the house."

"I don't know how he could have helped matters," returned Nan, "though I shouldn't have minded his being on hand. I don't believe he has gone to the festival and very likely has been out in all the storm stopping leaks in the barn; it's what he generally does. Gracious! what's that?"

A thundering knock at the door stopped them in their work of returning the pillows to their places. "Who can it be?" said Nan.

"Maybe it's some one from Cousin Mag Lewis's to see if we are all right," said Mary Lee. "I shouldn't wonder if it were Phil."

"Well, you go see."

Mary Lee ran down-stairs to the door. It was still raining a little as the puddles in the front walk showed. The vines were dripping and the flowers hung heavy heads. Mary Lee did not notice these things, however, for two strange lads stood before her. She at once surmised who they were. "Come right in," she said. "Just put your umbrellas in that corner of the porch. I'll tell Nan you are here."

"We are Randolph and Ashby Gordon," said the boys.

"I know," returned Mary Lee, and sped up the stairs leaving the boys to deposit their wet umbrellas on the porch. "Nan, Nan," called the girl, "they've come, and Aunt Sarah isn't here."

"Who has come?" Nan questioned from the top of the steps.

"The boys, our cousins, Randolph and Ashby. They are at the front door."

"Goodness!" exclaimed Nan. "What did you say to them, Mary Lee?"

"I didn't say anything except to tell them where to put their umbrellas. Come right down, please, Nan."

"Their bed isn't made or anything," said Nan, pausing to look across at the open doorway which disclosed a room not yet in good order. "I'll have to explain, I suppose."

She went sedately down-stairs to find the two boys standing in the front hall. "Oh, how do you do?" she began. "We didn't expect you to-day"—and then feeling that this was scarcely a welcoming speech, she hesitated, blushing at not being ready for the occasion.

"I know," said the elder boy, "and we must apologize for being ahead of time, but we found that we could get here to-day and have company all the way. A friend of father's, one of the professors at the University, was coming, and he insisted upon our taking the same train. I hope it doesn't make any difference to you."

"No," Nan faltered, "only Aunt Sarah hasn't come yet and your room isn't quite ready."

"Oh, no matter," returned the boy, courteously enough, but rather distantly.

"You see, mother went away only this morning," Nan continued her explanations, "and Mitty, our girl, has gone out, but if you will just walk into the living-room and make yourselves at home, I can soon get everything in order. I'm Nan, you know. It was Mary Lee who opened the door and the twins are up-stairs. We had a heavy storm, didn't we?"

"We certainly did," replied Randolph, following her into the room. His brother silently entered with him.

"Please make yourselves at home," repeated Nan.

Having established her guests, she flew up-stairs. "They're here sure enough," she said. "You all will have to help me get the room ready; fortunately it has been swept. Jean, get some clean towels and the piece of soap from mother's room. I suppose we shall have to give them soap. Jack, I wish you would get some water. No, you'd better not," she called. But Jack, finding a chance to help and rather liking the task imposed upon her, was already half way down-stairs. With Mary Lee's assistance, the bed was made and the room was soon tidy. Then Nan returned below stairs to decide what to have for supper. She would put the best foot forward, and, though she was racking her brains for a proper bill of fare, she would not show her anxiety. Her own efforts in the way of cooking had been limited, for her mother had always been there to take the weight of responsibility. She could make tea, but perhaps the boys didn't drink it; she would find out. She would have to attempt either biscuits or batter bread, for, of course, cold bread was out of the question. There was no cold meat. She would fry some bacon. Bacon and eggs would do nicely. She would set Mary Lee to paring and cutting up some peaches. There could be sliced tomatoes, too. If the bread question could be settled, they would do very well. She would bake some potatoes in case her bread was a failure. She sent Jean to find Mary Lee and tell her to come to the kitchen and then she set to work.

"They're just like company," was the remark with which she greeted Mary Lee. "They don't act a bit as if they belonged to us. The little one, Ashby, hardly opened his lips, and the other one was polite enough but acted as if we weren't kinsfolk at all, but just strangers who were going to take them to board. I'm going to have bacon and eggs for supper. I wish you'd see if Unc' Landy is around anywhere; he can cut the bacon for us. I'm afraid I could not do it well, and I shall have to try some biscuits. I've made the fire, Mary Lee, and I wish you'd put a few potatoes in the oven. Where's Jack? There isn't a speck of cake in the house and they look as though they were used to having it."

"How can Jack do anything about it?" inquired Mary Lee, rolling the potatoes into a pan preparatory to washing them.

"I'm going to send her over to Cousin Mag's to see if she has any. I'd better write a note for Jack gets things mixed sometimes." She ran to her room and scribbled a note to Mrs. Lewis, as the two families often accommodated one another in this way. Having despatched Jack upon her errand, Nan turned her attention again to the supper. Unc' Landy had evidently been storm-stayed somewhere and had not yet returned, so the bacon was cut rather clumsily and set over the fire to sizzle. To Mary Lee was given the responsibility of preparing the peaches and setting the table. Nan suggested that she put on the very best of everything.

"Oh, need we do that?" she said. "We'll have to wash them up afterward, you know, for Mitty will not be here to do it, and it would be awful if we were to break anything."

"Never mind," returned Nan, "I'll take the risk. We must show them that we have nice silver and china. Go on and do as I say, Mary Lee."

Mary Lee obeyed and Nan turned to her other tasks. "I wonder how long it takes bacon to cook," she said to herself, "and I wonder how much flour I shall need for the biscuits. I'll have to guess at it. Dear me, how does any one ever learn all those things?" She carefully sifted her flour and then measured out her baking powder accurately. As she was hesitating as to the amount of lard required, she realized that the kitchen was full of smoke from burning bacon, and, hurrying to the stove, she discovered that every slice was hard and black.

"Oh, dear," she sighed, "it's ruined, and I'll have to cut more; it's such a trouble, too. I'll finish the biscuits first, for I see the bacon will cook while they are baking." The interruption made her forget the salt for her biscuits, and she set rather a rough, ragged looking panful in the oven.

The next lot of bacon was cooked more successfully, though some slices were thick at one end and thin at the other. Some were short, some were long, quite unlike the neat curly bits which usually appeared upon the table. Mary Lee came in as she was concluding her tasks and her comments upon the looks of the dish did not reassure Nan.

However, she rose to the occasion. "They won't show when I've covered them with the fried eggs," she declared. "Dear me, Mary Lee, I'll never lift the eggs without breaking them. I'll have to let them cook more, I reckon. Hand me the cake-turner, please; maybe I can do better with that, and won't you look at the biscuits? They ought to be done by this time."

Mary Lee announced that they looked done.

"Try the potatoes."

A squeal from Mary Lee followed this operation, for she squeezed one potato too hard and it burst with a pop, burning her thumb.

Nan dressed the burn with a plaster of baking soda and dished up the potatoes herself. "Where's Jean?" she asked.

"She put on her best frock and is in the living-room entertaining the gentlemen," returned Mary Lee. "It's time Jack came back, don't you think, Nan?"

"High time," returned Nan, carefully transferring the rest of the eggs from pan to dish. "I've only broken one, Mary Lee, and the bacon is quite covered. Everything is nearly ready, but, oh, dear, how does any one ever do it quickly and easily? It is impossible to keep your mind on bacon and eggs and biscuits and potatoes all at once, and how any one remembers more than that is beyond me. There, we came near forgetting the peaches. Get them out of the pantry, and bring some fine sugar to put over them."

"It's getting pretty late," remarked Mary Lee, looking down the street, "but here comes Jack at last."

"I know it's late and I expect those boys are starved, but I can't help it; I've done my best."

"I should think you had," said Mary Lee; "you oughtn't to have had so much."

"I'm sorry I had potatoes, for they made you burn yourself. Well, Jack," as that young person entered the kitchen mud-stained and tearful, "what have you been doing? What is the matter?"

Jack held out a flattened parcel. "I fell down," she sobbed, "and I fell plumb on the cake."

"Goodness!" cried Nan. "Do see, Mary Lee, if it's fit to eat. I can't, for my hands are all peach juice from cutting up the peaches. Did you hurt yourself, Jack?"

"I hurt my feelings awfully, 'cause I spoiled the cake."

Mary Lee anxiously examined the contents of the parcel. The cake, fortunately, had been sent on a tin plate, which saved it from utter destruction. "It is quite good in places," she declared. "We'll put the mashed pieces underneath."

Nan laughed in spite of fatigue and anxiety. "Then it will match the dish of bacon," she said. "Never mind, Jack, you did your best and we are much obliged to you; the cake will taste good and we girls can eat the flat pieces. Now, are we all ready?"

"I think so," said Mary Lee, nursing her injured thumb. And the flushed and anxious housekeeper arranged her dishes upon the carefully set table.

"It looks beautiful," said Jack.

"I'm glad you thought of the flowers for the middle of the table, Mary Lee," remarked Nan, who was critically examining her board. "Yes, I think it looks very well. Now, I'll go and call them."

The meal went off fairly well in spite of the chunks of bacon and the mashed cake. To be sure, it was rather a solemn affair. Conversation flagged, for both boys and girls felt ill at ease. Nan was covered with confusion when she tasted her biscuits, and was obliged to excuse herself when she suddenly remembered the tomatoes which she had sliced and placed on the ice and when she caught an odor of burning bread. She rescued the last pan of biscuits just in time, only one or two having burned at the bottom.

After supper there was the task of clearing away, and when this was over and the last dish safely put away, it was a tired Nan who sent her sisters off to bed and sat waiting for the boys who had gone out to have a look at the town. There was no hope of seeing Aunt Sarah that night, for the last train was in, and Nan curled herself up in her mother's big chair by the window, feeling quite desperate when she thought of breakfast without the help of either Mitty or Aunt Sarah.

After the boys had returned and Nan was at last lying by Mary Lee, the very thought of the dear absent one sent the tears coursing down her cheeks, so that the pillow her mother's head had so often pressed was wet before the tired child fell asleep. It began to rain again, and all through the night the sound of the pattering drops made Nan dream that her mother was weeping, and longing for home and children.

[CHAPTER VI]
CONCERNING JACK

The consciousness of her responsibilities made Nan awaken with a start quite early in the morning. After her festivities, Mitty could not be expected to appear before nine o'clock, consequently, the matter of breakfast depended entirely upon Nan. She was sufficiently rested after her night's sleep to look upon the day's prospects with more calmness than had seemed possible the night before. The storm had passed; all the fears and dreams vanished in the sunshine. The whole world appeared fairer. The heavy rain had washed the dust from the leaves; the grass sprang up in livelier green; the morning-glories over the porch were fresh and beautiful; the very earth looked refreshed. Birds were singing in the bushes; a rooster was lustily crowing from a fence rail.

"It has cleared off beautifully," said Nan as she opened the kitchen door to look out. "Good morning, Lady Gray," she greeted the big cat which came purring to rub against her. "I hope my stormy time is over, too," she went on. "It certainly was a gray day yesterday, but to-day Aunt Sarah will surely come and Mitty will be back, so there is only breakfast to trouble me. I haven't the least idea what I ought to have, or, I should say, what I can have. I thought Aunt Sarah would be here to decide all such things. I can't have bacon and eggs again! Unc' Landy! Ah, Unc' Landy!" she called to the old man who was just issuing from his cabin.

He came toward her. "Mawnin,' miss," he said, taking off his battered hat with a bow. "Fine day arter de rain."

"It is indeed. Unc' Landy, I want you to cut some slices of ham for me."

"Yass, miss. Whar dat Mitty?"

"Now you know Mitty won't get back till nine o'clock. She never does after a festival or a picnic or a parlor social, as she calls it. She is too sleepy after staying up half the night."

"Po' miserble sinnah," grumbled Unc' Landy. "Bad man git her suah ef her foots keep on a-twitchen' when de banjo play."

"Oh, Mitty is all right," returned Nan smiling. "You are too hard on her, Unc' Landy."

"'Tain' no use talkin' to dese yer light-haided young uns," he replied. "Yuh jest bleedged to beat erligion inter 'em. Dey foots is on de broad road to destruction, and yuh bleedged to drive 'em back wid er stick, jest lak a sheep er a heifer er a pig when dey gits outer de parf. How much ham yuh reckon yuh wants, honey?"

