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       [Illustration: _Was it Kate Marshall? She scarcely knew._]

                        YOUNG MODERNS BOOKSHELF




                                  THE
                           VANISHING COMRADE
                      _A Mystery Story for Girls_


                                   BY
                            ETHEL COOK ELIOT

                [Illustration: Young Moderns Book Shelf]

 An unusual mystery about a strange orchard house with a brave girl who
                     finally straightens things out


                        The Sun Dial Press, Inc.
                                NEW YORK

                                  1937
                        THE SUN DIAL PRESS, INC.
                                   CL

                          COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY
                       DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
                          ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

                      PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
                                   AT
               THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y.


                        AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
                                   TO
                            MY SISTER HELEN




                                CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                                           PAGE
  I. Great Aunt Katherine Commands                                     1
  II. The Boy in the Flowery, Dragony Picture Frame                   19
  III. The Comrade Does Not Appear                                    30
  IV. Little Orchard House, Beware!                                   44
  V. Kate Makes Up a Face                                             59
  VI. “I Will Pay for It”                                             69
  VII. “Even So——”                                                    86
  VIII. Kate Meets a Detective                                        92
  IX. Something of Fairy in It                                       106
  X. In the Mirror                                                   116
  XI. Kate Takes the Helm                                            135
  XII. The Special Delivery                                          149
  XIII. “You Thief!”                                                 160
  XIV. The Stranger in the Garden                                    174
  XV. Kate on Guard                                                  194
  XVI. One End of the String                                         204
  XVII. Into the Orchard House                                       219
  XVIII. The Last Room                                               236
  XIX. Elsie Confides                                                249
  XX. A Farewell in the Dark                                         261
  XXI. Like the Stars                                                269




                                  THE
                           VANISHING COMRADE


  [Illustration: “_Orchard house, beware! Aunt Katherine’s nieces are
                                here._”]




                         The Vanishing Comrade




                               CHAPTER I
                     GREAT AUNT KATHERINE COMMANDS


Two boys and a girl climbed down out of the bus from Middletown when it
made its final stop in front of the summer hotel at the head of Broad
Street. The boys, between them, were carrying the girl’s books and a
goodly number of their own, for they were returning from the last
session of the school year. To-morrow summer holidays would begin. They
nodded a friendly good-bye to the driver and started off up the steep
little elm-roofed street that sloped directly up to Ashland College, an
institution for girls, perched on the highest plateau of this hill town.
The boys’ father was a professor in that college and the girl’s mother
an instructor. But in spite of their privilege of living in the lap of
learning these young people had to take a daily nine-mile bus ride down
into the bigger village of Middletown if they themselves were to get
college preparation.

The boys were twins. They were tall and spare, even for boys of sixteen,
and seemed all angles. They had thick thatches of auburn hair, whimsical
faces, and generous, clear-cut mouths. The girl was sturdy, slightly
square in build, with brown, straight bobbed hair. The bobbed hair was
parted at the side and brushed away in a wing from her forehead, and
this gave her a boyish, ready look. Her eyes were hazel and very clear
and confident in their level glance, but when she smiled, as she did
often, they crinkled up into mere slits of eyes, because they were
slightly narrow to begin with, and then she seemed oddly Puckish. Her
mouth was wide and her lips rather full, but for all of that, because of
its uptilted corners, it was really a very nice mouth. She trudged along
now between her two friends, the corners of her mouth more uptilted than
usual.

“Oh, I’m so glad it’s vacation! At last!” she was saying. “Mother and I
are going to have just the nicest summer. We’re going to take long walks
we never took, make a new vegetable garden, and eat almost every one of
our meals out-of-doors when it isn’t raining. We may even if it does
rain! When will your tennis court be done?”

“We’re going to get right at it to-morrow morning,” Sam Hart, the twin
on her left, answered. “It ought to be finished by the middle of July or
sooner if they’ll let us borrow the roller from the Hotel. Then if your
mother is as patient as usual with us, we may be champions ourselves
before the summer’s over.”

“She’s crazy to play,” Kate assured them. “But she says we must remember
she hasn’t touched a racket in years and that you have to keep in
practice to be any good at tennis. It was seventeen years ago she won
that cup at the Oakdale Country Club.”

“She must have begun playing when she was in creepers,” Sam exclaimed.
“I thought it was a regular cup, a real and regular tournament affair.”

“It was, of course. And she was nineteen, foolish.”

“She’s thirty-six now then.” Lee did the arithmetic. “It’s funny that,
being so old as all that, she has always seemed just one of us. Where
did you ever get such a mother, Kate?”

“Oh, I took my time about choosing,” Kate answered, apparently
seriously. “I didn’t snatch at the first thing offered. I said ‘better
not have any mother at all than one who isn’t magnificent.’ So I kept my
head and refused to consider anything commonplace. You know the result,
gentlemen.”

The boys did not bother to respond even with a laugh. They were used to
Kate’s nonsense.

But now in their climb up the steep elm-shaded street they had reached
the college campus on the “Heights” and Professor Hart’s house set into
its corner.

“I’ll take my books,” Kate said. “Thanks for carrying ’em. If I do a lot
of weeding in the court, perhaps it’ll pay you a little for having been
such good pack-horses for me all this year.”

But Sam shook his head at the outstretched hands. “I’m coming on with
you,” he declared. “How about you, Lee?”

“Me, too,” Lee responded. “Wait a second till I pitch these things on to
the piazza.”

But Kate protested. “No, don’t. It’s almost supper time. The bus was
late. We’ll be busy, Mother and I. Come after supper, instead, and help
us decide where the new garden is to be. Perhaps mother will play Mah
Jong with us.”

There was nothing to do but agree when Kate took a dictatorial tone. The
boys meekly gave a pile of books into her arms and turned in at their
own walk.

Kate’s mouth kept its uptilted corners as she went on alone, humming to
herself and thinking pleasant thoughts. She skirted the forsaken campus
a little way and then took a short-cut across its lawns. She knew that
the last student had left to-day, and there would be no “grass police”
to shoo her back to the paths.

“It’s great having all the girls gone,” she mused. “Now I shall have a
little of Mother to myself again.”

Kate was justified in her pleasure in the girls’ departure, for those
older girls did take an unconscionable amount of Katherine Marshall’s
time and thought. Of course, Katherine had to teach them, Kate
realized—that was how she earned their living. But she did not
understand why, outside of classroom hours, they need be always
underfoot. Kate was proud of her mother’s popularity, but often
exasperated by it, too; for those older girls never by any chance paid
any attention to Kate herself. They were polite, of course, but most
perfunctorily; it was her mother they came to see and on her least word
and motion they hung almost with bated breath. The truth was that these
indifferent, superior girls, always present and never of any use to her,
turned the college year for Katherine into a loneliness that even her
mother scarcely realized.

There were the Hart boys, of course, always. But boys cannot take the
place of a girl comrade. Kate’s mother was all the girl comrade she had.
That was why she had not let the boys come with her now. For once, she
would be sure to find her mother alone, and the hour would take on, for
Kate, something of the nature of a reunion.

The house she now approached, across the street from the campus to which
it turned its low and vine-hung back, had formerly been a barn. The
college had made it over for Kate’s mother into a charming cottage which
despite its turned back was still part of the college property. Kate
found her mother sitting on the little garden bench at the side of the
big double doors that had once been the carriage entrance and now stood
open all spring and summer facing the hazy valley. Her cheek was resting
on her hand and the expression in her eyes was a very far-away one, a
farther away than the valley one. But she became very present when she
heard Kate’s step.

“Oh, Kate, I thought you would never come!” she exclaimed. “Read this
letter.” She picked it up from the bench beside her and handed it to
Kate. “It’s from your Great Aunt Katherine!”

“What! Again?”

Why Kate exclaimed “Again” would be hard to say, for within her memory
Great Aunt Katherine had only written her mother once before, and that
was all of two years ago! That letter had been to tell of the sudden
death of a semi-relative, a woman of whom, until that time, Kate had
never heard. Would this have news of another death? It must be something
of importance that had wrung a second letter from Great Aunt Katherine.

Flinging her books on the grass, and following them herself to sit at
her mother’s feet, Kate opened the smooth, thick, creamy sheet and read:

  My dear Katherine:

  I am asking you to send your daughter Katherine to spend the month of
  July with me here in my Oakdale house. Unexpected business in Boston
  is keeping me from my usual trip abroad this summer. I do not know
  whether I told you when acquainting you with Gloria’s tragic death
  that her daughter was left without home or protection of any sort and
  that I proposed to take her in. But such was the case. Naturally, ever
  since, the child has been peculiarly lonely here in Oakdale. And now
  that she no longer has her day school in Boston to occupy her, the
  situation is a really trying one. It has occurred to me that Elsie and
  your Katherine are very nearly of an age, both fifteen, and that they
  might find themselves companionable. So I am asking you to forget old
  grievances, as I shall, and send your daughter to me for a month’s
  visit. I shall plan parties and theatres and good times for them, and
  promise you that it will be every bit as gay as it was when you were a
  young girl here, and not too independent then to let your aunt give
  herself pleasure by planning for yours. I have looked up trains and
  find that by leaving Middletown at one o’clock, Katherine, with only
  one change, will arrive in the South Station in Boston at six-fifteen.
  I shall expect her on that train Saturday of this week, and Bertha,
  Elsie’s maid, will meet her and bring her out here in time for dinner.
  If for any reason that is not a convenient train for Katherine to
  take, will you please wire me what time she _will_ arrive?
                                 Sincerely,
                                                         Aunt Katherine.

Kate looked up at her mother, dazed. “Just like that!” she exclaimed.
“Does Great Aunt Katherine expect us to obey her just like that?”

Katherine was grave. “Yes, she has always done things like this. That’s
been the trouble. And when things don’t go exactly as she has commanded
that they should, she is at first unbelieving and then furious.”

“Hm. And who is Elsie?”

“Elsie is Nick’s little girl, and a sort of foster-niece to Aunt
Katherine now, I suppose.”

“It was Nick’s wife who was killed in the automobile accident in France,
wasn’t it? But why haven’t you told me about her, about this Elsie? I’ve
always wanted a cousin so, Mother!”

“Well, she isn’t exactly a cousin, you know. But even so, if Nick and I
hadn’t quarrelled, if we had stayed as we were, in the course of things
you would have known each other and perhaps have been very dear friends.
It would have been natural.”

“Oh, Mother—quarrels! When you are so lovely, how have people quarrelled
with you so? It’s a—_paradox_. Now don’t say I’ve used the wrong
word!—But here’s more, more to the letter!”

Kate had turned the letter over and discovered a postscript on the back.
Katherine, who had missed it, bent down, and they read it cheek to
cheek.

  P.S. I will add, for this will perhaps make your acceptance the
  quicker to come to, that Nicholas’s name is never mentioned here,
  either by me or the servants, or even Elsie herself. So that end of
  things need cause you no anxiety. Elsie is a charming, well-mannered
  child.

That paragraph had not been intended for Kate’s eyes. Katherine
understood that at once, but it was all that she did understand about
it. She frowned, puzzled.

“Notice how she says ‘Make your acceptance quicker to come to’,” Kate
pointed out sharply. “She takes it for granted you’ll come to it,
apparently. If there is any question, it’s only one of time. But why
isn’t Nick’s name mentioned?”

Katherine shrugged. “I am afraid she must have quarrelled with him, too,
just as she did with your father and me. But if that’s so it must be
terrible for both of them, since he owes her so much and she counted on
him so to make up for Father and me and later you, Kate, and everything!
How could he quarrel with her? Why, he should have put up with
anything!”

Katherine’s cheek was again on her hand. Her face was all puzzle. “And
why should Elsie be lonely in Oakdale?” she went on aloud, but almost to
herself now. “Oakdale is quite a gay little place, and I know very well
there are plenty of young people there. Some of them are children of
friends of mine, friends I haven’t seen since I was married. Why, there
are even the Denton children, just next door to Aunt Katherine’s! It’s
all very mysterious, Elsie’s being lonely.”

But mystery where Great Aunt Katherine was concerned was no new thing to
Kate. Whenever she thought about Aunt Katherine at all it was always to
wonder. Why should her mother be estranged so entirely from her only
living relative, this aunt for whom she had been named, and who had been
a second mother to her after her own mother had died, when she was a
very little girl? Kate could never understand that situation. Katherine
was so peculiarly gentle and forgiving and lovable! How could any one
stay angry with her?

Last year, when Kate was fourteen, Katherine had tried to explain things
to her a little. She had said then that Great Aunt Katherine’s money was
the cause of the feud. Only it was not the usual trouble that money
makes in families. It was not that Aunt Katherine was selfish or proud.
It was—oh, absurdity—that she was over-generous! She expected to force
her generosity on her family whether they wanted it or not. It had begun
with Kate’s Grandfather Frazier. He and Great Aunt Katherine were
half-brother and sister. When Katherine was about Kate’s age now,
Grandfather Frazier had failed in business and the very same month Great
Aunt Katherine had inherited a fortune from an uncle on her mother’s
side. Until that turn of fortune’s wheel Aunt Katherine had been a
school teacher living with her half-brother and giving her spare time to
mothering her namesake niece. When she woke up one morning to find
herself a wealthy—a very wealthy—woman, she immediately decreed that her
brother should share the good fortune with her just as she had for so
long shared his home with him and his child. But Grandfather Frazier’s
pride forbade him to acquiesce in that. The uncle was not his uncle, and
it was not only his pride but his sense of propriety that influenced him
in his firm decision not to accept one cent from Aunt Katherine. All
that he would allow her to do to help his financial situation was to buy
the house from him in which they were living so that with the money he
might pay his debts. Thereafter he insisted that she was his landlady
and he made a fetish until the month of his death of being on time with
the absurdly small rent.

Aunt Katherine had built herself a large and mansionlike house on part
of the land that went with her brother’s little house. And since he
distinctly limited her in the things she might do for his daughter, she
adopted, suddenly and to every one’s amazement, a poor young boy, with
no background whatever, who had been brought up in a “Home,” and who at
the time of her discovering him was working in a factory. She prepared
him herself for college, sent him to Harvard, and thrust him, almost
head first, into the “younger set” in Oakdale. He had married Gloria, a
beautiful young Bostonian but with no especial “connections.” That was
all that Kate knew of him, except for this late knowledge that he had a
daughter.

Kate could understand her grandfather’s pride, dimly. But her mother’s
case was not so clear to her, not quite. Her mother had married a rising
young diplomat, a man of supposedly some wealth and assuredly fine
ancestry. But on his death, not long after Kate’s birth, it was
discovered that there was not a cent to which the young widowed mother
could lay claim. Katherine had never explained to Kate how this had
happened. She hardly knew herself perhaps, because the processes of Wall
Street were a maze to her. Almost gleefully, Aunt Katherine had seized
upon this opportunity to offer her niece a home with her and a
substantial allowance so that she might feel independent in that home.
Katherine had refused point blank. And Aunt Katherine, now very
sensitive on the subject of rejected generosities, had made a clean
break with her namesake, washed her hands, and dropped her out of her
life, much as one might drop a thistle that had pricked too
unreasonably.

Katherine, determined to earn her own and her little daughter’s way, had
obtained an instructorship here at Ashland College, worked hard and
happily ever since, and gloried in her independence.

The whole reason for this choice of poverty and hard work Katherine had
not told Kate. But she had hinted that there was a very deep reason and
one that justified her. Sometime, perhaps, she would disclose it.
Meanwhile, Kate gave all this little thought, and was only brooding over
it now because of the letter in her hand.

After a minute she said firmly, “If Great Aunt Katherine thinks I’m
going to leave you here alone on this deserted hill-top for a whole
month of our precious vacation, she has a surprise in store. Shall we
write or wire our regrets, Mother?”

“We’d better write,” Katherine answered, getting up suddenly and
beginning in an unusually energetic way to pull up weeds from the
lily-of-the-valley bed under the window. “I shall write that Saturday is
too soon, for there must be some preparation on our part for such a
visit. By next Tuesday, though, I should think you could be ready.”

Kate turned her head to follow her mother with amazed eyes. “You don’t
mean I’m to go, Mother?”

“Yes, I want you to go. I want you very much to go. Aunt Katherine
apparently needs you. I think, though, she must be drawing on her
imagination a bit as to the loneliness of Oakdale for Elsie, especially
since she herself says there will be parties and good times for you. You
can’t have parties without young people! Even so, her saying she needs
you makes our acceptance not only dignified but imperative.”

“But to leave you here alone! How could I ever do that? What are you
thinking of?”

Katherine laughed at her daughter then. She was extraordinarily pretty
when she laughed, startlingly pretty. But when she sobered, as she was
bound to do too quickly, she was quite different, still lovely but not
startling. Her face, sober, was intensely earnest. She had a rather
square and strong chin but with wide, melting gray eyes to offset it.
Her dark curly hair, which when undone came just to her shoulders, could
be held in place at her neck with only a shell pin or two, it was so
amenable in its curly crispness. Her cheeks and little slim hands were
tanned, but with healthy colour showing through, making her, Kate often
said, exactly the colour of a golden peach. She was slim and very
graceful and not tall.

But in spite of all Katherine’s loveliness and feminine charm, the
impression one gained from her was one of over-earnestness, a fire of
intense purpose steadily, even fiercely burning under the outwardly gay
and light manner.

Now she was laughing. “Why shouldn’t you leave me alone?” she asked.
“And I won’t be so alone, either. The Harts are staying. The boys will
be my protectors and my playfellows both. I’ve been a fortunate woman
all these years to have two such boys as well as my girl! And three
mornings a week, you know, I shall be busy helping Mr. Hart with his
cataloguing.... Now we shall have to collect all our wits and think
about suitable clothes for you.”

Kate’s heart began to beat. When she had read the letter she had not let
herself even contemplate what going would mean, not for an instant; for
she had not dreamed her mother would so fall in with Aunt Katherine’s
plan. But since she had fallen in with it, since she wanted her to
go—well, it was very exciting! For the first time she might have for a
comrade a girl, a girl of her own age, a chum! For if Elsie, that
stranger unheard of until a few minutes ago, was lonely, What was she,
Kate Marshall? Oh, she would surely be gladder of Elsie than Elsie could
possibly be of her!

She went to the border of the lily-of-the-valley bed and began weeding
beside her mother.

“I don’t see what we’ll do about clothes,” she said a little
tremulously, not yet really believing in this new vista that seemed
opening before her, like the valley there, at her very feet. “If I do
go, I suppose Aunt Katherine will expect me to dress for breakfast and
dinner and supper and in between times in that splendid house of hers.”

“No, not quite so bad as that; but she certainly will want you to
have—let’s see—two ordinary gingham dresses, a little dinner frock, a
party frock, a white dress for church, a sport coat and hat, a garden
hat, a street hat, a street suit, a——”

But Kate interrupted this list with a quick laugh. “She’ll want in vain,
then. Let’s get down to business and just discuss the must-be’s, if I
_am_ to be a pig and go and leave you here alone for July with a
vacation on your hands.”

Katherine straightened up, brushing the soil from her fingers. Her quick
ear had caught a joyous lilt in the voice and laugh that to an ordinary
ear would have sounded merely dry. Her own heart leapt in sympathy with
Kate’s.

“Fortunately there’s my pink organdie. That must do for dinners,” the
mother began, counting on her earth-stained fingers.

“Pardon, Mother darling, _my_ pink organdie. It’s been mine for over a
year. Why will you go on calling things yours for years and years and
years after they have descended? There’s _my_ pink organdie then. It’ll
have to do for church and for parties and for summer best just as it
would if I were here. Two gingham dresses almost new. The blue
flannel—but that will be too warm and scratchy for July, I’m afraid. Oh,
Mother, that’s just all. I simply can’t go to Great Aunt Katherine’s,
and I’ll never know Elsie!”

“Of course you can. Haven’t we always found a way to do the things we
really wanted? Wait a minute. There’s my new white linen. I shall fix
that for you. But your gingham dresses will never do, not for Oakdale.
Never!”

“You’re not to give your white linen to me. It’s the prettiest thing
you’ve got.”

“Hush! It will make a charming street suit. It will need a black silk
tie and a patent-leather belt. I can _see_ you in it.”

“You can, but you won’t!” But when Kate saw her mother’s dazed, puzzled
little frown that invariably met her rare impertinences, she relented.
“Oh, Mother,” she cried, “if I’m to have your very best things added to
mine, of course I shall be perfectly fixed. It will be a regular
trousseau.”

“I don’t need anything but these old smocks, staying here,” Katherine
insisted. “And that’s exactly what I shall do, give you everything of
mine that can possibly be of any use. For once in your life you are
going to have just an ordinary young girl good time. And if you and
Elsie do hit it off, perhaps Aunt Katherine will consent to her coming
back with you for the rest of the vacation. Come, let’s spread all our
possibilities out on the beds and see what there is!”

“Yes, after we’ve pared the potatoes for supper,” Kate agreed, trying
desperately to hold on to her last shreds of casualness and poise. “We
had better have supper to-night, I suppose, whether I go to Great Aunt
Katherine’s or not. It must be six o’clock now.”

Katherine threw an arm across Kate’s shoulder as they went through the
big door. “How fortunate it is,” she said, not for the first time, “that
I have such a steady, common-sensible little girl!”

But Kate would not abide her own hypocrisy.

“Oh, Mother, don’t make me feel cheap!” she exclaimed. “You know
perfectly well that I’m just bursting with excitement, only I’m ashamed
to show it, for it’s you who are going to be left at home doing just the
same old things and seeing just the same old people and everything.”

“But I’m happy doing just that,” Katherine hurried to assure her. “Why,
you yourself, Kate, have been looking forward to your vacation here and
planning it with such pleasure!”

“Ye—es. But that was before this came. Now I don’t see how I could bear
the thought of just staying here! Now that I’m going to have pretty
clothes and go to parties and meet some boys and girls, and have a girl
chum of my own—why, what I was so looking forward to doesn’t seem
anything at all. I’ve suddenly waked up, and there’s a big door open
right in front of me, bigger than our funny old front door! I’m going
through it, right into such fun! Only I’m leaving you behind. That isn’t
fair.”

Katherine was quick to understand. Kate’s whole mood was as real to her
as though it were her own. She said, “But don’t you see, dear, I _had_
all that fun a thousand times over when I was a girl. Aunt Katherine
gave me parties galore and took me to the theatre as often as Father
would let her and there was anything worth seeing. And now that you are
to have some of that life for a month, I am delighted. I only wish Aunt
Katherine had asked you sooner. I have truly always hoped she would.
Only, I suppose, she thought I was like Father and wouldn’t accept
things for you any more than for myself. And oh, Katie dear, do try to
be patient with Aunt Katherine, no matter what she does or says! Perhaps
you will make up a little to her for what I have taken away.”

They stood now in the kitchen, facing each other. Suddenly Kate laughed,
her nicest laugh that screwed up her eyes into slits and turned her into
a Puck. “Let’s put off supper then,” she cried. “Stodgy old suppers we
can have any night. Let’s get out all the clothes we’ve got and just
plan. I’m not going to let you touch any of your good ones for me. I’m
truly not. But there may be some old things we’ve forgotten.”

“Now you’re really common-sensible, my dear,” Katherine affirmed.
“Before it was only pretend common-sensibleness.”

And arm-in-arm, without one look at the kitchen clock which now was
pointing to all of quarter past six, they went through the funny, merry
little barn house toward the bedrooms.




                               CHAPTER II
             THE BOY IN THE FLOWERY, DRAGONY PICTURE FRAME


During the next few days of hurried preparation for the visit the Hart
boys found themselves almost entirely left out of the life in the little
barn house, the house that ordinarily served as a second home for them.

“No time for boys to-day,” Kate would call out crisply when they
appeared at windows or door. “Woman’s business is afoot. We’re too busy
even to look at you.”

And Katherine, who was usually so much more easily beguiled and quick to
see their side in any argument, for once echoed Kate and upheld her in
her determination to stick to the tasks they had set themselves.

In spite of all Kate’s protests, Katherine’s new white linen was ripped
to pieces and remade for the traveller into a jaunty street suit. With a
black tie and narrow black patent-leather belt, when it was finished it
looked as though it might have come from some fashionable shop in New
York. Kate could not help being delighted. The pink organdie, which had
done Kate duty for best all last summer, and Katherine for best for
several summers before that, was now freshened with new lace and
decorated with narrow black velvet ribbon. It was not only becoming, but
quite up-to-date, and when it was finished and Kate surveyed herself in
it in the glass, standing on a chair to see it all, they both decided
that Kate would be able to put clothes definitely out of her mind when
she was wearing it, for it was quite appropriate for all the occasions
it was destined to grace.

And finally, Katherine’s pretty bedroom was robbed of its month-old
chintz curtains which, under her magic, in the space of two days only,
became two simple but unique and pretty morning dresses for Kate. Now
all that remained to be thought of in the way of clothes was the
travelling suit.

“My navy blue silk will do perfectly,” Kate said. “If I’m a little
careful, it won’t hurt it any, and next winter it will be as good as
ever for your teas and things, Mother, unless I’ve quite grown out of
it. Anyway, travelling won’t spoil it.”

When that was agreed upon it naturally followed that Katherine’s new
spring hat must go with it; for it was a little navy blue silk hat,
light and small and quite fascinating.

“What you’ll ever do for a hat I don’t see,” Kate worried.

“Never mind about me,” Katherine told her nonchalantly. “Here on this
hill-top anything does so long as it gives a shade. And if ever I go
down to Middletown I can wear your black tam.”

In the silk dress and hat and with her last spring’s blue cape with its
orange silk lining Kate felt prepared to meet the eyes of even Elsie’s
maid with equanimity. But imagine a girl of fifteen having a lady’s
maid!

Katherine thought that was just a glorified title for nurse, probably.
But Kate protested that. A nurse for a girl of fifteen would be even
more absurd than a maid. Well, Katherine was sure Aunt Katherine herself
wouldn’t have a maid. She was a New Englander with all a true New
Englander’s scorn of self-indulgence. But she probably did need someone
to keep Elsie mended and possibly to be a sort of chaperon for her, too;
for Aunt Katherine, since her inheritance, had interested herself in
social and charitable work and was a very busy and even an important
woman.

The two had endless conversations about Aunt Katherine and the
adventures awaiting Kate. And Katherine talked more than she had ever
talked before about her own girlhood in Oakdale and the little orchard
house where she had always lived and where she had been so happy.

“If it isn’t rented you must go into it,” she told Kate. And then she
described the rooms for her and all the important events that had
happened in them. Aunt Katherine’s big newer house she hardly spoke of
at all, for Kate herself was so soon to see it and know all its corners.

All the planning and sewing and the long intimate conversations about
Katherine’s girlhood and bits of family history that Kate had never
heard before, kept her right up to the eve of departure occupied and
excited. But as bedtime approached that night she began to be shaken by
unexpected qualms. She had never before been away from her mother for
even one night and they had always _shared_ adventure. That now she was
actually to go off by herself into an adventure of her own seemed
unnatural and almost impossible.

They were sitting on the bench out beside the big front doors, breathing
in all the cool night air they could after the last hot and rather
hurried day. Their faces were only palely visible to each other in the
starlight. They had been silent for many minutes when Kate said
suddenly, and a little huskily, “Mother, may I take the picture of the
boy in the silver, flowery, dragony picture frame along to Oakdale with
me to-morrow? He’s a sort of talisman of mine.”

Katherine was used to Kate’s abruptnesses and seldom showed surprise at
anything anyway. But now she did show surprise, and the voice that
answered Kate quivered with more than surprise.

“The silvery, flowery, dragony picture frame? And the boy? What do you
know of him, Kate?”

“Why, he’s always been in the little top drawer of your desk. He’s
_always_ been there. I’ve never told you how much he meant to me. I’ve
made it a secret. But I’ve known him just about as long as I can
remember. I was an awfully little girl and had to climb on to a chair at
first to see him. But I didn’t climb to look often. I saved it
for—magic. When something dreadful happened, when I was punished or
lessons were just too hateful, or you were late coming home, then I’d
climb up and look at that boy in the frame for comfort. I think it would
be very comfortable to have it with me along with your picture, Mother.”

Katherine did not answer this for some time. She stayed as still as a
graven image in the starlight. Finally, without moving at all, and in a
voice as cool as starlight, she asked, “But why did you make it a
secret? I don’t understand a bit. I didn’t know you even knew there was
a little upper drawer. It’s almost hidden, and there is a secret about
the catch. You have to work it just so.”

“Yes, I know. And I can’t remember how or exactly when I discovered how
to work it. At first, I do remember, it was just the frame I loved. It
is a little wonder of a frame! The silver was so shining, and then the
flowers and the fruit _and_ the dragons are all so enchanting. I traced
the dragons with my finger over and over and played they were alive. I
thought it was too mysterious and lovely, all of it! It fascinated me in
a way I could never tell you.”

Katherine remained silent and Kate went on: “It was only when I was
older I began to look at the picture and feel about that so strangely. I
discovered what a wonderful face that boy has. I pretended he was the
Sandman, the one who gave me my dreams at night. I always had such
wonderful dreams, Mother! Remember?”

Katherine did not answer, and Kate felt somehow impelled to go on. She
was surprising herself in this account of past childish imaginings. She
had never thought about it in words like this before.

“He’d be just the person to have made those dreams for me. His face said
he knew them all and thousands and thousands more! Then, when I got
older I forgot about his being the Sandman, and anyway, my dreams
stopped being wonderful and were just silly. Then I called him the
‘Understander.’ When I especially wanted an understander I’d open the
secret drawer—I could do it without climbing on a chair by then—and
there he was, looking up at me out of the dragons and the fruit and the
flowers with _understanding_.

“It was all just a notion, of course. Oh, am I talking nonsense, Mother?
And was it nonsense to keep it so secret and all, always?”

Katherine answered emphatically, “No. Not nonsense a bit. Only
surprisingly—intuitive. For, Kate, he is just the sort of person who
_could_ have made up those wonderful dreams you used to have. And he
was—and is still, I suppose—just a perfect understander. That is his
quality. And it is startling to me, all you have said, for he has been a
sort of a talisman to me, too, all these years. I’ve looked at him, at
the picture, when _I_ needed understanding. And that is surprising in
itself, for once, when he was just the age he is in that picture, the
very week the picture was taken, I did him a wrong, a great wrong. We
quarrelled. Since then I have never seen or heard from him.”

Kate turned upon her mother with real exasperation at this disclosure.
“Oh, Mother! How could you! Another quarrel!”

Katherine said nothing, and Kate instantly softened. She felt that she
had wounded her mother; and that was a dreadful thing to have happened
on this their last night! It was in an apologizing tone and humbly that
she asked then, “And may I take him with me to-morrow?”

