Evelyn Raymond

“ Helena held Sapphira as closely, and Dorothy’s arm was tightly clasped about Luna’s waist, who, oddly enough, was the least affrighted of them all.
“Won’t the horses be afraid? Supposin’ they should run away!” cried Molly Martin, who had seldom been in the town and never on such an occasion as this.
“Pooh! Them horses won’t run ’less they’re prodded into it. They look as if they’d been draggin’ stages up and down these hills all their lives and never expected to do anything else,” answered Alfaretta, quickly. “Don’t you get scared, Molly, I ain’t.” ”

“ Are we never to hear the end of Oliver Sands? He’s the ‘Old Man of the Mountain’, in truth, for his name is on everyone’s lips,” cried Mistress Betty, crisply, yet resigning herself to the chair Dorothy pushed her way.
“Thee never said truer. He is the biggest man up-mounting in more ways’n one. I’ve not wasted more love on him than many another but I hadn’t no call to break his heart. Hark, thee. I’ll be as short as I can.
“When Oliver’s mother died he was a boy and I was. She——”
“Beg pardon, please; but this afternoon I really have no time to learn the family history of my neighbor.” ”

“ Laughter and badinage, peanuts and pink lemonade; men and women turned back to childhood, smiling at the foolishness enacted before them but more at their own in thus enjoying it; and the “Learned Blacksmith” who had pondered many books finding this company around him the most interesting study of them all.
It was this that he loved about a circus; and, to-day, at their first one, the faces of Ananias and Sapphira held his gaze enthralled.
“Dolly, Dolly Doodles! Do watch them!” he cried for sympathy in his delight. “Did ever you see eyes so bright? Mouths so wide agape? ”

“ It has been a secret between Dolly and me, but of course we can’t keep it always and I can’t a minute longer. It’s this: We two girls have adopted for all their lives the two twins! We’ve adopted them with our pocket-money,” proudly stated Molly B.
“Molly! Molly!” cried Dorothy, her face aflame and her eyes swiftly filling.
“Yes I shall tell, too. Secrets are the killingest things to bear. I expect Papa will scold and Auntie Lu make fun but I’m doing it for charity. ”

“ Seth, really delighted.
“Why, of course, Mr. Winters. How could we do otherwise? In society one never puts one’s own desires in opposition to those of others. That’s what society is for, is what it means, isn’t it? Good breeding means unselfishness;” said Helena, then added, with a little flush of modesty: “Not that I am an oracle, but that’s what I’ve read and—and seen—abroad.” ”

“ Calvert decided that a whole day there would be both inconvenient and too fatiguing. Now that she was at home the management of the House Party had been turned over to her by tacit consent, and she had laughingly accepted the trust.
“This was to be Dorothy’s affair, but it’s been more Mr. Winters’s than hers and now more mine than his. Well, I like it. I like it so exceedingly that I propose to repeat the experiment some time. I love young people; and am I not quite a young person myself?”
“Of course, you are, dear Aunt Betty! The youngest of us all in some things, Mr. Seth says!” ”

“ She watched her opportunity and when again Luna drew her plaything from her blouse, Dorothy snatched it from her and sprang to her feet, crying:
“The money is found! The money is found! My lost one hundred dollars!”
Strangely enough Luna neither protested nor noticed her loss. The drowsiness that often came upon her, like a flash, did so now and she sank back against her hay-support, sound asleep. ”

“ I do love children!”
Aunt Betty rose and turning to Dorothy, remarked:
“That should be a much better use for your money when you find it than adopting the grandchildren of a rich old Hardheart! Come, child, we must to bed; and to-morrow, we’ll take home the twins. ‘Pass them on’ to Heartsease.”
“Oh! must we? But, maybe, they won’t keep them there. Then, course, you wouldn’t leave them just anywhere, out of doors, would you? Besides, I don’t know what Molly will say. She’s perfectly devoted to her ‘son,’ ’Nias.” ”

“ Another woman screamed, and Seth Winters’s face paled. He knew how very little it would now take to start a panic. But the band played the louder, the performers went round and round the great ring, the clowns frolicked and the monkeys pranked, and he inwardly blessed the discipline which kept every player to his post, as if such electric storms were every day incidents.
“What are those men doing to the roof?” suddenly demanded Molly Martin of her neighbor, James, calling his attention to the sagging canvas and the employees hurrying hither and thither to lift it on the points of great poles. ”