"Oh, a couple of slices. I suppose you can tell how long to cook it. I had an awful time with my supper last night, and it wasn't very good after all. I forgot to put salt in the biscuits and the bacon was chunky."

"Whafo' yuh mek any fuss jest fo' yuh-alls?" said Unc' Landy. "Why yuh don' jest picnic till yo' Aunt Sarah come? 'Tain' no diffunce ef yuh chilluns ain' got a comp'ny brekfus."

"But it is a difference when we have two strangers."

"Strangers? Who dey?" Unc' Landy looked greatly surprised.

"The Gordon boys, Randolph and Ashby. They were to have come to-day, you know, but they got here yesterday instead."

"Law, honey, is dat so? An' de ole man ain' on han' to he'p yuh-alls out when dat fool chile Mitty away. Now, ain' dat scan'lous fo' Unc' Landy git ketched in de rain an' not git home in time fo' suppah? I clar it righ down owdacious. Nemmine, don' yuh werry, chile, I fix yo' brekfus. What yuh reckon yuh have?"

"Ham; you know I asked you to cut it."

"Brile ham. Yes'm, and a pone, aig pone. How dat do?"

"I used all the eggs last night."

"Dey mo' in de hen-house, I reckon. I git 'em. Coffee, yuh bleedged ter have a good cup of coffee."

"Well, yes, I suppose Randolph drinks it and maybe Ashby does. We'll have it, anyhow."

"Might fry some taters, er tomats," suggested Unc' Landy.

"Yes, they would be good."

"Den go 'long an' set de table, honey, whilst I git de aigs, an' den' yuh come tell ole Landy whar things is an' he git yo' brekfus. He cook, yass 'm, dat he kin. He domeskit, Landy are." And chuckling at this self praise the old man jogged down to the hen-house while Nan flew to set the table, greatly relieved at having so capable an assistant.

The breakfast turned out to be all it should. The ham was cooked to a turn; the egg pone, light and puffy, came to the table hot and delicious; the coffee was perfect; the tomatoes fried brown and surrounded by a tempting gravy. Nan tried to make conversation and her sisters ably assisted her, but the boys were not very responsive, though Nan concluded it was shyness and not pride which prevented them from being more talkative. They escaped as soon as the meal was over and Nan drew a sigh of relief. "They certainly aren't very good company," she remarked. "Jean seems the only one they will have anything to say to."

"You forget she dressed up in her best and entertained them yesterday," said Mary Lee, laughing. "What did you talk about, kitten?"

"Oh, fings to eat, and—and horses and—dogs."

"No wonder then they found something to say," laughed Nan. "Now run along and get ready for school. Mary Lee will start later and I may not get there at all."

"There isn't going to be any school to-day," returned Jean.

"Why not? Who said so?"

"Jack said so."

"How did she find out?"

"I don't know. She said this morning when we were getting dressed that there wasn't going to be any school to-day."

"It isn't a holiday. I'd like to know why," said Nan reflectively. "Are you sure, Jean?"

"Yes, I'm sure. I asked Jack twice and both times she said: 'There isn't going to be any school.'"

"To be sure we weren't there yesterday," said Nan, "and she probably heard from some one over at Cousin Mag's. Where is Jack?"

"I don't know."

"Go find her, there's a good girl."

Jean went out. She saw nothing of her twin, so she sought the dog who would be a willing and able help in finding Jack.

As she stood at the gate, looking up and down the street, the two boys came out. "What are you looking for?" asked Randolph.

"I'm looking for Trouble," she replied.

The boy gave a short laugh. "You'll find it soon enough if you look for it," he said, passing on and leaving Jean much puzzled by his remark. Finding neither Jack nor Trouble in this direction, she sought Unc' Landy and Trouble was discovered gnawing a ham bone by the old man's cabin door. "Come, Trouble, find Jack," called Jean.

The dog dropped his bone, cocked his head to one side, flopped an ear over one eye and looked at her brightly.

"Find Jack. Come, where's Jack?" repeated Jean. Then Trouble understood, and set off down the street, Jean following.

Just before the schoolhouse was reached, Jack was discovered sitting on the steps of a vacant house. She had settled herself there before any of the school children came that way. There were too many interesting things occurring for Jack to wish to waste her time at school, and she had argued out a plan of proceeding which ought to satisfy everybody, she reflected. There could be no school without scholars and she would see to it that there were no scholars. As each child came along she promptly called out: "There isn't going to be any school to-day." She felt that this was strict truth. The first arrivals turned back all too readily and repeated Jack's words to the others they met, so that within the schoolroom the teacher wondered and waited till ten o'clock. By that time Jack, feeling that the day was saved, left the steps where she had been sitting and went to the station to wait the first train in from Washington.

Before this, however, Trouble had discovered her to Jean in his most polite manner. "Nan wants you, Jack," announced Jean, running up.

"I don't care. She's not my mother," returned Jack.

"You'd better come."

"I will when I'm ready."

"I'm going straight home to tell her."

"I don't care."

"I don't see what you want to sit here for all by yourself."

"Because I choose."

In this mood Jack was not companionable, as Jean knew to her sorrow, and so, after a look of virtuous reproach at her sister, and a lifting of her head in scorn, she walked off with switching skirts, pounding down her heels very hard and calling back: "I'll tell Aunt Sarah too."

"She hasn't come yet," called Jack in return.

"You don't know whether she has or not," came the reply in fainter tones.

"I do so. The train doesn't get in till eleven. Ba-ah!" Then Jean indignantly pursued her way to pour forth her grievance in Nan's ear.

"She was sitting on the steps of the old Southall house," she reported, "and she wouldn't come when I said you wanted her. She said 'Ba-ah!' too, and she told me she'd come when she was ready."

Nan knew Jack's eccentricities of old, and that she should choose to be sitting on the steps of the Southall house was not a matter of surprise, though she wondered why Jack preferred to be there to enjoying her own home garden on a holiday. But she did not think it wise to try to force an obedience which very likely would not be given, so she said: "Well, never mind, let her stay there if she likes it. Perhaps she is waiting for some one. Isn't that Mitty coming? It looks like her yellow hat."

"It is Mitty," Jean assured her, "but her hat looks funny and she's got on an old calico wrapper."

Mitty entered rather shamefacedly. She had a tale of woe to tell. She had been caught in the rain and her clothes had suffered. She had gone to the "fessible," however, but it rained so hard that she, with most of the others, had to stay all night. There was a fight which scared her nearly to death, and there was no place to sleep, for the older persons took up all the floor space. She had walked home when daylight came, and had gone to bed at her mother's, but she was "clean tuckered out." And, indeed, at intervals during the rest of the day, one or another of the girls came upon her sound asleep over her work.

At eleven o'clock came Aunt Sarah, accompanied by Jack, who had met her at the train. Ordinarily Nan would not have been so overjoyed to see Aunt Sarah. There were too frequent passages of arms between them for the girl to look forward to her great aunt's visit with unalloyed pleasure, but this time Miss Dent was given an exuberant welcome, not only by Nan, but by the others. "We thought you would never get here," said Nan.

"I thought so myself," returned Aunt Sarah. "Henry Dent made me miss the train by five minutes yesterday morning, so I had to take the afternoon train. That was an hour late owing to a washout, so I couldn't make connection in Washington, but had to stay all night there with Cousin Lou, though I did get the earliest train this morning. Your mother got off safely, Jack tells me. Why aren't you children at school?"

"There wasn't any school to-day," promptly replied Jean.

"How's that?" Miss Dent turned sharply.

"I don't know," said Jean.

"Did you hear the reason?" asked Nan, turning to Jack. She had been so occupied that the question of school had given her very little thought that day.

"There wasn't one of the scholars there," replied Jack truthfully and with a guileless look.

"How do you know?"

"I was down there and saw."

"Down where? Did you go to the schoolhouse?"

"I didn't go in."

"Didn't Miss Lawrence come?"

Jack hesitated, but she was equal to the emergency. "I didn't see her," she made answer.

"I wonder if she is ill," said Mary Lee. "We didn't hear that she was yesterday, and yet Jack knew this morning before breakfast that there wasn't to be any school. She told us so."

"How did you find out?" Aunt Sarah fixed a keen look upon Jack. "Look here, Jacqueline Corner, it strikes me that there is a screw loose somewhere. Did you tell your sister that there wouldn't be any school so you could have a holiday?"

Jack faced her questioner unflinchingly. "It's just as I said, Aunt Sarah. There wasn't truly any school to-day."

"I'll find out the why and wherefore," replied Aunt Sarah, shaking her head warningly. "How did you get along, Nan? I suppose with Mitty and Unc' Landy you have had no trouble."

"We had an awful time," Nan answered. "Mitty took an afternoon and evening off. Mother promised her long ago that she should go to the festival of the Sons and Daughters of Moses and Aaron and we had a terrible thunder-storm that scared us nearly to death and that kept Unc' Landy from getting back from the mill where he had gone for some feed. Then the boys came and it was pitch dark before I could get supper ready."

"Yes, and Jack fell down and mashed the cake so some of it was crite flat," put in Jean.

"I don't care; it was dreadfully slippery coming up the hill and, anyhow, it tasted good. Randolph ate two pieces," protested Jack.

"So did you," retorted Jean.

"Hush, hush your squabbling, children," said Aunt Sarah. "Well, Nan, you did have your hands full. I'd have been more put out than I was if I had known those boys were here. I suppose, though, you didn't make any difference for them, just two youngsters like them."

"Indeed we did make a difference," Jack told her proudly. "We had out all the best china and silver, and Nan made biscuits, and we borrowed cake from Cousin Mag, and all that."

"For pity's sake, what did you make all that fuss for over two young cubs of boys?"

"We wanted to give them a good impression," said Nan, with dignity. "Mother says so much depends upon the first impression."

Aunt Sarah laughed. "Well, you might have saved yourselves in my opinion. What are the lads like? Nice fellows?"

"I suppose so," returned Nan doubtfully. "They haven't given us much of a chance to find out. Randolph says very little and Ashby nothing at all except: 'Please pass the bread' or 'Please pass the butter.'"

"Those remarks don't furnish much of a clue to character," remarked Aunt Sarah with a little smile. "Probably they are bashful and are not used to girls. Here in a houseful of them with no older person they feel mighty queer, I have no doubt. Their tongues will loosen up after a few days. You put them in your room? Your mother wrote that you wanted to."

"Yes, and we made it look pretty well. There is a broken chair that Unc' Landy is going to mend, and some of our clothes are still in the press."

"Well, I'll get myself settled and we'll soon have things in running order," returned Aunt Sarah, rising to go to her room.

Nan gave a sigh of relief. It lifted a great weight from her shoulders to have capable Aunt Sarah on hand, to know that in a few minutes the black cashmere would be substituted by a neat calico and that, in her working garb, Aunt Sarah would take control.

"Come, Mary Lee," said Nan, "Aunt Sarah will see to everything. There is really nothing for us to do, so let's go work in our gardens. It's a splendid day for weeding."

The girls' gardens were side by side. In Nan's grew currant bushes, a dwarf apple-tree, tiny tomatoes, yellow and red, sweet corn, and in one corner, pleasant smelling herbs, thyme, tansy, sage, lavender and bergamot. Flowering beans ran over her share of the fence, and a rollicking pumpkin vine sprawled its length along the line between this and Mary Lee's garden. All in Nan's garden appealed to the senses. She gloated over the delicate pink blooms which covered her small tree in the spring. She reveled in the shining red currants hanging in clusters among the green leaves. She delighted in the scarlet and yellow tomatoes, in the delicate bloom of the lavender, the graceful green of the tansy, the perfume of the bergamot. These gardens were theirs provided they raised something useful, and Nan had kept within the limits, but her mother smiled to see how she had chosen.

Mary Lee, on the contrary, showed a practical utilitarianism. Potatoes, onions, large lusty tomatoes, solid cabbages, mighty turnips, radishes and lettuce were what she aspired to cultivate, and right well did the crops show.