“No, I think you’d better not. Let him stay just where he is, in the
secret drawer. I may need his magic more than you while you are away.”

So her mother wasn’t really hurt at all, or cross. She had spoken
lightly, even airily. Kate sighed her relief. “I’m not asking you who
the boy is, notice?” she spoke as lightly as her mother. “It might spoil
the magic if I knew a human name for him. And I don’t believe you ever
did him a wrong, either. For one thing, I don’t believe any one could do
him a wrong. And you never did any one a wrong, anyway. I know it.
You’re too dear and kind.— Look at those fireflies out there. Watch me
catch one!”

Kate suddenly jumped up and ran away into the summer evening. Katherine
stayed still on the bench, watching her quick motions, her leaps and
runs and turns. “It’s very like a dance,” she thought. “Only there
should be music.” And she began humming softly.

                            * * * * * * * *

Kate slept that night with the twinges of premature homesickness dulled
by fatigue. And when morning came with the last bustle and scurry, any
doubts that still lingered back in her mind were lost in the glamour of
the adventure whose day had at last arrived.

“I’m going to take ‘The King of the Fairies’ with me to read on the
train, Mother,” she called from her bedroom where she was putting the
very last things into her bag.

Katherine came to stand in the doorway, a partly spread piece of bread
for a sandwich for Kate’s luncheon in her hand. “But you know ‘The King
of the Fairies’ by heart,” she said. “Why not take the mystery story Sam
and Lee gave you?”

“I’ve packed that. I believe you want ‘The King of the Fairies’
yourself, just as you want the picture!” Kate said, teasingly.

“Perhaps I do. It’s without exception the nicest thing that has happened
to us this year, I think. Bring it back safely, for I shall certainly
read it again before the summer’s through. Suppose we had been so
foolish as to decide we couldn’t afford it that day we stumbled on it in
the bookshop and were lost at the first paragraph!”

Kate gasped at such a supposing. “I simply can’t imagine having missed
it, never read it, can you? If that had happened, well, everything would
be different. It has made so many things different, hasn’t it—reading
it?”

“Yes, for us both, I think. That’s why I am sure it is a great book,
because it does make such a difference to you, having read it or not.
And I understand your wanting it with you to-day. Try to get Aunt
Katherine to read it, if you can. She has enough literary appreciation
to realize its beauty, and the rest of it, what it does to you—well, it
wouldn’t hurt to have it do a little of that to her, too!”

At that minute Sam and Lee whistled from the road, out at the back of
the house, and in a second they were around and in at the big front door
calling for Kate’s bag and anything that was to be carried. Katherine
hurried to finish the sandwiches and tie up the lunch, Kate gave her
hair a last boyish, brisk brushing, put on her hat, took her cape on her
arm, and they were off, hurrying down to Broad Street and the bus there
waiting the minute of starting in front of the Hotel.

“Don’t let your father work Mother too hard on that old catalogue,” Kate
besought the boys. “And do write me sometimes about everything, the
tennis court and all.”

Sam and Lee promised that they would take turns writing, much as they
disliked it, and Kate should not lack for news. “And bring Elsie back
with you to repay us,” they commanded. “The Hotel has let us borrow the
roller, and the court will be in fine shape. We’ll be all practised up,
too. You’d better do some practising yourself while you’re there. Elsie
is probably a shark, anyway.”

They reached the bus in good time and stood chattering a few minutes
before the bus driver facetiously sang out, “All aboard!” Kate was the
only passenger that morning. One quick hug and kiss passed between
mother and daughter while Sam put in the suitcase and Lee dropped “The
King of the Fairies” and the box of lunch in at the window. The busman
himself had climbed into his seat and was sitting with his back to them.
The Hotel piazza was deserted for the minute. There was no one besides
themselves on the street. Sam kissed Kate on one cheek, and Lee kissed
her on the other, quick, sound, affectionate, brotherly kisses. The
driver blew his horn twice just to make sure no traveller was belated in
the Hotel, started his engine, and the adventurer was off.

Kate stood in the little vestibule, hanging to the door and looking back
as long as she could see the three people she was leaving. Katherine was
between the boys, hatless, in a blue smocked dress; she was waving and
blowing kisses. She looked like a sister to the boys, and not even an
older sister from the distance of the speeding bus. Then the vehicle
jerked around a corner and Kate sat down, faced about the way they were
going, and contemplated her own immediate future.

In school she had often sat watching the big clock over the blackboard
in the front of the room; just before the minute hand reached the hour
it had a way of suddenly jerking itself ahead with a little click. That
was what had happened on the instant of parting from her mother—time,
somehow, or at least her place in time, had jerked suddenly and
unexpectedly ahead. Now the hour must be striking, she reflected
whimsically, and she was at the beginning of a new one. So much the
better. She expected it to be a wholly fascinating hour, and Elsie the
unknown comrade was waiting in it.




                              CHAPTER III
                      THE COMRADE DOES NOT APPEAR


Although Kate kept her book “The King of the Fairies” on her lap in bus
and trains, she did not look into its pages at all. Still it had its
meaning and its use on the journey. It was something well known and
dearly loved going with her into strangeness and uncertainty. Its purple
cloth binding spoke to her through the tail of her eye even when she was
most busy taking in the fleeting landscape. One would have thought her a
seasoned traveller and a very well-poised person if he had seen her
sitting so still, her hands lightly touching the closed book, her gaze
missing little of interest in country and town as the train rushed
along. But in reality her mind was as busy as the spinning wheels, and
her thoughts ranged everywhere from the commonplace to the inspired; and
as for her emotions, they were in a whir.

But the thought that recurred over and over and from which she never
entirely escaped during the whole five hours of travel was this: was any
one else in the world so happy and elated as she? People she saw looking
from windows, people working in factories, people working in meadows,
people walking on streets—how dull and uneventful their present hour was
compared to her present hour! And the Hart boys back at home! How could
they bear the commonplaceness of going on in the same spot all summer,
doing the same things, and seeing the same people! And only one week ago
she herself had been more than contented, happily expectant even, when
she was facing just such a summer!

Of course, she wondered about Elsie a lot. In fact, she scarcely thought
of Great Aunt Katherine at all. Would Elsie meet her at the South
Station in Boston? Great Aunt Katherine’s letter had said Elsie’s maid
would meet her. But surely Elsie herself would be there, too. Kate, for
a minute, imagined herself in Elsie’s place, eagerly waiting among the
crowds at the great terminal for the appearance of the new friend,
wondering and speculating about her, just as Kate herself was wondering
and speculating about Elsie.

The journey seemed very short. Kate could not believe they were actually
in Boston until the conductor coming through assured her that in less
than two minutes they would be in. But for Kate the next two minutes
seemed longer than all the rest of the journey put together. She sat on
the edge of the seat, one hand grasping the handle of her suitcase, the
other clutching “The King of the Fairies.” And even in her tense
excitement the long-drawn-outness of those two minutes made her think
about the King of the Fairies and what he had taught, or rather shown,
the girl and boy in the book about _time_—what a mysterious thing it
was, quite man-made and not real. She could well believe it now.
However, even that two minutes came to an end, as such eternities will.

At the train steps there were “red caps” galore clamouring for baggage
to carry, and a pushing crowd of passengers who had poured down from the
long line of coaches. Kate shook her head as a matter of course to the
porters, and marched along, her rather heavy leather bag, marked with
the initials K. M. in white chalk, in one hand, the book and her
purse—not a very good balance—in the other. No one could come out into
the train shed to meet you, Kate remembered now from the two or three
times she had been in that station with her mother. Well, Elsie would be
up at the entrance, standing on tiptoes, looking off over heads until
their eyes met. How should they know each other? No special arrangement
had been made to insure Kate’s being recognized. But Katherine had said,
“Don’t worry. Aunt Katherine’s not one to bungle anything. She or Elsie
or the maid, probably all three, will spot you at once. And if they
don’t, all you have to do is to find a telephone booth and call up the
Oakdale house.” And now, coming up through the shed, straining her eyes
toward the gate, Kate had not the slightest doubt that the minute her
eyes met Elsie’s eyes they would know each other. She had lived in
anticipation of this minute now so steadily for so long that she would
feel confident of picking Elsie out in a crowd of a thousand girls all
of the same age.

But she was getting near the gate and still she had seen no one that
might be Elsie. Then, walking on tiptoes for a second, a difficult feat
when you are as loaded down as she was, she did see a girl standing a
little way back from the gate and watching the passengers with impatient
eagerness as they came through. For an instant the eyes of the two girls
met. Kate went suddenly, unexpectedly shy at that encounter. But
instantly an inner Kate squared her shoulders, in a way the inner Kate
had, and forbade the outer Kate to tremble. And when Kate, in a flash,
had restored herself to herself, she knew that the girl waiting there
was certainly not Elsie; she was too utterly different from anything she
had imagined about her. There! She was right. The girl had greeted the
woman just ahead of Kate and they hurried off together talking volubly.
Kate drew a relieved sigh. She never could have liked that overdressed
girl as well as she knew she was going to like Elsie. They would never
have become chums and comrades.

But now she herself was outside the gate. She suddenly realized that her
suitcase was very heavy and put it down. Simultaneously she looked
around confidently for a friendly, welcoming face, for the eyes of the
new comrade. There was no such face, no such eyes. But she did become
aware of a youngish woman, in a very smart gray tailored suit and
Parisian looking black hat with a gray wing, bearing directly down upon
her. She was certainly too young to be Great Aunt Katherine; but it was
hard to believe that such smartness and apparent distinction could
belong to a maid.

“Miss Marshall?”

“Yes, I’m Kate Marshall. And you?”

“Bertha, Miss Elsie’s maid.” She turned toward a middle-aged round
little Irishman in brown livery. “Timothy,” she said, “it’s her.” Alas,
for the distinction of the black toque!

Timothy stepped briskly forward and picked up Kate’s suitcase, touching
his cap, but giving her a quick, keenly interested glance at the same
time. “Your trunk checks, if you please, Miss?” he said, holding out his
free hand for them.

“Why, there isn’t a trunk. The suitcase is all.”

“Didn’t the trunk catch this train?” Bertha asked, and added in a
commiserating tone, “Service is wretched—Miss Frazier says so.”

“I didn’t have any trunk at all. The suitcase holds everything.”

Bertha’s ejaculation of surprise was suddenly turned into a flow of
tactful words. “All the better, all the better. That makes things very
simple, very simple. We’ve only to go out to the automobile then, and
we’ll be in Oakdale in no time.”

Little round Timothy led the way with the bag and book, Kate followed
him, and Bertha came behind her. She was not used to walking in
processions like this, and she felt distinctly strange and lonely. But
the thought that Elsie might be waiting in the car braced her up. Even
so she couldn’t imagine why Elsie hadn’t come in and been the first to
greet her at the gate. If she were Elsie she would never sit calmly
waiting out in the car.

But the car was empty. It was a very handsome, big, luxurious affair,
painted a light glossy brown, the very shade of Timothy’s uniform. It
had a long, low body, much shining nickel plate, windshields before the
back seat as well as the front, and Great Aunt Katherine Frazier’s
monogram in silver on the door.

Timothy held back the monogrammed door while Kate stepped in. Then he
slid into the driver’s seat, leaving Bertha to follow him. So there was
Kate bobbing around on the wide back seat that was richly though
slipperily upholstered in smooth leather. Her baggage was in front with
the servants. She had not even the cherished book to sustain her. She
wondered, a little whimsically, that they had let her carry her purse.

Where was Elsie? Kate gave herself up to speculation as they crawled
through the crowded city streets. They crawled, but it was smooth and
beautiful crawling, for Timothy was an artist among chauffeurs. Kate
looked all around her interestedly and happily in spite of the sharpness
of her disappointment at Elsie’s absence. But although it was exciting
and stimulating to her to be moving through the streets of the big city
she realized the heat uncomfortably and, used to her high hill air, was
over-conscious of the unsavoury odours that met her on every side. She
unbuttoned and threw back her cape and resisted just in time an impulse
to lift her hat from her head by the crown, the way a boy does, and toss
it into a corner of the seat so that her head might be a little cooler.
But another inclination she did not resist in time. She leaned forward
and spoke to Bertha over the windshield: “Elsie, Miss Elsie, couldn’t
she come? Is she well?” she asked.

What an idiotic question! Why was she always saying things so abruptly,
things she hardly meant to say! Bertha turned her smooth,
distinguished-looking profile. “She is very well. She will be at
dinner.”

Now they were out of the city and they gained speed; but they gained
almost without Kate’s noticing, for the car was so luxurious and Timothy
was such an artist. But when she observed how the trees and fences and
houses were beginning to rush by she braced her feet against the nickel
footrail and laid her arm along the padded armrest. She leaned back,
relaxed. She began to feel that she quite belonged in the car, as though
such conveniences had always been at her service, almost as though
private chauffeurs and ladies’ maids were an everyday matter. Or was she
dramatizing herself? Anyway, it was fun and very, very new. She hoped
there would be time to write her mother all about it to-night. She
profoundly wished the Hart boys could see her!

But Bertha had turned her smooth profile again. “We are just entering
Oakdale,” she informed her, speaking impersonally, so decorously that it
might have been to the air. And instantly Kate’s composure and assurance
were shivered, her relaxed muscles tensed themselves, her mind became
just one big question mark.

Oakdale was a charming suburb. Most of the houses seemed to have lawns
and gardens that justified the name of “grounds,” and wealth spoke on
every side, but in a tone of good taste and often even beauty. Elms and
maples lined the street down which the adventurer’s chariot was bowling.

Oh, which house, which house was Great Aunt Katherine’s? Would Elsie be
standing in the doorway? Would Kate know the house by that? Or would she
be at a window, or keeping a watch for them on some garden wall?

They suddenly swerved from the main residential street and rolled down a
delightful lane bordered by older, more mellowed houses. At the very end
of the lane, before a large white house with green blinds, the car came
to a stop. What a gracious, dignified house it was, and every bit as
imposing and mansionlike as Kate’s mother had described it. There were
balconies gay with plants and hanging vines, tall windows, and an
absence of anything ambiguous or superfluous. The wide front door, with
its shining brass knocker and rows of potted plants at either side, was
approached by a dozen or so wide, shallow stone stairs bordered by tall
blue larkspur and a golden bell-shaped flower for which Kate did not
know the name. The steps were almost upon the lane, but Kate knew that
there were extensive “grounds” at the back, and somewhere there the
little orchard house.

No Elsie stood at the top of those stone steps or came running around
the house from the gardens at the sound of the stopping car. Not even
Aunt Katherine made an appearance. Timothy held open the automobile
door, Bertha took the suitcase and book, and Kate, with a “Thank you,”
to Timothy, started off on the last stage of her journey, that of the
climb of the stone steps to her aunt’s front door. Bertha followed close
behind. Kate wondered whether she should ring the bell, or wait and let
Bertha ring it for her. Or would Bertha open the door and they go in
without ringing? Oh, dear! Why hadn’t she asked her mother more
explicitly about correct usage when there is a lady’s maid at your
heels? But then, perhaps Mother couldn’t have helped her much, for
certainly Mother had never been so attended. And then the inner Kate
asserted herself. “Don’t be a silly,” it said. “How can it matter which
of you rings the doorbell?—and certainly you’re not going to go in
without ringing. Bertha’s hands are too full either to ring the bell or
open the door. Ring.”

But before her finger had time to reach the button, the door swung open
before her as though by magic and Kate stepped in. A maid had opened the
door and now stood half-concealed behind it with her face properly
vacant. Kate, when she discovered her, gave her a nod and a faint “Thank
you.” Then she stood still in the hall, looking about for her aunt. She
had almost given up Elsie for the present; but surely her aunt would
come now from some part of the house hurrying to greet her with
hospitality and show her her room.

But Bertha had no such idea. _She_ did not look about as though
expecting any one. “I will lead the way,” she offered, “if you please.
There are a good many turns.” And still carrying Kate’s suitcase she
walked off up the narrow strip of thick gray velvety material that
carpeted the polished stairs. Kate followed. It was a very complicated
house, she decided, as they went through doors, down unexpected
passages, up steps, and finally around a sharp turn, around two turns,
up two steps, and Bertha threw open a door. There Bertha stood back for
Kate to pass in ahead of her.

The bedroom that had been assigned to her was exquisitely lovely. It was
a little room of beautiful proportions facing the “grounds.” So much
care had been spent on its decorations and furnishings that one never
thought of all the money that had been spent _with_ the care. Its three
long windows, their sills almost on the floor, opened out on to a
flowery balcony hung above the garden. The windows were wide open now
because of the heat and stood back against the walls like doors. The
finest of spiderweb lace was gathered against the panes, and at their
sides hung opal-coloured curtains of very soft silk. The same colour, in
heavier silk, was used in the spread for the narrow ivory bed, with its
painted crimson ramblers at footboard and top. There was a low reading
table by the bed and in the centre of it a little crystal lamp with an
opal shade. Across from the bed and table stood an ivory dressing table
reflecting the balcony’s brilliant plants in its three hinged mirrors.
An ivory-coloured chair with a low back and three legs was placed before
the dressing table. On one creamy wall hung LePage’s “Joan of Arc,” and
on the opposite wall a painting of a little girl with streaming hair
leaping across a bright flower bed. Through a door with long crystal
mirrors panelled into either side Kate glimpsed a white bathroom with a
huge porcelain tub with shining taps and a rack hung thick with wide,
creamy towels.

“What a heavenly room!” she exclaimed, enraptured. “Is it mine?”

“Yes, this is your bedroom.” Bertha spoke almost deprecatingly of it.
“But there is a sitting-room just across the hall. It is Miss Elsie’s,
but while you are here Miss Frazier says you are to share it. That is
much more comfortable.”

Kate went directly to a window, hoping to find the orchard house in its
view. She was not disappointed. Beyond lawns and flower gardens there
was the old orchard with its gnarled, twisted trees, and back among the
trees the outlines of a little gray house. Kate was quite moved by this
her first glimpse of her mother’s home.

Bertha came up behind, and now was engaged in unbuttoning her cape for
her and taking off her hat. But Kate was almost unconscious of these
ministrations. She was unconscious, too, when Bertha turned to unpacking
her bag.

“There won’t be time for you to change to-night, Miss Frazier said,”
Bertha was informing her. “So we’ll just wash you up a bit and brush
your hair. Miss Frazier said you were to go down directly, and there’s
the first gong anyway.”

A musical note was sounding through the house.

Reluctantly, Kate turned from the window. Bertha followed her into the
bathroom, filled the bowl for her with water, and then stood at hand
with soap and a towel. For one wild instant Kate wondered whether Bertha
meant to wash her face for her! She had a definite feeling of relief
when she put the soap and the towel down at the side of the bowl and
left her alone. Quickly and efficiently Kate removed the grime of
travel. When she went back into her room Bertha was standing by the
dressing table, brush in hand.

Kate sat down on the three-legged chair. She thought she had never
looked into clearer mirrors than the three hinged ones before her.
“Please, I can brush my own hair, it’s so short. I would rather.” Just a
few quick strokes, a poke or two, and the bobbed hair with the wing
brushed across the forehead was perfectly tidy and crisp.

“I’ll take you to the top of the stairs,” Bertha offered. “You mayn’t
have noticed the way very carefully as we came along.”

“No, I am not sure I could find it. But tell me first, where does that
door, the other door, in the bathroom go?”

“Oh, that’s Miss Elsie’s door.”

“Miss Elsie’s room! So near! Oh, do you suppose she’s in there?”

“Why, I don’t know. I dressed her for dinner before starting to town for
you. She’s more probably downstairs. Dinner is served three minutes
after that first gong.”

Kate gave one more glance toward the door that now had become of so much
interest to her, before following Bertha. She was glad that she and
Elsie were to sleep so near each other. Why, it was a suite of rooms
they had. There was something splendid about occupying a suite of rooms.
And there was even a sitting-room for them across the hall. How jolly it
was and how independent! But where was Elsie?

Kate thanked Bertha when she had been guided to the top of the
staircase. “Am I just to go down?” she asked, a little timidly.

“Why, yes. Miss Frazier will be in the drawing-room. It’s at the left.
You can’t miss it.”

Bertha faded discreetly back as she spoke, into the shadows of the upper
hall, leaving Kate suddenly to her own resources. But after an instant’s
hesitation, during which the inner indomitable Kate was summoned up, she
passed quietly and with dignity down the gray velvet stair carpet.




                               CHAPTER IV
                     LITTLE ORCHARD HOUSE, BEWARE!


The drawing-room extended for almost half the length of the big house.
It was the largest room that Kate had ever seen or imagined outside of a
castle. Just at first she could not discover her aunt in it. But soon
her glance found her sitting down at the farthest end near one of the
French doors that stood wide open into the garden. Her head was turned
away, but the shape and pose of that head and the way she sat in her
chair, with a book but not reading, reminded Kate sharply and poignantly
of her mother. Why hadn’t Katherine warned her that they were so much
alike?

She went toward her softly because of her shyness, her feet hardly
making a sound on the Persian rugs, past the tables and divans and
lamps. It was seven o’clock of a July evening now, and the shadows lent
a lovely charm to the big room that was peculiarly charming even in
broadest daylight. Kate felt as she went toward her aunt that she was
walking in a dream. And it was a very nice dream, too, for that glimpse
of the likeness of her aunt to her mother had reassured her completely.
All her previous ideas of her aunt were swept away, and the
anticipations of this visit, which for a little had been dampened, now
returned with fresh life.

Miss Frazier turned as Kate came near. Hastily she put her book, still
open as Kate’s mother would have, on a table at her hand and rose. She
kissed Kate with warmth and dignity and then held her off, the tips of
her fingers on her shoulders.

“You’re not one bit like your mother,” she affirmed. “Not one least
bit.”

“Don’t accuse me,” Kate said, laughing. “I would have been if I could,
of course. But wouldn’t it have been rather confusing to have had three
of us so much alike? The names are confusing enough.”

If someone could have told Kate an hour—no, two minutes—ago that on
first meeting her aunt she would speak so easily, so without
self-consciousness, she would not have believed. She had expected to be
constrained, awkward. But then she had never expected Aunt Katherine to
be so agreeable as she apparently was.

Aunt Katherine was smiling quite brilliantly. Kate had instantly touched
and pleased her. “Does it really seem to you that I am anything like
your mother?”

Kate nodded. But even as she nodded, she saw the difference suddenly.
Aunt Katherine was taller, of course; but that was not it. Her firm,
squarish chin was not neutralized by melting gray eyes as Katherine’s
was. Aunt Katherine’s eyes were dark and their expression echoed the
strong chin; it was a sure expression, penetrating and above all
intellectual. And the lines about the mouth and eyes were lines that
Katherine would never have at any age. They were lines of loneliness and
trouble.

Even as Kate was thinking all this—lightning-quick thinking it was, of
course—she saw the lines deepen and the mouth and eyes harden
perceptibly. “It is past dinner time. Didn’t Elsie come down with you?”
The hardening was not for Kate’s tardiness; it was for Elsie’s.

“I haven’t seen her. I don’t believe she was in her room or she would
have heard me.”

“Haven’t seen Elsie? That is strange! She must be in the orchard or
somewhere, and not realize the time.”

Aunt Katherine moved to the garden door, her hand still on Kate’s
shoulder. “There she comes now, from the orchard.”

They stepped over the sill and waited for Elsie on the stone flags
outside. She was floating through the gardens directly from the orchard.
Floating is a better word for it than hurrying because she was such a
light and airy creature and above all so graceful. Her approach was
almost in the nature of a dance. She was dressed in white, a narrow belt
of periwinkle blue at the low waistline.

It was evident when she came nearer that she had not seen the two
waiting for her. Her eyes were dropped a little and she was smiling!
There was a radiance of happiness about her. At first, in this
impression of her, happiness was even more obvious than prettiness. But
she was pretty, too, quite enchantingly pretty. Kate, who was not pretty
herself, loved it all the more in others. Her appreciation always leapt
to meet it.

Elsie was slim, with a fairy grace of face and figure. Her hair, a net
of sunlight even now in the growing dusk, was tied at her neck, and its
curls straying on her shoulders and at her cheeks shone like fairy gold.
Her face was delicately moulded and faintly tinted. It was her chin that
struck Kate most. It was an elfin, whimsically pointed chin. In fact,
she was such an exquisite creature that Kate, standing there waiting for
the instant when she should look up and their eyes meet, felt as though
her own sturdy young body belonged to another world.

But Elsie was so absorbed in her happiness that she did not raise her
eyes until she was almost upon them. It was Aunt Katherine’s voice that
recalled her, and she stopped short a few feet from where they were
standing. “Well, Elsie?”

Then at last the eyes of the destined comrades met! Kate was smiling,
the corners of her mouth uptilted little wings. Her whole face spoke her
delight in Elsie’s extraordinary prettiness and her own expectation of
comradeship. No one could have missed what her look meant. But Elsie’s
response was a strange one. Instantly the elfin smile vanished, the
elfin chin became set, the pretty face and violet eyes hardened. But she
took the few remaining steps forward and gave Kate her hand. In a
correctly polite but delicately cool way she said, “How do you do?”

Aunt Katherine showed some chagrin at that tone. “This is your cousin,
Elsie,” she said. “You are not going to stand on any formality with a
cousin who has come for the express purpose of being cousinly. Dinner
was announced some minutes ago. Let us go in.”

But what had happened to Kate? She hardly knew herself. She had turned
sick, physically sick and faint, when Elsie had looked at her so coolly
and indifferently. No one had ever treated her so in all her life
before. She had had spats, of course, with her contemporaries, now and
then. There had been days when either Sam or Lee or some girl in school
refused to speak to her. There had been angry glances, sharp words. But
she had never been treated like this. Nothing before had ever turned her
_sick_.

As they moved down the long drawing-room and across the hall to the
dining-room Kate asked herself desperately whether she had imagined it
all. Could she have heard Elsie’s voice aright? Was the cool, hard
glance from Elsie’s eyes insultingly indifferent? How could it be? Why
should it be? What had she done? She had done just nothing at all. There
was no reason in the world for Elsie to hate or despise her. And so,
fortified by her reason and by the wise inner Kate that never wholly
forsook her, Kate decided before they reached the dining-room that it
_had_ been imagination—partly, anyway. Elsie might not have liked her
looks at first, but she had no reason to hate her.

Even so, she did not have the courage to look directly at Elsie when
they were finally seated at the table. They were in high-backed carved
Italian chairs at a narrow, long, black, much-oiled table. In the centre
of the table two marvellously beautiful water lilies floated in an
enormous shallow jade bowl. The napkin that Kate half unfolded in her
lap was monogrammed damask and very luxurious to her fingers’ touch. The
dinner was simple, as simple as the dinners to which Kate was accustomed
at home, but it was served with such dignity by a lacy-capped and
aproned waitress that before they were finished with the prune-whip
dessert Kate felt they had banqueted.

Very early in the meal Kate learned that she need not avoid looking
directly at Elsie, for Elsie’s own eyes were averted. Apparently she was
languidly interested in the portraits on the opposite wall. At any rate,
her gaze was always just a little above Kate’s head or to the right or
left of her shoulder. When Aunt Katherine spoke to her she looked at her
as she replied. But aside from those polite and clearly spoken answers,
she contributed nothing to the conversation.

In contrast to Elsie Aunt Katherine was giving her whole mind to being
entertaining and making Kate feel at home. She drew her out about the
life in Ashland, the barn that had so ingeniously been turned into a
house, Kate’s school in Middletown, the Hart boys, their mother and
father, the life at Ashland College, everything that concerned Katherine
and Kate. Although Kate hardly realized it, during the course of that
first meal she had given her aunt a pretty complete picture of her
background, and incidentally of herself.

Just as the finger bowls were brought in Aunt Katherine said, “The
little orchard house beyond the garden was your Grandfather Frazier’s,
you know, Kate. You will want to explore it, I imagine. To-morrow at
breakfast I shall give you the key.”

Kate was delighted. “Oh, may I go into it? Mother wasn’t at all sure it
wouldn’t be rented. She wanted me to see it if I possibly could, and
tell her all about it.”

“Of course it’s not rented. It is too much part of my grounds,
altogether too connected with everything here. A family there would be
intolerable. And besides, I consider that the house belongs to your
mother. It is only waiting for her.”

But now the eyes of the two girls did meet for the second time. Kate
gasped. Fear and anger spoke in Elsie’s direct stare. And Kate was sure
she was not imagining now—all the delicate tint had been swept from
Elsie’s face. She was pale.

They got up at that minute and followed Aunt Katherine from the
dining-room. Elsie turned her head away as they walked. But Kate was too
curious now to be definitely unhappy. She wanted only to know the reason
of Elsie’s behaviour. And she surprised herself more than a little by
finding herself drawn to the sulky, ungracious, frightened girl. Nothing
was at all the way she had dreamed it and expected it, it is true. But
in some ways it was better. Elsie was more of a _person_ than her dreams
had made her, and friendship with her, if only they ever did become
friends, might be quite wonderful. Kate did not think this out. It was
just her feeling.

In the drawing-room Aunt Katherine sat down at her reading table and
picked up her book. “It is after eight,” she told the girls, “and I’m
sure Kate should go to bed early. But you may walk in the garden
together a little first.”

Now Kate glimpsed the Aunt Katherine of tradition. Neither she nor Elsie
had any thought but to obey the command. They went out together to walk
in the garden. “Just like that,” Kate said to herself, inwardly smiling.
But there was no rebellion in her thought. She distinctly liked Aunt
Katherine and was ready to take commands from her. And this command was
particularly welcome. Now Elsie _must_ unbend! Now they must find each
other.

For a minute they walked in silence and then Kate said, “Let’s go into
the apple orchard. I want to see my mother’s house nearer. Do you know I
can hardly wait until morning when I shall see it inside, too. Mother
has told me so much about it!”

“It isn’t your mother’s house,” Elsie answered quite unexpectedly. “It’s
Aunt Katherine’s. And there’s nothing to see in the dark. Just a little
old gray house with weeds in the front walk. Even the road to it is all
grown over with grass now, for no one goes there ever.”

“I want to see it all the same. It’s where my mother and my grandmother
and my grandfather lived. I’m going whether you come or not.”

“Oh, all right,” Elsie acquiesced, sulkily. “But a lot you’ll see in the
dark.”

It was just as Elsie had said. It was a little old gray house set down
in the centre of the apple orchard with no road leading to it. And weeds
stood high in the gravel front walk.

“Why, it’s a fairy house by starlight!” Kate exclaimed, quite forgetting
Elsie’s mood in her own.

