Marion Ames Taggart

“ Wythie and Rob kissed the tall boy with tears which they did not try to keep back, and the dear Grey mother held him close.
"Good-bye, my dear; good-bye, dear Bartlemy," she whispered. "I am so sorry, but I fear we can do nothing but be sorry. Learn to be happy; one disappointment in the beginning of life will not harm, but will strengthen you, and remember we all love you, and shall watch your every step with anxious pride."
"Good-bye, Mardy Grey. The little grey house has given me much, but it has denied me its best gift," said Bartlemy. ”

“ Hester and Rob are not like us—we are not brilliant like Rob, nor intense and tremendous like Hester; we are background figures, Oswyth."
"Well, of all things!" expostulated Rob. "Why we lean on Wythie like—like—oh, like gravity! I don't mean seriousness, because for that we should have to lean on Lydia, but gravitation gravity. She is our pillar of reliance, and our pillow of soothing in the little grey house. You know that as well as I do, Francie. And as to you, you founded my story-telling, and you are always a rock of common sense and efficiency." ”

“ Rob smiled to herself as she paced the platform, thinking how Hester's pale face was that moment lighting up with joy, for the train whistled around the bend, and in an instant would be in sight.
Hester, her cousin, an old woman, and the mail-bag were the only passengers for Fayre. The tall girl leaving the car would have been conspicuous, however, among many, and the young man, browned by Eastern suns, who followed her, not less so. Hester was as tall as Prue Grey. She had a keen, restless face, with hungry, eager grey eyes, and rather a melancholy droop to her well-cut lips. ”

“ But, Prudy, don't you expect to use your eyes to good purpose, wherever you are, and is it a little thing that your bonny face will give pleasure to your loved ones? I am afraid you want an audience, my little cousin, but remember that anything outside doesn't matter seriously; it is the close heart things that count, especially to women. I don't mean to underrate your gift of beauty, Prue, nor to have you underrate it, but don't overrate it. Wythie is very sweet and pretty, and Rob's charm exceeds her good looks, which are not insignificant. You have fallen into the Grey heritage—that's all. ”

“ Everything can not be done in a day; let me turn over in my mind what you have said, and we shall see, we shall see."
"We will do all we can to help you, Hessie," said Mrs. Grey, her eyes beaming with longing to begin that instant to mother all the maimed waifs whom Hester could offer her.
"Father will help; I know he will," cried Frances, eagerly.
"Our father, too," said Basil quietly. "Some day he is coming to Fayre, not too long hence, I hope."
"It is lovely!" cried Prue, her imagination picturing vividly the attractive rôle of Lady Bountiful to forlorn and grateful childish hearts. ”

“ We are all merely molecules, by comparison, but working together for a result," said Bruce. "You can make life sweet and wholesome all around you. You can help three big fellows, for instance, to march straight in a world full of pitfalls; you can cheer everybody and set the best of examples, which preaches wordlessly, to all who come near you. I think, as a unit, Rob, you might be considered a success. If all units did their cheerful best, as it is done in this little grey house, the collective result would be the millennium." ”

“ He hasn't told me that he cares for me, not yet, but I know that he does care and will say so, and I shall go to Italy with him, not with my dear old chum, Bartlemy. But I'll see you there, and you shall paint me as Romola, Bart dear. I'd love to be painted as Romola, not Romola in black and serious under Savonarola's influence, but radiant, beautiful, golden-haired, young Romola, as she was when Tito found her."
"And you'll always care for me; why don't you add that, Prue—it's what girls say in novels when they don't care a hang for a fellow," muttered Bartlemy. ”

“ You see, Rob, you wouldn't care for a society life, any more than I do! It is full of catch phrases and catch ways."
"Hessie, Hessie, what are you trying to get at?" cried Rob. "You know I have as much desire for a society life as there is prospect of my leading one! But I don't see why you can't 'just be happy'; wasn't that the burden of one of James Whitcomb Riley's poems? Why can't you dance and play, and be eighteen, only, with all your might, and let the future take care of itself? ”

“ Grey looked at Rob sharply as she spoke, and Rob looked her squarely in the eyes, with her changeable face flashing into smiles. "She was a nice, dreaming, sunny little Robin, Mardy, but I am as blithe as a blackbird now, so don't imagine the hand of time lies heavy on me yet. Only you know I never did want to be a woman," said Rob. "I think it is so very lovely to be vastly young. Coming events cast their shadows before, you know; they don't cast rays of light. ”

“ Each life has its meaning, every one her limitations and she is a blessed woman to whom the whole meaning of life comes, offered in such love and honour and security that she may take it fearlessly, and through it reach up to the highest ends. To go without bravely and cheerfully when that is one's vocation is noble, Rob, but to receive, gratefully, on one's knees, and to enjoy the fulness of all living is not a thing to turn from, dearie, for in its highest form it is the lot of few. ”

“ Like all early houses the grey house had many doors, letting its guests step forth under its trees with but a brief delay upon broad flagstone steps. Wythie was to be married in the big wainscotted room in which her father had spent most of his dreaming days. Hester, Frances, Rob, and Prue, with the help of Bruce and Bartlemy, with Lester, had covered the walls between wainscotting and low ceiling with mountain laurel, and the effect was most beautiful. ”

“ There are more ways of being good than humdrum ones."
"You are ambitious, Prudence, and Mardy says that ambitious women are not likely to be happy ones," insisted Wythie.
"Then I must be unhappy. I can't make myself like you, Wythie, satisfied to live, like Kiku-san, purring by the fire, nor like Rob, throwing herself into whatever lies at hand, and spending herself for a tiny circle," said Prue. "I'm going out into the world and it shall not be the worse for having me. ”