"I think I'll have an asparagus bed next year," said Nan bending down to gather a leaf of bergamot. "It looks so pretty and feathery, and after it is once started it is no trouble at all."

"It will take up a lot of room," returned Mary Lee. "I do wish you'd pull up that old pumpkin vine; it's getting all in among my turnips."

"It's too late in the season for it to hurt them," returned Nan nonchalantly, "and I really can't keep it on my side, Mary Lee, unless I sit here all day and all night watching it, for it grows so fast I'm continually having to unwind it from something. I believe it is a fairy vine, an ogre—no, it's too jolly to be an ogre. It may be a playful giant that grabs at everybody just to be funny."

"I don't think it's a bit funny," replied Mary Lee, not possessing Nan's humor. "I just wish you'd come and get it away from my side."

Nan stepped across the twig fence which separated the two gardens. "Come here, old Giant Pumpkin-head," she said. "You must stop curling your fingers around everything you see. Stay on your own side." She dragged the obtrusive length of vine across to her own garden. "He does spread mighty near over the whole place," she continued. "I'm afraid I shall have to put a spell on him another year. Oh, I know where I'll have him next season."

"Where?" asked Mary Lee industriously pulling up weeds which yielded easily after the rain.

"Oh, never mind where. I can't tell just yet," Nan hastened to say, for her thought was to allow a pumpkin vine to have its own way upon the edge of the field where she had her retreat. She, too, fell to pulling weeds, but presently she cried: "Mary Lee, Mary Lee, Miss Lawrence is coming up the street and I believe she is coming to our house."

"Then she isn't ill," returned Mary Lee, brushing the earth from her hands.

"No, and here comes Jack running for dear life. I must go see what she wants. Heigho, Jack!"

The child came tumultuously toward them. "Oh, Nan, don't let her see me," she cried.

"Let who see you?"

"Miss Lawrence. She's coming after me."

"Coming after you? and why? You know she's not bothering about you unless you have been up to some trick. Have you, Jack?"

Jack clung to Nan's hand. "I didn't tell a story. There couldn't be any school when there were no scholars, could there?"

"No, I suppose not."

"I did so want to help," said Jack. "I knew you would have to stay home and get dinner if Aunt Sarah didn't come, and I wanted to go and meet her if she did."

"But what did you do?" Nan drew the child to one side. "Now tell sister the whole truth, Jack, and unless it is something perfectly dreadful, I'll try to get you let off. What did you do?"

"I just told Carrie Duke and Laura Fitchett there wouldn't be any school, and they went and told a whole lot of the others, and when any one else came along I told them, too. There wasn't any school, so I didn't tell a story."

Nan giggled outright. She couldn't help it. Of course, it was not right, but the plan was so ingenious and the logic so like Jack's that she couldn't be angry. Moreover, she was but a child herself who liked a holiday. "I'll tell you what to do," she advised. "You go over to Cousin Mag's and tell her I'll send back some cake to-morrow, that I am very much obliged to her for helping us out, that Aunt Sarah has come and that we shall have no more trouble. Then I'll go up to the house and say I have sent you on an errand. You may stay over there for a little while, if you like. Of course," she added, feeling that perhaps she was too lenient, "you did very wrong, and if Miss Lawrence asks me I shall have to tell her what you did, but if she is very mad you'd better not be on hand, especially as Aunt Sarah is there, too. Now, run along."

"Oh, Nan, you are so dear," cried Jack, giving her a hug. "I haven't been comfortable all day, and when I saw Miss Lawrence coming, and I felt so afraid, like Adam and Eve in the garden, I knew I hadn't done right. It didn't seem very wrong when I first thought about it this morning."

"I can't say it was right," said Nan with decision, "but go now." And Jack took the benefit of her advice.

"I'm going up to the house to see Miss Lawrence," Nan called to Mary Lee. "Will you come, too?"

"Not unless she particularly wants me. My hands are a sight, and I do want to finish this weeding while the ground is so nice and soft."

Nan went slowly toward the house. She did not mean to excuse Jack but she meant to shield her. It was always Nan's way and Jack realized that her eldest sister was her most tolerant friend. There were occasions when even Nan's patience gave out, but her mother feeling for her little sister was too strong for her not to love this wayward one, perhaps, best of all.

She found Miss Lawrence and Miss Dent in animated conversation. Miss Lawrence was hardly through her greeting before she began to question. "Why weren't you at school to-day, Nan?" she asked.

"I couldn't come, Miss Lawrence. Mother went yesterday, and our girl was away, too, so I just had so much to do I couldn't come."

"Oh, I see. Miss Dent has been telling me of your mother's absence. I am sorry."

"Nan, where is Jack?" asked Miss Sarah.

"I sent her on an errand, Aunt Sarah. She'll be back after a while."

"Do you know anything of her having reported that there would be no school to-day?" asked Miss Lawrence severely. "Not a scholar came though I waited till after ten. I could not imagine why it was and have tried to trace the cause. From what I learned Jack was the first one who started the report. Why did she think there would be no school?"

Nan glanced at her Aunt Sarah and was relieved to see that she did not wear her severest look though Miss Lawrence looked sternly unsmiling. "I don't think the way Jack looked at it," began Nan, addressing Miss Lawrence, "that she meant to tell a story. She said there couldn't be any school if there were no scholars, and so she saw to it that there were no scholars. She always wants to help and she knew how busy I would be, but she knew, too, that I would insist upon her going to school and so she thought out this plan for having a holiday."

There was actually a smile on Aunt Sarah's face.

"That's Jack all over," she said. "And I know full well that from her point of view she believed she wasn't telling a story."

"That's what she said to me," Nan again asserted.

"It's most astonishing," said Miss Lawrence, but even in her eyes there was a flicker of amusement as she glanced at Miss Dent. "Of course, she must be punished," she went on, "for she must realize how wrong it was and such things cannot be overlooked."

"She didn't really think about its being wrong till she saw you coming," said Nan, "and then she was scared to death, poor little Jack."

This was most tactful of Nan, for Miss Lawrence had a great horror of being dreaded and disliked. She believed in firmness but in gentle and loving control, so she said, "She should not have been scared of me, Nan. I am never unjust, I hope."

"What are you going to do to her?" asked Nan, feeling that she must learn the worst. "If it's very bad, Miss Lawrence, please let me take the punishment; I'm bigger, you know."

The tears sprang to Miss Lawrence's eyes. Nan had scored a second time, all unconsciously. "Why, my dear, do you believe I could be harsh enough to inflict anything dreadful upon a little girl? I assure you I shall do nothing worse than keep her in after school and give her a lecture, not an unkind one, but I hope to be able to make her understand the nature of an untruth better than she does now. I am glad to know the exact facts, Nan; it will make it easier for me to deal with her."

"Shall you tell the whole school?" asked Nan anxiously.

Miss Lawrence considered the question. "No, I think not. I will simply tell them that a false report arose and that another time they must come to see for themselves, and that any announcement of a holiday will be made from the desk by me personally." She then bade Miss Dent good-bye, and stooped to kiss Nan whose championship had won the day for naughty little Jack.

Jack took her punishment stoically and the only remark about it was in answer to her sister's question: "Was it very dreadful, Jack? Was she awfully solemn and terrible?"

Jack's reply was philosophical: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me," she said gravely. And that was all any one was ever able to get out of Jack.

[CHAPTER VII]
A TOURNAMENT WITH PETE

As Aunt Sarah prophesied, the boys thawed out in a few days, but did not promise by their manner to offer any real companionship. Mary Lee made a point of avoiding them while Nan was perfectly indifferent, and only Jean went out of her way to be agreeable.

"I think they're horrid," complained Mary Lee. "Just because they have a finer house than this one and their father has been some high muck-a-muck they think they can look down on us."

"I don't believe they look down exactly; I think it's because we are girls, and they're not used to playing with girls. We belong to the same family and it isn't anything much to be a Congressman. I'm sure they're polite enough."

"But they're not a bit like Phil," replied Mary Lee who measured all boys by that standard.

"It's because they're not used to girls," insisted Nan; "that's what Aunt Sarah says, and Phil has been used to us ever since he was born."

"But Phil says they're stuck up," persisted Mary Lee, "and a boy ought to know."

"Oh, well, who cares?" returned Nan. "I'm sure I don't, and I don't want boys tagging after me wherever I go," which was something of a fling at Mary Lee who generally preferred Phil's company to that of any of her sisters.

It was Phil, after all, who did bring about a better understanding between the cousins, so that all spent many a holiday in common. It was one Saturday when Phil came over to propose a "sure-enough" tournament, that the fun commenced. He had his own horse and proposed to beg, borrow or—

"Not steal one for me," interrupted Mary Lee.

"I'll get one some way," said Phil. "We must have more than one to enter the lists. The more the better."

As a tournament was sufficiently romantic to appeal to Nan she eagerly put in, "I'll be a knight."

"What'll you ride?" asked Mary Lee.

"Pete."

Phil tumbled back on the grass with a shout of laughter, for Pete was the old mule which Unc' Landy used for all farming purposes. He was aged, half blind and evilly disposed, so his entering a contest like a tournament seemed the height of absurdity.

"You laugh mighty soon," retorted Nan. "Maybe you reckon I can't ride Pete. I can do more with him than any one."

"I think he'd be lots of fun," said Phil, sitting up, his eyes twinkling with mirth. "I'll bring Lightfoot and maybe I can get sister Polly's mare for Mary Lee."

"Oh, I'd love that," cried Mary Lee, enthusiastically. "Who'll be the spectators?"

"We don't need any except the kids. Jack and Jean will do," returned Phil. "We'll just ride for the fun of the thing, you see."

"We can have a make-believe audience," said Nan eagerly. "I'd love that. Where can we have it, Phil?"

"Oh, over in the field, back where the road comes in."

"How about rings? We must have rings."

"One will do. We can't expect to have many. I can fix up one over the gate and if we take that we shall do well."

"That will be a fine place," said Nan, hugging her knees. "Go 'long, Phil, and get your horses and I'll see about Pete. Unc' Landy isn't using him to-day."

Phil went off with a chuckle, promising to return in half an hour, and Nan flew to the house. It was her intention to outdo them all in the matter of costume. Phil had declared his intention of tying some sort of sash around his waist and of wearing his brother Tom's Rough Rider hat with a feather in it. Mary Lee said she would put on a red jacket and tie a silk handkerchief around her head.

"I'll get up something," said Nan evasively. She might not have the swiftest steed but she could have the grandest costume. Whatever Nan went into, she did with all her heart and her enthusiasm went to full lengths whenever she entered any contest.

Nan had the faculty of mentally placing objects in their relative places once she had seen them, and on her way to the house she quickly made an inventory of those things she should need. First there was Jack's plaid skirt; it would about come to her knees. A pair of leathern leggings her mother had worn as part of her riding costume when a girl, she remembered seeing in a trunk in the attic. In this same trunk, to her satisfaction, she came across some strips of plaid like the skirt; these she considered a great find and bore them down-stairs with the leggings.

Having arrayed herself in a green shirt-waist, the plaid skirt and the leggings, Nan rummaged among her treasures to find an old cairngorm pin which had belonged to her Grandmother Lee, and which her mother had once given her as a birthday gift, lacking anything new. Fashioning the plaid strips into a scarf by pinning the longer ones together, she fastened them at the shoulder with the pin. Then her deft fingers contrived from some stiff paper, a sort of Scotch cap. She gave this a coat of shoe polish which dried quickly, and as a finishing touch she pinned to it a long peacock feather which some one had once given her.

When all was ready Nan surveyed herself in the glass with much pride. Her ideas had been gleaned from some pictures of Highland costumes which she had often seen at her Cousin Mag's, and she had determined to take the name of the Knight of Snowdoun, knowing and loving well her "Lady of the Lake."

On her way from the house she stopped in the pantry and took three apples from the barrel standing there. One of these she carefully pared and slipped the paring into her pocket; the others she took with her to the stable yard where old Pete stood, his head over the fence. She rubbed his nose gently and gave him the pared apple. If there was anything Pete loved, it was apples, and with these as a reward Nan knew she could do anything with him, and indeed he allowed her to adjust his bridle and to strap a folded horse blanket upon him and to mount him easily, a bit of apple being the recompense for such amiable behavior.