Elsie spoke in a rather high voice then, a voice that carried all
through the orchard: “If it is a fairy house,” she called, “Fairies,
beware! Orchard house, beware! If there are fairies in the house put out
all lights, hurry away. Aunt Katherine’s nieces are here and Aunt
Katherine doesn’t want the house occupied.”

Kate was surprised but quickly pleased, too. Elsie had entered into a
game whole-heartedly. Perhaps she was just an ordinary girl, after all!
Perhaps she had been imagining absurd things about her. This Elsie
calling out into the starry dimness, warning the little house of their
approach, was Elsie as she should be, with her fairy-gold curls and
elfin chin.

Kate involuntarily drew nearer to her. And then she raised her voice and
called in her turn to the little orchard house. “But Aunt Katherine’s
not here,” she called. “She is deep in a deep book. So light all your
lights, if you wish, look out of your windows, open your doors. Little
enchanted house, wake up!”

She was laughing as she finished and holding Elsie’s hand, for she was
quite carried away by her own fancy. This was the kind of nonsense she
loved, and the little house did seem alive and awake. She _felt_ it
responding there in its dim starlight!

Elsie allowed her hand to be held. But she cried, softly, but still in a
carrying voice, “No, no, no. Don’t look out! Don’t wake up. There are
two of us here. Two. Not one!”

And then the girls stood silent. The game had become so real that Kate
would not have been at all astonished to see fairy lights at the
windows, to hear windows opening and fairy laughter. But she heard
nothing except the crickets in the uncut grass and Elsie’s hurried
breathing.

“Come,” she whispered. “Let’s go all around the house”—and off she
started, still holding Elsie’s hand. Elsie could only go, too. And at
the back of the house, the side that was in view only of the orchard and
vacant fields beyond, Kate noticed two windows wide open in the second
story.

“Does Aunt Katherine let those windows stay open like that?” she asked,
curiously. “Those are the windows in the study. I know from Mother’s
telling. Suppose it should rain to-night? It must be an oversight. Let’s
go back and get the key from Aunt Katherine now to-night and close them
for her. Won’t it be fun to go in by starlight, just we two alone!”

Elsie shook her head violently and pulled her hand away at the same
time. There was a break in her voice almost as though she were in danger
of bursting into tears.

“You needn’t go being a busybody the very first hour you are here,” she
exclaimed. “I guess Aunt doesn’t need your advice about such things.
Come away. Come out of the orchard.”

Kate followed her, nonplussed, at sea. “What is the matter?” she
demanded. “What are you afraid of, Elsie Frazier?” Then, stopping
suddenly, “What was that? Listen!” Surely a door had closed softly up
there in the room with the windows open!

“What was what?”

“Didn’t you hear?”

“No, of course I didn’t hear anything.”

“A door closed up there.”

“Nonsense! How could a door close up there?”

“Well, it did. I heard it just as plain. But perhaps it was a breeze
that closed it. Only I don’t feel any breeze.”

“It must have been a breeze.”

“Well, it was a _careful_ breeze. It shut the door ever so gently. Quite
as though a door knob was turned. Oh, Elsie, do you suppose it is
fairies—or something weird?”

“I don’t suppose anything. And Aunt Katherine will be expecting us in.
Come.”

As they went Kate turned to look back several times at the orchard
house. But no fairy lights twinkled for her in the windows, no doors or
windows opened, no fairy stood on the doorstone beckoning her back. It
was just a little old gray house in an orchard. But even so Kate felt it
_alive_, awake somehow. Elsie could not spoil her feeling about it.

Just outside the lighted drawing-room Elsie turned about and faced Kate.
She was not quite so tall and she was slighter. But her whole body was
drawn up with extraordinary force and her face, in spite of its delicate
elfin quality, was determined.

“Kate Marshall,” she said in a quiet tone, “you’re not to say one word
to Aunt Katherine about those windows. Not one single word! And what’s
more, you’re not to use the key that she will give you to-morrow. It’s
not your mother’s house any more. You’ll only be disappointed. There’s
nothing of her in there at all. I shall hate you and hate you and HATE
you if you use that key. You’ve got to promise me.”

Kate did not flinch before this unexpected attack. But she was amazed.
“Of course I sha’n’t promise you,” she contradicted. “You’re a silly to
think you can make me. What’s the matter with you, anyway?”

Elsie still looked at her, but her firmness, her determination melted.
Her lips trembled. Unshed tears glistened in her eyes. When she spoke
her tone was changed completely. “Please, please,” she besought Kate.
“You are just a girl even if you are—well, even if you are Kate
Marshall. Please promise me that you’ll wait a week before exploring the
orchard house. After that I won’t care. Go and live in it, if you like.
But just for a week, promise me.”

“No, I won’t promise.” But Kate was softening. “I won’t promise. But
perhaps, since you care so much, I won’t go in to-morrow or the next
day. Perhaps I’ll stay away a week. Only I think you’ll have to tell me
_why_.”

But Elsie shook her head. “I can’t tell you why. You’ll know for
yourself within a few days. You’ve promised?”

“I have not promised. And I think you ought to explain to me. Are you
sure you won’t? I’m a pretty good person at keeping a secret. If I knew,
I _might_ promise.”

Elsie shook her head. Kate saw the tears still glistening in her eyes.
She felt brutal to have made a fairy cry!

“Don’t, don’t cry,” she begged softly. “I won’t use the key to-morrow,
anyway. I promise you that. And I’ll tell you before I do use it. I
don’t see why I shouldn’t put it off for a week if you care so much. I’m
not a pig.”

“And you won’t even prowl around the orchard house during that week?”

Kate, instantly forgetting her momentary pity, grew hot. “I never prowl.
What a nasty word!”

“You prowled to-night.”

“I didn’t. We were playing a game with the house. I’m going in.”

With high-held head, flaming cheeks, and bright eyes Kate stepped into
the drawing-room. Elsie was at her side, cool, calm, no trace of recent
tears. In spite of Kate’s flash of real anger Elsie was well satisfied
with the outcome of their “walk in the garden.” For she felt that Kate
would be one to keep her word. Elsie might breathe freely, for a day
more at any rate, and not live in hourly terror of the discovery of her
secret, and the secret of the orchard house.

Aunt Katherine had been watching them through the glass of the long
door. She smiled, apparently well pleased, as they came in now. She
said, “I am glad that you are getting acquainted. You should have a very
nice month together, you two. Kate must be tired, and I advise you both
to go right to bed. Breakfast is at quarter to eight.”

“She was watching us while we talked at the door,” Elsie whispered as
they went up the stairs. “She thought we couldn’t leave off talking. She
imagines we’re bosom friends already.”

But Kate walked on up with a set face. She did not trouble to answer.




                               CHAPTER V
                          KATE MAKES UP A FACE


As they neared their doors Elsie said, “Please tell Bertha if she’s in
your room that I shall be in the sitting-room when she’s through helping
you. I’m going right to bed then.”

She stopped with her hand on the knob. “Wouldn’t you like to see the
sitting-room? It’s yours, too, now.”

Kate looked in as Elsie opened the door and stood back. Now she knew why
Bertha had said that room was more “comfortable” than her bedroom. In
contrast to it her bedroom was almost nun-like. There were deep chairs
upholstered in gay cretonne, cretonne with parrots and poppies and birds
of paradise glowing against its yellow background. There was even a
little lounge, heaped with yellow pillows, drawn up under the windows.
In the centre of the room stood a square cherry-wood reading table, and
the walls were almost lined with bookshelves already about one third
filled with books. On the table stood a glass bowl filled with red
roses. A Japanese floor lamp cast a mellow light over everything. In one
corner a practical old Governor Winthrop desk with many drawers and a
wide writing leaf drew Kate’s eyes. Imagine having a desk like that just
for one’s own!

But she did not show her appreciation of the room. She simply glanced
about it, as Elsie seemed to expect her to, and then muttering a crusty
“good-night” crossed the hall to her own room.

Bertha was waiting for her there. Evidently Aunt Katherine had
instructed her that Kate would retire early. The opal lamp by the bed
was shedding its delicate radiance through the room, the bed was turned
down, Kate’s dressing gown and nightgown were spread across its foot,
and her bedroom slippers stood near at hand. Her bag had long since been
unpacked and put away. The “King of the Fairies” and the mystery
story—Sam and Lee’s gift—lay on the bed table under the lamp.

Kate was very glad of her own cool, clear little room. She liked it
better than all that colour and ease across the hall. And in any case
she would never be able to share that other room with Elsie. She
determined not to go into it at all—no, not even to look over the books!

“Miss Elsie is in the sitting-room,” she told Bertha. “She said to tell
you that when you were ready she would go to bed. I don’t need any help,
truly.”

“Sha’n’t I even brush your hair, Miss Kate? That is so restful.”

“You’ve unpacked for me. Thank you very much. My short hair doesn’t need
much brushing.”

So, reluctantly, for Miss Frazier had requested her to attend to both
girls equally, Bertha took her dismissal. In a minute Kate heard voices
on the other side of Elsie’s door. Then Elsie opened the door and looked
in through the bathroom.

“Aunt Katherine says we’re to leave these doors open,” she informed
Kate, calmly. “That is so you won’t be lonely.”

Kate nodded an “all right.” But to herself she said, “I’d be a heap less
lonely if you’d close the door and I’d never see your face again.”

She undressed well out of sight of Elsie’s room. When she was in
nightgown, dressing robe, and slippers, she sat down on the three-legged
ivory stool, before the hinged mirrors, brush in hand. She was surprised
by the expression of her own face as it looked back at her grimly out of
the glass. All its humour, its _charm_, was gone. She was just a rather
plain young girl. And as she looked at this disenchanted reflection it
suddenly went misty and blurred. She saw tears rising in its eyes.

With an angry hand she dashed them away and stuck out her tongue at the
blurred face in the mirror. Then came her own laugh, the eyes crinkling
to slits, the mouth freed from its set lines and lifting wings in a
smile.

“Idiot,” she whispered. “To cry about her! She’s a stuck-up little pig,
but you needn’t become a grouchy glum just for that. Be yourself in
spite of her.”

But as she went toward the windows to push them a little farther back,
for the night was a warm and beautiful one, she turned her head and
looked through the open doors into Elsie’s room. Elsie was sitting
before her own dressing table, a replica of Kate’s. She was in an
exquisitely soft-looking pink dressing gown edged about the neck and the
long flowing sleeves with swansdown. Bertha stood behind her, brushing
her curls with long, even strokes. The eyes of the two girls met in
Elsie’s glass. Flashingly, Kate was glad she had made up a face and got
it over with; otherwise she would certainly have made up just the same
face now, at Elsie, before thinking.

The pairs of eyes held each other in the glass for an instant. It must
have been something deceiving in the twin lights glowing at either side
of Elsie’s mirror, or in the glass itself, Kate decided afterward, but
for that instant it seemed that a _comrade_ had looked questioningly out
of the mirror at her! But the hidden comrade, if such it was, vanished
even before Kate had time to turn away.

What a delicious bed Aunt Katherine had given her! She delighted in its
scented linen and light covers. She punched the fluffy pillows up into a
bolster, slipped out of her dressing gown and in between the smooth,
lavender-scented sheets. Sitting there against the pillows she took “The
King of the Fairies” on to her knee. She couldn’t sleep quite yet, she
knew. Why, at home she seldom went to bed before her mother, and now it
was not yet nine. The very sight, even the feeling of this book in her
hands filled her with a happy stir deep in the far wells of imagination.
She opened it casually. Any place would do since she already knew it
practically by heart. The very sight of the smooth, clearly printed
pages with their wide margins freed her. She was ready for space now and
clear, disentangled adventurings into light.

Although the book was titled “The King of the Fairies” it was not at all
a fairy story for children. Kate had only just reached the age when it
could be cared about. It began with a girl and a boy quarrelling on a
fence in a meadow. It was a real quarrel, a horrid quarrel with hot and
sharp and bitter words. But it is interrupted by a tramp happening by.
He asks them a direction and they stop their recriminations for the time
to point him his way scornfully. Accepting their directions he still
tarries a while to ask them if they themselves don’t want some pointing.
Then the story, the marvellous story begins. He points to an elder bush
and asks them what it is. They tell him glibly. Then he gets on to the
fence between them and with his eyes level with theirs asks them to look
again. Everything is changed for the girl and boy in that instant. They
begin seeing as the tramp sees. They are in Paradise or Fairyland: the
author himself makes no clear distinction. But the elder bush is now
much more than an elder bush. And the meadow is full of a life the girl
and boy had never suspected. There are other beings moving in it, fairy
beings, perhaps. Not only is the invisible made visible to the girl and
boy seeing as the tramp sees, but the, until then at least, partly
visible—the brook, the trees, the very stones and the elder bush—are
seen to have more _life_ than could be suspected. And all colours are
changed, too. The boy and girl are seeing things in a new spectrum.

Finally the three get down from the fence and wander about in this
Fairyland that has always been here truly but is only now seen. The book
is their day in the meadow. And when you have turned the last page you
do not remember it as a _book_. You remember it as a day in Fairyland or
Paradise—or as a day on which you saw things clear. And you never doubt
for a minute that the author himself is one who has certainly seen like
that. Perhaps he only saw it in a flash, but he did see for himself and
with his own eyes.

In the end the boy and girl return to the fence and the tramp departs on
the way they had pointed out to him. But as he goes, he turns about when
he gets to the elder bush and they realize in that last glance from his
eyes that he is the King of the Fairies. Then as he turns again and
walks on, as long as he is in their sight, he is simply a common tramp.

But their quarrel has dropped for ever dead between them. A boy and a
girl who have actually walked in Fairyland together and seen things
clear have nothing to quarrel about, and so long as they both shall live
can have nothing to quarrel about again.

And though they had surely seen things clear for a whole day in the
meadow—the sun had risen to the meridian and gone down into the west
while they wandered—now when they look at each other there is no
indication that a minute has passed. The sun is where it was at the
height of their quarrel! And so it appears that the tramp’s arrival and
stay and departure and their whole day in the meadow was squeezed into
perhaps one straight meeting of their eyes as they quarrelled.

But they do not spend themselves in wonder. This boy and girl are
Wisdom’s own children, in spite of the momentary silliness that had
plunged them head-first into the darkness of an enmity; they accept the
gods’ gifts. And for a boy and a girl who have spent a day in Fairyland
together, or for that matter only spent a minute there together, the
gods’ gift is marriage.

Katherine, when she had finished the book, had said that it was the most
perfect love story she had ever read; she wished she were rich enough to
give it to all the lovers she knew. And she said, too, that the author
must be a very wonderful person, a great man in some field of life.
Perhaps that was why he had not signed his name to the work.

As Kate read now, the conversation between Elsie and Bertha in the next
room was a humming undertone to her thoughts. She could not have caught
their words if she had listened. But she had no inclination to listen.
She was moving in a world where quarrels and bitter feelings were an
impossibility. She was seeing things through the eyes of the King of the
Fairies. She was in the meadows that she knew at home, feeling the
larger life there that the King of the Fairies had made known to her.
She was standing, tall, in the body of an elm tree, spreading with its
leaves to the sun, feeling with its roots into the vibrating ground.

Suddenly a voice came to her. It was a long way she rushed back to find
the voice. Bertha was standing beside her bed.

“Shall I turn out your light, Miss Kate? Or do you wish to read?”

Kate did not know that Bertha had come into the room at all. Elsie’s
light was out, and if the doors through must be left open, Kate’s light
would disturb her. Of course she must put out her light and try to
sleep. She was on the verge of saying, “I will put out my own light,
thanks,” but the meadow from which she had rushed back had, oddly enough
as some might think, put her into more perfect harmony with her own
restricted four walls. So she said, “You may put the light out, thank
you.” And she did not even smile to herself when Bertha bent over the
table and pulled at the little chain that was much nearer Kate’s reach
than hers. She accepted the service naturally, since such acceptance was
Aunt Katherine’s wish and the purpose of Bertha’s presence here.

“Good-night,” Bertha spoke out of the sudden darkness.

“Good-night,” Kate answered. Then soft footfalls, and she was alone in
the room.

But though “The King of the Fairies” had done a good deal for Kate it
had not had time to do enough to make her call a “good-night” to Elsie.
Suppose Aunt Katherine knew the two girls were going to sleep without a
word to each other!

From her bed, now that the room was dark, Kate could see the dim apple
orchard under starlight. She rose on her elbow and strained her eyes for
the outlines of the little orchard house. She found it by hard looking.
How mysterious, how lonely, still how alive out there it stood. And she
_had_ heard a door close softly, just as though a door knob had turned
as they stood below those open back windows. And why were those windows
open? Elsie knew, Kate was sure. The little orchard house harboured some
secret of Elsie’s.

But what was that! Kate sat up in bed and bent toward the window, her
eyes straining. A light, flickering, was moving down through the house!
Kate watched it as it went by several windows, breathless. Soon it
disappeared altogether, and a second after Kate thought she heard the
front door of the little orchard house softly closing, or opening; but
that must have been fancy, for the orchard house was much too far away
for a sound of that quality to carry to her.

As she curled down into bed again her eyes crinkled with her smile in
the darkness. Well, here was mystery. She would write Sam and Lee that
she would save their mystery story for duller times. Now she was living
in one!




                               CHAPTER VI
                          “I WILL PAY FOR IT”


Kate was waked next morning by Elsie moving about in her room. She
opened her eyes quickly and sat up. To her surprise Elsie was dressed
and ready for the day. She looked as fresh as the July morning in a blue
and white gingham, white sport shoes and stockings. Her hair was pinned
up at her ears, and that made her look older but not less pretty than
last night.

Kate was not a girl to wake up with a grudge on a morning like this, or
on any morning, in fact. So she sang out now, “Hello!”

But Elsie, apparently, had not been mellowed by sleep. She responded to
the “hello” with a nod. Then, much to Kate’s surprise, she came directly
to the bed and picked up “The King of the Fairies” from the table there.

“Bertha told me you had borrowed my book,” she said. “I don’t mind your
borrowing books. But I think you ought to ask. And Aunt Katherine didn’t
give me this one. I’m going to read outdoors before breakfast, and I
want ‘The King of the Fairies,’ if you don’t mind.”

Kate laughed. “It’s my copy, not yours,” she said. “Mother and I gave it
to each other last Easter. It’s a perfectly great book, Mother thinks,
and I brought it with me here because I love it so.”

Elsie was standing directly in the gilded morning sunlight. Kate had
just waked up and her eyes were still a little dazed from sleep. That
may account for her seeing again, flashingly, the comrade she had
surprised in the mirror last night. Surely Elsie’s whole being in that
flash radiated comradeship. And there was something more. Kate could not
remember, but sometime in her life—it felt a long time ago—she had
exchanged glances with that golden comrade! Or had it been just a vivid
dream she had had, or perhaps only the ideal she had set up in her mind
of the perfect comrade?

But Elsie almost instantly moved out of the sunlight nearer the bed, and
everything was as before.

“Please pardon me,” she said coldly. “I don’t know why it never entered
my head that you might have a copy of your own. That was stupid of me.
I’ll see you at breakfast.”

“So it is still on,” Kate told herself, as Elsie left the room. “She
hates me. She hates me just awfully. And that was awfully rude about the
book, even if it had been hers! How _could_ she be so rude—to a _guest?_
She is afraid of me, too. She is afraid I will discover the secret of
the orchard house. Why, perhaps she doesn’t hate me, personally at all.
Mayn’t it be just fear that makes her like that? For she has no reason
to hate me, and of course if she has some secret in the orchard house
she has every reason to think I may discover it. For I do mean to
explore it thoroughly when I get around to it.”

Somehow the conviction she had come to, that fear rather than personal
dislike was ruling Elsie’s conduct, comforted her. Moreover, it was a
perfect morning—sunshine, a light breeze at the curtains, birds
carolling (how had she ever slept through the noise those birds were
making?) and the room pervaded by flower scents from balcony and
gardens. It was with a light heart, then, that Kate allowed Bertha to
run her bath, lay out her clothes, and finally even brush the bobbed
hair. Such unneeded service seemed absurd to Kate, but it was in the
order of this household, and some fresh sweetness she had brought from
sleep made her eager to harmonize herself as much as possible with the
world she had come back to. But even so, in a minute when Bertha’s back
was turned, Kate grabbed the brush from the dressing table and gave a
quick, surreptitious stroke that turned the bang Bertha had created into
a wing across her brows; for Bertha, experienced lady’s maid as she was,
had not caught the knack of _that_ so quickly.

It was with a heart as bright as the morning that Kate finally went down
the long stairs just as the soft-toned gong was sounding. There was no
sign of breakfast being laid in the dining-room, so she wandered about
the house, in and out of the rooms she had only glimpsed through open
doors last night.

Everything was quite beautiful. Kate knew that Aunt Katherine had once
been determined to “go in for art seriously.” But at that time money had
been lacking for such a design, and she had with keen disappointment
submitted to fate and become a school teacher. When wealth had suddenly
come to her everyone thought she would, of course, take up study with
some great master and become an artist. But this never came about.
Perhaps the first disappointment had been too keen; perhaps in giving up
her hope so definitely she had made it impossible for herself ever to
renew it under any conditions. But now, wandering about these rooms that
Aunt Katherine had made, Kate realized that she had turned artist in a
way. Instead of painting on canvas she had created beauty in her
environment. For her home was like a warmly painted picture with
beautiful lights and shadows. And Kate soon felt as though she were
walking around in a picture. The morning sunshine outside was its great
gilded frame. That was how the utter silence and absence of human beings
in these big downstairs rooms explained itself to her fancy; somehow she
had walked into a picture painted by her great aunt, a picture hung up
somewhere in an enormous gilded frame. This fancy stirred her
imagination and she pretended so hard to herself that it became quite
real.

That is why she almost started when she finally did hear voices and the
clink of china. Coming out of the picture into everyday life, suddenly
like that, was something of a jar. And she was probably late for
breakfast wherever it was being served. She hurried her steps and found
Aunt Katherine and Elsie already at the meal. They were sitting at a
little table under a peach tree growing up between the flags of a
terrace just outside a sunny breakfast-room. How delightful! Kate was
glad now to step down out of the picture.

Aunt Katherine greeted her with a welcoming smile. And having just
stepped down out of Aunt Katherine’s picture Kate felt that she
understood her, that they were very close to each other really. How
different, and how pleasantly different, Great Aunt Katherine was
proving herself from Kate’s preconceived ideas of her.

Kate took the little garden chair waiting for her and unfolded her
napkin. Coffee was percolating visibly in two large glass globes set one
on top of the other before Aunt Katherine. The silver sugar bowl and
cream pitcher turned all the sunlight that found them into a million
diamond sparkles. A half grapefruit with ice snuggled about it was at
Kate’s place. Kate lifted the slender pointed spoon made just for
grapefruit, and gratefully tasted the tart pulp and juice.

“Elsie might have shown you the way,” Aunt Katherine was saying. “I
thought of course you would come down together.”

“I am sorry I was late. But it was fun wandering around in the house
trying to find you.” And then Kate told them all about how she had felt
herself in a picture.

Aunt Katherine was pleased. “Was it really like that to you, my house?”
she asked.

“Oh, yes! and more so than I know how to say. Most of the windows and
doors open, the glimpses of tree branches and flowers and sky, the light
and shade in the rooms, all the flowers in vases in surprising places,
the colours of everything, the hangings——”

Kate stopped, embarrassed by her own enthusiasm, or perhaps discomfited
by Elsie’s cool gaze. But she had said more than enough to give Aunt
Katherine very real and deep pleasure.

“Then I see,” she told Kate, “why you did not mind wandering about alone
or our seeming inhospitality. And I think your dress, my dear, fitted
into the picture. It is a very poetic dress.”

Kate flushed with pleasure. “Mother would love to hear you say that,”
she said. “We made it out of the new chintz curtains in her bedroom. You
see I had to have some dresses, and there were the curtains. Mother
thought——”

But at mention of her mother Kate saw in morning light what she had
failed to see last night in lamplight: the deepening of pain lines
around Aunt Katherine’s eyes and mouth, a cloud of pain somehow in her
face. So she broke off her account of Katherine’s ingenuity.

“I’m glad you like it,” she finished lamely.

“I have brought you the key to the orchard house,” Aunt Katherine said,
as though it were a matter she would like to be done with quickly.
“Elsie will show you all over it and around it. Then I have an errand at
the post office I wish you girls would do for me. I have a very busy
morning ahead. The car is at your disposal this morning, and I should
think you would take a good long ride. It is really too warm to do
anything more energetic. At least, it promises to be a very warm day.”

Kate looked at the key which Aunt Katherine had handed her. It was an
old-fashioned brass key, clumsy and heavy but not too big to go into her
pocket. When she had tucked it away there she raised defiant eyes to
Elsie. But her defiance suddenly turned to pity. Elsie looked so
troubled!

Aunt Katherine with a word of apology to the girls picked up the mail
now lying at her place and began reading the one or two personal letters
she found among the circulars, pleas for charity, and advertisements.
Kate leaned toward Elsie and said quickly and softly, “Don’t worry.
You’re safe to-day and to-morrow, too, and for as long as you mind, I
guess. If I see the little house sometime, what does it matter when?”

Elsie nodded to signify that she had caught the very low words, and her
face cleared.

“Ungrateful thing! She might at least have thanked me,” Kate reflected.

But very soon she learned that Elsie was thanking her for that impulsive
gesture of generosity in her own way. When they joined each other in the
big car that was waiting for them at the door, half an hour later, Elsie
was plainly trying to force herself to be friendly and natural. But
since this friendliness was forced, Kate’s response to it was of
necessity forced, too. Oh, how different everything was turning out
between these two girls from the way Kate had dreamed it!

“Don’t you think Oakdale is pretty?” Elsie asked. “People care so much
about their gardens. And then the streets are all so wide and shady, and
where they aren’t wide they are just little lanes like ours that end
perhaps in a gate or an open meadow. Those endings of streets seem
romantic to me always.”

“Yes, I think they are romantic,” Kate agreed. “And when your lane
turned all the away around and ended in the orchard, that must have been
awfully romantic. I wonder why Aunt Katherine ever let the grass grow
over it so that it got lost, the end of the lane!”

Something in Elsie’s restrained silence at this remark made Kate realize
that she had blundered. Oh, dear! She hadn’t meant to. Truly! She tried
to explain.

“You see it was my mother’s house, Elsie. You can’t know what fun it is
to imagine your mother a little girl, to see for the first time the
house where she was born and the places where she played. Everything
about your mother’s childhood—well, there’s a kind of mystery about it.”

Elsie deliberately turned away her face. “Oh, I’m sorry. What an idiot I
am! I had forgotten about your mother! How could I be such a—brute!”

Elsie looked at Timothy’s back steadily. “Don’t be so sorry as all
that,” she replied coolly and without any apparent emotion in her voice.
“My mother was killed in an automobile accident in France two years ago.
But I never knew her, anyway. When I was at home she was usually
somewhere else, at house-parties or sanitariums, or abroad. And I was
only home for holidays. She sent me off to boarding school when I was
eight. Her being dead hasn’t made much difference to me. I was terribly
sorry for her when they told me, that was all. She was so pretty, and
too young-seeming to be a mother. And she would have hated dying!
Sometimes I _ache_ for her when I think of that. But that’s all.”

“Oh, how can you! How can you speak about a dead mother like that!”
Kate’s heart was crying. But she only said, after a second: “There are
lots of jolly-looking girls and boys in this town. Do you know them all?
They keep looking at us, but you never speak. Don’t you _see_ people?
Mother’s like that. She’s so absent minded.”

But even this was an unfortunate subject. Unlucky Kate!

“I know who most of them are but of course I don’t know them socially.”

This was amazing. “Why not?”

But here all Elsie’s attempt at friendliness broke down. She turned on
Kate a tigerish face. “Yes, why not?” she almost hissed. “You know very
well, Kate Marshall, why not. Here’s the post office.”

Kate was shocked. “Well, I certainly _don’t_ know ‘why not’,” she
contradicted. “I haven’t the least idea—unless you treat them in the
rude, horrid way you treat me.”

The car had drawn up to the curb and come to a stand-still before the
pride of Oakdale’s civic life, its white marble post office built on the
lines of a Greek temple. Elsie’s only answer to Kate’s denial was a
shrug.

“Have you letters? And are there any errands?”

Timothy stood on the sidewalk asking for orders.

Elsie stood up quickly. “I’ll post the letters myself,” she answered
him. Kate noticed for the first time a package that Elsie was carrying.
Across the top the word “Manuscript” was written in a round hand, and
the address was that of a publishing house and caught Kate’s attention
because it was the same publishing house that had brought out “The King
of the Fairies.” Kate read the large round black handwriting quite
mechanically and without any motive of curiosity as Elsie stepped past
her out of the car.

When Elsie was halfway up the post-office steps she turned and ran back
to the curb. “Tell me,” she said, “didn’t Aunt Katherine ask us to do
something for her? I’ve quite forgotten what it was.”

“Yes. A dollar book of stamps and ten special deliveries. She gave you
the money.”

“Oh, thanks. Good for your memory.”

“What is she sending to those publishers?” Kate found herself wondering
when the spinning glass doors had closed on her “cousin.” “There was a
special delivery stamp on it, too. And it filled her mind so full that
she quite forgot Aunt’s errands. Can Elsie be trying to _write_? Oh,
wouldn’t that be exciting!”

“Now Holt and Holt’s,” Elsie ordered Timothy when she returned to the
car.

“Holt and Holt’s is a grocery store. I noticed it as we came by,” Kate
said. “I didn’t hear Aunt Katherine say anything about groceries.”

“Of course not. Julia, the cook, attends to all that over the telephone.
This is my errand. Do you mind?”

Kate refused to rise to the sarcasm in Elsie’s “Do you mind?”

But at the grocers’ she said, “I think I’ll come, too, and stretch my
legs.”

“All right.” But Kate distinctly felt that Elsie did not at all like the
idea of having her companionship in the store. However, her pride would
not let her turn back now, of course.

Elsie’s order was given briskly: “A head of crisp Iceland lettuce,” she
said, “a small bottle of salad oil, genuine Italian, half a pound of
almonds, half a dozen eggs, and the smallest loaf of bread you have. Oh,
yes, and a pound of flour, if you sell so little.”

“Thanks,” said the young clerk who had written the order down in his
book.

But Elsie waited. He looked at her inquiringly. “Anything more?”

“No. But I want what I ordered.”

“I thought we’d send it, of course. It will be quite a load.”

“No. Please do the things up and put them into my car for me. How much
is it all?”

“Oh, that’s all right. You’re Miss Frazier, aren’t you? You folks have a
charge account here.”