“ Danger, fear, responsibility meant nothing to this little creature whom Dorothy had saved from drowning, and with a sudden pitiful memory of poor, half-witted Peter Piper who had loved her so, she realized that here was another such as he. In body and mind the child had never grown up, though her years were many.
“Come this way, little lady. Come with me. Let us go into the house;” said the girl gently, and led the stranger to the window she had left open. “You must be the odd guest I needed for my House Party, to make the couples even, and so I bid you welcome. ”

“ CHAPTER V RIDDLES
“There’s a most remarkable thing about this House Party of ours! Every person invited has come and not one tried to get out of so doing! Three cheers for the Giver of the Party! and three times three for—all of us!” cried happy Seth Winters, from his seat of honor at the end of the great table in the dining-room, on the Saturday evening following.
Lamps and candles shone, silver glittered, flower-bedecked and spotlessly clean, the wide apartment was a fit setting for the crowd of joyous young folk which had gathered in it for supper ”

“ Seth’s feet, but, now, with the suddenness [Pg 101] native to them, awoke, discovered the dogs, and leaped out of the pew into the aisle. There they flung themselves upon the dogs with shrieks of delight. It was as if they had found old friends and playmates—as later developments proved to be true.
Poor Mr. Winters stared in consternation. He detested a scene but saw one imminent; and how to get both dogs and babies out of that sacred place without great trouble he could not guess. But Dorothy put her hand on his arm and gently patted it. ”

“ Oh! I do hate good-bys. Saying that and packing one’s trunk are two just unbearable things and make one wish, almost, that the nice times had never begun.”
“Yes, beginnings are grand; but endings—Hmm. I agree with you, Miss Molly,” echoed a boyish voice so close to her elbow that the girl wheeled briskly about to see who spoke.
“Why, Melvin Cook! Are you down in the dumps, too? I didn’t know boys had—had feelings, don’t you know.”
He ignored her mockery and answered gravely:
“They do feel a deal more than they get credit for. A boy daren’t cry and be silly like a girl——”
“Thanks, awfully!” ”

“ So close he drove to the big wagon that George Fox’s nose touched Littlejohn’s leader, and the boy pulled back a little.
“Huh! That’s old Oliver in his First Day grays! But he’s in the grumps. Guess the Spirit hasn’t moved him to anything pleasant, by the look,” he remarked to Dorothy beside him.
“He does look as if he were in trouble. I don’t like him. I never did. He wasn’t—well, nice to Father John once. But I’m sorry he’s unhappy. Nobody ought to be on such a heavenly day.” ”

“ The band which had been playing all the time now broke into a more blatant march, a gaily accoutred “herald” galloped forth from a wide opening at the rear of the tent, then turned his steed [Pg 171] about to face that opening, waving his staff and curveting about in the most fantastic manner. Then the silence of expectation fell upon that mass of humanity, the promenaders settling into any seats available, warned by men in authority not to obstruct the view of those on the lower benches.
As a cavalcade of horses appeared Mr. Winters looked anxiously down into Luna’s face. ”

“ People who have lived with such a mistress as Madam Betty Calvert must have learned kindness, even if they learned nothing else.”
[Pg 58]
Dorothy laughed. “Dear Mr. Seth, you love my darling Aunt Betty, too, don’t you, like everybody does?”
“Of course, and loyally. That doesn’t prevent my thinking that she does unwise things.”
“O—oh!!”
“Like giving a little girl one hundred dollars at a time to spend in foolishness.”
Dorothy protested: “It wasn’t to be foolishness. It was to make people happy. You yourself say that to ‘spread happiness’ is the only thing worth while!” ”

“ How ever in this world? I’ve promised to adopt one of the twins and Molly trusts me in that and I haven’t a cent. I’m poorer than I used to be before I was an heiress. Molly will never believe me again. Then there’s all this expense you’re paying—the circus tickets and railway fares and all. It was to be my House Party, my very own, to celebrate my coming into my rightful name and home and it isn’t at all. It’s yours and—Oh! dear! Oh! dear! Nothing is right. I wish I could run away and hide somewhere before Aunt Betty comes home. ”

“ There’s nothing so convinces me that I am still a little boy as the smell of tanbark and sawdust, and the sound of the clown’s squeaking voice!”
They laughed. It was so easy and so natural to laugh that morning. Even Helena, who had enjoyed many superior entertainments, felt her pulses thrill in anticipation of that day’s amusement; and she meant to let herself “go” for all the fun there might be, with as full—if not as noisy an abandon—as any “mountain girl” among them.
Continued Mr. Seth, closely observing Dorothy who, alone of all the company, was not smiling: “Now, for the morning. ”