As Nan rode in state out of the yard in the direction of the field, Ashby Gordon saw her and was fascinated by her appearance.

"What are you going to do?" he called after her.

Nan flashed him a merry look over her shoulder, but made no reply.

There was something entirely too enticing in the possibilities her looks presented and Ashby's curiosity got the better of him. He ran to find Randolph. "Come on, Ran," he said. "I wish you'd see Nan. She looks stunning and she's riding old Pete somewhere. Come on."

More impressed by Ashby's manner than his words, Randolph followed his brother. As they went out they caught sight of Nan just disappearing down the road behind the barn. A dip in the hill hid her from view in another moment, but they determined to take the same direction to see what was going on. Arriving upon the scene, they found Phil on Lightfoot, Mary Lee riding her Cousin Polly's Beauty, and the twins seated as spectators.

"What's going on?" asked Randolph.

"A tournament," said Phil. "There is the grandstand if you want to look on."

"Oh, but I'd like to be in it, if I only had my horse here," said Ran.

"So would I," put in Ashby. "My! but Nan looks great. What are you, Nan?"

"I'm the Knight of Snowdoun, Mary Lee is the Knight of the Red Jacket and Phil is the Knight of Morro Castle because he is wearing a Rough Rider hat."

"It's rather too big," said Phil. "I've got to take a reef in it."

"We've only one ring," said Nan, "but we have a large assemblage to look on. The Goldenrod family are nearly all here. The Oaks are out in force and the Maples are dressed up in their gayest clothes, you see."

Ran looked at her with more interest than he had ever shown. "I say," he remarked, "you look like the real thing. Who's your herald?"

"Oh, we haven't any. Phil is going to call out: 'Prepare to charge,' and 'Charge,' unless," she said graciously, "you'd like to do it."

"I'd like it first-rate," said Ran heartily.

"All right. That will help us out finely, won't it, Phil?"

To which Phil replied: "It will make it more real, I reckon."

"The other two had selected their ladies before I reached here," said Nan, "so if I win I'll have to crown a make-believe. The crown is of red maple leaves. Jean is making it now."

"If you win," said Mary Lee contemptuously, being rather put out at the appearance of the Gordon boys upon the scene.

"Yes, Miss High-and-Mighty," returned Nan. "Because you have the best mount, you needn't think you're going to have it all your own way. It isn't the riding; it's the taking the ring. Two out of three goes. Where are the lances, Phil?"

Phil produced three long straight poles made from saplings, sharpened at the end, and soon all three knights were mounted and in line. But just before the herald uttered his first call, Nan lowered her lance, drew from her pocket a piece of apple paring and tied it upon the pole.

"What in the world are you doing?" cried Phil.

"I'm doing this to make Pete go," was the answer. "If he smells this, he'll try to run for it."

"That's not fair," cried Mary Lee.

"It is, isn't it, boys? When she has the best horse she ought to let me do it, I think," declared Nan.

"Oh, there wouldn't anything make that old creature go," said Phil disparagingly. "He always sleeps while Unc' Landy has him in the plough, and I reckon he'll do it now. Let her tole him on any way she likes, Mary Lee; it will be more fun."

The Knight of the Red Jacket was the first to start, but with such impetus did her steed go that it took all her wits to hold in the spirited mare and her lunge at the ring brought no result.

Nan came next. Pete, with the apple paring dangling within a foot of his nose, got up his best speed and galloped with noble effort to overtake this tid-bit.

"Good boy, Pete," cried Ashby, clapping his hands, and the sly old mule, as if understanding, dashed along at a rate which surprised every one. Nan had ridden him bare-back too often not to know his paces and though he had never before taken quite such a gait she was secure in her faith in him and actually took the ring, laughing as she slipped down and offered Pete the bit of apple paring.

"I told you it was skill and not paces," said she as she came back.

Phil was the next, and he, too, took the ring.

"It's not fair," pouted Mary Lee. "If you had this horse, you'd go so fast you couldn't see anything."

"I'll change with you," cried Nan quickly.

"Suppose you do that," proposed Ran. "Then each one will have a fair test. Nan can ride Mary Lee's mare next time and Phil can take Pete. Then the third time Phil can ride the mare, Mary Lee can ride Pete, and Nan Lightfoot; that will give every one an equal test."

Mary Lee objected to this, mainly because Ran had proposed it, but the others overruled her and so it was arranged, Nan a second time coming off victorious, Phil knocking the ring from its place and Mary Lee scoring not at all.

The third time no one won for Pete absolutely refused to carry Mary Lee. He planted his feet obstinately and firmly and when urged by repeated blows from Ashby at the rear, kicked out so viciously that Ashby speedily got out of the way. So Nan and Mary Lee were obliged to change back again, but even then Mary Lee was no more successful, for by this time Pete's temper had been tried beyond pacifying and he was sulky. No amount of coaxing would urge him to go faster than a slow walk, so it was decided to lead him aside and Nan made her third essay upon Phil's horse, without taking a ring. However, as it was, the odds were in her favor, for she had outdistanced her rivals and had shown herself the most expert in the tourney. Therefore, it was she who was to bestow the crown upon her chosen lady.

"You might take one of us," said Jack wistfully, who longed to be queen of Love and Beauty.

"I wish I could, but you didn't wear my colors and I can't offend a brother knight or we might have a joust which would end in bloodshed," said Nan seriously, swinging the wreath of red and yellow leaves upon her lance. "I'm sure I don't want to give offense," she added.

Jack looked disappointed. "I thought, of course, you'd choose me, Nan," she said.

"I will next time. We'll try it again some day, and this time Phil can crown you as a maid of honor."

This satisfied Jack who felt that to be the only lady to wear a crown was sufficient honor.

Nan stood swinging her wreath and looking uncertainly around the field. Upon a tall bramble a single spray of white shone out, the bush evidently having miscalculated the season and having imagined that it was still summer. "Ah, my Lady Bramble," cried Nan, "I will crown you, for you must have expected something unusual or you wouldn't be showing yourself at this time of year." And she flung her garland over the bramble bush.

But just here their play was interrupted by a voice at the fence, saying, "Who got dat mewl?"

Nan ran toward Unc' Landy who looked at her in disapproving surprise. "What all dis? Dis ain' no way fo' young ladies to dress. None o' de fambly evah done disher way 'scusin' dey goes to er ball."

"It's a tournament, Unc' Landy, and I took the ring," cried Nan joyously. "You ought to have seen Pete run the first time, but he was awfully obstinate at the last."

"Pete? You ain' ride dat ole mewl to no tournymint?"

"Yes, I did and he ran, really he did. I'll tell you why." And Nan told how she had lured on the old creature by the odor of apples.

At this story all Unc' Landy's disapproval vanished and he burst into a loud guffaw. "I say yuh meks him run," he cried. "I knows now how to git wuk outen him."

"Oh, but you mustn't fool him," said Nan. "I gave him the apple afterward. It would never do to make him run that way every day or he'd die in his tracks."

"He sholy would ef he keep up dat gait. Come erlong hyar, yuh ole fool creetur. Whafo' yuh kickin' up yo' heels lak yuh young an' frolicsome? I knows yo' age. Come on hyar." And he led off the old mule while every now and then he doubled over with mirth, repeating: "I say run."

"It was great fun," declared Ran. "I didn't know girls ever did such things."

"We do," returned Nan. "We do all sorts of things and mother doesn't care so long as it isn't actually wrong. She likes us to be out-of-doors. We girls play baseball and do lots of things like that."

"Nan won't always play," complained Mary Lee. "She gets too young ladyish sometimes and goes off somewhere to mope."

"I don't mope," returned Nan, "but there are other things I like to do. I don't like boys' games all the time, only sometimes. I don't like to go fishing because I hate squirming worms on hooks, and I feel sorry for poor gasping fish."

"Oh, but we have to have them for food," said Ashby.

"I know we do, but I'd rather not do the catching. I'll let you do that," she added laughing.

They were all on thoroughly good terms by this time and since the afternoon was not over, they took turns in riding, Ran showing himself so expert as to pick up his cap from the ground while going at full speed. He was able, too, to ride standing, bareback or any other way, winning great applause for his cow-boy acts.

"I believe I'll ask father to let us have our horses up here," he said. "It would be no end of comfort and if we had some kind of trap we could take you girls off on long drives."

"We have an old phaeton," said Nan; "it's rather dingy looking, but that is all that is the matter with it, and there is the sleigh. We don't need either since we sold the horses, but mother doesn't like to part with them for the small price we could get for them and she says maybe some day we can afford to keep a horse."

"We must surely see about having our horses here," repeated Ran, and that very night he wrote home to his father to make the request.

A week later the horses arrived and were stabled near-by. Polly Lewis was generous enough to send her mare to one of the girls once in a while and so many a long and delightful ride did the cousins have. Sometimes several of them would pile into the old phaeton and sometimes two would go horseback and the rest would drive. Strange to say, though Mary Lee was so much less impetuous than Nan, and fonder of boys' sports, she sat a horse less well and was never the graceful and fearless rider that Nan was, though many a girl might have envied even her good seat and steady hand.

There were other tourneys, too, when Randolph generally was victor and crowned Jean who was his special favorite, thus causing pangs of jealousy in Jack's ambitious heart. Nan, seeing this, resolved to do her best for Jack's sake and practiced so diligently that once Ran's successes rendering him careless, she actually did take the championship from him and to Jack's great delight, crowned this little sister, making a flowery speech as she did so.

Aunt Sarah smiled contemptuously at these performances which she called "fool nonsense," but since the children kept well, were not in bad company, and did not neglect their school duties, she did not forbid them their exciting plays. After the arrival of the horses belonging to the Gordon boys, Pete was not again expected to play the part of a curvetting steed, but was allowed to rest on his laurels.

[CHAPTER VIII]
THE SUNSET-TREE

Although the girls had plenty of time for play, Aunt Sarah saw to it that they had no really idle moments. She was the most industrious of persons herself and accomplished wonders which she explained by saying her daily nap of half an hour so fortified her that she could do two days' work in one by taking two rests in the twenty-four hours. She was quick to perceive defects in young people and in a half sarcastic, half humorous way, commented upon them. Upon Jean, such remarks had little effect; they angered Jack, slightly annoyed Mary Lee, but they hurt Nan to the quick, she being the most sensitive of them all. Proud and romantic, high-spirited and impatient, she was often thrown from a pinnacle of eager expectation into the depths of a present discomfort. It was on such occasions that she fled to her nook in the pines which she had finally named "Place o' Pines." Here she would often solace herself by writing to her mother whom she missed, perhaps, more than any of the others did. Reports coming from Mrs. Corner were on the whole favorable. "If I can stay long enough," she wrote, "the doctors give me every hope of entire recovery."

It was one afternoon when Aunt Sarah had been particularly exacting that Nan fled to Place o' Pines. She had not been there for some time, having been occupied in too many ways to have many moods. This, however, had been a particularly horrid day. In the first place she had come down late to breakfast and Aunt Sarah had said: "Good-afternoon," when she entered the dining-room. That made all the others giggle and she felt so small. She needn't have been late, of course, but while she was putting on her shoes and stockings she thought of a new tune and had been humming it over so as not to lose the air, and, as she sat there dreaming, the time slipped away.

Then of course, Mary Lee might have seen that she was in a bad humor and should not have teased her about dawdling, making her answer sharply.

"You old sharp corner," Mary Lee then had said.

"You're a Corner yourself as much as I am," Nan had retorted. "You're an angle; you're an angle worm," was Mary Lee's triumphant reply. And then Randolph had shouted with laughter. Nan's cheeks reddened as she remembered his mirth. She hated to be laughed at, especially by boys, and by older boys worst of all. She didn't mind Ashby and Phil so much, for they were younger, but she did very much mind Randolph's laughter, so she had taken to her heels and had not spoken to any of them since. She hoped they would let her alone and that she would be safe in her hiding-place till supper-time.

It was two months since her mother had left home and longer since she had parted from her Aunt Helen. As she came through the orchard to where the pines stood sombrely green, she saw a charred space just outside her tiny grove. The boys had evidently been there roasting potatoes, for there were skins and corn-husks scattered about.