“However, I want to pay for these things myself. Do not by any means put
them on Miss Frazier’s account.” Elsie spoke primly but with flushed
cheeks that contradicted her outward composure.

“Thought I’d just tell you. Yesterday when you came in and paid for
things Mr. Holt said there must be some mistake.”

“There is no mistake. And will you please put the box of eggs in a bag?
Not just tie them with a string like that!”

“We’re going up your way, miss, in about ten minutes. Why don’t we take
’em?”

But Elsie shook her head, biting her lips with annoyance at the young
man’s persistence. She commanded him to put the things into the car.

“To the Bookshop now,” she ordered Timothy as they started again.

At the Bookshop Kate did not speak of getting out, though it certainly
attracted her more than the grocery store. But Elsie herself turned at
the door. “Don’t you want to come, too, Kate?” she called. “It’s an
awfully cunning little place.”

Kate and her mother were always drawn by bookshops wherever they found
them, and they spent in them during the course of a year a sum that it
would have taken no budget expert to see was all out of proportion to
their income. But then, Katherine always said when the subject of
“budgeting” came up that it was as foolish to make rules about the
spending of money as it would be to make rules about the spending of
time. It was a matter for the individual, strictly. Kate followed Elsie
eagerly, now.

It was such a little shop that Kate, although she immediately gravitated
toward a table of books that interested her particularly, could not
avoid hearing Elsie’s conversation with the Bookshop woman.

“Have you Havelock Ellis’s ‘Dance of Life’?” she asked.

“Yes, a new order has just come in. I knew Miss Frazier wanted it and I
was sending it up first thing this afternoon. Would you like to take
it?”

“Yes, I’ll take one for my aunt, if she ordered it. I’ll take two. One
is for myself, and I will pay for it.”

“Your aunt always charges. Sha’n’t I charge them both?”

“No, I will pay for it. How much is it?”

“Four dollars.”

“Four dollars! Oh, dear! So much?”

The woman was very obliging. “Why not charge it?” she suggested again,
for Elsie was looking woefully into her purse.

“No. Let me think a minute. Well, I won’t buy it to-day.”

Elsie’s face had so fallen, she was so obviously disappointed, that Kate
went over to her. “I have money,” she offered. “Five dollars. You can
borrow from me.”

But as she spoke her glance quite unconsciously fell upon the purse
opened in Elsie’s hand. A little roll of crisp bills lay there for any
one to see, amounting surely to more than four dollars.

“No, thanks.” Elsie replied, snapping the purse shut. “Let’s go home.”

Kate turned it over quickly as they went back to the car. Why had Elsie
acted, as she certainly had acted, as though she did not have four
dollars in her purse when it was perfectly plain that she had more? And
why did she want the book, anyway? Katherine had bought that book less
than a week ago, and Kate had had an opportunity to look into it to find
what of interest there might be for herself. She had found nothing. It
was decidedly a book for adults, a rather deep book, and, to Kate’s
mind, a dull book. But perhaps Elsie only wanted it to give away.
Anyway, she would ask no questions. It was none of her business.

Timothy showed distinct surprise at Elsie’s nonchalant “Home, Timothy.”
And Kate understood his surprise. Aunt Katherine had given them the car
for the morning and Timothy was all prepared to start off on a long
drive. But Elsie had apparently forgotten about this in her worry over
the book. And Kate had no impulse to remind her. If things were only as
one might expect them to be, not all so strangely mysterious and
unpleasant, a car at her disposal and a comrade on a beautiful summer
morning like this would have seemed the height of pleasure. But such a
ride with Elsie would certainly be no fun, and she did not think until
it was too late that she alone with Timothy might start off on an
exploring adventure.

When they got out of the car in front of their own door, Timothy, as a
matter of course, expected to take the packages from the grocery store
around to the servants’ entrance. But Elsie held out her hands for them.
He relinquished them to her, plainly puzzled. Surely they were
groceries!

When the two girls stood together in the big front hall Kate said
briefly: “Good-bye. I’m going out into the garden.”

“Wait on the terrace outside the drawing-room and I’ll come with you,”
Elsie responded, very unexpectedly. “First I’ll just run up to my room
with these bundles. I know a lot about the kinds of flowers and things
in the garden. Let me show it all to you.”

Kate was almost dazed by this suggestion. She had certainly been made to
feel that Elsie was only too eager to get rid of her company. She stood
where she had been left, wondering.

Why had Elsie taken lettuce and oil and bread and eggs and flour and
nuts up to her room? What could she ever do with them up there?

“I’ll not ask her about it,” she promised herself, “just not a thing.
But I shall write to Mother and the boys this morning. I won’t tell
Mother how horrid Elsie is being, though. She would be too disappointed
for me. And I’m really not having such a bad time as it might sound. But
I’ll tell the boys just everything. They will be as mystified as I am.
And to think I was dissatisfied with them for chums and wanted a _girl_!
I’ll appreciate them when I get back, that’s certain. Oh, of course! Why
didn’t I think at first! Elsie doesn’t trust me in the garden alone!
That’s why she wants to come with me. She is afraid I won’t keep my
promise. She’s afraid I will go ‘prowling’ around the orchard house. I
just wish I hadn’t promised not to use the key. It would be something to
do with this morning she’s spoiled. And something to write Mother about.
And it might explain some of the mystery. There _was_ a light last
night. I saw it plain enough. The boys will be interested in all that.
How soon can I expect letters from home, I wonder?”

With these thoughts Kate went out through the cool, shady drawing-room
and on to the terrace. There in the shade of some trellised wisteria she
sat down on a garden bench to wait for Elsie.




                              CHAPTER VII
                              “EVEN SO——”


Elsie was a very long time in coming. As the minutes dragged themselves
along Kate’s cheeks began to get hot even before she realized that she
was angry. But after she had waited so long that she was convinced Elsie
was not coming at all she got up with a shrug. Any one who knew Kate
would have seen at once that she was in no ordinary mood; for shrugs or
any such Latin methods of self-expression were quite foreign to this
girl, New England bred.

She went up to her room for paper. Now was the time to write to her
mother and Sam and Lee. Certainly she had enough to tell them!

The door to the sitting-room across the hall was standing open and a
glance assured Kate that it was empty. And while she did not actually
look into Elsie’s room she heard no sound and felt that Elsie was not
there. But she had no idea where Bertha had put the writing paper when
she unpacked the suitcase and the envelopes and stamps. She searched
through the drawers of the dressing table. But there were only her
ribbons, her handkerchiefs, her underclothes arranged artistically. No
sign of paper or fountain pen. So, although she had meant never to go
into the sitting-room, she was forced to now. Her writing materials must
be in the desk there.

She found them at once. And now being in the room, she took the occasion
to look all about. It was the jolliest place imaginable for a girl to
call her own! And since the morning had grown rather oppressively hot it
was a refuge, too; for there was a breeze on this side of the house and
it was the coolest spot Kate had found herself in that morning. Tree
shadows stood on the walls, and leaf shadows shook in a green, cool
light. It would be very nice to sit here and write. But Kate could not
bring herself to do it. She reminded herself that this was Elsie’s desk
and room, and therefore hateful.

Picking up her own property she hurried out and down the stairs. Once in
the garden she made directly for the apple orchard. She would allow
herself to walk along the edge viewing the orchard house from that
angle. If Elsie called that prowling, let her! As she walked she felt
the brass key in her pocket. But though now her whole mind was on the
house and her desire to go into it, it never entered her head to break
her promise. Elsie certainly deserved her anger, but revengeful thinking
was quite outside of Kate’s mentality.

When she had walked the whole length of the orchard she came to a low,
broad hedge that marked the termination of Aunt Katherine’s grounds.
Near it she sat down, not in the orchard but in its shade, and placing
her block of paper on her knee began to write.

“Dearest Mother”:—And then so suddenly that it startled her, tears
blotted the two words. At the same minute she heard running feet. Kate
winked fast and furiously and looked up. Elsie was standing over her.
She was flushed from running in the heat and her eyes were very bright
and soft. Again she was radiating happiness as on Kate’s first glimpse
of her. On her arm swung a straw basket and one hand held a pair of
shining shears. Kate felt that she would rather die on the spot than let
Elsie guess that she was crying. But if Elsie saw the tears she showed
no sign.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner, and that I asked you to wait.” She
spoke in a conciliatory tone. “Truly I’m not so rude as I seemed. But I
had an unexpected opportunity to attend to something that needed
attention and there wasn’t time to run down and tell you. It had to be
done quickly. But now I’m ready. I thought as we walked around I’d cut
some flowers for our rooms. Aunt Katherine likes me to keep my vases
filled.”

Now it was Kate who was cold and distant. Her shame in her tears made
that necessary. “I’m writing to my mother,” she answered. “And I don’t
need to be entertained a bit. Some other time I’ll help you with the
flowers.”

Elsie’s glow flickered and went out. “Very well,” she said, and turned
away sharply to cut some nasturtiums growing around the foot of an apple
tree.

But just as she turned there came a shout from over the hedge. A boy
older than themselves, in fact a young man of seventeen probably, had
come to the tennis court, only a few paces beyond the hedge, with a
racket and balls in his hand. He was calling to a girl on the steps of
the piazza of the house next door. “Hurry up,” he shouted. “Come on.”

“Yes. Just a minute.” The girl was bending over on the steps, tying her
shoe perhaps. In a minute she had come bounding down the long slope of
the lawn and joined her brother.

Kate looked at them interestedly. “Who are they?” she asked of Elsie.
Elsie gave her the information without turning. “That’s Rose Denton and
her brother Jack. And they’d ask you to play, probably, if they saw you,
and I weren’t here. They just barely speak to me.”

“Barely speak to you? And they live right next door?”

“Yes, queer, isn’t it!” The voice above the nasturtiums was sarcastic.
“Only get yourself noticed and you’ll soon know them. Hope you have a
good time.”

Elsie straightened up, adjusted her basket on her arm, and moved away.
But Kate called after her, her voice shaking with anger, “I don’t know
why you are so queer, Elsie Frazier, or why you haven’t friends. But
while I’m visiting you it isn’t likely I’d play with people who won’t
play with you, no matter how much they asked me. That’s that.”

Elsie turned and walked backward now. “Well, Kate Marshall, I’m afraid
you’ll have just a horrid month then,” she prophesied. And with a
strange, almost strangled little laugh she whirled about and was really
off with her basket and shears.

Kate watched her as she went, floating toward the gardens across the
smooth lawn. “She walks like a dryad,” she thought, “and she looks like
a Dorothy Lathrop fairy.” Then she smiled a little woefully at her own
fancy. “She may look like a fairy but she’s a horrid, stuck-up thing
just the same,” she reminded herself.

But she found relief for her overcharged emotions when she came to the
compositions of her letter to the Hart boys. There she described Elsie
just as she was and had behaved. Not one unpleasant thing that Elsie had
done was forgotten. Perhaps it was rather horrid of Kate to complain so
unrestrainedly and set down so much criticism. But she did not give that
a thought—not then. When the letter was finished and in its envelope she
pulled it out again to add a postscript.

  P. S. It’s all true what I have told you about Elsie Frazier, every
  bit. But _even so_, I don’t hate her and now that I’ve written about
  her I’m not even angry any more. She’s hardly said a friendly word or
  acted a bit as you would expect her to to a guest, but even so if she
  only were nice to me I’d be quite crazy about her. That isn’t just
  because she’s so pretty, either. I don’t know why I feel that way, but
  I do. She’s exactly the sort of chum I’ve always imagined having some
  day. And there’s one thing good I can tell you about her. She likes
  “The King of the Fairies,” I think. Anyway, she owns it. So what do
  you make of it all? And what about the light in the orchard house? And
  why do you suppose Elsie is so set against my using the key? And why
  did she buy those groceries and take them up to her room? Don’t tell
  Mother a word I’ve told you about how mean Elsie is. _She_ must think
  I’m having a _lovely_ time—at least, until I know whether I can stick
  it out or not. K.M.




                              CHAPTER VIII
                         KATE MEETS A DETECTIVE


When Kate came to luncheon that day she was surprised to see a letter
lying at her place. So soon? Why, she had not been here a day yet!

“It’s not your mother’s handwriting,” Aunt Katherine said, a little
curiously.

“No, it’s from the boys. Oh, I’m so glad!”

“The boys?”

“Yes, I told you about them last night, you know. The twins. The Harts.
How jolly of them to write me so soon!”

“But what can they have to tell you since yesterday?”

“It will be all about Mother, and much better than a letter from her
herself because she doesn’t know how to tell about herself, you know.
She’s always so silent on that subject. Do you mind, Aunt, if I just
open it and peek?”

“Of course, my dear, read it. Elsie and I will excuse you.”

But there was almost no letter inside. There was one paragraph in the
exact centre of a big square sheet of yellow notepaper, written in a
script so small and round and legible that it was almost print like. But
the very wide margins were bordered with a series of pen sketches that
told a story in its progressive action something in the way a moving
picture does. It was the story of a picnic the Harts had arranged for
yesterday afternoon with Katherine the guest of honour. Professor Hart,
in an endeavour to rescue the lunch basket which had fallen into a
brook, had evidently fallen in after it. That perhaps was the high mark
in the artist’s work. But the picnic had been chock full of adventure
one could see at a glance; and Lee’s quick humour and real art had
turned even the worst mishaps into fun.

The paragraph was in Sam’s hand, and began: “Dear Kate, if you are well
it is well. We also are well.” Apparently he had nothing whatsoever to
say, but he said it cheerfully.

Kate crinkled up her eyes and laughed so wholeheartedly over the
nonsense that she felt herself rude. She passed the paper to Aunt
Katherine. “You will see that I can’t help it,” she explained.

And Aunt Katherine, after she had studied the pictures a few seconds and
skimmed the paragraph, laughed, too, a light, genuinely amused laugh.
“It’s not only funny, though,” she insisted, “it’s artistic. Which boy
drew these pictures?”

“Lee. He’s always sketching. He means to be a real artist.”

“I think he is that already. All he needs now is study. I would say he
has a future if he has the will to stick to it.”

Aunt Katherine now handed the letter to Elsie and turned back to Kate to
remark: “Your mother, on accepting my invitation for you, mentioned the
fact that you were lonely, in need of friends as much as Elsie. But I
don’t see how any one could be more companionable or amusing than these
boys, from your descriptions and this letter.”

Kate glowed at Aunt Katherine’s appreciation of Sam and Lee. “Oh, Mother
meant _girl_ friends. There just doesn’t happen to be any one near my
age in Ashland. And while boys are all right, they aren’t exactly the
same.”

Elsie had lost some of her indifference and coldness over the letter.
She was almost smiling, in fact. Now she was actually smiling. Kate
beamed. This was certainly the most natural minute and the happiest
since her arrival. She blessed the Hart boys for having created it.

But Aunt Katherine was surprised when it developed that the girls had
not been exploring the countryside in the car that morning.

“Didn’t you use Timothy at all?” she asked.

“Just for errands in the town. Kate wrote letters and I picked and
arranged flowers, and read ‘The King of the Fairies.’”

“One would think, Elsie, you possessed only one book. When are you going
to finish with ‘The King of the Fairies’?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Elsie’s tone had fallen suddenly into sulkiness.

But though Aunt Katherine did not seem to notice the sudden chilling of
the atmosphere, Kate did and spoke quickly, a trifle nervously.

“Haven’t you read ‘The King of the Fairies,’ Aunt Katherine?”

“Why, no. It’s a fairy story, a child’s book. It surprises me that
Elsie, a big girl of fifteen, finds it so fascinating.”

“Mother finds it fascinating, too,” Kate hurried to assure her. “And I
know it just about by heart. Mother keeps saying it’s the most beautiful
love story she ever read. And even the boys like it. They felt just the
way you do about its title. But once they got into it they couldn’t
stop. If you read it yourself you’d see why.”

Kate was fairly radiant with her enthusiasm about this book. Her aunt
smiled into her eager eyes. “I shall certainly look it over, then,” she
promised. “It must be an unusual book to inspire such loyalty.”

“I’ll bring my copy down and put it on your reading table right after
luncheon.”

“You have a copy with you! It _must_ be a favourite! Thank you, Kate.”

But Elsie did not offer a word to this topic. She sat, colder than ever,
looking at the wall to the right of Kate’s shoulder.

“As Timothy hasn’t been working this morning, I think I shall have him
take me in to Boston this afternoon,” Aunt Katherine said, as she helped
the girls to lemon ice which had just been set before her in a frosted
bowl. “Driving is about the coolest thing one can do to-day. Will either
or both of you come with me?”

“Oh, yes. _I_ should love to.” Kate was secretly relieved that with this
promise she would not be thrown alone with Elsie again that afternoon.
And she was even more relieved when Elsie said, “I don’t believe I’ll
go, thank you, Aunt Katherine. I shall read or do something here.”

As Kate was on her way up to get her hat for the drive she was stopped
at the stair-turning by a woman who had come through a door connecting
with a different staircase. She was a middle-aged, plump person with
graying curly hair, in a starched black and white print dress, almost
entirely concealed by a crisp white apron. It was the cook, Julia.

“How do you do, Miss Kate,” she said, hurriedly, and almost in a
whisper. “Excuse me, but I just had to ask how is your blessed mother?
Miss Frazier never tells us anything at all. She ain’t sick or anything,
is she, and that’s why you’re here?”

Kate reassured her. “But did you know Mother?” she asked.

“Of course. We all did, ’cept Isadora. She’s new since. Your mother was
for ever in and out of the house and we all loved her. Didn’t she ever
tell you the time she broke her arm falling on the kitchen stairs? And
she never cried, if you’ll believe me. Only moaned just a bit, even when
the doctor come and fixed it. Miss Frazier was away and old Mr. Frazier,
too. So I had to manage. Didn’t she ever tell you?”

Kate had to admit that she had never heard the story.

“Well, she wan’t one to talk about herself, she wan’t. Always interested
in _you_ and sort of forgot herself like.”

Kate nodded at that. Evidently Julia did know her mother.

“And you say she’s perfectly well? We’ll all be grateful for that.”

Aunt Katherine’s voice came up to them from the hall at this point. She
was talking to Elsie. As quickly as she had appeared, Julia whisked
about and was out of the door through which she had come. But quick as a
wink, and almost as if by magic, before she vanished she had produced
from somewhere a gingerbread man and pushed it into Kate’s hand.

Kate looked at the gift, amused, when Julia was gone. “She couldn’t have
realized how old I am,” she thought, smiling. “She thinks I’m just
Mother’s ‘child.’” Up in her room she hid it under her pillow.

                            * * * * * * * *

It was pleasant speeding along with her aunt toward Boston, creating
their own breeze as they went through the hot July afternoon.

“Now tell me, Kate,” Aunt Katherine questioned her abruptly as soon as
they were on their way. “Are you and Elsie getting on well? Are you
becoming friends?”

This was difficult for Kate. She hesitated. “I don’t think Elsie likes
me,” she said finally. “She tries to be—polite, I think.”

“Not like you? Nonsense! How could she help liking you?”

Kate laughed. “I suppose you _can’t_ like everybody,” she said modestly.
“But Elsie doesn’t seem to like very many people. That boy and girl next
door—she doesn’t play with them.”

“Oh, Rose and Jack Denton. You know the reason for the coldness there,
of course. But you are quite different.”

“No, I don’t know the reason. Why hasn’t she friends here? I don’t know
anything. She hasn’t explained at all.”

Aunt Katherine showed real surprise. “Do you mean your mother hasn’t
told you why things are difficult for Elsie? Is she as ashamed as that?
Well, she feels even more strongly than I had suspected then.”

Bitterness and sorrow had settled on Aunt Katherine’s features.

“I don’t think Mother knew anything to tell me,” Kate protested. “Why
are things difficult for Elsie?”

“If your mother hasn’t told you, she wouldn’t want _me_ to. That is
certain. But I am surprised she let you come, feeling so. However, since
she did let you come, and you have no prejudice, Elsie has no business
to include you in her rages. You are the one person in the world she
should be friendly with and grateful to. And, you know, I am sure she
exaggerates other people’s attitude, anyway. The young people would be
friendly enough if she would only go halfway.”

Aunt Katherine put her hand on Kate’s arm and continued earnestly: “That
is one reason why I wanted you to come so much, to help us break the
ice. Friday I am giving a party in your honour, Kate, an informal little
dance.”

Kate clasped her hands. For a minute she forgot all the mystery that had
gone before in her aunt’s speech.

“A dance! Oh, Aunt Katherine, how beautiful of you!” To herself she
added, “Glory, glory! Already things are beginning to happen just as
Mother said they would.”

“I have asked fifteen boys and thirteen girls. _They have all, every
one, accepted!_ If that doesn’t prove how mistaken Elsie is, I am a very
foolish woman.”

“Elsie hasn’t mentioned the party to me,” Kate wondered aloud.

“No. I haven’t told her anything about it yet. I wanted you here and
established first. I hoped that once you and she were having a happy,
gay time together, she would soften, feel more in the mood. Most of the
young people I have asked she had met when visiting me during school
vacations. She was very popular with them before—well, before. But there
are a few new families who have come to Oakdale since—well, since.”

“Before what? Since what?” If it was rude of Kate, she could not help
it. It was all too mystifying.

“But that’s just what I can’t tell you, since Katherine hasn’t. Only,
your not knowing makes it a bit complicated. No, I’m not sure of that.
It may make everything more simple, more natural. But tell me, can’t you
be friends with Elsie? She needs your friendship and companionship more
than you can guess, my dear.”

“I’m sorry. Perhaps we shall be friends yet. But she does act awfully
_queer_. Oh, it’s mean of me to talk about her so. Perhaps I’ve done
something. Perhaps there’s a reason.”

“Well, she’s a strange child. Strange! But she used to be different. I
always thought she seemed a little lost and lonely, you know. That was
mostly because of her mother—no mother at all, in reality. Just a
butterfly. In spite of that Elsie was agreeable and tender once. Quite a
dear. But since she has come to live with me she has been entirely a
changed person. You must believe, though, Kate, that there is no more
reason for her to be unfriendly toward you than there is for her to be
unfriendly toward me. And I am speaking truly when I say there has
hardly been a friendly moment between us since she came into my home.
She is polite, beautifully polite. I suppose that absurd fashionable
boarding school she was sent to taught her manners. But it goes no
deeper. How do _you_ feel about it? Is there anything unkind or wrong in
the way I treat Elsie? Have you noticed anything in the brief time you
have been here?”

Kate was amazed to have Aunt Katherine so appealing to her. All barriers
were down between them. They were talking as two girls might, or two
women.

“Nothing unkind, of course! I don’t know how you could be kinder. But,
Aunt Katherine, do you truly like Elsie? It may be that she _feels_, in
spite of your kindness, that you just don’t like her.”

“Does it seem that way to you?”

“No—perhaps not. But there is something in your voice when you speak to
her—a difference. I don’t know how to express it. If you truly don’t
like her, perhaps you can’t help showing it a little.”

Aunt Katherine said no more for a while. But she was thinking. “It’s
queer,” she said finally, “very queer, the way I am talking to you. I am
treating you as though you were your mother almost. And you are like
your mother, in deep ways. Only you are franker, more open. You say
right out the things that she might think but wouldn’t say. Well, and
since I am saying things right out, too—I _don’t_ like Elsie. You are
right there. I tried to. But I simply couldn’t. She is too unnatural,
too cold and heartless, and perhaps self-seeking. The irony of it is
that she is all I have left to love, the only person in the world who
needs me now—or, rather, the only person who will let herself use me.
But I can’t like her.”

Kate was embarrassed at this revelation, and at the same time deeply
sorry for her aunt. For the present the subject dropped between them.

                            * * * * * * * *

In Boston Kate looked about her with the greatest interest as the car
crept through the crowded business section. She had been in Boston
before on brief holiday visits with her mother, stopping at little
boarding houses, and spending most of the time in art galleries or the
Museum or on trolley rides to places of historical interest. But now she
was seeing it from a new angle, leisurely and in comfort. There was no
jostling, no hurrying, no aching feet.

They drew up to a curb in Boylston Street. Timothy got out and came
around for orders. “Go up and ask Mr. O’Brien to come down to the car,
Timothy. Tell him I have only a minute.”

Almost at once a spruce, energetic-looking young man stood at the car
door, his straw hat in his hand.

“Wouldn’t it be better to have our interview, no matter how brief, in my
office, Miss Frazier?” he suggested deferentially.

Miss Frazier shook her head with decision. “No. I just want to ask you
one question. Is there any news?”

Mr. O’Brien glanced toward Kate significantly.

“This is my niece,” Miss Frazier informed him but not at all in the way
of an introduction. “Tell me, have you the slightest news?”

“Nothing that is very certain. We have a new clue, perhaps. But I cannot
go into that before your niece, Miss Frazier.”

“Oh, this is not Elsie. It’s another niece, a blood relation. And I do
not intend to climb those stairs to your office. You can surely give me
some hint.”

“There is an elevator. You forget.”

“No matter. I am not going up. Be quick, please. Naturally, I am
impatient.”

Kate was certainly catching a glimpse now of the bossy Aunt Katherine of
tradition.

“Well, we just have an idea. We should like to know whether your other
niece, Miss Elsie, ever comes into Boston alone. Has she been in this
week, say?”

“Why, no. Certainly not. Bertha, her maid, is with her when I am not.
She is a chaperon as well as a maid. I trust her. She happens to be a
very remarkable woman for a servant.”

“Miss Elsie does come in, then, without you sometimes? Is she planning
to come soon again?”

“Why, yes. But what this has to do with the business I can’t see. I’m
sending her in to-morrow with her maid and Miss Kate to buy party frocks
and see ‘The Blue Bird.’”

“Excellent!” Mr. O’Brien seemed much pleased. “Will they go directly to
the store?”

“Yes, Pearl’s. A modiste on Beacon Street.”

“Very good. May I have one word in your ear?”

“I see no reason.” But Miss Frazier leaned a little toward the insistent
young man while he lowered his voice so that Kate did not catch one word
of what he said.

Her aunt laughed, amused apparently. “Much good that will do you. I have
told you, Mr. O’Brien, there is not a chance in the world that Miss
Elsie knows any more than we do.”

“However, you do not object?”

“No. Except that it is a foolish waste of time.”

“We shall not lose time through it, I assure you. Other members of my
staff are working on other clues. Precious few there are, though.”

“If that is all I will say ‘good afternoon,’ then.” Miss Frazier settled
back in her seat. “You will call me up, of course, the minute there is
anything definite.”

“Of course. But does Miss Elsie often answer the telephone?”

“Sometimes. Very seldom. I tell you, Mr. O’Brien, there is no rhyme or
reason to your suspicions in that direction.”

“Even so, Miss Frazier, I beg you to adjure Miss Kate here to secrecy.
She should, on no condition, tell Miss Elsie one word she has heard.”

Miss Frazier nodded, glancing at Kate. Kate’s return look carried her
promise. “I shall hope for something more definite when next I hear from
you, Mr. O’Brien. Good afternoon. Home, Timothy.”

Mr. O’Brien stood on the curb while the big car pulled out. There was a
troubled, displeased expression on his face, Kate thought. She knew that
he resented very much the interview not having been more private.

“Is he a detective?” she asked her aunt curiously.

“Yes, a private detective, and a very good one. But perhaps he is right,
Kate, and you had better forget all about him. If he is doing the job I
suppose he has a right to do it in his own way.”

A private detective! And what had a detective to suspect of Elsie! But
Kate took her aunt’s hint and asked no more questions.

Their way home took them by the Green Shutter Tea Room, a quaint little
place built by a stream in a grove of maples. The tables were set out
under the trees. Aunt Katherine suggested that they stop. And when they
were seated opposite each other at a little round green table, their
order given, they smiled at each other contentedly, like friends of long
standing.




                               CHAPTER IX
                        SOMETHING OF FAIRY IN IT


“You haven’t told me a word about how you like the orchard house!” Aunt
Katherine said. “Did you go all over it? The study is really the nicest
room. Did you like that? And did you see your mother’s old playroom?”

Kate hesitated to confess to her aunt that she had not been near the
orchard house. It might involve Elsie too much. She remembered Elsie’s
plea last night. So she hesitated, feeling her cheeks redden. But after
an instant she said, “I think I shall save it for a day when there isn’t
so much to do. It’s a darling house, but I haven’t been in.”

“After the party on Thursday I am hoping that all your days here will be
full of things to do, yours and Elsie’s, too. She will begin to have the
life of other girls again. For myself I have hardly cared a bit. I had
rather grown away from my old friends, anyway, and larger interests, or
at least more impersonal interests, have been absorbing me of late
years. But now I’m pocketing my pride for Elsie’s sake, and going more
than halfway toward reconciliations.... Madame Pearl, the woman to whom
I am sending you to-morrow for frocks, is an artist in her way. You two
girls must choose dresses that not only become yourselves but go well
together.”

For Kate all the puzzling hints that ran through her aunt’s conversation
were forgotten in this new subject. “But Mother and I thought my pink
organdie would do for a party, if you gave one. You haven’t seen it. I
shall wear it for dinner to-night.”

“No, I haven’t seen it, but I am sure it is very dainty and pretty. Even
so, this is to be Elsie’s first real party, and her first real party
frock. And it will be more appropriate for you to have dresses that
match in a way, or contrast with each other artistically. You _will_ let
me give you such a gift, won’t you, Kate?”

There was surprising entreaty in Aunt Katherine’s dark eyes, and fear,
too. Would Kate be simply an echo of her mother? Would she rise up in
pride and say, “No charity, thanks”?

Meanwhile, Kate was thinking rapidly. She had no idea whatever whether
her mother would want her to accept a party frock from Aunt Katherine or
not. But quickly she decided that her mother would want her to speak for
herself now, that this was a matter between herself and her aunt.

“Of course I shall love to have a party dress,” she exclaimed. “Oh, but
you are good to me, Aunt Katherine! And it will be my first as well as
Elsie’s.”

Miss Frazier flushed, pleasure all out of proportion to the event,
seemingly, shining from her eyes. She said “Thank you, my dear,” in as
heartfelt accents as though Kate herself were the donor.

Kate laughed at that, her eyes crinkling, and after the laugh her mouth
still stayed tilted up at the corners. “Oh, I’m so excited,” she
exclaimed. “But aren’t you going to Boston with us, to Madame Pearl’s,
to help us choose?”

“No, I think not. Bertha has excellent taste, and Madame Pearl herself
would not make a mistake. And I think that the more I am out of it the
better the chance is that you and Elsie will find each other. A day
together, shopping, lunching at my club, and seeing ‘The Blue Bird’
afterward ought to give two girls all the opportunity they need to get
over any strangeness.”