“ They’ll be killed—the little rascals!” cried Jim, and leaped the barrier, in pursuit.
“He can’t catch ’em! I’ll help!” and fat Monty rolled himself over the fence.
“What’s up, boys?” demanded Frazer Moore; and, perceiving, added himself to the rescuing party. Ditto, Mike; then Littlejohn and Danny. This was the chance of a lifetime! to be themselves “performers.” Only Melvin and Herbert rose, hesitating, amazed—and, seeing the little ones, whom everybody tried to catch and who eluded every grasp, in such imminent peril of trampling horse-hoofs, they also followed the leader. ”

“ Then she tried to snatch it away, but they were too strong for her, as anybody who has ever thus contested with sturdy five-year-olds can guess.
“They’ll make themselves ill! and they’ll ruin their new clothes. What will Mr. Winters say? Molly, how could you!” wailed Dorothy. “I wish we’d never brought them. I mean, I wish you hadn’t thought of candy. I wish——”
“You’d hold your tongue!” snapped Molly, so viciously that her friends both stared and Dolly said no more. “I don’t mean to be so horrid, girls, but it is so vexatious! ”

“ After all, the world wasn’t such a dark place, even if he had missed the circus, now that all these chatterers were treating him just as of old. They were so happy, themselves, that their happiness overflowed upon him.
Cried Jim Barlow, laying a friendly hand on the black man’s shoulder:
“Come on, Ephy, boy! If the girls are going to make a ‘bee,’ and get supper for all hands—including the cook—let’s match them by doing the chores for the men. The ‘help’ have done a lot for us, these days, and it’s fair we do a hand’s-turn for them now! ”

“ But during all that homeward ride there lingered in Dorothy’s memory that strange, startled, half-cognizant gaze which gentle Dorcas Sands had cast upon poor Luna. But by this time, the afflicted guest had become as one of the family; and the fleeting interest of any passer-by was accepted as mere curiosity and soon forgotten.
After dinner Mr. Winters disappeared; and the younger members of the House Party disposed [Pg 113] themselves after their desires; some for a stroll in the woods, some in select, cosy spots for quiet reading; and a few—as Mabel, Helena, and Monty—for a nap. ”

“ Between these two equally devoted members of “Miss Betty’s” family had always existed a bitter jealousy as to which was the most loyal to their mistress’s interests. Let either presume upon that loyalty, to indulge in a forbidden privilege, and the wrath of the other waxed furious. Both knew that for Ephraim to have lain where Dorothy had discovered him, during that past night, was “intol’able” presumption, and at Dinah’s care would be duly reported upon and reprimanded. ”

“ I should keep watch myself, if I didn’t think my Dorothy and her mates were better worth protecting than all Deerhurst.
“So now, shorten up that doleful countenance. The mischief that has been done must be undone. Aunt Betty must come home to a loving, forgiving child; old Ephraim must be reinstated in his own and everybody’s respect; and to do this—that money must be found! ”

“ Besides, she is Betty Calvert and you are you.”
“That’s no answer, as I can see.”
“It is all the answer there is. She is an old, old lady though she doesn’t realize it herself. All her life long she has been accustomed to doing exactly what she wished and when she wished. She has idealized you and you have idealized her. Neither of you is at all perfect—though mighty nice, the pair of you!—and you’ve got to fit yourselves to one another. Naturally, most of the fitting must be on your part, since you’re the younger. ”

“ Monty Stark rolled over backward on the floor and fairly yelled in laughter, while the laughter of the others echoed his, but nothing perturbed by this reception of his, to him, commonplace statement, master Ananias looked about in cherubic satisfaction.
Then again demanded Molly of the other midget.
“What’s yours, twinsy? For twins you must be!” ”

“ Mrs. Calvert stopped speaking and rose. She had never been so stately nor so severe and Dorothy pitied the poor old man who cowered before her, even while she was herself fiercely indignant against him. By a clasp of Mrs. Betty’s arm she stayed her leaving:
“Wait a moment, Aunt Betty, please. It’s just as bad as you say, he’s just as bad; but—he’s terrible tired and old. He looks sick, almost, and I’ve been thinking while he talked: You let me stay at home, take Portia and the pony cart and carry Luna—Leah—and him back to Heartsease right away. ”

“ Despite her own heavy kimono she was already chilled by the air of that late September night, while the little creature beside her was shivering as if in ague, although she seemed to be half-asleep.
She reasoned that Ephraim must have waked and closed the library window and departed to his own quarters. But there must be some way in which a girl could get into her own house; and then she exclaimed:
“Why, yes! The sun-parlor, right at the end of this very piazza. All that south side is covered with glass and if I can get a sash up we can climb through. The place is as nice as a bedroom. ”