"Oh, dear," sighed Nan, "if they have found out my darling grove, I shall never have any more peace." But, apparently, the boys had not entered the charmed castle, for as Nan crept through the underbrush she saw that all was as she had left it, only a bit of white paper fluttered from the music rack to which it was fastened by a pin.

"They have been here after all," she exclaimed, "and have found me out. I suppose that is some foolish note they have left." She took the paper to the edge of the grove where it was lighter and read:

"Come, come, come,
Come to the sunset-tree.
The day is past and gone;
The woodman's axe lies free,
And the reaper's work is done.

"Come at ten o'clock to-morrow by command of your

"Fairy Godmother.

"October 14."

Surprised and pleased, Nan's first thought was "I must go tell mother." Then with a rush came the recollection of her mother's absence. She was the only one who knew the secret. Her Aunt Helen had returned. Had she come alone?

Nan looked across the little brook toward Uplands. The house seemed as silent and deserted as in the weeks and months past. Slipping the paper into her blouse, she determined to go and reconnoitre.

The house looked grim and uninviting. Nan wondered if ever it had seemed otherwise, if ever the doors had been thrown open and from the windows had looked smiling faces, her Aunt Nancy's, her Aunt Helen's, her father's. The stick-tights and jimson weed held her with detaining hands as she ran back through the unmown lawn. They seemed like unseen fingers from fairies under a spell. Nan wondered at what mystic word the doors of this haunted dwelling would fly open to her.

"Suppose," Nan said to herself, "an ogre lived in that dark woods and I was in his power." She gave a little self-reproachful sigh as she reached the sunset-tree. "Mother would tell me that I was in the power of an ogre, I suppose," she continued, sitting down on the gnarled roots which stretched far along above soil. "Mother would say old ogre Impatience and the bad fairy that makes me get to dreaming, had me in their clutches. Maybe they have. I wish I could tell my fairy godmother about it, and that she could give me a phial of precious liquid to squeeze on the ogre's eyelids so he would go to sleep and never wake up; and I wish she would give me a charm to change the fairy that makes me dream into one that would make me jump right up and get dressed in a jiffy. I wonder why it is I always love so to moon over my shoes and stockings. All sorts of ideas come to me then. Perhaps if I did nothing but put on shoes and stockings I'd some day have an idea come to me that would be worth while." The whimsy of spending the rest of her life in putting on shoes and stockings made her laugh.

The sunset was gorgeous gold and red over the top of the hill. Lakes and mountains and turreted cities appeared in the sky. "The holy city," said Nan, becoming grave. "That is where papa is. Now up go the roses," she went on as pink clouds detached themselves and drifted off overhead. "I'm sending you those roses, papa," she said. "Please take them into heaven with you and I'll try to get rid of the ogre Impatience and the Poppy fairy. Poppies put you to sleep they say, so I'll call her that. To-morrow I'll stand on one foot to put on my shoes and stockings, for if I sit down I am lost. I wish I knew, papa darling, if you could look through those bright golden cracks in the sky and could see me standing here under the sunset-tree."

She returned soberly home and deliberately sought out Mary Lee and the boys whom she found practicing the double shuffle on the back porch.

"Where have you been?" asked Ran, pleasantly.

"In the enchanted woods," returned Nan, "but it was getting gruesome there so I came away."

Ran laughed. He was getting used to these speeches from Nan, and rather liked them.

"I can do it now," said Mary Lee eagerly. "I got Mitty to show me. See, Nan." And she executed the step easily.

"I don't know that step, but I know another one," said Nan, glad to perceive that her ill temper of the morning was forgotten, and being a little ashamed of supposing that they would miss her much when she went off alone.

The noise of their break-downs brought Aunt Sarah to the door. "What in the world are you all doing?" she asked.

"Just doing some steps," replied Mary Lee, expertly executing her double shuffle.

"You might have been better employed," returned Aunt Sarah. "It would have been just as well, Mary Lee, if you had been giving some attention to darning your stockings. There is a fine large hole in the knee of one where you scraped it against a tree you were climbing, I suppose. And, Nan, it wouldn't do any harm if you were to see where you left the shirt-waist you took off this morning. We are not Japanese to hang up things on the floor."

"I wish we were," answered Nan. "I'd like to wear kimonos and shoes that slip up and down at the heel, and I'd not mind living in a house made of paper screens."

"Poor protection they'd be to you," replied Aunt Sarah, "for you would punch a hole in every one before a day was over."

Nan was not destructive and considered this an unjust imputation, so she stalked off with her head in the air. She didn't believe but that she had hung up the shirt-waist and that it had slipped down. Aunt Sarah was so particular and was always dinging at her about leaving bureau drawers and closet doors unclosed. When one is in a hurry, how is it possible always to see that everything is just so?

She found the waist not on the floor of the closet, but by the chair where she had laid her clothes the night before. There were some of Jack's belongings, too, strewed around the room, but Mary Lee's and Jean's were carefully put away. Nan hung up the waist and then sat down by the window. Suppose the things in the big house at Uplands had been allowed to lie around helter-skelter, she didn't believe it would look so attractive as she imagined. This brought a new train of thought which she carried out, leaning her arms on the sill, her chin resting upon them till Aunt Sarah's entrance aroused her from her reverie.

"Up in the clouds, I suppose," she exclaimed. "You ought to live in a balloon or a sky-scraper, Nan, you so seldom want to come down to earth. I want you to find Jack and Jean and tell them to come in and get ready for supper."

Nan departed on her errand, smiling to herself in the thought that she had a secret from them all. She was out of sorts with everybody in the house, but to-morrow would be the sunset-tree and Aunt Helen.

She was promptly on hand at the trysting-place the next morning, though finding some difficulty in getting there in time as it seemed that Aunt Sarah had a hundred things for her to do. That she did not dream over them goes without the saying, and Aunt Sarah congratulated herself upon the seeming improvement under her reproofs. Promptly, as Nan appeared, the little figure of her Aunt Helen was seen approaching her. She did not wait for Nan to come up but ran toward her and clasped her in her arms, and Nan gave her as close a hug. Her imagination was strongly appealed to by this relative, so little known and who had chosen such fascinating methods of becoming acquainted.

"You dear Aunt Helen," cried Nan, "where did you come from?"

"You know me then," said her aunt.

"Oh, yes. When I told mother, she guessed who you were."

"And she let you come to meet me to-day?" said Miss Helen, with a strain of eagerness in her voice.

"She didn't know. She wasn't here to ask. She's gone away, you know."

"I didn't know. Tell me about it, please."

Nan poured forth her woes and fears concerning her mother.

"Oh, dear, oh, dear," sighed Miss Helen. "We didn't know. Oh, my dear."

"Do you think she may be very ill?" asked Nan her eyes wide with alarm.

"I hope not. I hope not." Her aunt spoke more cheerfully. "No doubt she will get quite well where she is."

"She says she will if she can stay long enough."

"She must stay." Miss Helen spoke with decision. "Did she mind very much, Nancy, that you met me?"

"Oh, no; she was glad. She said——" the girl hesitated.

"Go on, please." Miss Helen spoke pleadingly.

"She told me that she had said something that she regretted."

"And that was——" Miss Helen leaned forward eagerly and caught Nan's hand in a tight clasp.

"That she never wanted to see any of the Corner family again," here Nan hurried on. "It wasn't any wonder, was it, when she was in such trouble and distress?"

"I never blamed her," murmured her aunt.

"She said she ought to have tried to be friendly to you and"—Nan looked up shyly, "that you used to love me dearly."

"I've always loved you dearly," returned her aunt warmly, "and I hope I always shall. Ah, my dear, you don't know what it is to have those dreadful bitternesses come into a family. I loved you all, your father, your mother, you children, but I loved my mother, too, and she needed me, for I was all she had left, and—well, never mind now. I am so very glad time has softened your mother's feeling, toward me at least, and I am so sorry, so very sorry, that she is not well. Poor dear Jack, it would have been a blow to him."

"Don't say that! Don't!" cried Nan. "It makes me feel as if I ought to be scared and trembly about mother and I don't want to." She put her head down in Miss Helen's lap and burst into tears.

"My dearest child," cried Miss Helen, "please don't cry. You make me so miserable."

"I won't cry," said Nan lifting her head. "She is better, oh, she is, Aunt Helen."

"I am sure of it, darling. Now, do you want to know what brings me here?"

"I do indeed."

"I have crossed the ocean twice since I saw you. I took your kiss to your grandmother all the way over with me, and oh, Nannie, dear, you don't know how much it meant to her! The first tears I have seen her shed for many a long day came to her eyes when I told her about you and what you said. Then she was restless and unhappy until she decided that nothing would do but she must see you. At first she urged me to send for you or to come over and bring you back, but I could not leave her and I doubted if you would be allowed to come. When she realized that, for the first time in all these years, she expressed a desire to come back to America. She has come to see you, Nannie. You won't refuse to go to her, will you?"

Nannie's heart was beating fast. At last she was to see the beautiful grandmother whose eyes followed her about from the portrait over the mantel. "Oh, I want to see her," she said. "I can't ask mother, but I know she would say yes; I know she would. Where is she, Aunt Helen? And when can I see her?"

"She is coming home. She is coming here as soon as I can get the house ready. She is with friends in Washington and I have engaged Martha Jackson to come over to clean the house and with Henry Johnson's help we shall soon have everything in order."

"I wish I could help," exclaimed Nan.

"Would you really like to?"

"I certainly would."

"Then you may. We'll go right over now for I promised Martha I'd come back soon so she would know what to do next."

This prospect of helping at Uplands was one of sheer delight to Nan. It was what gave her the greatest pleasure, and this opportunity of becoming intimate with the furnishings of the house at Uplands was beyond anything she had ever hoped for.

Through the long weeds the two made their way to spend the day in uncovering furniture, unpacking boxes and setting things to rights generally. During the process, Nan became confidential and revealed more of her own character and of her home life than she could have done in days of ordinary intercourse, so that Miss Helen came to know them all through her: Jean's gentle sweetness, Jack's passionate outbursts and mischievous pranks, Mary Lee's fondness for sports and her little self-absorbed ways; even Aunt Sarah stood out on all the sharp outlines of her peculiarities. Her unselfishness and her generosity were made as visible as her sarcasms and tart speeches, so that Miss Helen often smiled covertly at Nan's innocent revelations.

There was uncovered, too, the lack of means, the make-shifts and goings without in some such speech as: "Dear me, I wonder if our old sofa ever looked like that when its cover was fresh and new. It's just no color now and mother has patched and darned it till it can't hold together much longer, and the springs make such a funny squeak and go way down when you sit on it. Jack has bounced all the spring out of it, I reckon;" or, "we had a pretty pitcher something like that but Jack broke it and now we have to use it in our room, for you know we couldn't let the boys use a pitcher with a broken nose."

There were moments, too, when Nan spoke of the ogre Impatience and the Poppy fairy, both of whom Miss Helen seemed to know all about, for she fell in so readily with all Nan's fanciful ideas that the child felt as if she had known her always, and often would fly at her impetuously and give her a violent hug, frequently to the peril of some delicate ornament or fragile dish which she might have in her hand.

As room after room was restored to its former condition, Nan breathed a soft: "Oh, how lovely," but when the drawing room was revealed and all the beautiful pictures were unveiled, she sat in the middle of the floor and gazed around. All this she had longed to see and now she was in the midst of it. "I have a right to be here, haven't I, Aunt Helen?" she asked. "I really have a right. You invited me."

"Why, of course, Nan."

"I shall tell Aunt Sarah I had. She will say I sneaked in or stood around till you had to ask me, but I didn't."

"Of course not, you silly little girl. Come now, I am half starved. Let us go see what Martha has ready for us."

"Oh, I forgot about eating. I wonder what Aunt Sarah will say to my not coming home."

"Will she be alarmed?"

"No, not that exactly, because sometimes I take my pocket full of biscuits and stay out all day on Saturdays. I play I'm all sorts of people and that I have all kinds of wonderful things to eat. Have I ever had a meal in this house?"