“ Fayre in June. You have been taught by example and precept that success is not always measured by results, but is always measured by the end for which one works and lives. Dear Prue, keep your ideals; never for one moment lose your hold on the vision of perfection in character and the ends for which you labour. It is a dream which brings its own fulfilment, if not in outward surroundings, at least in the character of the dreamer. Your mother fears, dear Prue, your tendency to be attracted by glitter and by the noise of plaudits which are not the echo of truth. ”

“ All three Grey girls saw them off on the edge of the October twilight, and came home under Fayre's elms and the young moon, discussing Hester's newly presented cousin, with unanimous praise.
"He may be an artist, but he liked the little grey house," said Prue, as they stood in a sisterly row, warming their feet, first the right ones and then the left, like a kind of drill, before the wood fire on the hearth.
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"He likes it because he is an artist; not in spite of being one, as you imply, Prudy," said Wythie. ”

“ I wonder if Lyddie really can be but twenty-four years old! I can't believe it! Isn't it odd how many things one knows to be true, yet can't believe? Like India, for instance, and that the world is round, and all those things."
"All what things?" laughed Bruce. "Don't you believe in India—after Kipling?"
"Kim is so vivid that I can't believe it—don't pretend you don't understand, Bruce, because you always do," said Rob.
"I know," assented Bruce. "The wonderful detail that is vivid and unreal at once, as dreams are vivid and unreal. ”

“ How she would weep of nights lest that poverty prevent her from doing her duty by them. The young widow looked younger than her years, and Rob's great heart went out to her in a pulse of knightly protection.
"You poor thing!" she thought. "Indeed, I will never add one straw to the burden on those thin shoulders! If Aunt Azraella won't make a codicil to her will I'll give you the house anyway. But I should hate most dreadfully to appear in the light of a Noble Benefactor!" ”

“ Now her dilated eyes shone like stars; grey eyes they were, under black lashes, the sort that have a trick of looking black, but whose colour is hard to determine.
They had dressed her in a long gown, belonging to some Puritan child in the days when costumes not merely denied, but annihilated childhood. Polly's gown had a stiff long stomacher, its front was cut square, like a court lady's, and the heavy silk stood out around her figure, disdaining a hint of a droop. ”

“ The orchestra sounded a few bars, and suddenly the sixteen dancers began to sing to the old French gavotte the words which Rob had written, beginning the dance at the same time. In breathless silence the audience watched and listened. The colours blended and contrasted, the girls flushed and dimpled, carrying their heads regally under their powdered hair, while the young men, not less gorgeous in their degree, led them forth with courtly bendings of their powdered heads, managing their swords and the laced hats which they carried with creditable grace and dignity. ”

“ Mr. Baldwin came quietly up behind her. "Dear Rob," he said, "I am so proud of my girl, so happy to see how deep and fine is her nature that I want to tell you that I realize what your friendship has done for her, and that it was a fortunate day for Hester that brought to my office a brave, frightened little heroine in her black garments, and carrying her bumping suitcase."
Rob's lips quivered; she felt overwrought. "I have done nothing, Mr. Baldwin; it was all in Hester herself." ”

“ Wythie was the same Wythie that she had been always; pretty, womanly, gentle, sweet, with goodness, pure, simple, unadulterated goodness, shining from her steady eyes and smiling lips. Frances Silsby had not changed much. She, too, was pretty in an unobtrusive way, and had grown more so in growing older. "She was a girl," Bruce Rutherford said, "whom one would endorse or cash at sight," and she deserved the trust that she inspired. But Rob swept everything before her; no one ever stopped to criticise nor analyse Rob. ”

“ I mean I think you are entitled to your own fireside, but I want to keep you."
"You are the best Mary of all the thousands in the world!" cried Miss Charlotte. "You are so sweetly reasonable! Yes, I love every one of you much more than you know, well as you know my love, and I love this dear little grey house—but I want my home."
"You shall have your own home!" cried Mrs. Grey, while Rob and Prue looked at each other aghast at the prospect of letting Cousin Peace slip away out of their household. "The first thing to be done is to consult on plans." ”

“ I have told you truly that Polly is welcome for just as long a time as you care to trust her to us—weeks, months, or years. She is a dear, quiet, gentle child, and we have plenty of room to shelter her and plenty of bread and butter to nourish her till life has something better to offer her than we can give her. And you know, Mrs. Flinders, that my girls and I will give the child the same care, in body, mind, and soul that Wythie, Rob, and Prue received. ”

“ Little Polly Flinders loved dearly to crawl off into the corner, as far under the lean-to as the low rocking-chair, which had served all the Greys in turn, would go, and quietly to sit rocking Hortense, watching Miss Charlotte with awe-struck eyes that never got to the end of the charm and the lessons of that gentle face. ”

“ Unfortunately, she was conscious of her effect, although she was hardly to blame for this, since every one, except her wise mother and sisters, flattered her. It was a lucky thing for Prue that Wythie's sweetness and Rob's charm surpassed in the long run the attraction of Prue's dazzling beauty; for, otherwise, she might have forgotten altogether that beauty is by no means the only gift that the good fairies can bestow at a christening. ”

“ Then she threw back its lid, and looked up at Basil.
"There isn't much to see, but it has always seemed to me that there was much to feel in this chest," she said.
An odour of attar of roses, of lavender, of tonka beans, blended into an indefinable, sweet mustiness by more than a hundred years, arose into the young faces bent to inhale it. Soft muslins, fine with the fineness of the importations from India when broad-sailed merchantmen went out from New England ports, yellow with age, and daintily wrought with broidery, lay neatly folded before their eyes. ”