“‘The Blue Bird’! Well, it’s just as Mother said it would be, wonderful
things galore! Oh, dear! I wish she could know this minute that I’m to
see ‘The Blue Bird’! We’ve read it, of course. But to see it! I shall
write her again to-night—and the boys, too.”

Kate was sitting with clasped hands, her hazel eyes narrowed and golden
with light. She was almost little-girlish in her excitement and
pleasure, and of course the corners of her mouth were uptilted at their
most winged angle. Aunt Katherine, watching her, thought, “She is better
than pretty, this grand-niece of mine. She is fascinating. Just to look
at her stirs your imagination.”

But she said, “Eat your toast before it is cold, I advise you. And don’t
neglect the marmalade. It is unusually good marmalade they serve here at
the Green Shutter.”

And so Kate came to earth. “But such a nice earth!” she said to herself.

Before they had finished their tea, Aunt Katherine rose to a pitch of
confidences that surprised herself. But it was just exactly as though in
Kate she had found a friend, a friend to whom she was able to open her
heart. At this moment in her life Miss Frazier needed this sort of a
confidante badly. They were talking about Elsie again and her coldness
and indifference to Kate.

“There is one obvious explanation for it,” Aunt Katherine said. “I can
think of no other. She may be jealous. She may have been jealous from
the first minute of your arrival.”

Kate was too surprised to think at all. “Jealous—_of me_? Why?”

“That you might take her place with me, cheat her somehow of what she
apparently considers hers. She sees, as you have guessed, that I do not
like her. May she not be all the more jealous of you just because of
that?”

“Oh, no, no, no.” Kate was thinking clearly again. “She isn’t horrid
like that. I know it. She’s too beautiful and lovely. There’s something
about her that makes any such idea just impossible. She mayn’t like me,
and I may be cross with her, but for all that—for all that I know she’s
not a _mean_ person, Aunt Katherine.”

Kate was amazed herself at having so suddenly become Elsie’s champion.
Loyalty to that strange girl had apparently been born in her all in a
second. Or was it loyalty only to the comrade she had glimpsed
flashingly, once in the mirror last night, and once in sunshine this
morning? Whatever it was to, it was very real and staunch.

Aunt Katherine’s face lightened remarkably. “You may be right, and I
earnestly hope you are,” she said. “For if Elsie were unfriendly toward
you for any such reason—well, it would be the last straw, the very
last.”

As they spun along toward home through the cooling air, Miss Frazier’s
expression grew happier and happier. Kate had done for her what she
could not do for herself: lightened real suspicions, and eased her
heart.

It was almost dinner time when they arrived. If Kate was to don her pink
organdie she would have to hurry. She raced up the stairs and found
Bertha in her room waiting for her.

“You have only ten minutes, Miss Kate,” she warned. “Your bath is set.”

A glance showed Kate the pink organdie freshly pressed, crisp and cool,
hung over a chair back, and the white slip to go under it on the bed.
Her pumps were set down by the dressing table and some fresh stockings
near on a stool. Two baths a day! How comfortable! Kate, still aglow
with her afternoon, had quite forgotten her self-consciousness with this
lady’s maid.

“Has Miss Elsie dressed?” she asked.

Bertha answered rather worriedly: “No, and none of us have seen her all
afternoon. I do wish she would come up. I can’t think how she’s been
amusing herself, or where.”

Kate herself began to wonder, when she had had her bath and was freshly
dressed. “There’s the gong!” she exclaimed.

But simultaneously with the note of the gong Elsie’s door slammed and
there she was in the bathroom door.

“I’m late,” she called, but not at all ruefully. “No time to dress,
Bertha. Hello, Kate.”

“You’ll have to wash your face, whether there’s time or not,” Bertha
assured her. “And your hair, it’s a sight! Where did you get like that?”

Elsie laughed, elfin laughter. “Never mind where. And you aren’t my
nurse. You’re my tiring-woman. Bear that in mind, Mrs. Bertha.”

Bertha’s worried face changed into a beaming one. Elsie in such good
spirits! That was the best that Bertha asked of life, Kate intuitively
felt.

But it was true enough. Elsie very much needed washing and brushing. Her
nose and forehead were beaded with little drops of perspiration, her
cheeks were a burning red, as though she had been sitting over a fire,
or perhaps long in the sun, and there were smudges of what looked like
flour on chin and arms. As for her hair, it was all in little damp curls
across her brow and over her ears: one side had come completely undone,
and showered down on to her shoulder.

“I can’t for the life of me see how you ever got in such a mess,” Bertha
murmured happily as she officiated in Elsie’s hurried cleaning up. “You
might just as well be a cook in a kitchen! But, oh, dear! What’s that
burn?”

“It is horrid, isn’t it?” Elsie agreed.

“Well, I think you need a nurse more than a lady’s maid! Did Julia let
you get near the stove on this broiling day? Here’s some olive oil.”

After another minute of scurrying Elsie appeared in Kate’s door. “It was
nice of you to wait for me,” she said. “But I’m afraid I’ve made you
late.”

Aunt Katherine lifted her brows when she saw Elsie still in her blue and
white morning dress. But the fact that the girls had come in together,
actually arm-in-arm, made up for much. In fact, it put Aunt Katherine
into a light and gay mood. Things were beginning to go as she had
planned now. At dinner she told Elsie about the party set for Friday
night. And Elsie, who herself was in a gay spirit, thanked her aunt
prettily for everything—the coming party, the promised frock, and the
seats for “The Blue Bird.”

“Why, she is a human being, after all,” Kate admitted. “This morning and
last night seems like some dream I had about her.” And Kate opened her
hazel eyes a little wider now as she looked at Elsie across the table.
She was on the watch for the reappearance of the vanishing comrade.

That evening again Miss Frazier sent the girls to walk in the garden.
She herself settled down in the big winged chair under her especial
reading lamp and picked up “The King of the Fairies,” which Kate had not
forgotten to place there.

The orchard drew all Kate’s attention once they were out in the growing
starlight. She looked toward it often as they paced back and forth on
the garden paths. At first she talked to Elsie about her afternoon, the
ride, and the Green Shutter Tea Room. But Elsie, though she listened
with interest, and even took pains to ask questions, in return gave Kate
no information as to how _she_ had spent the hours. Even so, Elsie was
so completely changed that finally Kate had the hardihood to tell her
laughingly about the light she had seen in the orchard house last night
before falling to sleep.

“I am sure I saw the light. But of course I couldn’t have heard the
door,” she finished. “That must have been imagination, for sound doesn’t
carry like that.”

But at this mention of the orchard house Elsie’s new manner fell from
her as though she had dropped a cloak. She stiffened as they walked and
her voice took on restraint.

“If you imagined the sound of the door, why wasn’t the light
imagination, too?” she asked reasonably. “Or it may have been fireflies
in the trees. See them now.”

It was true enough. Over in the orchard fireflies were twinkling, almost
in clouds.

“It wasn’t like firefly light, just the same.”

“Well, you were almost asleep, weren’t you? It was probably fireflies
and sleepiness all mixed up.”

Kate did not acknowledge that she was impressed by this reasoning. But
deep in her mind she was.

“And you’re not to tell Aunt Katherine about the light. Promise me that.
She would go investigating then. You’ve got to promise.”

Kate’s quick temper flashed up and ruined the new relation between them
at Elsie’s brusque command.

“I haven’t got to promise. Why do you think you can boss me like that?”

Elsie’s answer to that was a tossed head. “I’m going in,” she said
shortly.

“_I’m_ not.” Kate sat down abruptly in a garden chair they were passing.
When Elsie had gone on Kate bit her lip, hard, hard to keep back the
tears. “Now I’ve spoiled everything,” she accused herself bitterly. “Why
did I have to go talking about the orchard house at all? Everything was
so jolly, so right at last! Elsie was beginning to be more than decent.
What an idiot I am!”

She leaned her head down upon the arm of the chair. Then the inner, more
tranquil Kate came forward. “Think about the King of the Fairies,” she
said. “Look as he looked, see as he saw. Perhaps if you do, all this
trouble will dissolve in light. Get above the quarrel.”

And as she sat curled up there, she tried hard to follow the inner
Kate’s directions. She tried to look at the orchard with the different
seeing. If she followed the King of the Fairies’ directions, mightn’t
she see the _all_ of things as the girl and boy on the fence had seen
the all? She stayed very still, and watched, expectantly.

Elsie came back to her, silent as a shadow. It was almost as though she
could read Kate’s thoughts; for she knelt down by her on the dewy grass,
and putting her face quite close to Kate’s said in a low voice, but
earnestly: “I’ll tell you this much, Kate Marshall, _there is something
fairyish about that little orchard house_. If things fairyish show to
you around it or in it, it is because they _are there_. This is no lie.
I cross my heart. But you aren’t wanted there. And unless you are very
mean you will keep your promise to me and not go near.”

Then Elsie floated away, and was lost to Kate in the garden shadows,
like a fairyish thing herself.

Kate started up. Had she dreamed Elsie’s coming back, and her words? She
had been in such a _different_ state of mind trying to see as the King
of the Fairies saw, that she hardly knew. Anyway, big girl of fifteen
that she was, she began looking again toward the orchard house with
deepened expectancy.




                               CHAPTER X
                             IN THE MIRROR


If Elsie had thought to tease or bewilder Kate in the garden last night
by asserting that fairies actually had something to do with the orchard
house she would have been disappointed now if she could read Kate’s mind
as she lay awake in the early morning. A sense of something exciting in
the day had waked her before dawn. The excitement, of course, was the
party frock that Aunt Katherine had promised her, and “The Blue Bird.”

“I can hardly believe that I am going to have such a wonderful day,” she
thought. “Is it really happening to me? Will the morning ever come?”

She had no idea what time it was but she could see that the sky was
beginning to lighten. She felt that she could never go to sleep again
and she felt very hungry. Ah-ha! She remembered the gingerbread man
under her pillow. She had put it there simply to hide it and meaning to
get rid of it somehow without Elsie or Bertha seeing. She had not
thought she would ever want to eat it! It was too childish. But now she
pulled it out, and leaning up on her elbow ate every last crumb.

This elbow position brought the orchard into her view, or rather its
growing outlines in the approaching dawn. She recalled last night and
Elsie’s emphatic assurance that fairies somehow had a hand in the
mystery. Perhaps most other girls of fifteen would simply have laughed
at Elsie and not for an instant accepted it as a possibility, fairies
not entering into their scheme of things. But fairies did enter into
Kate’s scheme of things and always had. There she was different. But
there was a reason for her difference.

When she was a little girl of seven she had seen what she thought was a
fairy; and it had made such an impression on her mind that when she grew
older and came to the age of doubt she simply went on knowing. She had
seen what she had seen, and that was all there was to it. Moreover, her
mother had seen it, too, or something like it. It was hardly likely that
both of them could have been utterly deceived.

It happened when she and Katherine had gone for a walk on a June
Saturday. They started very early in the morning and walked very far,
for a seven-year-old. But it was Saturday and they were both free, Kate
from the lessons which her mother set her, and Katherine from teaching.
And it was June. So they did not seem to get tired a bit, but walked and
walked, and explored. Toward noon they came to a high meadow hilltop.
There they lay down, flat on their backs among the Queen Anne’s lace,
buttercups, and daisies, their arms across their eyes, their faces
turned directly up toward the sun. It was luncheon time, but they did
not care. The sunshine soaking into them and the smell of warm grass and
earth were better than food.

They lay still for a long time, not even speaking to each other. Perhaps
the little Kate slept. And they thought of getting up and starting for
home only when the sun in the sky told Katherine that it must be past
two o’clock.

Halfway down the hill pasture stood a little beach wood. They took their
way through that because it looked so cool and inviting, and because
Katherine knew there was a spring there among some rocks where they
could get long, satisfying drinks of cold water. It was there they saw
the fairy. They saw her just as they came out of the bright sunlight
into the green, cool shade of the wood and stood above the water. She
was at the other side of the spring facing them. She was looking down at
her reflection in the water, not at all aware of their approach.

Kate saw her as a lovely girl in a floating green garment. Her feet and
arms were bare and shining and it was their shining that made Kate know,
even in that first instant before the fairy had glanced up, that she was
unearthly. Kate and Katherine stood as still as the leaves on the trees
in that still wood, awed and entranced. Then the little Kate whispered
“Mother!” and pointed. At that whisper the fairy lifted her eyes. Kate
saw the surprise in her eyes and a dawning—something; was it
friendliness, or a smile? There was not time to know; for the fairy
flashed backward and up on to a stone behind her across which the
sunlight fell. And there she was lost in the sunlight. They simply could
not see her any more.

But Kate had never forgotten that instant when they stood looking at the
fairy while she was plain to view. And she had never forgotten the
expression on her mother’s face after the fairy had vanished. It was
such a delighted expression, so startlingly _satisfied_.

But that night, in talking it over, it came out that mother and daughter
had not seen exactly the same thing. Katherine was sure that the being
who had stood looking down at the spring was taller than human, grander,
with a more tranquil, noble face, And her garment, she said, was the
colour of sunlight, not green at all. Little Kate protested that. No,
she was just a slim girl and her garment was green. Why, Kate remembered
exactly how it hung almost to her bare ankles, without fluttering or
motion in that still wood. The golden gown Katherine had seen had blown
back, she said, as in a strong wind, although she herself felt no breath
of air.

The end of their discussion came to this. Katherine said it might be
that the sun in the high meadow together with their having had no
luncheon had made them see not quite true. When they came suddenly into
the cool, green shaded wood out of the glare their eyes played them
tricks. What seemed like a person standing above the spring may have
been simply an effect of sunlight striking through leaves.

“You remember, don’t you,” Katherine had ended, “how she vanished into
sunlight when you said ‘Mother’? Well——”

And Katherine had left it at that. “Well——” But she had warned little
Kate not to talk about it.

“People will think I had no business letting you go without luncheon
so,” she gave as her reason, laughingly.

But just because she had promised Katherine that she would not talk
about having seen a fairy, Kate had thought about it all the more. And
she never went into a cool wood out of hot sunlight without hoping to
surprise a fairy again. What she had seen she had seen, and that was all
there was to it!

So now to Kate the thought that fairies might somehow be connected with
the little orchard house did not seem at all an impossibility. Elsie
certainly had not acted or looked as though she were lying. And it was
perfectly true that from the minute Kate herself had first caught sight
of the orchard house she had felt that there was something very special
about it—more special than just the fact that it was the house where her
mother had been born and grown up and married. When Elsie called out
“Fairies, beware! Orchard House, beware!” Kate had been pricked with the
feeling of listening ears. She had felt somehow that the warning was
truly heard and taken.

She stretched now to her full length between her scented sheets. “I do
wish the dawn would hurry up and dawn!” she thought. “The minute it’s a
bit light enough I’ll get up, take a cold bath, dress, and get out into
the orchard. If fairies are there, dawn ought to be as easy a time to
see them as any. I’ll keep my promise about the key. But I’ve a perfect
right in the orchard.”

She fell asleep then and dreamed about the orchard house. The King of
the Fairies was there, waiting for her on the doorstep. She sat down
beside him and at once began to see things different, to see them, as
the King of the Fairies said, “whole.” There was a lot to the
dream—colour, adventure, and music, and above all, the sight of things
“whole.” But Kate, when she woke, had quite lost it. The dream had
become just tag ends of brightness left floating in her mind.

                            * * * * * * * *

To her surprise morning was fully established, birds were singing in
high chorus, and water was running loudly into the tub!

Bertha appeared in the bathroom door. “Miss Elsie got ahead of us,” she
informed Kate brightly. “She must have been quieter than a mouse to have
had her bath and all and not waked you. Now I suppose she’s out in the
orchard or somewhere. It’s a beautiful day.”

Oh, well, Kate did not allow herself to be downcast at having missed
dawn in the orchard. Not a bit of it. What a day it was to be! The
frock, “The Blue Bird,” the whole day in Boston with Elsie, and Aunt
Katherine so friendly!

At her place at the little breakfast table under the peach tree she
found a letter from her mother. She snatched it up and tore it open,
hoping she could get at least the heart out of it before Aunt Katherine
and Elsie should appear.

But she had hardly read the first sentence before Miss Frazier came out
through the breakfast-room and Elsie floated from the direction of the
orchard. Kate was too absorbed to be aware of the approach of either
until she heard Elsie exclaim, “Letters! Oh, is there one for me?”

Aunt Katherine’s tone was surprisingly sharp when she answered, “You
never get letters, Elsie. You have hardly had one in the last year.”

“That’s unfair,” Kate thought hotly. “Aunt thinks she’s jealous even of
my mail. And all the time she’s probably expecting an answer to that
special delivery she sent yesterday.”

But in spite of the edge in Miss Frazier’s voice Elsie apparently was
not at all dashed. To Kate’s curious eyes she looked just exactly as one
might who had been skylarking with fairies in the orchard all early
morning. She was ready to laugh, ready to talk, ready to be friendly.
Kate was profoundly glad, for this kind of an Elsie argued well for the
day they were to have in Boston together.

They went by train because Miss Frazier herself had uses for the car.
Bertha was again dressed in her correct gray tailored suit. “Looking
like an aunt herself,” Kate thought. Kate wore the blue silk dress she
had travelled in and the smart little hat that was really her mother’s.
The white linen would have done beautifully if they had not been going
to the theatre; but even though they were to sit in the balcony—seats
were sold out so far ahead that this was the best Aunt Katherine had
been able to do for them—Kate thought the white linen would hardly be
appropriate for that, and Bertha had agreed with her. Elsie, when she
appeared, quite took Kate’s breath away. She was so lovely, but so much
older looking than she had been in her house clothes. She was dressed in
a straight little three-piece silk suit of olive green. The rolling
collar was tied by a jaunty orange bow, and on the low belt of the dress
the same colour was embroidered in a conventional flower pattern. The
coat hung loosely and very full, hooked together only at the collar. The
hat was a limp dark brown straw with olive-green and orange embroidery
all around the crown. Elsie had pinned her curls up over her ears, and
her hair was a soft crushed aura under the hat. She looked very much
like a city girl but as though the city might have been New York or
Paris rather than Boston.

Kate gasped a little, and in her secret heart was very glad she herself
had decided on her silk. For a little while she was constrained with
Elsie, as though Elsie had in fact become older suddenly just because
she looked older.

As they came through the gates at their terminal in Boston Kate noticed
a young man in a slouch brown hat, a polka-dotted brown tie, and very
shining pointed brown shoes, standing about as though expecting someone
to meet him from the train on which they had come in. Perhaps Kate
noticed him so particularly because he seemed to be noticing them so
particularly, especially Elsie. For the first time that morning she
remembered Mr. O’Brien, the detective. Was this one of his men, and was
he going to “shadow” them to-day? Kate was sure of it when out of the
tail of her eye she saw him wheel and follow at a little distance as
they moved toward the taxi stand. He stood prepared to take the next cab
that should move into position as theirs moved out. Kate hardly
understood her own emotions at that moment. Her cheeks were hot and her
knees shook a little. She was resentful for Elsie. Why was she being
shadowed by a detective as though she were a criminal? Why had Aunt
Katherine let this happen?

Madame Pearl’s establishment was a narrow three-story house on Beacon
Street. “Madame Pearl” was engraved on a plate above the bell, nothing
more. A daintily capped and aproned maid answered their ring. She knew
their names before they had given them.

“It is the Misses Frazier,” she said, speaking with a distinct accent.
“You have an engagement, and Madame Pearl is expecting. Please come this
way.”

The front door opened directly into a long narrow room, panelled in
ivory, decorated with wreathed cupids and flowers. The floor was cool
gray and the hangings at the long windows at the end of the room were
gray, too, silvery. But under their feet were warm-coloured Persian rugs
of the most beautiful shades and designs. There were little tables in
the room with magazines and books scattered on them, a few easy chairs,
and two long divans. In one corner by the window there was an exquisite
little writing desk of Italian workmanship. On this stood a vase of very
red roses.

Kate glanced about with surprised eyes. But Elsie, who had been here
before with Aunt Katherine, nonchalantly followed the maid who was
guiding them. Kate had expected to find herself in a shop. But there was
no evidence of things for sale here. And they had an appointment!
Whoever heard of having an appointment in a shop?

The maid stood back at the foot of a narrow spiral staircase at the back
of the room. The girls and Bertha ascended.

Still no sign of a shop, or dresses for sale. This long upper room was
simply a boudoir with chaises-longues, mirrors, and flowers. Madame
Pearl swept to meet them. She was a regal little lady in trailing gray
chiffon. The gown had long flowing sleeves that just escaped the floor.
Miss Frazier had told Kate at breakfast that morning that Madame Pearl
was really a Russian princess who had escaped at the time of the
Revolution and in just a few years had made a fortune with this shop.
Her real name was Olga Schwankovsky. So Kate looked at her with intense
curiosity now. But where was the shop?

“Miss Frazier has telephoned,” Madame Pearl said in the sweetest of
voices and almost perfect accent. “You young ladies are to have party
dresses, your first party dresses. Very simple, very chic, youthful. We
must not hurry but give time to it and consideration. If you will be so
kind as to come this way——”

“This way” was all down the room to a wider alcove, walled on the street
by big plate-glass windows and on the two other sides by huge, perfect
mirrors.

There Madame Pearl asked them to be seated. She herself sat comfortably
among cushions on a little lounge. She inquired as to their favourite
colours. From that the conversation expanded to their other tastes, to
books, music. Elsie told about their plan for the afternoon.

“You are to see ‘The Blue Bird’!” Madame Pearl exclaimed. “That will be
an experience. I myself saw it when I was about your age—its first
production at the Moscow Art Theatre. I had never dreamed anything could
be so beautiful. You will think so, too.” Then she added, sighing a
little, “But it cannot be quite the same. Stanislavsky produced it as it
never could be produced by another. It was superb.”

“You saw it, there, when it was given in Moscow that first time?” Elsie
breathed, sitting on the very edge of her chair, her cheeks pink with
excitement. “That was wonderful. I know, for my fa——” She stopped, bit
her lip, and continued: “Someone showed me photographs of the stage sets
and costumes once. I am wondering if it will be anything like that
here.”

“I don’t know,” Madame Pearl replied. “But I tell you frankly I am not
going to see. For the memory of our Art Theatre production is too vivid
for me to want to expose it to any comparison. It was done with a
richness, a depth, a true sense of mysticism—— What shall I say? It was
so free of sentimentality. I confess I do not care to see it attempted
again. It had an effect on me, that play. An effect that is lasting,
that runs through—how shall I say?—my life.”

Elsie nodded and looked at Kate. She said, “Yes, we understand. ‘The
King of the Fairies’ is like that, too.”

Kate’s heart leapt. At last those two girls had met face to face,
comrades on common ground.

“‘The King of the Fairies,’” Madame Pearl murmured, reflectively. “Ah,
yes. I have heard of that book. Published last year. Very beautiful, I
have heard. And literary people are surprised because it is so popular.
They alone, when they discovered it, expected to appreciate it and
enjoy. They are a little annoyed that children and simple people and the
unliterary love it, too, that it is a ‘best seller.’ I have guessed,
though I have not yet read it, that that book must tap some deep wells
of truth that all humanity knows, even the simple. I have a theory about
art——”

There the beautiful voice ceased abruptly. Madame Pearl rose, smiling
enigmatically. “This is not choosing frocks, is it?” she said. “But
while we have chattered I have studied your types. I have not been idle.
Shall we begin with the one of which I am the least sure? That is Miss
Kate. We may have to try several frocks before we are suited for you.
But I think we shall begin with an orange crêpe.”

Madame Pearl touched a button in the wall and almost instantly a maid
appeared, not the one who had answered the door, but identically
dressed. She was young and pretty and very quick in all her motions.
Kate found a screen placed around her almost before she knew what was
happening. It was a light folding screen made of gray silk and bamboo
and embroidered with oriental flowers. Bertha hastened to disrobe her.
Then she came forth and stood ready to try on before one of the huge
mirrors.

Panels in the wall were slid back and the little maid brought the
dresses from their hiding places one by one. Bertha and the little maid
slipped them over her head, fastened them, turned her around lightly by
the shoulders. Then everyone looked at Madame Pearl. She was sitting on
her couch again, her eyes intent. She studied Kate as an artist studies
his picture. And to every frock, when it was on and Kate had been turned
quite around once or twice, she shook her head decidedly. None of them,
not one would do.

Kate herself could not see why. There was not one that was positively
unbecoming, and three or four had been quite lovely. She was growing
dazed and tired. The sparkle and colour of the frocks heaped about her
on chairs and thrown over the screen was almost too much for her eyes.
She thought of the Arabian Nights and imagined herself a young princess
of Arabia being decked for her wedding. But even as the corners of her
mouth lifted with this dream she was startled by an exclamation from
Madame Pearl.

“At last! It is perfect!”

Kate turned to herself in the mirror.

But was it Kate Marshall at all? She scarcely knew.

The frock was yellow, of softest satin, the color of a crocus. At the
rounded neck it was gathered softly to a narrow border of tiny
pearl-white and blue blossoms made in satin. At the low waistline the
satin was gathered again at a girdle of the same exquisitely fashioned
flowers, four wreaths of them loosely twined. The skirt swung out from
this girdle very full and straight, stopping just a little above the
ankles, quite the longest skirt Kate had ever had. The border of the
skirt was cut in deep, sharp scallops showing an underskirt below of
foaming, creamy lace.

“Do you like it?” Madame Pearl asked, interestedly. Kate was looking at
herself without speaking.

“I couldn’t help liking it,” Kate replied. “It’s beautiful. But—it
doesn’t look exactly as though we belonged—it and I together! It is
fluffy! So delicate!”

“That’s the fault of your hair, the short bob,” Madame Pearl assured
her. “There must be a cap.” She gave directions to the maid. “The silver
cap with the star points. Yes, the one from Riis’s. Deep cream
stockings. And the pumps—but I see you know which pumps that frock must
have yourself. I think they will fit, too. Fetch them.”

The maid whisked away to return in a minute with silk stockings, satin
slippers, and a silver cap.

“Your feet first,” Madame Pearl said, quite excitedly. “The cap we will
leave for the finishing touch. Then you shall see.”

Again, almost in a daze, Kate vanished behind the painted screen
accompanied by both Bertha and the maid. Each of them dressed a foot,
and it was done in a minute. The pumps were an exact fit. They were
creamy satin embroidered in deeper creamy-coloured flowers. At the side
of each a small diamond-shaped crystal buckle caught the light in many
facets. The heels were low.

Kate was troubled. “My aunt is only giving me the frock,” she said. “She
didn’t mention slippers and things. I’ve some perfectly good black
patent-leather pumps, anyway.”

“Black pumps! With that frock!”

Madame Pearl gazed at her in horror. Bertha hurriedly interposed, “Miss
Frazier impressed it on me that the costumes were to be complete.”

Then Madame Pearl arose from the couch and herself set the silver cap on
Kate’s head. It was a saucy affair fashioned in crisp silver lace with
five star points radiating from its crown. The cap was indeed the
finishing touch. It accomplished almost a transformation.

“Why, I’m _pretty_, awfully pretty!” Kate exclaimed to herself, gazing
into the mirror. But then more modestly, she added, “Any one would be in
that fascinating cap.”

So Kate was ready for the party! Let it come!

And now it was Elsie’s turn. But Madame Pearl had no trouble in fitting
Elsie to just the right frock. In fact, she had decided which it must be
in the first minutes while they sat discussing “The Blue Bird.” Elsie
was not “difficult.” Madame Pearl whispered to the maid, who scurried
away. She returned bearing over her arm a cloud of green chiffon. While
Kate was being dressed behind her screen Elsie was put into this green
creation behind another similar screen. She appeared before Kate was
done.

Her frock was simplicity itself, just straight lengths of green chiffon
falling straight away from her slim shoulders. As she moved back and
forth in front of the mirror her draperies floated about her like
filmiest clouds. When she stood still they fell straight and sheer
almost to her ankles. Madame Pearl signalled and the maid took the pins
from Elsie’s curls and they tumbled, a shower of sunlight.

The effect was perfect. Madame Pearl breathed softly: “I am satisfied.
Exquisitely.” She determined that white kid sandals, sandals in the
Greek style, were the footwear the frock required. She had them, too,
stored somewhere behind those secret panels. The maid hurried off, and
Elsie in preparation for her return slipped off the black patent-leather
sandals she was wearing, and out of her stockings.

At the same time Madame Pearl moved to the big windows. “The light is
glaring,” she murmured, “and it is unreasonably hot.” Untying a cord at
the side of the sash she let down green inner blinds. Elsie rose, and
stood in her bare feet facing herself meditatively in the mirror. At
that instant Kate came from behind her screen.

“Oh!” It was almost a shriek. Kate actually reeled against Bertha who
was following her and clutched for support. Bertha led her to the couch.
“Water, a glass of cold water quickly,” Madame Pearl commanded the
little maid. Elsie ran to Kate and knelt before her, taking her hands.
“Kate, Kate,” she called as though Kate were running away from her.

But Kate was not a girl to faint easily. She straightened up now and
took a deep breath. “It’s only the way you looked in the glass, Elsie,”
she explained, shakily. “The room just went spinning when I saw you.”

“‘The way she looked in the glass!’” Madame Pearl cast a hurried glance
toward the big mirror that now reflected only Kate’s array of discarded
dresses, a few tables and chairs.

But Kate explained further, looking at Elsie wanly: “You were the
fairy—the fairy that Mother and I saw by the pool that day. You were the
fairy exactly, even the expression on your face when you looked at me!
And the green light——”

Madame Pearl laughed. “The green light is only because I pulled the
blind. But you are right, Miss Elsie does look exactly like some fairy,
some wood fairy. Perfection.”

“No, not some fairy, _the fairy_. I have remembered perfectly.”

Madame Pearl spoke to Bertha aside, but Kate heard well enough. “It was
the heat, and she was tired from trying on. She ought to lie down.” Then
she turned her attention to Elsie’s sandals.

But Elsie kept looking back over her shoulder at Kate, resting on the
sofa—questioningly. She was speculating: “Had Kate taken her hint of
fairies in the orchard house seriously? Was it so much on her mind that
she was imagining things? Or had Kate once really seen a fairy, and
Elsie in the mirror had reminded her?”

When they left the shop and stood on the step looking about for a taxi
Elsie asked Kate eagerly, “Did you really see a fairy once? Where?
When?”

“Yes, Mother and I. But we both saw it differently. And now—now, how
could it have been a fairy? Why, it was _you_. But I promised Mother not
to talk about it.”

At the mention of Kate’s mother the cold look came back to Elsie’s face.
She turned away with feigned indifference while Bertha lifted her hand
to summon a taxi.