"Many a time you have sat in your father's high-chair, and have banged on the table with a spoon, and, later on, you had many a sly meal with us when you would run off and I would catch you coming here. You couldn't cross the brook but would stand on the other side and call to me, 'Nenny, Nenny,' for that was as near Helen as you could get."

Nan sighed. "I really think I ought to go home. I could come back, I think."

"And leave me to eat my luncheon alone?"

Nan hesitated. It didn't seem very kind to do that, so she overcame her scruples and sat down to the meal Martha had prepared for them, wondering what Aunt Sarah would say when she heard about it. She felt a little startled when she stopped to consider possibilities. Aunt Sarah, though tart of speech, seldom resorted to active punishment unless she considered the limit had been overstepped, then she did not hesitate to mete out supperless solitary confinement to the aggressor. "I don't care," said Nan resolutely to herself, "I'm not going to be impolite to Aunt Helen even if Aunt Sarah doesn't approve. She can punish me if she wants to. I shall not mind going without my supper." In consequence she ate a hearty luncheon, being hungry from exertion and, moreover, wisely providing for future possible fasting.

It was a memorable day and when at last they left the house and Miss Helen locked the door behind them she told Nan that she would hang out from the second story window a red cloth as a signal when she had returned from Washington, and that Nan was to come over after that as soon as possible. She kissed the child good-bye and said, "I dreaded coming back, Nannie dear, but now I am glad to come since I have seen you."

So Nan went off with an exultant feeling in her heart. It was all like a fairy tale; Aunt Helen the fairy godmother, her grandmother the queen of the fairies. This was the enchanted castle and Nan was to be given entrance to it. She ran down the hill, stopped at the sunset-tree to look at the reddening sky, crossed the brook, and ran plump into Aunt Sarah.

[CHAPTER IX]
IMPRISONMENT

"Nancy Weston Corner," exclaimed Aunt Sarah, "where have you been all day? Who was that you were talking to up there at the house? I saw you coming away."

"It was my Aunt Helen," replied Nan, stoutly.

"And have you been up there hobnobbing with her and that wicked old mother of hers?"

"I reckon I've a right to hobnob with my own aunt," retorted Nan, immediately up in arms, "and as for my grandmother, she isn't there and she'd not be wicked if she were."

"Much you know about it. If you did know, you'd have more pride than to insinuate yourself into a household where you are not wanted."

"I do know all about it, and I didn't insinuate myself; I was invited. Aunt Helen invited me."

"When did you see her? How did she find you out?"

"I saw her weeks ago and my mother knew all about it. She did not object in the least."

"That's a likely story."

Nan's eyes flashed. "I'll thank you to believe, Miss Sarah Elizabeth Dent, that I don't tell stories."

"Don't you speak to me in that way," returned Aunt Sarah angrily. "March yourself home. You know as well as you're alive that neither your mother nor I ever cross the brook and that you are not allowed to do it either."

Nan wrenched her shoulder from Aunt Sarah's grasp. "I don't care anything about what you do," she said, rebelliously; "my mother knows I go to my grandmother's house, so there."

"We'll see about this," said Aunt Sarah. "Not a step do you go from the house till I have word from your mother. I'd be ashamed to be beholden to them for so much as a crust of bread, and to let them have the chance to patronize you after all that is past is more than my family pride will allow. You knew perfectly well I would never give my consent to your going there and you sneaked off without so much as a word to any one and were gone all day so that I worried——"

"I don't see why you worried," Nan interrupted. "I am often gone all day."

"Don't contradict me," said Aunt Sarah severely. "There is one thing I will not stand from servants and children and that is impertinence. You can go to my room and stay there till I can inquire into this. I'll sleep with Mary Lee. You don't cross the threshold of that room till your mother says so."

Nan's indignation by this time had risen to its greatest height. If she were to be punished for one impertinence, why not for more? So she turned and said: "You needn't touch me; I'll go. But I'll tell you one thing; that I don't believe my grandmother is half as wicked as you are and she'd not treat me this way no matter what. If I do go to your room I shall ask the Lord to bless her in her down-sittings and her up-risings just the same. You can write to my mother if you want to, and ask her if I did wrong to go to see my Aunt Helen. I know what she will say and I'll ask her if I can't stay there altogether till she comes back. They wouldn't call me a story-teller and they'd treat me better than you do. They are nearer kin anyhow."

Having delivered herself of this indignant speech, Nan took to her heels, reached the house, ran to her aunt's room and slammed the door after her, then she burst into tears of rage. Never before had her temper brought her to the making of such remarks to Aunt Sarah. They had had their little tiffs but such anger on both sides had never been displayed.

If there was one subject above another upon which Miss Sarah was excitable, it was the Corner family. She resented to the very core of her being the elder Mrs. Corner's neglect of her son's family, and that Nan should deliberately make overtures aroused all her indignation. Nan could have said nothing to enrage her more than to compare her unfavorably with Mrs. Corner, senior. So there was open war between them and Nan might well feel that she had gone too far.

However, the girl was more aggrieved and angry than sorry, and was specially annoyed that she had been sent to her aunt's room; that seemed to her a needless severity, for what harm would there be in allowing her to occupy the room she shared with her sisters? But it was some satisfaction, Nan reflected, that her aunt was punishing herself likewise, for she disliked a bedfellow.

It was not long before Jack's pattering feet were heard upon the stair and presently she burst into the larger room calling: "Nannie, Nannie, where are you?"

"Here," answered Nan in a depressed voice.

Jack stuck her head in at the door. "What you in here for, Nan?" she asked.

"Aunt Sarah sent me," returned Nan, biting her lip and trying to keep the tears back.

"Why, what for?"

"Just because I went to Uplands without asking her. Mother did not object when she was here, and Aunt Helen was there and wanted me." It was a relief to pour out her grievances if only to Jack.

"A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind," and Jack's own experiences made her appreciate the situation. Moreover, it seemed the height of calamity to her that Nan should be punished; Nan, who was the eldest and who really had a right to read lectures to her younger sisters. That she should be in disgrace was something to awe and impress one. "She's a mean old thing," said Jack winding her arms around her sister's neck. "Who's Aunt Helen, Nannie?"

"Papa's own sister, and she has come back to Uplands. I saw her before mother went away, but I didn't tell any one but mother. It was a secret and I couldn't tell. She wants me to come over there as soon as she and grandmother get back from Washington, and now I can't go for Aunt Sarah says I must stay here till she hears from mother. She was just furious with me. They are not her kinsfolk; I don't see why she should meddle. Aunt Helen will expect me and will wonder why I don't come." And the tears again started to Nan's eyes.

"I'll go tell her and then she'll know why," said Jack generously.

"And get punished, too. No, ducky dear, I can't have that, but it is good of you to offer to go. I'll have to think out some way, for if I am to be shut up here till Aunt Sarah hears from mother, Aunt Helen must have some word. I don't think I did a thing wrong in going to see my own aunt, but Aunt Sarah says I have no pride, and that it is wicked to think of wanting to go over there, but that is just her way of thinking. It isn't mine at all, and it is horrid, horrid for her to shut me up as if I were a baby, and to shame me before—before the boys."

Jack gazed at her in silent sympathy. She understood all about it. Many and many a time had she passed through just such tribulations. Many and many a time had she been punished for something in which she could see no wrong. How many times had her motives been misunderstood, and how often had she been censured for what seemed to her a praiseworthy act? Oh, yes, she could readily sympathize with Nan, and because Nan had more than once helped her out of a difficulty, she would do her best for her sister. "I'll bring you something to eat," she promised. "You shan't be fed on bread and water, and I'll tell the boys that Aunt Sarah is an old witch and is just torturing you."

Nan at that moment felt like heartily endorsing that opinion but she suddenly remembered that it would never do to undermine Aunt Sarah's authority over Jack, so she replied rather weakly: "Oh, I suppose it is all right. She thinks she is doing the best thing because she doesn't know all about it. When she hears from mother, she will understand. I don't mind anything so much as disappointing Aunt Helen. I wish you would find Mary Lee and send her to me," she said with sudden resolution, feeling that Jack's championship might not serve her as well as Mary Lee's, for the latter being a calm and more dispassionate person was usually more convincing, and if Nan could persuade her that she was a martyr, the boys would be given a proper view of the situation.

"What do you want Mary Lee for?" asked Jack a little jealously and because she must always know the whys and wherefores.

"I want to see her before Aunt Sarah does," said Nan with a ghost of a smile, and Jack departed upon her errand.

It was not long before Mary Lee, all curiosity, made her appearance. That Aunt Sarah should have exercised her authority in such a decided manner, and that Nan should have fallen under her displeasure was a matter of no small moment to each of the four Corners, for who knew now where the blow might next fall? "Of course," commented Mary Lee, when Nan's story was told, "it was because you didn't ask Aunt Sarah's permission, and because you answered her so. And then, I really don't see, Nan, how you could have been willing to go over there, after all that has happened. You know how Aunt Sarah feels about it and mother, too."

"Mother isn't so dead set against our going there," Nan informed her. "She would like to make up with Aunt Helen, I know she would, and I know she will say I am to go if I choose."

"Well I shouldn't choose," returned Mary Lee, her head in air. "I don't see how you can feel so. I shouldn't want to make up with them when they have treated mother so mean."

"Aunt Helen hasn't. She's always loved us, but she had to stand by her mother and that was right," persisted Nan. Then in a little superior way—"You don't understand all the ins and outs of it as I do, Mary Lee."

"I don't care," returned Mary Lee, immediately on the defensive. "I think you are very mealy-mouthed and are not showing proper respect to the family."

"Pooh!" returned Nan. "Just you wait till you hear what mother has to say."

This confidence in her mother's opinion somewhat altered Mary Lee's point of view. "Well," she said, "I wouldn't have gone myself, still, I think Aunt Sarah has no right to punish big girls like us for something our mother would not scold us for. She ought to wait till she knows for sure before she ups and makes a prisoner of one of us."

"She'd think she had a right to shut mother up if she did anything Aunt Sarah disapproved of," said Nan, mournfully. "Tell me, Mary Lee, how are you going to explain it to the boys?"

"I'll tell them the truth."

"But you can't say there is a family quarrel and that we aren't allowed to visit our own nearest relations."

"Yes I can. Everybody knows it or suspects it, and we are not the only ones that have had a family quarrel. We can't help our grandmother's being a horrid old skinflint."

"Oh!" Nan was about to defend her grandmother vigorously but concluded to say only: "Maybe she didn't mean to be quite so horrid as she seemed. When people get mad they say lots of things they don't mean. I know I do."

"Oh, yes, I know you do," returned Mary Lee, "but a grown-up old woman ought to do better. I hope you will when you are her age." At which sisterly reproof Nan had nothing to say. "At all events," Mary Lee continued, "I'll stand by you, Nan, and I know the boys will, too."

After Mary Lee left her, Nan reviewed the situation. If her Aunt Sarah's ire cooled she would probably be liberated the next day and her Aunt Helen would not arrive from Washington till Monday anyhow. On the other hand, if her Aunt Sarah's anger, instead of cooling should wax stronger, Nan could not expect to be free till her mother should be heard from, and that would be in not less than three days; in all probability it would be four. Nan counted on her fingers: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday; very likely Wednesday, for Aunt Sarah would hardly have her letter ready before the morning's mail. "I wish she'd send a telegram," sighed Nan, "but she'll just like to keep me here as long as she can; I've made her so hopping mad."

Nan's conscience told her that Aunt Sarah did have a right to be more than usually angry at her impertinence, but she chose to see only her own side of the case and would admit herself nothing but a martyr. True to her expectation, no supper was forthcoming and before that hour her door was securely locked on the other side. She was indeed a prisoner.

In spite of her hearty luncheon, Nan felt the pangs of hunger about the supper hour. She had a healthy appetite and, as the odor of hot biscuits stole upward from the kitchen, she realized that hers was no pleasant predicament. "Old witch aunt! Old witch aunt!" she murmured under her breath. "I don't love you one bit, so there! You are ungodly and I wish the ungodly would be overthrown, I do. I wish the peril that walketh at night would encompass you round about. I don't believe David had any more troubles than I have, when he wrote his psalms." She sat gloomily nursing her misery and feeling herself a much abused person when she was aroused by some one calling softly under her window: "Nannie, Nannie."

She looked out and there stood Jack. "I've saved my cake for you," she said. "How shall I get it up to you?"

"I'll let down a string," said Nan promptly. This was a pleasant diversion and she hunted around energetically till she found in Miss Sarah's work-basket a spool of strong thread. To the end of this she fastened an empty spool which she dropped out of the window. Jack fastened her cake to the string having first wrapped it in a piece of paper, and Nan drew it up. "You are a darling," she called down. "I'll do as much for you some time. Can't you get me some biscuits or something?"

"There aren't any biscuits left to-night. The boys were so hungry and Phil was here; there's only batter-bread left and that's too soft," returned Jack. But here the opening of a door sent her scudding away and Nan closed her window.

She devoured every crumb of the cake and longed for more. It seemed but to whet her appetite and she pondered long trying to devise some way by which she could undertake a foraging expedition. "As if I hadn't a right to my own mother's food," she said, complainingly. "I'm going to get it some way."

After a long time given to planning out different schemes Nan at last hit upon one which she determined to carry out. She would wait till after every one had gone to bed. She wondered if she could keep awake till then. She made up her mind that she would, and, after lighting the lamp, she took a magazine from her aunt's stock of papers and began to read. She grew very drowsy after awhile, but she did not give up to sleep. Instead she tried all sorts of steps, making such a noise that the other children came to see what she was doing.

"What are you up to?" called Mary Lee through the key-hole.

"I'm only amusing myself," returned Nan. "I'm just dancing to keep awake."

"Why don't you go to bed?" asked Mary Lee.

"Don't want to yet," replied Nan, smiling.

Her lively effort had the effect she wished and she was wide awake even when Aunt Sarah came up to bed. She waited till she was sure all was still in the house, putting out her light and watching till the crack of light coming from the room across the hall was no longer shining under the door. Then she lighted her own candle and cautiously unlocked a door leading from the room she was in to the unused wing of the house. She left the door open and stepped out into the dark empty hall. It appeared strange and uncanny. A sudden squeak and a scuttling sound suggested mice, and the whir of wings and the quick swoop of a bat's wing scared her so that she nearly dropped her candle. The peculiarly musty smell which comes from a house which has long been shut up greeted her as she stood for a moment irresolute. Was it worth while to continue the adventure?

"I just will have something to eat," she decided plucking up courage to cross the hallway and go down the stairs which led to the lower rooms. Her heart beat like a trip-hammer as she continued her way, and she was thankful when she reached the door leading to the occupied rooms. It was never locked, for the key was lost. Jack had disposed of it in some mysterious way. This Nan remembered when her eye fell on the key in the door up-stairs.

Once safe in the living-room, it was easy to find her way into the kitchen and to the cupboard where she knew she would find any remains of supper. To her satisfaction she discovered a small pitcher of milk, a few pieces of bread, a little dish of stewed peaches and a section of apple pie. These she carried over to the table and sat down to make a hearty supper. The lateness of the hour, for it was after eleven o'clock, put an extra edge upon her appetite and she ate heartily, stopping to wash the dishes and pile them up neatly on the table.

Lady Gray, who occupied the kitchen at night, that she might scare away any mice, arose from her box and came purring toward her. "I will take you back with me; you'll be lots of company," said Nan, "and you can sleep at the foot of my bed; you'll love to do that."

She lifted the cat, who put her paws over the girl's shoulder contentedly. She had been used to this method of being carried about from the time she was a kitten and was quite satisfied. All went well till the door of the living-room was closed after them, and Nan was mounting the stairs on her way back to her room. She was more than half way up when the sudden appearance of a mouse darting across the hall was too much for Lady Gray's equanimity. She gave a bound from Nan's arms, the suddenness of the spring sending the candle to the ground, and causing Nan to miss her footing on the stair. There was a scream, a fall, and then all was still while Nan lay huddled up in an unconscious heap at the foot of the stairway.

[CHAPTER X]
THE RED CLOTH

The sound of the fall startled Aunt Sarah from a sound sleep. She sat up in bed and listened. All was quiet. "I couldn't have been dreaming," she murmured. "Mary Lee, Mary Lee," she called, "did you hear anything?"

"Huh?" said Mary Lee sleepily.

"Did you hear something fall? I thought I heard a scream and a fall. Is Jean in bed with you?"

Mary Lee was now awake. "Yes, Aunt Sarah, she's here," she answered. "I don't know whether I heard anything or not, I was so sound asleep."

Miss Sarah lay down again, but her ears were open to the slightest noise and in a little while she heard a plaintive meow. Again she sat up. "I hear a cat," she said. "It's somewhere near-by, and I shut Lady Gray in the kitchen myself."

"Maybe it's on the porch roof," said Mary Lee, drowsily.

Miss Sarah arose and went to the window which overlooked the porch. "Scat!" she said, putting out her head. She waited a few moments but there was no sound from this quarter. When she drew in her head the meowing sounded more plainly than ever.

"It certainly is in the house," said Miss Sarah. She went to the door leading out into the hall and discovered that the sound seemed to come from one of the rooms opposite. In one of these slept the boys; the other was where she had turned the key upon Nan. Slipping on a dressing gown and slippers, and taking a candle, she went forth to investigate. She stopped first at the door where the Gordon boys slept; all was still. At Nan's door she listened. It was plain that the meowing came from there. Lady Gray having failed of catching the mouse had found her way into the room which Nan had left and was trying to make it known that she wished to be let out.

Miss Sarah opened the door and was met with every evidence of satisfaction by Lady Gray. "How in the world did you get up here?" asked Miss Sarah in surprise. But just then a curious damply smelling air arrested her attention and she perceived the door standing ajar. "Of all things!" she exclaimed and went on with her candle. "Nan," she called, "Nan, what prank is this? I wonder if that willful child really has run off to her grandmother's." She cautiously went on to the stairs, shading her candle with one hand and peering down into the dark hallway. A white heap at the foot of the stairs caught her eye. She hurried down to find Nan, pale and still, lying there.

"Oh, dear, dear, dear," cried Miss Sarah, "what has happened? Nan! Nan!" but Nan did not stir.

Unable to carry both Nan and the candle, Miss Sarah hastened back to her room. "Mary Lee, Mary Lee!" she called, "get up quick and bring a candle! Hurry!"

At this peremptory summons, Mary Lee leaped from her bed. "What is the matter? What is it?" she cried.

"Nan has fallen down the stairs. Come right along. Here, take both candles and I'll carry her."

Trembling, Mary Lee followed apprehensively, and lighted the way for her aunt to bear the helpless burden up-stairs to the room from which the girl had escaped. As Mary Lee caught sight of the white face and limp form, she burst into tears. "Oh, is she dead? Is she dead?" she cried.

"I don't know," said Miss Sarah, her lips quivering. "Run get me some camphor, or hartshorn or smelling salts, or, better yet, there is a little brandy in the medicine closet; bring that."

"I'll bring them all," answered Mary Lee, rushing away and coming back laden with bottles. "Oh, Aunt Sarah," she said, anxiously watching her aunt force the brandy between the shut lips, "suppose she is dead! Suppose she is, and I called her an angle-worm. Oh, my dear Nan! My poor Nan! What will mother say?"

"Hush up," cried Aunt Sarah, tortured beyond forbearance. "I reckon you're not the only one who is feeling distressed. She's coming around, Mary Lee," she said presently, "but I can't tell whether there are any bones broken or not. We'd better get the doctor at once. Her right arm looks queer to me. Call Randolph and send him for Dr. Woods."

Aroused by the confusion, Jack came pattering to the door. "What is the matter?" she called as she heard Mary Lee knocking on the boys' door.

"Nan's fallen down the stairs," said Mary Lee, concisely.

"Is she dreadfully hurt? Oh, Mary Lee, is she?"

"We don't know, but we are going to send for the doctor."

Jack rushed across to where Nan was lying. "Go right back to bed," commanded Aunt Sarah. "I don't want a case of croup. I've got about as much as I can manage right here."

"I want to see my Nan."

"Go to bed," ordered Miss Sarah, and Jack sobbingly obeyed.

Mary Lee returned with the report that Randolph would go instantly. She poured out some of the brandy and came close to the bed to see Nan opening her eyes.

"She was stunned," said Aunt Sarah. "No, she mustn't have any liquor; it will be bad for her now. She is gaining consciousness."

Nan gave a weak moan. "What's the matter?" she said faintly. "My arm hurts so. Where's mother?"

Aunt Sarah's chin quivered and her eyes filled as she answered, "You've had a fall, child. Keep quiet till the doctor comes."

Nan closed her eyes and lay still for a moment. Presently she said: "I was hungry and I went down to get something to eat." Then she fainted again and Aunt Sarah was busy with restoratives when the doctor came. He was a bluff, hearty, middle-aged man who had known Nan all her life.

"What's all this?" he said. "Tumbling down stairs in the dead of night? Walking like a ghost in shut up places? What does this mean, Miss Nan?"

Nan tried to smile but felt herself slipping off into an unreal world while the doctor looked her over. "Nothing worse than a broken arm," he decided, "only a simple fracture, fortunately." The bone was slipped into place, causing a moment of exquisite agony, and after leaving a soothing potion, the doctor said, "She will be feverish and possibly a little delirious after her fall. I will come again in the morning." He departed leaving Miss Sarah to a solitary vigil while Nan moaned and wandered off again into the world of unreality.

Toward morning she began to mutter about strange things of which Aunt Sarah had never heard: the Poppy Fairy and Giant Pumpkin-Head, the Place o' Pines and the red cloth. Then she tried to sing a little song beginning: "A little child goes wandering by." At this the tears started to Aunt Sarah's eyes and she busied herself in putting iced cloths on the burning head.

Sunday morning dawned softly bright, a dim haze over the purple mountains and a faint mist enveloping the valley. Mary Lee awoke with the realization that something distressful had happened. She told the twins to keep very quiet for Nan was very sick, and it was a sober little group which gathered around the breakfast table.

Randolph and Ashby tiptoed about cautiously. Jean took refuge with Unc' Landy and Jack established herself just outside the door of the room where Nan lay. Mary Lee rushed down to Cousin Mag's with the woeful tale and Cousin Mag hurried back with her offers of help. She insisted upon taking Aunt Sarah's place and allowing her to rest, but this Aunt Sarah would not permit.

"I reckon I am more responsible for this than any one else is, Margaret," she said. "I was in a perfect pepper-jig of a temper because Nan went over to Uplands, and when she answered me back pretty saucily I was madder at that than anything, so I made her go without her supper and locked her up into the bargain. We're both of us pretty well punished and I reckon it's going to be my only consolation to nurse her."

Cousin Mag then declared that the twins should stay at her house a few days and she would see to it that the housekeeping went on smoothly at the Corners'. "You'll have to take some rest," she declared, "and I will come over every day to see that you get it."

So began the long siege for Aunt Sarah and Nan, each of whom was receiving a punishment not anticipated. Because she felt herself partly to blame, Aunt Sarah was tenderness itself, and for the same reason Nan was a docile patient.

Jean was perfectly willing to spend a week at Cousin Mag's and rather liked the idea, but Jack at first rebelled, and only after receiving the promise that she should see Nan every day was she willing to go. So every afternoon a wistful little face appeared at Nan's door.

It was on the third day that Nan first noticed her. After her fever and delirium, she lay weak and exhausted, but she gave a faint smile of welcome to her little sister. Aunt Sarah had stepped from the room for a minute and Jack ventured inside. "Can't I do something for you? May I kiss you just once, Nannie?" she said softly.

"Yes indeed," said Nan, and Jack dropped a gentle kiss upon her cheek.

"Have you seen the red cloth?" asked Nan with as much anxiety in her voice as her weakness would allow.

"Oh, I haven't looked," said Jack, "but I will." Aunt Sarah's footsteps were heard in the hall and Jack slipped out. "I kissed her," she said facing Aunt Sarah at the door, "but I didn't make her worse." Aunt Sarah smiled but made no reply.