                               CHAPTER XI
                          KATE TAKES THE HELM


But the taxi driver Bertha had signalled shook his head, giving a
sidewise jerk toward the back of his cab to indicate that he had a fare.
There was the young man of the brown hat and polka-dotted tie looking
away as though he was not one bit aware of them and smoking a cigarette.

“Well, why do they stand still, then!” Bertha complained. “How could I
know!”

Almost at once, however, another taxi came cruising up the hill, and
they were soon in, whirling away toward Miss Frazier’s club. It was now
almost one o’clock, and they were quite ready for luncheon.

Though Kate did not actually lean out to see whether the detective’s
taxi was following, she felt quite sure that it was. “And he’ll be
wherever we go all day,” she reflected. “What does he expect us to do—or
Elsie, rather? What _could_ she do with Bertha and me along, anyway?
It’s all just too curious! And I don’t like it a bit. It makes me angry
for Elsie. It isn’t fair to her! I wonder what Mother and the boys would
think if they knew I was riding around Boston to-day, buying gorgeous
clothes, conversing with princesses, almost fainting, and being shadowed
by a detective!

Both girls, lunching in Miss Frazier’s club, felt themselves quite
emancipated, really adult! Elsie wrote out their orders on a little pad
tendered by a gray-clad waitress, and acted hostess throughout. Kate
very much admired her worldly air, her poise and decision, and the way
she knew the French names for things. Apparently she was quite
accustomed to such complicated menus. Kate was proud of Elsie, proud and
stirred. Aunt Katherine herself could not have conducted things better.

They discussed Madame Pearl and her establishment. They were both
enchanted by her, and full of surmises about her life. Miss Frazier had
told them that people knew very little about Madame Pearl’s experiences
during the Revolution and her escape, because she meant to keep out of
the papers. That was why she had taken the name Madame Pearl, and did
not want to be known as a princess at all, except to a few trusted
customers, or rather patients.

“She prescribes clothes just as a doctor prescribes pills, Aunt
Katherine says,” Elsie remarked, laughing.

“I think my dress is too wonderful,” Kate sighed. “But do you know I am
afraid Mother won’t want me to wear it to high-school dances next
winter, if I go to any. She will say it’s too grand, I’m sure.”

In time, however, they left the topic of clothes and launched into
discussion of “The Blue Bird.” Both had read it, but in quite different
ways. Kate had read for the story, and Elsie to fit it to the
photographs she had seen of its first production in Moscow. In fact,
this was typical of these two girls. They had enthusiasm for the same
things, but approached them from different angles. That was why, when
they found themselves talking freely, the air fairly sparkled between
them. They opened new avenues of thought to each other, took each
other’s old ideas and spun them like balls, showing new sides and
colours. They were animated. They leaned toward each other over the
table, their faces alive and bright with thinking. Bertha remained
mostly silent, enjoying her luncheon and the interested and appreciative
glances that were turned from every direction upon her charges.

Luncheon went on slow feet because of conversation’s wings. But they did
not in any way neglect it. It was a most delicious meal, and quite a
complicated one, because Miss Frazier had given Elsie carte blanche and
told her to make it just as splendid as she pleased. After the ice they
had a demitasse. Neither of the girls was accustomed to coffee, but this
was a special day and they would do special things. Besides, the
waitress seemed to expect it of them. It tasted horrible. But each made
a brave effort and drank down the tiny portion without grimacing.

Now for the theatre!

At the door of the club a footman summoned a taxi for them. As Kate went
down the steps and got in she looked all about for signs of the
detective but saw none. However, they were in a crowded section, taxis
and autos moving in two rivers, one north, one south, and the sidewalks
were two more rivers—rivers of human beings. That polka-dotted young man
might well have his eye on them from some station in that flow of life
and Kate never be aware.

Elsie had the theatre tickets in her purse, and took them out now to be
sure about them. “They’re in the third row in the first balcony,” she
said. “Aunt Katherine thought they weren’t very good, but I am sure they
are. Why, it will be even better than as though we were ’way up front
downstairs. We will get all the effects better. Don’t you think so?” But
she asked a trifle anxiously, as though trying to console herself.

Kate agreed, though to speak truth she knew very little indeed about the
theatre and could hardly be considered a judge in any way. Both girls
were glowing with anticipation and excitement. Kate felt that it was all
simply too wonderful to be true. Her heart was almost breaking with
happiness—at least, that is what she told herself was the matter with
it. It certainly was pounding.

But arrived in the palace of gold decoration and purple plush which was
the theatre, and ushered to their seats, there was an unpleasant
surprise. One of the seats was directly behind a large ornate post!
Whoever sat there would have to do a great deal of craning and
stretching to see the stage at all, and not for one instant would she be
able to see its entirety.

“Don’t you bother,” Bertha reassured them, concealing her own deep
disappointment. “Of course I shall sit there. It’s only a pity it’s
between you.”

Now Elsie showed a new side of her character to Kate, and a side that
she had not suspected. “Don’t be silly,” she told Bertha
emphatically—but not rudely, merely affectionately—“Of course we shall
take turns. I shall have the post for half the time and you the other.
But it’s mean, just the same.”

“And I, too—I shall certainly take my turn,” Kate threw in. “But I think
it is mean, and a cheat, too!”

“No, you are the guest,” Elsie said firmly. “You are to sit at the end
and stay there. Go in now and I’ll follow.”

But Kate did not pass in. She stood frowning. “It isn’t fair,” she
insisted. “They had no business to sell Aunt Katherine that seat.”

Bertha shrugged. “Of course it’s unfair,” she whispered, “but there’s
nothing to do about it.” She was bothered by the attention they were
beginning to attract. She wished Kate would go in and sit down.

“Then we ought to complain,” Kate insisted, still blocking up the aisle.

“To whom?” Bertha asked. Her tone said _she_ would have nothing to do
with it.

Elsie murmured quickly, “Oh, let’s not,” and gave Kate a slight push.
She, too, was conscious of their conspicuous situation. “_I couldn’t_.”

Kate, too, knew that they were attracting the attention of many people.
All the more she was determined not to accept the injustice of that post
seat meekly. They were early; the curtain would not go up for ten
minutes. The orchestra was only just coming into the pit.

“You go in and sit down. But give me the ticket stubs. I’ll make them
fix this up.” Kate did not whisper or even lower her voice. She spoke
calmly, with assurance. Underneath she was as diffident as the other
two, but hers was not a nature to tolerate such injustice supinely.

Elsie, with one quick, surprised glance, thrust the stubs into this
country cousin’s hand, and Kate was off up the steep aisle, bent on
business. When she had pushed her way through the incoming crowds out
into the upper foyer the first thing she saw was the detective, leaning
against the wall trying to look unconcerned and as though he belonged
there. In spite of the crowds their eyes happened to meet. Kate’s cool
look said, “So you are here.” Then she turned away and fought her
passage down the stairs.

The young man scowled. Well, this was not the niece he was to watch. She
had light curls, and his chief had said she would be wearing a green
silk suit. Even so this bobbed-haired one was of the party. He was
troubled by her movements. What was she leaving her seat for? Where was
she going? He really ought to find out, but, on the other hand, if he
forsook his post here he might miss Miss Elsie if she should come out.
No, he must stay, but it was annoying all the same.

At the box office they were turning people away. “No seats left,” Kate
heard on every side. But that did not stop her. “They can put a chair in
the aisle,” she thought. “They _must_ do something. People should have
what they pay for.”

But the man at the ticket window gave her no hope. “All sold out,” he
assured her before she had had time to say a word. When he heard her
complaint he merely said, “Well, we’ll give you your money back. I could
sell that post seat a hundred times over in the next five minutes. All
you need is to _lean_ a little. Where’s your stub?”

“I don’t want the money,” Kate protested. “I want to see the play. It
was a cheat, selling a seat like that. I want another one. In fact, I
want three other seats, for we have to sit together.”

The man laughed, much amused at that. And several by-standers laughed,
too. Kate’s cheeks fired.

“Where can I find the manager?” she asked, straightening her spine and
looking hard at the amused young man.

The man strangled his laugh and pointed across the lobby to a door
marked “Private.” “There, if he’s in. Much good it’ll do you.”

As Kate left the window and crossed to the door indicated she heard
several titters. That made her determination deeper. She knocked firmly
right in the middle of the word “Private.”

As she got no answer to her knocking she followed her usual course when
uncertain, or embarrassed—abrupt action. In this instance she simply
opened the door and stepped in. She did this in exactly the way she
often spoke when she had no intention of speaking. A man turned from a
window where he was leaning looking down into the crowded street
watching the people flooding to “The Blue Bird.” He was a youngish man
with nice lines around his eyes, smiling lines. But the eyes were very
keen. Whether he was truly the manager or not Kate never learned, but he
was manager enough for her purposes. She told him her grievance. He
listened respectfully without a word until she had finished. Then, still
without a word to her, he took up a telephone instrument from his desk
and spoke briskly into it: “Box office, any seats left?” he asked.
“Good, that’s fine. Give the young lady who was at your window a minute
ago one in the lower left.” He hung up and turned to Kate.

“The house is sold out,” he informed her in a voice that was fairly
jubilant. “And they said it couldn’t be done in the States in summer!”
She felt that he wanted to dance and was constrained only by her
presence. “All except a few box seats. They come too high. You can get
yours now at the office all right. I’ve fixed it.”

But Kate did not move to go. “There are three of us,” she explained. “We
have to stay together. We are with a chaperon. You hung up before I
could tell you.”

The manager was dashed. He had expected gratitude. “With a chaperon? Why
isn’t she here fixing things instead of you, then?” he asked with
reason.

“Well, she didn’t like to. She was willing to sit behind the post. She’s
really my cousin’s maid, but my aunt lets her chaperon us.”

“Oh, I see.” There was something of humorous admiration in the manager’s
voice now. He liked Kate’s spirit. He snatched up the telephone again.
“Three seats for that lady just mentioned,” he commanded into it. “Front
ones.”

Then Kate did thank him and smiled—her peculiar, charming smile. He
responded to it with a beam of his own. But her last words were, “It was
a cheat, wasn’t it, selling that post seat to anybody.”

His reply was simply “Rather!” as he held the door for her. She had read
enough to know by his use of that word that he was English. He had
spoken his “rather” in the most natural, sincere way possible.

The box-office man eyed her with respect. “Never thought you’d turn the
trick,” he said, admiringly. But Kate did not deign to answer. Suddenly
she felt her conspicuousness too keenly. She took the tickets he offered
her and fled away up the stairs, not looking at any one.

In the upper foyer the detective was on the watch for her. He sighed
with relief when she appeared and vanished again through the swinging
doors into the balcony. Well, his “party” was safe now until after the
play. It was unfortunate that he had not been able to secure a seat
inside where he could keep his eye on them directly. When the curtain
went up he would slip in and stand in the back, of course. After all,
things were pretty satisfactory. They certainly couldn’t escape his
attention now. So far their doings had been innocent enough, all except
that little excursion of the bobbed-haired one. Had she taken a note to
someone? Perhaps he had been foolish not to follow her.

“Seats in a box! Oh, Kate, how did you ever!” Elsie looked at Kate with
sincerest admiration shining in her eyes, and Kate felt for ever repaid
for all her effort. If Elsie had acquitted herself well at luncheon,
Kate had surely acquitted herself well here. They were equals. Comrades?

An usher hurried toward them as they came out into the aisle. “The
curtain is about to go up,” she warned. She felt, perhaps, that they had
already made too much disturbance.

“Yes, but we have seats down in a box,” Kate said with composure. The
usher reached her hand for the tickets. “This way, then. There are
stairs behind these curtains. If you hurry you’ll be there before the
lights go out.”

“Ha, ha, Mr. Detective!” Kate laughed to herself as she felt her way
down the narrow, velvet-carpeted stairs. “You are losing us now. You’ll
watch up there in vain.”

Their seats were quite perfect, almost on the stage, three chairs in the
very front of the best box in the house, three throne-like chairs with
gilded arms and cushioned backs!

“We ought to be more dressed,” Bertha whispered, a little uneasily, as
in their conspicuous position she felt that the eyes of the whole great
audience were upon them. But Elsie laughed softly. “Who cares!” she
exclaimed. “And won’t Aunt Katherine be surprised when she hears of all
this state!”

Music. The asbestos curtain rolling up, revealing night-coloured velvet
curtains with a huge gold shield. Lights out. The two girls, recently so
estranged, were for the hours of this play closest sisters. In Fairyland
all are friends. They gripped hands. Soon they simply sat close
together, arm-in-arm, entranced. The theatre, the huge audience,
dissolved for them in mist. The stage was not a stage. They were moving
with Mytil and Tyltyl through frightening or lovely or saddening scenes,
all equally enthralling. They were moving bodiless. They _were_ Tyltyl
and Mytil.

Not until the very last minute of the play, when the night-coloured
curtains had drawn together for the last time and the blue bird was at
large again, perhaps somewhere in the upper reaches of the gilded
theatre, did the girls again take up their habitations in their own
minds and bodies. They looked at each other then and sighed, waking as
from a dream they had shared. Bertha was quite pale with emotion and
surreptitiously wiping away her tears.

The first waking thought that Kate had was gratefulness that Bertha had
seen the play as it ought to be seen and not cut in two by a post, since
she cared for it so much.

All three were almost silent on the journey to the station, wrapped in
the afterglow of the play’s thraldom. But just outside the gates of the
train shed Elsie looked all about and asked a question: “That young man
in the polka-dotted tie seems to have disappeared,” she observed. “He
was here when we came, outside of Madame Pearl’s in that taxi, in the
hallway to the club and upstairs at the theatre. What’s happened to him
now?”

“Oh, did you notice him, too?” Kate asked, surprised. “And in the club?
I missed him there. How did he get in?”

“He was talking to the telephone girl and watching us while we had
lunch. I saw through the door. He acted like a detective, or something.
I was going to point him out to you, and then every time I got
interested in what we were saying and forgot. What do you suppose he was
doing?”

Kate was suddenly embarrassed. She knew very well what he was doing, but
of course she was bound not to tell.

“He acted like a detective,” Elsie said, musingly. “Just exactly the way
they act in books.”

“Yes. And we might have been thieves, or something,” Kate took it up.

But at her words Elsie stiffened. Although Kate at the minute was not
looking at her she _felt_ the stiffening. And when they were established
in their coach and Kate did turn to look at Elsie she saw at once that
the comrade had vanished again! What _had_ she done? And how could she
bear it after this perfect day? Oh, no, it was not to be borne. Things
couldn’t happen like that. She leaned toward Elsie and spoke quickly,
urgently but softly.

“Don’t get icy again,” she pleaded. “If I’ve offended you, I truly don’t
know how. And we’ve had such a splendid day of it. Deep down everything
seems to be all right with us. It’s only on top things keep going wrong.
Don’t look like that. Don’t.”

But Elsie did not respond to Kate’s pleading. She kept on looking “like
that” and merely commented coldly, “You do say such queer things. I
don’t know what you mean.”

And from then on Elsie, dropping all her city bearing, curled one foot
up under her on the car seat, turned her shoulder to Kate, leaned her
chin on her hand, and gazed out of the window. Kate sat biting her lips
with clutched hands. After a while, when she realized that Elsie’s “cold
shoulder” was to be permanent, she got up and crossed the aisle to sit
by herself at a window.

“Why am I not furious with her?” she asked herself. “She has no right to
treat me like that! And I am angry, of course. But I’m not _very_ angry.
Why am I not very angry?”

The conclusion she finally arrived at was that she couldn’t be very
angry until she understood what it was all about. There was a mystery
that needed solving. Kate felt herself destined to solve it. There was
an elation in that prospect that bore her up above the moment’s worries
and confusions. “If you’re going to live you’ve got to be willing to
suffer,” she told herself sententiously. “And certainly I am living!”
Then her eyes crinkled into their nicest Chinese smile. For Kate was
perfectly capable of being amused at herself.




                              CHAPTER XII
                          THE SPECIAL DELIVERY


Miss Frazier approved, and was even delighted with the frocks when she
came up to view them after breakfast next morning.

“Shall we try them on for you?” Kate offered eagerly.

“No, I don’t believe so. I can trust Madame Pearl, I am sure, to say
nothing of you girls yourselves! And there is a lot to be done now to
get ready for the party.”

Miss Frazier was moving and speaking in suppressed excitement, any one
could see that. This party to her was to be a significant moment in her
own life as well as in the girls’!

“What can we do?” Kate asked.

“You may help me to decorate the drawing-room and hall. If I engage a
professional person he will simply load the whole place with flowers in
a set and stuffy way. Besides, this is an informal party, and we want
the decorations to be very simple and unstudied.” Then Miss Frazier
added with a twinkle in her eye, “That’s why we must study very hard and
fuss and consult.”

Both girls laughed at that.

“I’m expecting a man now to help Timothy move the furniture back for
dancing. As soon as they are done we can begin. The dresses are
charming, and I congratulate you.”

Since getting into the train the afternoon before the comrade in Elsie
had not been visible. The girls had spoken to each other only in
monosyllables and with eyes usually averted. Almost as though they had
agreed upon it, however, they played up a little in the presence of
their aunt. She had been so kind to them and counted so much on the day
together to have made them friends, they had not the heart to let her
see just how things stood between them. So at dinner they had told her
of the day’s adventures vivaciously, dwelling most on their reactions to
“The Blue Bird” and the episode of the post. For some reason Elsie did
not mention the young man who had shadowed them in such an unshadowy
way. That omission surprised Kate and gave her pause. What did such
reticence mean? Aunt Katherine had been much diverted by Kate’s account
of her interview with the box-office clerk and the manager. Her comment
had been, “You are a Frazier, Kate! You have a _spine_. I imagine the
manager sensed that.”

After dinner the three had settled to a quite exciting game of Mah Jong.
No need for Elsie and Kate to pretend friendliness then, for the game
took all their attention, and they could forget each other as persons.
After that there was a brief stroll in the garden, Aunt Katherine
walking between the girls, their arms drawn through hers. It had all
seemed very peaceful and congenial. But there had been no “good-nights”
upstairs, though in accordance with Aunt Katherine’s will the doors
stood open between the two bedrooms.

So now, when Aunt Katherine left to attend to the moving of the
furniture, Kate turned to Bertha and said, “I shall be in the garden
over by the Dentons’ hedge, writing letters. Will you call me when Miss
Frazier is ready, Bertha?”

Without a glance at Elsie she picked up her pad and hurried out. She
hoped that Elsie realized she was avoiding using the sitting-room and
the desk they were supposed to share; and she would not have minded
knowing that Elsie’s conscience bothered her about it. But if it did,
Elsie gave no sign. She herself simply turned away about some business
of her own.

There was so much for Kate to tell her mother in this letter that was
interesting and wonderful! First, of course, there was Madame Pearl and
her most unique shop that didn’t look like a shop a bit. She must
describe the frocks they had chosen, or rather that Madame Pearl had
chosen for them; Kate realized now that they themselves had done no
choosing at all. Then dining in the luxurious club—she would describe
that in detail. She had never in her life had quite such a stimulating
conversation with any one before as that conversation at luncheon. She
recalled it now as an hour during which she had _thought_, and thought
rapidly, and expressed her thoughts to an attentive listener who in her
turn _thought_ and came back at her in a most provocative manner. Ideas
had spun in the air between them like iridescent bubbles, changing
colour as they turned and you viewed different sides of them. The truth
about that was that two most congenial minds had discovered each other,
and that is as exciting an adventure as there is in the world, and not
at all an ordinary one. The thing that gave this experience its final
tang was that the two minds, though comprehending each other perfectly,
worked entirely differently. It followed that for each other they had
great discoveries and surprises. Together they danced as one in figures
new to both!—Of course, Kate could not tell her mother exactly this, but
she could tell her enough so that she would understand a little what had
happened. But she must begin.

Instead, unhygienically, she sucked the end of her pencil.

Would Mother approve of her having accepted the party frock? That
bothered her a little. Knowing Aunt Katherine now she understood her
mother much less than ever before on these points. The dress must have
cost—no, she would not imagine what it must have cost since Aunt
Katherine had told her not to give that end of it a thought. Still, she
would describe the dress to Mother, and she could come to conclusions
for herself.

“Dearest Mother”:—Oh, there was so much, so very much, it was quite
hopeless to write! There was the fairy in the glass. That must be told
first. There was not the slightest doubt in Kate’s mind that the two
were exactly the same, the fairy in the woods that day and the
reflection of Elsie in the mirror at Madame Pearl’s. But what its
explanation could be was unthinkable. At the time the little Kate had
seen the fairy in the woods, Elsie was only a little girl of her own
age. How, then, had Kate seen her as she would look eight years later in
a mirror in a Boston shop? It was such an unanswerable question that
Kate’s mind turned away from it. Still, not for one minute did she doubt
that the two visions had been exactly the same. What would Katherine
make of it?

“Hello. Good morning.” Jack Denton, in white flannels, tall and
athletic, was standing the other side of the hedge, swinging his tennis
racket and smiling a friendly, frank smile. “Excuse me, but you’re Miss
Kate Marshall, aren’t you? My sister and I are coming to the party in
your honour to-night. I’m Jack Denton, and Rose will be out in a minute.
If you’ll play a set with us I’ll call up another fellow and make
doubles.”

Kate jumped up, delighted. She went to the wall. “Good morning,” she
said. “I was just beginning a letter. But I’d love to play—that is, for
a little while, till Aunt Katherine needs me. But why don’t we just
shout for Elsie? She likes tennis, I know, and Aunt Katherine says she
plays wonderfully.”

But Jack’s expression had changed queerly. He grew slightly red and
avoided looking directly at Kate. “No need to get any one yet,” he
objected. “Heaven knows when Rose will be out. She’s awfully pokey—slow.
Let us begin just by ourselves till she does appear, anyway. Can you
jump? Here’s a hand.”

But Kate shook her head. “No, thanks. I don’t think I’ll play, after
all. I may be called any minute to help Aunt Katherine, and
besides—besides, it’s very warm, isn’t it?”

Kate was looking at the pad in her hand, about to turn away.

But Jack kept her a minute. “Oh, I say! You aren’t offended, are you? I
wouldn’t do that for anything.”

“No, of course not.” But Kate’s negation was made only out of a spirit
of reserve and also embarrassment. “No.”

“But you are, and I don’t wonder. Of course you’d be on your cousin’s
side. And listen. We are, too. Rose and I and all of us are, always have
been. We never could see any sense in all the hubbub. It’s just been
Grandmother and Grandmother’s friends. We all thought Elsie was great
stuff when she visited Miss Frazier before—— And we’re coming to the
party to-night, you bet. Only—at this minute Grandmother is sitting
right up there in a window where she can see the court, and it might
change her, decide her for some reason not to go to-night. She feels
that her going formally and giving in, as it were, publicly, is the
thing that’s going to turn the trick. It’s her show, sort of. If we did
it first, now, she might be just as bad as ever again, begin all over
again. Do you see?”

“No, I don’t see,” Kate said in all truth. Jack’s explanations shed no
light whatsoever. His face had grown steadily redder as he realized that
he had simply made a mess of it. “I don’t see.”

But even as she stood looking at Jack Denton she was smiling at herself
mentally, to hear how her voice had taken on the very timbre of Elsie’s
when she was being her most unpleasantly polite. What a copy cat she
was. Still, there was a certain satisfaction in finding herself so
successful in a self-made rôle. “All you say is just Greek to me. And I
ought to be writing my letter. Good morning.”

She turned deliberately and sauntered back to her place in the shade of
the orchard. But Jack did not leave the wall. He stayed there watching
her, a frown gathering on his brow. When she was seated, with her back
against an apple tree trunk and her pad ready on her knee, he called
again.

“Oh, I say,” he called. “I thought you knew everything about it all, of
course. If you don’t, it’s a shame. I just can’t be apologetic enough.”

But Kate did not turn to him. “Go away, go away, go away,” she said,
mentally. “I don’t want to hear any more. It’s not for you to unravel
the mystery. I don’t want to know from a stranger. I feel very
indignant. Very, very indignant, and I hardly know why.”

Kate’s silence meant as much to Jack Denton as the thoughts he could not
hear. He turned away and strolled toward the house, swinging his racket
and looking at the ground dejectedly. Kate was sorry she had been so
deliberately rude, but she simply could not call him back. She was too
really indignant, and at the same time unable to analyze her
indignation. She returned to her letter.

But she found it very difficult to write. There was just too much ever
to begin to put on paper, in spite of this being only her third day
here! What she must do was simply tell the _facts_ and let the rest go.
The colour of the facts, all that lay underneath and over them, must
wait. The letter that finally developed was a thin affair, perfunctory
and empty of interest. Kate had never in her life felt so far from her
mother.

The girls and Miss Frazier selected and cut flowers in the garden. They
took them in loosely on their arms and tossed them down on a damp sheet
spread on the floor just inside the drawing-room doors. Then came the
deciding on receptacles and the placing of them. It was all very
interesting, and exciting, too, for as the rooms grew in adornment Kate
felt the party itself drawing nearer and nearer. Miss Frazier seemed
very gay as they worked. She laughed and said whimsical things in a
whimsical manner. And her every touch was deft, and the result artistic.

That morning Kate learned more about colour values and proportion than
she had ever learned in all her years of school. She had not dreamed
that so much _mind_ could be used on such an apparently simple
occupation as placing a few nasturtiums in a vase!

What a good time they were having! Kate moved about the big drawing-room
and hall with almost dancing steps, she was so happy doing her aunt’s
intelligent bidding and seeing loveliness form before her eyes and under
her hand. And Elsie was laughing quite spontaneously at Aunt Katherine’s
humour and taking as much delight as Kate in the growing beauty of the
arrangements.

“Someone to speak to you on the telephone, Miss Frazier.” Isadora had
come out from the telephone booth under the hall stairs.

“Who is it, please? Always get the name, Isadora.”

“Yes, ma’am. I always do when I can. But this gentleman won’t give his
name. Says it’s not necessary. He wants to speak to you on important
business, he says.”

“Won’t give his name! Nonsense! Tell him, then——” But suddenly in the
middle of this command Aunt Katherine’s expression changed. “Oh, well, I
think I know now who it must be. That’s all right, Isadora.”

Aunt Katherine dropped the yellow roses she was sorting—their wet stems
and leaves instantly spreading white spots on to the polished surface of
the little table. With a quick step she hurried toward the telephone
booth. Kate snatched up the roses and remedied the harm they had done as
well as she could with her pocket handkerchief. Then she and Elsie
simply stood idly about waiting for the doors of the telephone booth to
open and their Chieftain to reappear. For having seen Aunt Katherine
work with the flowers they knew themselves incompetent to go ahead
alone.

As Kate leaned against the banister, and Elsie smoothed her hair before
a little gilt mirror on the wall near the door and secured the shell
pins holding it, the front-door bell suddenly rang and Isadora came into
the hall to answer it. A postman in livery standing there thrust a pad
at her mumbling, “Sign here.”

Elsie dropped a shell pin on to the floor and rushed to Isadora. “It’s a
special delivery,” she cried. “For me?”

Yes, it was for Elsie. She almost snatched it out of the postman’s hands
and scrawled her signature on the pad that Isadora surrendered.

“All right,” she said, pushing the pad at the postman and the next
instant shutting the door directly in his face. Had she shoved him out?
Kate was not at all sure she hadn’t.

Then Elsie ran through the hall with the letter hugged up under her chin
and up the stairs past Kate. “Tell Aunt Katherine I’ll be right back,”
she called as she went. But she stopped on the first landing to lean
over the banister and whisper down, “Don’t say anything about my having
had a special delivery, will you, Kate?”

“Of course not, if you don’t want me to. It’s none of my business, is
it?”




                              CHAPTER XIII
                              “YOU THIEF!”


Kate was dressed and ready for the party half an hour before dinner that
night. She stood surveying herself in the long door mirror. Anticipation
had brought unusual colour that glowed even through the tan on her
cheeks, and the corners of her lips were sharply uptilted.

“The cap is certainly a wonder worker,” she reflected. “It is magic; it
makes me pretty. That’s even better than having a cap to make you
invisible, much better!” And when she smiled at this idea the girl in
the glass smiled, too, and was fascinatingly pretty. “Oh, if Mother
could only see me! She’d hardly believe. If the picture telephone were
perfected and Aunt had one I’d spend my last cent to call Mother up.”

All this was not so conceited as it sounds; for Kate knew perfectly well
that ordinarily she could lay no claim to prettiness, that the charm of
the person clothed in crocus-yellow satin in the mirror before her was
due to Madame Pearl’s artistic genius and the pert, star-pointed silver
cap. And when the idea came to her to go down to the kitchen and display
herself to Julia in this enchantment it was wholly for Julia’s pleasure
she intended it; she would be taking herself down in the same impersonal
way she would take a doll down to turn it round. For finery of this sort
and the kind of glamour that beautiful clothes give, she did not for a
minute associate with herself, her _very_ self. Ever since Julia had
appeared to her on the stairs, asked eager questions about her mother
and bestowed the gingerbread man on Kate, she had wanted to see her
again. It seemed so queer and unnatural to be eating the delicious meals
she cooked and ignoring her presence in the house. Wasn’t she a friend
of her mother’s? But until this minute Kate had been too shy or too
strange in the ways of her aunt’s big smoothly running establishment to
seek Julia out in the dim, distant servants’ apartments. Now, however,
in her magic cap, looking and feeling like a young princess, and also
disguised in a way, she had no hesitation about it. She felt sure that
Julia would be interested and pleased, and that Katherine, if she were
in Kate’s place, would do that very thing. But on second thought she
decided to wait until just after dinner, for this hour would surely be
about the busiest one in a cook’s day.

She crossed the room and sat down at her dressing table again, pulling
out a drawer. She would reread a letter from Sam, a scrawl that had come
in the afternoon’s mail when she was too much occupied to give it her
full attention. She had merely glanced it down hastily and put it away
in this drawer on top of the key to the orchard house. She read it now,
bending her head and not bothering to pick it up.

“Don’t let her befool you, Kitty. Take our word, she’s just a silly
snob. You’re worth millions of her any minute. What a figure she’d cut
in that meadow—you know, with the King of the Fairies! She just wouldn’t
be _anything_, would she? Teach her a lesson. We’d like to, Lee and I.”
There was more of the same sort; but she did not pick it up to turn the
page. There was an uneasy stirring in her heart. It hadn’t been very
decent of her, writing like that about Elsie. She could not remember now
just how she had done it, or why. She knew that both Sam and Lee must
have struggled together over the composition of this letter in reply.
They had evidently thought it a very important letter indeed, and spent
their best efforts on it. She appreciated that, and she appreciated
their hot partisanship, too. What she didn’t appreciate at this minute
was her own motives in having so called out their sympathy. And she had
better tear it up. It certainly wasn’t a letter meant for other eyes to
see. With a strange little ache in her soul somewhere, probably in her
conscience, she picked up the sheet. Then her heart stood still, and the
fingers crumpling the paper turned cold. She went queerly sick. The key
that should have lain there under the letter was gone. It was nowhere in
the drawer. And whoever had taken the key could scarcely have failed to
read the words staring there so blackly up at you, all in Sam’s
print-like script!