Jack went out into the hall. She had found something to do for Nan. She tiptoed down-stairs and went out upon the porch softly closing the door behind her and looking toward Uplands. Yes, there hung the red cloth from the second story window. For a moment the child stood irresolute, then she started off, but with more than one backward look. She was doing the same thing as that for which Nan had been punished, but she didn't care. It was for Nan. Nan wanted her Aunt Helen to know that she could not come to her. She remembered that this had distressed her sister in their talk that evening before the imprisonment.

The little girl trudged on downhill, across the brook and uphill, on the other side. In a few minutes she had reached the house and was trying to make up her mind at which door she should knock. She decided upon that which opened upon the front porch and here she raised the brass knocker and let it fall twice. The door was opened by Miss Helen herself. Jack knew her at once from Nan's description, and it may be that Miss Helen guessed Jack's identity for she said: "Come in, dear."

"I can't come in," said Jack. "Nan's tumbled down-stairs and has broken her arm. She can't come to see you and she's dreadful sorry."

"Oh, dear, oh, dear, how grieved I am to hear that!" said Miss Helen. "How did it happen?"

"Aunt Sarah shut her up and wouldn't give her any supper, so she got up in the night and Lady Gray saw a mouse and jumped so the candle went out and Nan fell nearly all the way from the top. It's a wonder she wasn't killed, Cousin Mag says."

Just what Lady Gray had to do with the accident Miss Helen could not clearly understand. "Oh, I am so sorry," she repeated. She hesitated before asking, "Why did Aunt Sarah shut her up?"

Jack did not reply at once. "I don't believe I ought to tell that," she said. Then after some consideration of the subject: "Maybe I can tell half; she shut her up for one thing and she made her go without her supper because Nan sassed her back."

Miss Helen smiled but immediately she said gravely, "Nan should not have done that."

"Maybe you would, too, if you were doing something your mother let you do and your mother's aunt said you shouldn't," returned Jack, feeling that in this rather mixed-up speech she had adequately excused Nan, and Miss Helen read the meaning sufficiently well to take in the fact that Miss Sarah had disapproved of Nan's coming to Uplands.

"Aunt Sarah has written to mother," said Jack, "and Mary Lee has written, too, so I reckon Aunt Sarah will feel awfully sorry when mother's letter comes and says Nan wasn't disobeying." Jack gave further enlightenment. "I see Nan every day," she added.

"I am sure that makes Nan happier," returned Miss Helen. "Which of the twins are you? Jack, I suppose."

"Yes, I am Jack. Jean is over to Cousin Mag's. We sleep there now while Nan is sick. Nan won't be able to write for ever so long, for her right arm is all wrapped up in something and she can't move it. It is funny that it is her right arm and her writing arm, too, isn't it? I must go now."

"I wish you could stay," said Miss Helen wistfully. "I will write to Nan, and you must give her my love. Can't you stay and see your grandmother? She is asleep now, for she is very tired, but she will waken soon."

"I'm afraid I can't stay," said Jack who had no great desire to see a grandmother of whom she had heard from Mary Lee and Unc' Landy only ill reports. "I saw the red cloth. Nan told me about it," Jack went on. "I came over to tell you about her. She doesn't know I came but she'll be glad."

"You love Nan very much, don't you?" said Miss Helen tenderly.

"Yes. I love Jean 'cause she's my twin, but Nan always takes up for me and helps me out of scrapes. I get into a great many," sighed Jack. "Maybe I'm in one now," she added thoughtfully.

"Oh, dear, I hope not," Miss Helen hastened to say. "I must not keep you if you ought not to stay. You must not be disobedient if any one has forbidden your coming here."

"Nobody did 'zackly, but—I reckon I'd better not stay."

Miss Helen stooped to kiss her. "I hope to see you soon again," she said, "and I am very much obliged to you for telling me about Nan."

Jack trudged back satisfied at having done her errand. If Aunt Sarah discovered it she said nothing and a day later came a letter from Mrs. Corner in reply to Miss Sarah's. In it she said: "I feel now, dear Aunt Sarah, that I did wrong in harboring any ill-will toward Helen. I am sure my dear husband would wish me to meet any advances from her with an equally forgiving spirit and I do want my children to see and love their Aunt Helen, the only sister of their father. So Nan has my permission to go to Uplands when she receives an invitation. When one feels that the waves from the dark river may perhaps soon be touching her feet, quarrels and dissensions seem very petty things. I realized this when I first knew of the danger threatening me. Now that I feel that I am permitted a longer lease of life the bitterness of the past is something to be forgotten. I view life with a new understanding and I would encourage peace, forgiveness and forbearance."

Aunt Sarah read the letter thoughtfully, Nan watching her with big eyes looking from a very white little face. Aunt Sarah put her head back against the back of the big chair in which she was sitting and rocked silently for some moments.

"What does mother say?" asked Nan feebly.

"She says you may go to Uplands. Would you like to start now, Nan?" Aunt Sarah spoke half sadly, half jestingly. "Well, Nan," she went on, "I reckon we are both punished pretty thoroughly, you for your sauciness and I for my hardness. Neither of us has any scores to pay that I see. Goodness, child, when I picked you up from the foot of those stairs I would have given my right hand to have taken back my conduct toward you."

"I was dreadfully saucy, Aunt Sarah," said Nan. "It was wicked for me to speak so to you, and I had no business, either, to sneak down into the kitchen in the middle of the night. I have given my right hand, for a little while," she added, "only it don't do away with what I said and did."

Aunt Sarah bent over and kissed the child's forehead. Two salt tears trickled down from her eyes and fell on Nan's cheek. Those drops washed out all ill feeling between them, for Nan understood that Aunt Sarah did really love her and that she, too, had suffered, if not bodily pain, at least bodily fatigue and much mental anguish on Nan's account.

There was another letter which came later to Nan. It was not exactly a lecture, and the reproof was slight, but after reading it Nan felt that in being impertinent to her aunt she had abused her mother's trust and had hurt her as well as Aunt Sarah, so she resolved that never, never again, no matter what, would she treat Aunt Sarah with disrespect.

Many were the attentions showered upon the little girl during her illness, but chief among them, and most pleasing to her, were those which came from Uplands. Not a day passed that she did not receive some token of her Aunt Helen's thought of her. Lovely flowers were never suffered to fade before they were replaced by others. Dainties to tempt her palate followed the flowers, and when she could sit up came packages of picture postal cards of different places in Europe or interesting photographs. To these were added once in a while a cheerful story-book or a magazine, so, in spite of pain and lack of freedom, Nan fared well and in due time was out again, her arm in a sling and herself a little pale, but otherwise no worse for her accident.

[CHAPTER XI]
GRANDMOTHER

The November winds had swept the leaves from the maples and had sent them in hurrying gusts upon the waters of the little brook before Nan again visited Uplands. The oak trees still showed patches of dark red foliage and in Place o' Pines were heaps of shining brown brought there by that same November wind. Since Jack had braved her Aunt Sarah's displeasure with no ill results, Nan had felt there was hope that she would be permitted to make a visit to Uplands as soon as she should be well enough. Jack had not repeated her visit; she was not as ready to meet her grandmother as Nan was, nor were Mary Lee and Jean any more eager, so that the first interview was left to Nan.

It was one day in November that she said rather timidly to her Aunt Sarah: "Don't you think I might go over to Uplands? You know mother said I might."

"Assuredly," replied Miss Sarah. "Go by all means."

Nan looked at her critically to see if she meant this sarcastically, but there was no suspicion of any such intention, and she realized that the consent was readily given.

It was an important event to the girl. She had fallen in love with the lady of the portrait in the first place; her Aunt Helen had completely won her in the second, and she had learned to give at least pity and sympathy where her sisters felt, at the most, indifference, so she set out upon her walk with an eager anticipation.

She panted a little as she reached the top of the hill on the other side of the brook, for she had not gone so far since her accident, and, moreover, her heart was beating fast. She was to meet her grandmother. Would she be haughty and distant or kind and cordial? Would she come sweeping in all jewels and lace, or would she wear the plainer dress which her daughter adopted? Nan hoped that she would wear nothing more sombre than black satin with fine laces and that she would have more than one glittering ring upon her fingers.

There were no weeds now to wade through for the lawn was smoothly mown, though grass would have to be sown when the stubble was ploughed under. There were pretty curtains in all the rooms and flower-pots holding blossoming plants stood in a row in some of the windows. A bird-cage, too, hung in the library and as Nan stepped upon the porch she heard the joyous song of the canary. The place seemed so lived in; no longer a mysterious enchanted castle but the comfortable abode of human kind. A neat maid opened the door and ushered Nan into the library. An open fire was blazing in the grate, the canary was singing blithely above the blossoming geraniums and begonias. There were magazines and papers piled on the table and an open desk showed that some one lately had been writing there.

Presently there was a rustle of skirts on the stairs and Miss Helen came swiftly in. "My dear, my dear!" she exclaimed. "How glad I am to see you. What a siege you have had. It has seemed such a long time and mother has been hoping every day that you would be well enough to come. Do you still suffer, poor little lass?"

"Not now," was the answer, "but I gave my right hand, you see, and didn't get anything for it after all."

"You haven't given it altogether, I hope."

"No, but I can't even write, and if I had a piano I couldn't play on it."

"But you will soon be well," returned her aunt. "Come, let us go up to mother; she is very impatient to see you."

Nan followed to the softly carpeted, upper front room. No grand dame, magnificently attired came forward to meet her, but by the window sat a little old lady in sombre mourning; her face was lined with sorrow and her hands were worn and thin; only a plain gold ring adorned the left one.

"And this is Nancy," she said. "Excuse my rising, my dear, I am not very strong. Come here, won't you?"

Nan approached with a feeling of disappointment. How could any one fear sharp speeches from this mild-mannered old lady? Where was the flashing splendor of her eyes? Where was her proud mien? What had become of all those qualities which the portrait represented?

"Come closer, Nancy, child; I want to have a look at you," said her grandmother. And Nan knelt down before her. Mrs. Corner took the girl's face between her hands and looked at her long and earnestly. "She has Jack's eyes," she said to her daughter.

Nan smiled; it pleased her to be told this.

"And his smile," continued her grandmother. She took Nan's free hand and smoothed it softly. "She has the Corner fingers, too," she went on, "long and tapering with the filbert nails. She has sentiment, Helen, I am sure, and she is quick but sensitive; loving but impatient; honest and forgiving."

Nan felt rather embarrassed at this summarizing of her character, but as her grandmother leaned over and kissed her forehead a glad light leaped to the girl's eyes. This was not censure, but a tender interest.

"Your old grandmother is very glad to see you," Mrs. Corner went on. "I have longed for you, for one of my son's own children, and it is a great gratification to me to know you have no hard feelings."

"No, I haven't any hard feelings; neither has mother," returned Nan gravely.

A little expression of pain passed over Mrs. Corner's face and she sighed. "Never let yourself be a wicked old woman, Nancy, to want your own way. Be willing to share what you possess with others. Never be jealous and suspicious and envious. Try not to pity yourself too much and don't think your rights are superior to those of other persons. You will be very unhappy if you do not learn your lesson early. The book of life holds many hard pages and it will be handed back to you over and over again till you have learned by heart what is meant you should know."

"Now, mother," put in Miss Helen, "you are entirely too grave and preachy. Don't spoil Nan's first visit by giving her the impression that she is in a lecture-room."

"You are right, Helen; I should not allow myself to be carried away to the past from the present. Forgive me, Nancy, for being prosy and serious; your coming awakened so many memories of things I have tried to forget. Tell me about your mother while Helen gets out some things I brought you from Italy."

Nan's eyes sparkled. "Brought me? How good of you," she exclaimed. She wondered what the gifts could be and was quite overpowered when Miss Helen came in with her arms piled high with all sorts of packages. There were soft silks from Sorrento, corals from Naples, strings of beads from Venice, odd bits of jewelry from Florence, scarfs and sashes from Rome, a quaint little hat from Milan, embroideries, laces, knickknacks of all kinds.

Nan looked at them in delighted amazement. She had never seen so many pretty things together before. "They're not all for me," she said.

"All for you, my dear," said her grandmother with a pleased smile.