Moreover—she saw it now—the thief had gone through the whole dressing
table before hitting upon this particular drawer. Everything was a
little out of place. The thief was Elsie, of course. No one else wanted
the key. Well, serve her right, then, to have read about herself!

Kate tore the letter into shreds and dropped it back into the drawer.
Then she strode through the bathroom, and stood in Elsie’s open door.
Elsie was already decked in her fairy green frock, her curls tied
loosely at her neck in a way that Madame Pearl had begged her to wear
them. But quite regardless of her finery she was curled up in the window
seat, her sandaled feet tucked under her, looking dreamily out toward
the orchard house. She was lost in her thoughts for she did not hear or
feel Kate when she came striding across the room to stand over her. Even
in the temper she was in, Kate could not help thinking, “How unconcerned
she is about that beautiful frock! It’s as though she was born in it.
How delicate, how _fairy_ she looks!”

Elsie started out of her reverie at Kate’s voice.

“Give me my key,” she was saying huskily, her hand held out.

Elsie, in spite of the suddenness of the attack, did not stir except to
turn her head.

“What key?”

“You know very well what key. You stole it.”

Red scorched Elsie’s cheeks at the word “stole.” Kate rejoiced at that.
She would make it scorch even redder. “You are no better than a thief,
to hunt through my things, to read my letters. To steal, to steal, to
steal!”

Even as Kate stormed she knew, deep where knowing still had a foothold
below the surface of her anger, that her greatest fury was at
herself—fury that there had been such a letter for Elsie to read at all,
that she had ever written the Hart boys as she had written them. But in
spite of that knowing she seemed to have no control over the superficial
Kate, the raging, furious Kate.

“You thief! You’re no better than a thief! Give me back my key.”

But Elsie’s response to this attack surprised Kate into a little
calmness. She stood up, clenching her hands, and facing her accuser.

“Well, if I am a thief I am proud of it, proud, proud. So there! If you
think I’m ashamed of it you’re wrong! Call me thief all you like. I like
to be called thief. I like it. I am one. I’ve got your old key. I’ll
give it to you to-night when we come up to bed, not before. I meant to
all along. Then the orchard house will be yours, all yours. Go live in
it! I won’t care. There’s the gong.”

But in spite of Kate’s growth in calmness her determination remained.
“Aunt Katherine gave the key to me,” she said. “It belongs to me. Give
it back this instant.”

“If I won’t, what will you do?”

Kate considered. “If you won’t, I’ll go right out there after dinner and
climb in at a window and explore the whole house. I’ll discover your
blessed secret whatever it is and not even wait till morning. That’s
what I’ll do.”

Elsie stood looking at her. But something changed in her eyes. For a
flash, or was it only Kate’s wild imagining, a comrade looked out
through those clouded windows, making them in that instant clear as day,
and then vanished. _Now Kate knew what would have been the expression on
the face of the fairy in the wood that June day, eight years ago, if she
had not flashed back into the sunlight too quickly for her to catch it.
It would have been this sky-clear look of the golden comrade._

“Why don’t you say you’ll tell Aunt Katherine?”

Kate looked at Elsie, amazed. Such an idea had never entered her head.
Her face said so. _Again the comrade flashed._ But it vanished quicker
than before, and this time definitely. “Well, you told your wonderful
friends, ‘The boys,’ on me. You _do_ tell, you see.”

Kate had no answer to that.

Elsie whirled about and went to her bed. From under her pillow she took
the key, and returning, handed it to Kate, coolly. “Here it is,” she
said, “and this is the last time I shall ever ask a favour of you, Kate
Marshall. Please don’t use it to-night.”

Kate accepted the key. “All right,” she promised. “I won’t use it
to-night. There won’t be time, anyway, with the party and everything.”
She was not speaking to the Elsie who had asked the favour, however, but
to the vanishing comrade, invisible now, whom she had seen clear enough
in that one flash. Was that comrade within hearing, she wondered.

“Thanks,” Elsie said, as though she meant it, and in a relieved tone.
Then she straightened. “But just the same, Kate Marshall, I shall never,
never, never, never forgive you for calling me a thief, not so long as I
live, I sha’n’t.”

“You said you were proud of it,” Kate rather cruelly retorted.

Elsie suddenly threw her arm across her eyes. To Kate’s dismay she was
sobbing.

“Don’t cry, don’t cry,” she begged. “The gong rang minutes ago. Quick,
wash your eyes. For Aunt Katherine’s sake! She’s been so good to us.
Let’s go on pretending everything’s all right.”

Masterfully, but very wretched in her heart because of this bitter
weeping of which she was the cause, Kate hurried Elsie into the
bathroom, ran some cold water into the bowl, and put a wash cloth into
her hands. “Quick, wash your eyes. For Aunt Katherine’s sake!” Kate
commanded again, and Elsie obeyed.

Then Kate took her hand and hurried with her out through the twisted
passageways to the main front hall and down the stairs. Dinner had been
announced some time ago, and Aunt Katherine was waiting, standing and
impatient, in the drawing-room. But when she saw them hurrying and
hand-in-hand she smiled. When you have dressed for your first real party
in your first real party frock you may be expected to be a little late!

“How lovely you are, Aunt Katherine.” Elsie gave her tribute
spontaneously in as cool a way as though the scene upstairs had never
taken place; and Kate echoed “Lovely, Aunt Katherine.”

Miss Frazier was touched. “Thank you, my dears,” she said. “And I can
return the compliment. In fact, Madame Pearl has outdone herself!”

Miss Frazier deserved their tribute. She was both handsome and
distinguished looking, with her graying hair done high and topped with a
jewelled comb that sent out shivers of light whenever she moved, gowned
in softest lilac-coloured silk draped with black lace, and wearing a
long black lace scarf in a most regal manner. The lilac, the green, and
the crocus-yellow figures that passed into the dining-room arm-in-arm
caused the waitress Effie the most wide-eyed admiration.

“And they were as friendly, just as friendly as could be,” she told the
kitchen when she removed the service plates. “You’d think Miss Frazier
was their mother, she’s that affectionate. Why, it’s like a regular
family to-night!”

Julia, handing out hot dishes, beamed. “Perhaps everything’s coming
right, after all,” she said. “Katherine’s child will shed sunshine all
about just as Katherine did.”

Bertha, sitting at a distant table playing cards with Timothy and the
gardener, sniffed at that. “Miss Elsie is as capable of shedding
sunshine as anybody,” she said, defensively. “She’s just made of it
herself. I’m always telling you.”

“Yes, you’re always telling. But we’re never seeing,” Julia retorted.
“Touched with melancholy, she seems to me, but as nice as you please.
Only not cheerful to have about. It’s probably her poor mother’s awful
death. Her heart’s broke.”

Bertha shook her head. “I don’t think her heart’s broken. She’s as gay
as anything alone with me sometimes! And she’s the most generous child
living.”

“She does funny things, though,” Timothy offered his bit. “Carrying
groceries up to her room, buying eggs and bread and stuff and paying for
’em herself. Holt told me.”

Bertha looked at him, unbelieving. “Groceries in her room? No such
thing. Who takes care of her room, do you think? I never saw such a
thing in it. What do you mean?”

Then Timothy related how for a week past Elsie had bought foodstuffs
every time she went to the village, and refused to give them to him to
carry around to the kitchen afterward. Julia had assured him they were
never ordered by her; so of course Miss Elsie took them to her room.
Where else could she keep them?

Bertha would have nothing to do with that idea. Indeed, it was
impossible there could be any such food supply as Timothy described in
Elsie’s room, for Bertha knew every inch of that dainty apartment, and
kept it in order. Still, she had respect for Timothy, and could not
doubt his word when he insisted that Elsie actually had bought bread and
eggs, lettuce, oil, and nuts and brought them home with her in the car.
“What she does with ’em’s none of our business, that I can see,” she
volunteered. “Feeds the birds in the gardens and orchard perhaps. She’s
that unselfish! She’s probably even kinder to the birds than to human
beings.”

But every one laughed at this explanation. You don’t feed birds eggs and
oil and nuts! No, there was some mystery about it. Julia had felt
mystery in the air for a week past, and not just because of Elsie’s
queer purchases and the puzzle of what became of them, either. Mystery
was simply “in the air.” Julia “_felt_” it.

Timothy nodded his head knowingly. Timothy was Irish and very romantic.
“What can you expect?” he asked. “In a house with two young things like
that! Why, they’ve just come out of the Fairyland of their childhood,
they’re standing now on the edges of life. What can you expect but
mystery? They’re all mystery.”

“I don’t mean that kind of mystery, Timothy,” Julia protested. “I mean
regular down-and-out _mystery_. I feel it in my bones. You wait and see
if I’m not right.”

Effie had returned from the dining-room again. “Miss Frazier’s telling
them about Rome now,” she said. “She says she’ll take them both there
together sometime, if Miss Kate’s mother’ll let her go. She said
‘Katherine’ just as easy as though it didn’t hurt a bit and as though it
might be any name. Perhaps she wouldn’t mind our speaking it now. Things
are changing.”

It was true. Things were changing with Miss Frazier. She sat at the head
of her table to-night a light-hearted, spirited person. And she was more
than that. She was intensely interesting. She said she meant soon to
begin to travel, really to travel and see the world. Arabia attracted
her, and all Asia. A book by a man named Ferdinand Ossendowski had
lately stimulated her roving instincts and enthralled her imagination.
Why should she not explore a totally different civilization from the one
she had been born into! She recounted some of Ossendowski’s exploits,
adventures, and escapes, and his stories of the “King of the World.” As
she talked a panorama entirely new to her listeners unrolled before
their minds’ visions. What a place this world was, what a place to be
alive in, and what a time to be alive! How the importance of personal
affairs evaporated in the face of such contemplation! The girls were as
stirred as Miss Frazier herself apparently had been stirred; they were
lifted out of themselves. They felt that the world was a challenge, that
life was a challenge—a glorious one. For the time the party, drawing so
near now, sank into insignificance.

But Miss Frazier, looking at their eager faces, suddenly remembered. She
said, “Katherine wouldn’t let me take you to such out-of-the-way places
yet, Kate, and of course I wouldn’t want to. But when we go to Rome——”
Then she had talked about Rome and places nearer home. But in speaking
of them she touched them with a new light and interest. Kate’s dream, as
most girls’ dreams, had often been of some day going “abroad.” Such an
adventure in contemplation had always seemed the very height of
happiness to her. But now, Miss Frazier’s conversation lent travel new
glamour, for Miss Frazier was steeped in history, the history of nations
and religions and art, and her idea of travel was not simply of
adventure into lands, but into realms of imagination, and into the past.

“Would you girls like to travel with me for a summer—perhaps next
summer?” she asked.

Kate’s joy at such a prospect was too great to allow of words. She
simply glowed at Aunt Katherine. But Elsie suddenly turned away her
head. Somehow then, in that instant, the spell was broken. The dinner
table with the diners floated back to Miss Frazier’s house in Oakdale,
Massachusetts, and there they sat, consuming “cottage pudding” with
lemon sauce, dressed and ready for a party.

After dinner Miss Frazier settled down, expecting to finish “The King of
the Fairies” before the guests began to arrive, leaving the girls to
amuse themselves in their own way. Elsie wandered out on to the
star-lighted terrace, looking exactly like a dreamy fairy. Kate went
with her, not speaking, and soon leaving her, to find her way around to
the kitchen door.

The servants in their own attractive dining-room were just beginning
dinner. Kate had forgotten how many of them there would be, and was
almost overcome with embarrassment, when they all leapt to their feet
and the maids walked around her in a circle, exclaiming admiringly. “I
just wanted to show Julia the new frock Aunt Katherine gave me,” Kate
was explaining a little breathlessly. “I never seem to see you, Julia,”
she added, catching her eye at last in the group, “and I never really
thanked you for the gingerbread man and your kind inquiries about
Mother.”

“To think,” exclaimed Julia, “of my giving you a gingerbread man! Where
were my wits? Why, you’re a young lady. But your mother liked
gingerbread even after she was a young lady.”

“You’ll have a fine time at your party in that gown,” Isadora affirmed.
“You couldn’t help it. There’ll be nothing half so beautiful.”

Meanwhile Bertha beamed. In a way she felt responsible for this young
vision of splendour. Hadn’t she helped choose the dress, and hadn’t she
finally put Kate into it! She was certainly involved in the display.

Then Julia said, feelingly, “We’re all grateful to you, Miss Kate, for
bringing a party to this house again, for getting things natural. Miss
Frazier’s acting like herself now, and it’s on account of you.”

“Why, I haven’t done anything,” Kate denied.

But she liked their praise and their warmth, and she felt now entirely
in the mood for the party to begin.




                              CHAPTER XIV
                       THE STRANGER IN THE GARDEN


Soon after eight Miss Frazier stood regally in the wide hall between her
two nieces, receiving and introducing the first arrivals. They came
fluttering in at the big wide-open door—girls in shimmering, fluffy
party frocks of rainbow colours; boys, mostly in white flannels and dark
coats, but a few in tuxedos; and a thin scattering of two older
generations, these latter gray-haired grandmothers and younger
matrons—some of the mothers looking scarcely older than their own
children, in the modern manner. All was murmuring, laughter. Then the
orchestra placed back in the blue breakfast-room began tuning their
instruments. Jack Denton claimed Kate for the first dance. He danced
perfectly, much better than Kate, in fact, who had had little
experience; and all the time he kept up a stream of interesting
nonsense. Kate laughed at him and swung along more and more in harmony
with the music. How gay, how merry it all was! Elsie floated past, her
green chiffon draperies like airy wings.

“Isn’t she lovely!” Kate exclaimed in admiration that must find voice.
“Do you know I think she is the very prettiest——” She was going to say,
“the very prettiest girl I have ever seen,” but Jack interrupted, his
brown eyes smiling down at her: “No, I wouldn’t say she’s the
_prettiest_——”

No one in all her life had ever even insinuated that Kate was pretty
before, and the comparison that Jack indicated now was beyond
contemplating. It was the magic silver cap, of course. Suppose it should
blow off as they danced! How surprised Jack Denton would be!

As the evening went on Kate entertained more and more the conceit that
she was masquerading in prettiness. There was no blinking the fact that
she was tremendously popular. And it obviously was not just the easy
popularity of the girl for whom the party is given. Not a bit of it. It
was spontaneous, joyous. Perhaps she realized the reality of this
popularity all the more because she had never experienced it before. At
the two or three high-school dances in Middletown which her mother had
allowed her to attend, while not being exactly a wallflower, she had not
particularly shone. There had been many minutes of suspense when she
forced a semblance of a smile to her lips and intense interest to her
eyes while she watched the more popular girls swinging by with their
partners, while all her mind was taken up with praying that Jim Walker
or Cecil Quinn would look in from the hall and notice there was a girl
there not dancing. It is true that Jim or Cecil or some other usually
did notice sometime before the dance was half over and come to her
rescue, for Kate was a good sort and everybody liked her. At those
dances Kate never counted on the Hart boys for attention, although they
were her escorts to and from; for to them Kate was no better than a
sister. They would have been glad to see her popular, and taken natural
pride to themselves in it. But it never entered their heads to be
gallant themselves. No, the high-school dances had left Kate secure in
the conviction that she would never be a success socially and in the
philosophical determination not to care.

But to-night all that was changed. Even Elsie, perfectly beautiful as
she was, was not having the same success. She danced constantly, of
course, but often with a boy whom Kate had had to refuse.

In an intermission a dowager-like old lady beckoned to Kate from a chair
near an open door leading out on to the terrace. Kate left Jack Denton
who at the minute was fanning her with a magazine which he had picked up
from a table for the purpose, and went to the dowager.

“Bring a chair,” the bejewelled one commanded, “and talk to an old woman
for a minute.”

And when Kate had drawn up a stool that stood near and sat down close to
her she said, “You are every bit as pretty as your mother was, Katherine
Marshall. Every bit!”

Kate shook her head, laughing. “It’s just a disguise,” she affirmed,
mysteriously.

“A disguise? What do you mean, you funny child?”

“This cap I am wearing is a magic cap,” Kate informed her, touching its
star points ever so lightly with her finger tips. “But shh! don’t let
them hear. I will confess to you, though, that it makes me much, much
better looking than I really am, and more popular.”

The evening had rather gone to Kate’s head. But the dowager person liked
it. She liked it very much. She tapped Kate’s shoulder with her jewelled
lorgnette. “Well, then, shall I say,” she continued quite in Kate’s
fantastic mood, “you have your mother’s prettiness to begin with, and on
top of that the magic cap has added a good bit more. But even better
than prettiness you have her spirit. She was always the belle of every
party. And often I’ve sat right here in this very chair and watched her
gliding past with the young men. Dancers did glide then, not hop and
walk. In spite of her preoccupation she always gave me a smile as she
drifted. And I was old and ugly even then.”

“Old and ugly! Are you wearing a magic something yourself to-night,
then? Perhaps it’s your pearls that make you seem stately and lovely!”

There was blarney in this, for while the dowager was stately enough she
certainly was not lovely in any usual sense of the word.

But Kate was scarcely responsible. She hardly knew what she was saying;
she was simply effervescing with high spirits and a heady
self-satisfaction.

The dowager laughed mellowly. She was not often mellow, and certainly
she had not been mellow before this evening. She had sat perfectly still
in her chair, her hands folded, with the expression of a judge in court.
Now, however, she was a judge no longer. She had slipped into the spirit
of the party, swept in on Kate’s fantasy. Miss Frazier watching, but not
appearing to watch, from a distant divan where she conversed with two or
three mothers, saw the mellowing even at that distance and was well
pleased. “Congratulations, Kate,” she said, mentally. “Congratulations,
and thank you.”

Meanwhile the dowager was murmuring in Kate’s ear: “You are a dear! It’s
for your mother’s and your grandfather’s sake I came to-night and
persuaded my daughter to let the young people come. And now I am glad I
did.”

Kate looked up at her. “Why for their sake? Why not come, anyway?” But
as she spoke automatically, Kate felt her lips stiffening over the
words. Indignation was suddenly welling up as it had in the garden with
Jack Denton that morning. Glamour fled away, and Kate was straightening
like a warrior.

But the dowager hardly heard her question, and certainly did not notice
the straightening process. She went on, “I always said no good would
come of it. There’s something in good blood that tells—and in bad blood,
too. Not that we knew the blood was bad—although in time it showed it
was surely enough—just that we didn’t know anything about it! How Miss
Frazier dared, a person of her race and blood——”

But Kate interrupted with a strained laugh. “Blood!” she wanted to
exclaim. “You make me creep. Are you Lady Macbeth’s grandmother?” But
she uttered no sound except the laugh. This was fortunate for Kate, and
remarkable restraint. She sat with lips stiffened, watching the glamour
gliding away out of her heart, out of the party.

The dowager had paused a minute at Kate’s laugh, waiting for her to
speak. But now she continued, “Terrible risk. Everyone warned her. But
she would listen to nobody, not even to me. Now she’s trying to unmake
her bed. It’s to be hoped she sees the folly of expecting anything good
to be made out of bad blood. Environment! Pshaw! Futile!”

Kate shivered. She looked around for a way of escape from this
murmuring, croaking person whom but a minute ago she had dubbed stately
and lovely. If she should start now and dance off on the music that was
beginning again might she outdance the spectre? Might she overtake the
glamour? There was Elsie, standing alone for the minute in the open
doorway a few steps away. Kate knew now why she had outdistanced Elsie
in popularity to-night; she knew it as she watched her, hardly aware of
thinking about it at all. Elsie was too fine, too entirely lovely in the
real meaning of the word to appeal to any but those sensitive to
loveliness in its purest essence. She did not belong to the party at
all. She belonged to the starlight beyond the lamplight, to the dim
orchard—to the orchard house!

“Whom will you dance this with?” the dowager was inquiring in Kate’s
ear.

“The first person that gets here,” Kate replied, quickly. But the
dowager did not take offence. Several were in the race, but a tall,
lanky youth won, a humorous creature with a happy-go-lucky bearing. When
Kate rose to dance off with him, the dowager took her hand. She smiled
up at her in the most friendly manner. “You must come to call on me
soon,” she said. “Or I will call for you and take you for a drive and
then home for tea. That will be better, I think. How is that?”

“Thank you.” Kate managed to smile, but it was a smile her mother would
never have recognized.

“I’ll say,” her partner informed her the minute they were out of
hearing, “you’ve made a hit. Do you know who she is? Jack Denton’s
grandmother, Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith. The social autocrat of Oakdale.
Everything will come your way now.”

But Kate did not respond to this gay assurance. “What’s the matter?” her
partner asked, surprised. Responsiveness had been Kate’s greatest charm
all the evening, if she had only known it, not the cap.

“Nothing. Only I’m chilly.”

The boy whistled. “No wonder, having sat next to that old iceberg so
long. Though ’twas probably the air from the door, too. It’s lots cooler
and a storm is coming up, I think. I’d have rescued you sooner if I’d
had the nerve. She looked almost outlandishly amiable, though. What was
her line?”

Kate shivered, a pretend shiver this time, getting her gaiety back.
“Blood! Just blood, if you will believe me. Is she an ogress as well as
a social autocrat? She discussed blood in several of its phases. Bad
blood, good blood, and talking blood. Like the singing bone, I suppose.”

The boy laughed heartily. “She didn’t waste any time in mounting her
hobby, I’ll say. But she can’t worry you. Your blood’s all right. That’s
the word’s been going ’round ever since the invitations were out.
‘Fraziers, one of the best families in Massachusetts.’ She was probably
congratulating you and expecting a return of the compliment.”

Kate laughed. But in spite of her new gaiety, the corners of her mouth
had quite lost their winged tilt.

After a few more dances, supper was announced. Kate had promised Jack
Denton early in the evening that she would take supper with him. She saw
him now looking about for her. In an instant their eyes would meet and
he would hurry across to her where she stood for the minute alone. But
she suddenly realized that she was tired. She ached with too much
dancing. She would never have acknowledged this to herself, of course,
unless something had gone wrong with the evening. Hardly knowing why,
she stepped out of the door near which she was for the instant standing,
backward. That step precipitated her into a different world entirely.
The stars had disappeared behind dark, windy rain clouds. The air was
fresh, and you heard a wind and felt its edges. Kate took a deep breath.
She would stay here in the blowy dark just for a little. It wouldn’t
hurt Jack to search a minute longer.

She moved, still backward, farther away from the lighted doorway. She
brushed against a garden chair and sat down. She leaned her head against
its high back. An impulse came to take off the magic silver cap and be
herself. Whimsically she lifted it from her head and placed it on her
knee.

“Now you’re just Kate Marshall,” she spoke to herself, but aloud. “Just
ordinary, plain-as-day Kate Marshall. Dowagers can’t spoil anything for
you. They wouldn’t pay enough attention to you now to bother about
spoiling. All the magic that’s really your own, all that isn’t false
magic, she can’t touch. Nothing she could say could touch it.”

Kate sighed, having finished her little heartfelt speech to herself. She
felt relieved and freshened. She had certainly cast off the dowager’s
spell.

“That’s right. All the magic that’s your own, nobody, even a Mrs. Van
Vorst-Smith, can touch. It’s safer than the stars from troubling!”

That was a low voice speaking directly behind her. No, it was not simply
her own thoughts, although those words might very well have been in her
mind that minute, for some of them were right out of “The King of the
Fairies.” But it had been a voice, a man’s voice.

Slowly she turned her head. Directly behind her chair a man was
standing. She could not see his features at all, because the night was
so black, but she thought that he was hatless, and she knew he was in
dark clothes. The wind, not merely its edges, had come to earth now. Was
it flapping the borders of a long dark cape enveloping the vague figure?

The vague figure bent down to her. Yes, it was a dark cape, blowing away
from his shoulders on the wind. It seemed as though the being himself
leaned down out of the wind. “Give this to Elsie, please,” he said, in
quite a matter-of-fact tone now. Then the wind took him. At least Kate
could not see him any more. He had stepped back among the tall lilac
bushes that bordered the terrace at that spot.

When he was gone it was just exactly as though he had never been, except
for the folded paper that Kate found clutched in her hand. That folded
paper, however, definitely fixed him as a reality. But who could it have
been? Mr. O’Brien, the detective, crossed Kate’s mind, or one of his
assistants, that young man of the polka-dotted tie. But instantly she
laughed, though silently, at such a notion. They, neither of them, she
felt sure, would by any chance have quoted from “The King of the
Fairies” while doing business. “It’s safer than the stars from
troubling.” Had the King of the Fairies himself passed her there on the
wind? No, hardly. He wouldn’t be leaving a note for Elsie.

Anyway, whoever it might be, he had spoken in a voice whose bidding she
was ready to follow. She rose and took the few steps between the chair
and the drawing-room door. But she stepped over the sill without hurry,
with a meditative air. The man, standing a little way in among the tall
lilac bushes, said to himself; “She’s the right stuff. Not startled or
upset. Good for Kate Marshall!”

Jack Denton pounced upon her almost at once. “Where _have_ you been?” he
cried. “The salad I fought for and won for you has just been
commandeered by my grandmother. Now will you agree to stay put while I
dash into the fray in the dining-room again?”

“Yes, after a minute. First I must find Elsie. I have to see her very
specially.”

“Elsie? Haven’t laid eyes on her for some time. Give me your message and
I’ll go hunt.”

“No, but do look around for her. I will, too, and that will save time.”

Elsie was not to be found anywhere in all the rooms that were lighted
and open that evening on the first floor of the house. “She’s just not
down here at all, unless she’s somewhere in the servants’ wing,” Jack
finally reported when they met by chance at the foot of the stairs.

Kate now went to her aunt who was having salad sitting between two
dowagers, one of them Kate’s dowager. “I am looking for Elsie, Aunt
Katherine,” she said. “Have you seen her recently?”

Miss Frazier shook her head. “Not for some time. I myself have been
wondering what has become of her.” Miss Frazier’s dark eyes as she
lifted them to Kate were clouded with worried surmise.

Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith laughed. As a laugh, it sounded a trifle unsure of
itself and uneasy for a dowager person. “I had a few words with the
child myself half an hour or so ago,” she volunteered. “Strangely
enough, she took some offence at some remarks that were meant only
kindly, and flounced off. Perhaps she is sulking somewhere about it.”

“I am sorry, Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith, if my niece was rude to you.” But in
spite of the words Miss Frazier’s tone was not at all a sorry tone; it
was rather edged. She herself had just been submitted to some remarks of
Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith’s that were doubtless meant kindly, and as a
consequence her sympathy was all with Elsie. But even so, if Elsie were
sulking, she was undoing all that Miss Frazier’s efforts had built up in
her behalf. That was a pity.

“Don’t apologize for the young person you call your niece,” Mrs. Van
Vorst-Smith said, suavely. “We will lay it simply at the door of the
times. There is no respect for age, say nothing of _birth_, in this
generation.”

Miss Frazier paid slight attention to these acid remarks. She merely
said to Kate in a concerned tone, “I’d go upstairs to look for her,
Kate. Under no circumstances must the party be ruined for her by
_anybody_. Do persuade her to come back and forget any hurts she may
have received. Do your best.”

Kate flew away on the errand, her heart rejoiced that her aunt had
answered the dowager exactly as she had.

There was no light in the girls’ suite. “She can’t be here,” Kate
decided. But just to make absolutely certain she went through and,
fumbling for it, turned on the switch just inside Elsie’s door.

The first thing that caught her eye under the shaded lights that
blossomed forth so obediently at the pressure of her finger was the
fairy green frock dropped in a heap exactly in the middle of the floor,
the white sandals topping it! Elsie herself was undressed and in bed!

“Go away, go away,” she commanded, plaintively, not even looking to see
who was in the room.

Kate stood dumbfounded. Then she remembered her aunt’s clouded, kind
eyes, and the dowager’s haughty, skeptical nose. She braced herself. “I
can’t go away,” she said softly, evenly. “Not until you get up and get
dressed and come downstairs with me. How can you treat Aunt Katherine
so?”

“I won’t get dressed. I won’t go down again. I hate the party! It’s your
party, anyway. I’m not needed down there.”

Was Aunt Katherine right in the theory she had put forward at the Green
Shutter Tea Room? Was Elsie simply jealous? But Kate rejected that
thought almost before it had presented itself. In fact, she caught only
the tail of it as it switched by! She spoke reasonably.

“Yes, it’s my party so-called. But you know perfectly well that Aunt
Katherine means it even more for you. It’s so that you’ll get to be
friendly with all the girls and boys who you say hardly speak to you. My
being here was just an opportunity. Now if you vanish in the very middle
of things, how do you think that will help any of us? It will be just
unspeakable.”

“I want to be unspeakable. Go away.”

“Yes, perhaps you do. You are, anyway. But do you want Aunt Katherine to
be ashamed? Could you ever forgive yourself for treating her so? She
knows Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith has been rude to you, and she herself just
now has come very near being rude to Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith on your
account. Whatever all the fuss is about—honestly and truly I haven’t an
idea what it is about myself—Aunt Katherine is all for you, Elsie. She’s
your champion. You can’t go back on her now, right before everyone. It
doesn’t matter whether you’re having a good time, not a bit. If you’re
any good at all you’ll get dressed in a jiffy and go back down with me.
You can _pretend_ you’re having a good time.”

Kate finished. Her argument had exhausted her strangely. She found
herself trembling with the intenseness of her conviction that Aunt
Katherine must be saved from all embarrassment.

For a few minutes Elsie made no visible response to the harangue but lay
perfectly still, her eyes shut, her head turned away. Kate stood in the
middle of the room, the fairy green dress at her feet, waiting. “I’ve
done all I can,” she told herself. “Now we’ll just see whether she has
any sense at all.”

After a space of utter stillness Elsie stirred, threw back the coverlet,
and sat up. “You’re right, I suppose,” she said, sulkily. “I’m just a
pig, that’s all. I was only thinking of myself.”

She did not look at Kate but busied herself picking up her scattered
clothes. When Kate started to leave the room, however, she called her
back. “Do you mind helping me with these?” she asked almost humbly. “I
don’t want to ring for Bertha. Do you mind?”

“Of course not. Let’s hurry. Everybody’ll be wondering.”

But now when Kate’s hands were needed she was recalled to the note still
clutched in her fingers.

“Oh, I entirely forgot,” she exclaimed, dismayed. “Here is a note for
you.”

Elsie unfolded the paper. If she had looked miserable before, when she
had finished reading the few words on that paper she looked tragic. “Who
gave it to you? How did you get it?”

Kate was amazed at the way petulance had turned to sorrow.

“I don’t know who, or even exactly how,” she confessed. “I was alone for
a second on the terrace. A man appeared just out of the wind in a
blowing, long cape. He had a singing voice at first so I hardly knew
whether he was real. And he quoted ‘The King of the Fairies.’”

Elsie nodded. Nothing in Kate’s account surprised her apparently. The
girls did not speak to each other again but silently worked together
repairing the damage done to Elsie’s hair-dressing, getting her into the
fairy green dress, and finally bathing away evidences of tears. Supper
was just about over downstairs before they were ready to descend, and
dance strains sounding. Jack had not given Kate up, however, but was
faithfully waiting for her on the stairs.

He saw the girls the minute they appeared at the upper turning, and
bounded up several steps to meet them. “Where have you been hiding?” he
asked, laughingly, and without any signs of surprise whatever. “I’ve
managed to save some salad for you both and ices, too, here in the
window seat.”

It was a window seat on the stairs, halfway down the first flight. “Oh,
thanks,” Kate said, heartily. “Have you had some yourself, though?”

“Hardly likely, not until you came. Didn’t you promise to have supper
with me?” Jack looked feigned surprise and grief.

He was certainly making their return to society easier. Girls and boys
glanced up at them rather curiously as they danced past the drawing-room
door, and a few of the mothers, sitting where they had a view of the
stairs and the landing, rather stared. But since the truants could laugh
and talk with Jack, who was acting as though their absence had been in
no way extraordinary, they had no time to be self-conscious.

But suddenly Jack’s face went queer right in the middle of some
nonsense. It was half a laugh, half dismay that twisted his countenance.
Quick as thought, he pointed up to the second turn of the stairs.
“That’s a fine old clock!” he exclaimed. “Take me up and show it to me.”

Why they obeyed his command so docilely—put their plates down again on
the window seat and went back up the stairs—they hardly knew. But they
did go, like lambs. And when they had turned a corner and were out of
sight of dancers and chaperons Jack stopped, not looking at the clock at
all, and dropped his eyes to Elsie’s feet. Even Elsie laughed when she
saw what he was calling attention to. In their hurry the girls had
forgotten one item, and here was Elsie ready to appear in the
drawing-room in her pink satin, swansdown-edged boudoir slippers. They
were very dainty slippers, quite fetching in fact, but they were hardly
in harmony with the fairy green frock.

“Run back and change while Kate and I admire the clock,” Jack advised.
And Elsie ran.

When she returned the three sat on the window seat and ate their
long-delayed supper. At first Elsie said she wasn’t hungry and couldn’t
possibly eat, but Jack laughed her out of that. Soon Rose came up to
join them, carrying her ice, and stopping to take dainty tastes as she
came.

“This is the nicest situation of all,” she exclaimed, settling down
beside Elsie. “And what a view it offers. Why, it’s like being in a box
at the theatre. We saw you and Kate, by the way, at ‘The Blue Bird.’ We
thought it very grand of you to have a whole box to yourselves.”

Others followed Rose, some of them with plates of ice cream. And Kate
noticed that the ices and the ice cream were in every case in a stage of
melting. She suspected then that Jack had overheard the conversation
about the missing Elsie and had collected this little band, encouraging
them to _eat slowly_. The realization of his tact and consideration
wiped out for ever any lurking indignation toward him left over from the
morning, when he had squirmed at the idea of her calling Elsie down to
play tennis.

A few minutes later, when Miss Frazier came out into the hall with old
Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith who was leaving and seemed to require her escort,
she saw to her great surprise and relief that the very merriest part of
the party was on the stairs. There were eight or nine girls and boys
crowded about Kate and Elsie talking eagerly and interrupting themselves
with the lightest-hearted laughter. No need to worry any more now
because her girls were not on the floor dancing. This was an even better
way of getting acquainted. Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith, feeling for an instant
that she had lost the full attention of her hostess, followed her gaze
upward. Kate was looking down, and their eyes met. Then old Mrs. Van
Vorst-Smith did an amazing thing. At least, the few people who observed
it were amazed. She made the motion of “good-night” with her lips to
Kate, and _blew her a kiss_.

Both her grandchildren stared round-eyed. “I say,” Jack whispered, “you
have certainly charmed my grandmother. What did you ever do to her?”

He looked at Kate, wonderingly respectful, with frankest curiosity.

When Miss Frazier returned from seeing the old lady out of the door, she
stood for a minute within hearing of the conversation on the stairs.
They were discussing “The Blue Bird” now, but presently it changed to
“The King of the Fairies,” a book they all had read, apparently. She
smiled inwardly, well pleased. “Katherine over again,” she told herself.
But she had to admit, too, that Elsie was doing her share in keeping the
subject at a high-water-mark of intelligent conversation. “Kate is
certainly having an influence,” she reflected, “an even finer influence
than I could have hoped for.” Then she passed on into the drawing-room,
trailing her black scarf more regally than ever since she was so
honestly proud of both her nieces.

When the last guest had departed Miss Frazier took an arm of each niece
and led them toward the stairs. “It was all a great success,” she
affirmed. “And it was you girls, yourselves, who made it a success.
Kate, you were what a new girl—at least, any new girl worth her
salt—ought to be, the belle of the ball. And, Elsie, you did me more
than credit. I am, oh, so very proud of both my girls. Old maiden aunt
that I am, I felt that I had two lovely daughters. Now I advise you to
dash to bed and save all discussion of the party until morning.
Breakfast is ordered for half-past nine to-morrow, so that you may
sleep.”

“But sha’n’t we help you close up?” Elsie offered. “I heard you tell
Isadora to go to bed.”

“No, thank you, my dear. I am going to stay down here awhile, finishing
‘The King of the Fairies.’ I was almost at the last chapter when Mrs.
Van Vorst-Smith led the procession of arrivals. It is an enchanting
story, just as you said. Now, good-night.”

For all its finality the “good-night” was spoken with greatest
affection. In the last few hours Aunt Katherine had flowered into a
serenely warm human being. Both Kate and Elsie realized the change in
her, and each, for a different reason, was disturbed by it; Kate because
now less than ever she understood how her mother ever could have let
such a lovely person go out of her life; and Elsie—well, that concerns
the secret of the orchard house.




                               CHAPTER XV
                             KATE ON GUARD


Kate was waked by the flapping of her window draperies. The rain that
had held off during the evening was upon them now, a wild, windy, heavy
rain, unusual for July. Kate heard it spattering on the floor of the
balcony and pattering on the floor inside the tall windows. This last
would never do. Much as she liked the fresh wet wind, full of garden and
damp earth smells, she must close those windows or the room would be
damaged. It was pitchy dark, and Kate could be guided only by sound and
the direction from which the wind blew. Somehow she got the big door
windows closed and fastened, simply by the sense of touch, and then
turned gratefully bedward. But she did not go back to bed that night.

Elsie’s door had blown shut to only a crack, and light was coming
through that crack. That was perhaps none of Kate’s business, but
instantly she was concerned. She and Elsie had not said “good-night” to
each other, but parted in silence. And Kate had gone to sleep wondering
just how much Elsie was truly hurt by whatever it was that old Mrs. Van
Vorst-Smith had said to her, and wanting, but lacking the courage, to go
in and sit on the edge of her bed to talk it out and comfort her if she
could. If she had heard Elsie so much as turn in bed she would have
taken heart; but not a sound had come from the other room after the
light was out. In the end Kate had gone to sleep still undecided as to
what she ought to do.

Now the light drew her. Perhaps Elsie had not been to sleep at all.
Perhaps she was too unhappy to sleep. Kate had no idea what time it was,
and she did not think of the time. Her only anxiety was that Elsie might
not be angry with her for trying to comfort. On bare feet she crossed
the bathroom floor and pushed at the door.

The lamp by Elsie’s bed was burning, but she had placed her party frock
over it to dull its glow, so the room was in a queer green light. That
was what Kate noticed first. The bed was empty. But Kate found Elsie at
once, her back turned to her, and still unconscious of her presence, at
the farther end of the room bending over a suitcase which she was busy
packing. Elsie was fully dressed, even to her hat. She was wearing the
green silk of their Boston jaunt, and the same brown straw hat. It was
perfectly plain that she was running away, running away in the middle of
a black, stormy night.

Kate pushed the door all the way open. “What are you doing?” she
whispered, loudly.

Elsie turned upon her. She had been crying as she packed, and even in
the excitement of the moment Kate reflected how oddly tears and a set,
tragic face went with the jaunty costume with its brave flutter of
orange at the neck.

“You belong in bed,” Elsie whispered back. “And any one can see what I’m
doing.”

“Yes. Running away!”

“Yes, running away. And no business of yours.”

The warrior in Kate straightened. This was a clear call to arms. She
felt very old and wise. She certainly would never let that crying little
girl go away like this into the rain and dark night. She couldn’t expect
to walk out right under Kate’s nose!

“Is that what the note I brought you was about?” she asked. “Was it a
plan for this?”

“No. It was telling me _not_ to do this. But I’m going to, just the
same. He didn’t understand—he couldn’t know.”

Elsie returned to her packing. Kate moved nearer to her.

“Do you think I’m going to stand here and _let_ you run away right in
the middle of the night like this?” she asked, curiously.

Elsie did not glance up at her. She simply said, “Well, what can you do
to stop me?”

“Wake the house, of course. Call Aunt Katherine. Shout for her.”

Elsie stared at Kate in unfeigned surprise. “You’d tell on me?” she
asked in an unbelieving tone. “I thought you weren’t like that. I
thought you were decent.”

“I am decent. I don’t tell, not about little things, like the key. But
this is entirely different. I should certainly wake the whole house if
you tried to walk out with that suitcase.”

“You wouldn’t.” Elsie lifted the suitcase which was filled and closed
now, and picking up her hand-bag from where it lay on the dressing
table, took a step toward the door. But Kate reached it ahead of her.

“I’ll shout,” Kate warned.

“Kate Marshall, please, please, please don’t!”

“I certainly will.”

Elsie began to cry silently and stood with her suitcase in one hand, her
bag in the other, and her face turned from Kate, ashamed of her tears.
Kate’s heart softened, but not her determination.

“Get undressed and into bed, and promise you won’t get out again
to-night, or I shall go right to Aunt Katherine’s room now and tell
her,” Kate said firmly.

After a moment of hesitation Elsie began to pull off her clothes
furiously. In about two minutes she was in bed, her face turned toward
the wall. In silence Kate picked up the cast-off garments Elsie had
scattered, and put them away. The green suit she hung up on a hanger in
the closet and the hat she put away in the deep hat-drawer. Then the
suitcase claimed her attention. Bertha had better not find it packed and
standing by the door in the morning. Kate unlatched it and took out the
things. “The King of the Fairies” lay at the bottom of them all, with a
little New Testament. Kate put the two books on Elsie’s bedside table
under the lamp. Still Elsie did not move or speak; she might have been
asleep for any sign she made that she knew what was occupying Kate in
the room.

But Kate spoke to her: “You’ve burned a hole in your party dress,” she
said.

It was true. The heat from the electric bulb had been strong enough to
scorch the flimsy material.

“No matter,” Elsie muttered from her pillow. “I’ll never wear it again,
anyway.”

She had not taken the trouble even to look at the damage. That told
Kate, if it still needed telling, how truly desperate Elsie was.

“I’m going into my room,” Kate announced, after she had hung the ruined
party dress away. “But don’t think I’m going to bed, for I’m not. I
shall be sitting up, wide awake, and surely hear you if you get up
again.”

Elsie did not answer.

Kate did not mind that. If never before, now she certainly merited
Elsie’s wrath. Elsie had hated her before without any cause. There was a
certain comfort to Kate in knowing the cause of her present state of
mind, a certain satisfaction in no longer being scorned for nothing, but
for something. She could defend herself to herself now.

But could she defend herself adequately? Had she really any business to
have so interfered with Elsie’s plans? Had she any reason so at a leap
to have become a dyed-in-the-wool tattletale, at least to have
threatened tattletaling? Yes, she thought she could excuse herself. She
thought she was more than justified. Even so it was a hateful business.

Kate wrapped herself in her dressing gown and sat in a wicker chair by
her reading light. She did not dare lie in bed to think for fear she
would drop off to sleep. She gave herself up to pondering the situation,
but kept an ear cocked all the while for the slightest movement in the
other room.

What should she do about things in the morning? Even if Elsie had failed
to get off to-night, if Aunt Katherine were left unwarned, she would
certainly plan so as not to fail the next time. Why, to-morrow morning
itself Elsie might walk out of the house and never come back. If Elsie
had any place to go to, Kate would not be so worried. But she knew that
Elsie’s mother’s family, what there was of it, was living in Europe, and
that not one member of it had ever shown the least consciousness of
Elsie’s existence. Aunt Katherine had told her about that and marvelled
at it. So Elsie had just no one to take her in if she did run away.
There was the stranger in the garden! But he had told her not to run
away. Kate was sure Elsie had spoken truth about that note. Who _was_
the stranger in the garden? His note had turned Elsie tragic, whoever he
was.

There was no way out of it that Kate could see but telling. Elsie must
be protected against herself.

But half an hour’s more pondering brought Kate to the conclusion that
she would not tell _Aunt Katherine_. Her whole instinct was against
that. Aunt Katherine, charming as she was, and kind, was after all only
an aunt, and an aunt who had said herself that she simply could not like
Elsie. What Elsie needed was a _mother_. This was work for Katherine.
Kate had perfect confidence that if her mother could talk with Elsie
everything would come clear for everybody. Light suddenly dawned in
Kate’s puzzled mind. Katherine might take Elsie home with her. They
would all three go back to Ashland together, and there all would be made
right for Elsie. Once with Katherine’s arms around her shoulders, and
Katherine’s gentle, understanding eyes looking into hers, Elsie would
confide. Kate never doubted for an instant that her mother would be
overjoyed to take the beautiful, unhappy Elsie to her heart. Why, since
Aunt Katherine had failed so to make her happy, and since she did not
even like this foster-niece, it might become a permanent arrangement;
Elsie would live with them. She would be a sister!

All this was rather wild dreaming. Kate straightened mentally and pulled
herself back to hard facts. The facts were simply that Kate could not
bring herself to the idea of delivering Elsie up to Aunt Katherine for
judgment or help, either one. Elsie needed a mother more than she needed
anything else in the world. Katherine was a mother. Katherine must come.

And only a few hours ago Kate had felt very far away from her mother,
very independent of her! She smiled now, remembering. Well, she had
never needed her more. Sitting alone here in the sleeping house, with
rain and wind at the windows and Elsie lying hating her in the next
room, Kate _ached_ for her mother.

She decided to write her a special delivery letter. That would bring her
day after to-morrow, or day after to-day rather, for it must be getting
toward day now. For one day Kate could stand guard over Elsie. She was
glad of her decision to write as soon as she arrived at it. It seemed
automatically to relieve her from grave responsibility. Besides, the
composition of the letter would keep her awake.

  And so, mother darling, please come on the very first train.
                                                    Your desperate Kate.

It had been a long, full letter. She had told Katherine just everything
that had to do with Elsie and her strange behaviour from their very
first meeting. When Kate looked up from her signature she found the
night had passed; dawn was in the room, at least the gray light of a
rainy morning.

Kate rose, stretched her cramped limbs, and yawned prodigiously. Then
she crept to Elsie’s door. Elsie was not asleep. Their eyes met. There
were dark circles under Elsie’s eyes, and her face in the gray light was
almost paper-white. The girls stared at each other silently. Then Elsie
turned her head away on the pillow.

“How she hates me!” Kate thought, as she stole back through the
bathroom. “She’s a dreadful hater. I couldn’t hate any one that way, no
matter what they had done.”

She turned out the light that was still burning by her bed. Then she
took a cold shower bath and dressed in a fresh dress, the second chintz
curtain one. She brushed her hair vigorously.

“Some difference,” she reflected, “between the party Kate and the
morning-after one. Too bad I haven’t a magic cap for day-times!”

Perhaps she needed one especially to-day. For tired, sleepless people
are rarely pretty people; and Kate’s eyes were almost as dark-rimmed as
Elsie’s.

Her toilet completed, she stole again to Elsie’s door. Again their eyes
met.

“If I were you I’d go to sleep,” Kate whispered. Elsie’s pallor bothered
her. But Elsie did not deign to answer.

Kate, back in her room, with over four hours before breakfast stretching
away ahead of her, curled up on the foot of the bed with “The King of
the Fairies” in her hands. She opened it just anywhere, much as one
opens conversation with a friend just anywhere. It is the _presence_ you
want. And the presence of the soul in this book did not fail her now.
How it drove walls backward and pushed roofs skyward! And as for
out-of-doors, it made that boundless, lifting veils and veils of air
disclosing Fairyland or Paradise, in any case the realler than real.

Kate was withdrawing from the chintz-curtained Kate on the bed. She was
rising up out of that drowsy figure. She was floating. But the flowers
from the chintz were still decking her, only they were living flowers
now, smelling all the sweeter for the rain soaking their petals. And the
birds from the chintz were with her, too, changed to living birds,
soaring, floating, drifting with her, singing shrilly in the rain. The
mysterious, many-coloured portals of sleep were opening to her far off
beyond the last lifted veil of air.

It was nine-fifteen before she woke.




                              CHAPTER XVI
                         ONE END OF THE STRING


Breakfast was served in the little blue-and-white breakfast-room. A fire
burned there cheerfully in the grate, making it possible to leave the
doors open on to the rain-beaten terrace. The storms of the night had
subsided into a steady, hard downpour.

“What a day!” Miss Frazier exclaimed when she appeared.

Kate had come into the room just ahead of her. Moved by an impulse of
affection she went to her aunt and kissed her on the cheek. “Thank you
for that beautiful party,” she said. “It was gorgeous.”

Miss Frazier was pleased. “Thank you, my dear, for paying back so, in
being happy about it, the little that is done for you. ‘It is more
blessed to give than to receive’ may be, but the art of receiving
graciously is a rare and beautiful accomplishment. I hope Elsie’s
experience with Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith didn’t entirely keep the evening
from being ‘gorgeous’ for her, too. Where is she?”

“Dressing, I think.”

At this moment Miss Frazier was summoned to the telephone. “The same
gentleman who wouldn’t give his name yesterday,” Isadora informed her.

“Don’t wait for me, Kate. I’m not having grapefruit.”

When Aunt Katherine returned it was plain to see that she was greatly
stirred, though trying hard to be calm and matter-of-fact.

“I shall have to go to town,” she told Kate. “And I shall be gone all
day, probably until rather late to-night. In spite of the rain I think I
had better take the car.”

Then Elsie came in. She sat down languidly at the breakfast table and
leaned her cheek on her hand. Everything that Effie offered she refused.

“Aren’t you going to have any breakfast at all?” Miss Frazier asked.

“No. I thought I could eat. But when I see things I know I can’t. I
think I’ll be excused if I may.”

Miss Frazier looked at her keenly. “I am afraid you are ill. Come, let
me feel your forehead. Yes, it is hot. You have a temperature almost
certainly. And the shadows under your eyes! Is this what a party does to
you? What a pity that I must leave for Boston at once.”

She turned to the maid Effie. “Effie, tell Bertha to get Doctor Hanscom
on the telephone and ask him to come over here before office hours. Then
she is to help Elsie back to bed.”

“Bed! Oh, no. Please! Please, Aunt Katherine!”

“Why, yes. Bed isn’t so terrible as all that! You may read or knit,
until Doctor Hanscom arrives and gives other orders, anyway. Kate will
sit with you so that you won’t be lonely. Yes, indeed, you must go to
bed.”

Elsie was very much distressed at this turn of affairs. Kate saw dismay
in her face, and she easily guessed the reason. Of course, being tucked
up in bed and getting the attention and care of an invalid would make
running away to-day almost impossible. But there was no question of Miss
Frazier’s being obeyed. She expected obedience and she got it.

When Elsie had left the room Miss Frazier forced herself to take up
conversation lightly and naturally for the remainder of the meal, but
Kate did not fail to notice that her fingers shook slightly as she
lifted her toast and that her dark eyes were unusually bright. Evidently
the “gentleman who will not give his name” had had some news of
importance. Kate felt confident that that gentleman was the detective,
Mr. O’Brien.

“I finished your book last night,” Miss Frazier was saying. “I
understand your enthusiasm. It is literature and much more. The author
must have deep and even esoteric wisdom. One wonders very much who and
what he is, the author. But whoever he is, even if this book is all he
has to show, he is a great man. Has it occurred to you, Kate, how much,
how extraordinarily, like your mother, Hazel, the girl in the story, is?
It might be a direct portrait.”

Kate laughed. “Oh, have you discovered that, too? Even Mother had to
admit it—that in looks, anyway, Hazel was exactly herself when she was
that age. But I say she is still like Hazel, old as she is!”

“Thirty-six isn’t exactly aged, you know. One might very well keep some
remnants of looks even until then.” Aunt Katherine was smiling. “But it
is a strange coincidence how a person of the imagination can so echo a
person in life. I was fairly startled last night when I realized how
vivid the resemblance was.”

But though Kate heard and replied to all her aunt’s remarks during that
breakfast, her mind was most of the time on other matters, and if Miss
Frazier could have known, Kate under her calm exterior was hiding a
heart as perturbed as her own.

Kate was glad when Miss Frazier rose. She assured her that she was very
well able to amuse herself at home this rainy day, and that she would do
everything for Elsie that she could. Yes, she would see to it that she
stayed in bed! Yes, she would read to her, if Elsie felt like listening.
Yes, Aunt Katherine was not to worry. And so Miss Frazier departed, and
Kate was left virtually in charge of the house, the responsibility for
things quite hers.

Of course, Kate knew perfectly well that Elsie would not want her to sit
with her, no need even to ask about that. And Kate must hurry to send
her telegram. Beyond the portals of sleep she had decided, or possibly
it had been decided for her, that the special delivery letter would not
make things happen quickly enough. Katherine must be wired for. She was
needed to-day. Kate had waked with this determination full-blown. But
how could she risk leaving the house now to send the wire, with Elsie in
the desperate mood that was so obvious? How could Kate be sure that
Bertha would not help Elsie to run away in her absence? Bertha adored
Elsie, and Kate herself had reason to know that when Elsie pleaded it
was easier to do her wish than not. She realized, of course, that a
telegram may be given over the telephone; but her inexperience and
shyness made her doubt her ability in such a complicated procedure.
Besides, the bill would be charged to Aunt Katherine in that case.

“I shall just have to chance it,” she decided. “Elsie needn’t know I am
out of the house at all, and I can hurry.” She would run up to her room
and get her cape and hat as quietly as possible. She would have to slip
down into the kitchen then and borrow an umbrella from Julia.

But Bertha, administering to Elsie, heard the door of Kate’s closet when
a surprising little gust of wind banged it shut while Kate was inside
reaching for her hat. When Kate had fumbled for the knob and opened the
door, Bertha had come into her room. At once Kate noticed that Bertha,
too, was labouring under great excitement. Her cheeks were on fire and
she was simply quivering with suppressed emotion of some sort.

“Oh, Miss Kate,” she cried, nervously, looking at the hat in Kate’s
hand. “Are you going out?”

Well, no help for it now. Elsie had heard, of course. But Kate was much
bothered. “Yes, on an errand. I’ll be gone almost no time at all,
though.” This she spoke loudly, meaning that Elsie should not miss it.

“Oh, if you are really going into the village _could_ you do an errand
for Miss Elsie?”

Ho, ho! Was this the thin ruse Elsie meant to use, to get her out of the
way?

“Perhaps,” Kate said, noncommittally.

“That fixes everything nicely then.” Bertha took a deep breath of
relief. “I would go myself but Miss Frazier expects me to see the doctor
when he comes, in order to report to her. And then there is all my work.
Wait a minute.”

Bertha hurried back into Elsie’s room and Kate heard a low murmuring
between them. When she returned she had Elsie’s purse in her hand. “Here
is some money. Miss Elsie says to use only that that’s tied in the
handkerchief.”

So! Elsie was letting her pocketbook go. Last night, Kate remembered,
Elsie had taken it when starting toward the door. And running away she
would surely need it. Kate recalled her first motion to decline the
purse and tuck the handkerchief with the coin tied in its corner into
her own. With Elsie’s pocketbook in her possession, Elsie was just so
much the safer.

“What does she want?”

“Half a dozen eggs. A head of lettuce. Some bread.”

Kate stared. Bertha stared back at her, nervously. But Kate restrained
any exclamations and simply nodded. When Bertha realized that she was
not going to be questioned, relief like sunshine overspread her flushed
face.

“And will you be as quick as possible?” she asked.

Again Kate was pleasantly surprised. “Yes, I’ll be as quick as I can,”
she agreed. “If Elsie will promise to stay in bed until luncheon time.”

Bertha looked at her in genuine astonishment at that. “But of course.
Miss Frazier has ordered that she spend the day in bed.”

“No, she must promise me herself. You tell her.”

Elsie had heard. She called out now, “Yes, I promise. And do please
hurry, Kate.”

Kate was deeply relieved. Now she could absent herself from the house
without fear of finding Elsie flown when she returned. “And whatever you
do, Kate Marshall, and whatever they say about it, don’t let them charge
those things at the store to Aunt Katherine,” Elsie called again.

“You haven’t an umbrella,” Bertha said, bringing her Elsie’s, a gay
green silk one with an ivory handle. “It’s a wild day for July, and I’m
not at all certain Miss Frazier would like your going out like this. If
you could only have the car—but it’s gone to town with her.”

“Yes, I know. And you needn’t feel responsible. I have an errand on my
own account, you know.”

But Kate did wonder much about Elsie’s errand. “I think,” she mused,
“it’s a wild-goose chase Aunt Katherine is on in town, and those
detectives, too. Where they _might_ do some good, and find some _clues_,
is right here. Who was that man in the garden? Why all this buying of
groceries? If there is a snarl of some sort that needs unravelling, and
if Elsie has anything to do with it, the end of the string is right
here. But how do I know the snarl ought to be unravelled by
detectives—that it’s any of their business? Oh, heavens! I must run to
the telegraph office. Mother is terribly needed this very minute.”

At the Western Union Station she did not study long over the wording of
her message. Time was too precious, she felt, for even a minute’s delay,
if Katherine was to catch the noon train from Middletown.

  A mix-up here come first train nobody sick or dead Kate.

She was aware that those ten words would worry her mother unspeakably.
But how, in the limits of a telegram (Kate had never conceived of the
possibility of a telegram being over ten words in length!), was she to
persuade her mother to take the next train if she was not to be worried?
No, the only way to make absolutely sure of her coming was to frighten
her into it.

The man who took the message looked at Kate curiously. He knew perfectly
well who Kate was and wondered very much about the “mix-up.” He thought
Kate peculiarly self-contained for a young lady who found herself in a
situation that necessitated that message. If he had only known, however,
Kate’s calm exterior was entirely assumed. She was more excited,
perhaps, than she had ever been in her life before, and full of
presentiments of even greater excitement to come. Sending the wire,
though, was a great relief. In a few minutes Katherine herself, ’way off
in quiet Ashland, would be concerned in the affair. With Katherine once
“in it”, Kate was assured things must somehow turn out right.

Now for those puzzling groceries.

When she came out of Holt and Holt’s with her purchases, Jack Denton
suddenly appeared at her shoulder. He was without an umbrella, but in a
raincoat and felt hat that required none.

“May I walk along with you?” he asked.

Kate was very glad to see him. His high spirits brought relief from the
strain and confusion in her mind. Gallantly, and with the air of
courtesy that was so delightful in him, he took her bundles from her and
then her umbrella. With laughter and exchange of party remembrances they
started off together through the rain toward home.

But before they had gone half the distance Jack turned serious.

“Do you know,” he said, “at our dinner last night (Mother gave a dinner
before your dance) some of us decided to go on strike, to stand up for
our own ideas more practically against our elders. Younger generation
stuff. We all used to like Elsie tremendously, and now we are going to
treat her just exactly as though nothing had happened, if she’ll let us.
I think she will, too. She was all right last night.”

Kate turned to look up at Jack under the umbrella. The brown eyes that
returned her look had lost their easy laughter and were earnest with the
glow of a _cause_.

“Granny’s had her way long enough,” he continued. “Our mothers and
fathers never really cared a bit, you know. It’s just those more ancient
ones. They barely survived the shock. You see _their_ daughters and sons
had been playing around with him, and any one of their daughters might
have married him. Granny says her grandson (meaning me) is going to have
the protection her daughter didn’t have (meaning Mother). It’s really
just a joke. And we only humoured ’em because they were so rabid. Now
we’re sorry we were so soft. I wanted to tell you.”

“I don’t understand,” Kate said, quickly. “Not one word. Can’t you
explain better? What happened that was so awful? What was the thing that
shocked them so? And what has it to do with Elsie?”

Until this minute she had not wanted such information, when it came, to
come from outside. She had felt that to learn that way would be disloyal
of her. But now that her whole mind was turned to helping Elsie she
wanted to know all she could. She wanted to get hold of the end of the
tangle, any way, and perhaps then there would be some chance of
straightening it out. The information that Jack was apparently able to
give her would surely constitute that end; once having that in her
fingers she might unravel snarl after snarl for herself.

Jack, however, was not prepared for her questions. He whistled,
startled. “Don’t you know what the fuss has been about?” he asked.
“Don’t you know about anything? I thought you were only pretending
yesterday.”

“No, truly. Not a thing. Aunt Katherine was surprised that I didn’t
know, too. But she wouldn’t tell me. You tell me.”

“Why, it doesn’t seem fair. I thought, of course, you knew. But you did
know there was something?”

“Yes, almost the first minute I got here. Elsie acted so queerly. And
then she said she hardly knew you. And all the time there you were
living right next door. It was puzzling. Now tell me.”

“Well, if they want you to live in ignorance it’s hardly up to me to
enlighten you, is it?” Jack was very ill at ease.

“Your grandmother would have told me if I had let her. And Elsie herself
acts as though I knew. She has accused me several times. I’ve wired to
my mother to come. I am frightened about Elsie. She is in danger of
doing—oh, something that would be dreadful for Aunt Katherine, and for
herself, too. Aunt Katherine is away for the day. The more I know the
more I can help. Please tell me just everything you can.”

“I hate doing that. But if it helps you to help—— Anyway, it’s only fair
to you. You ought to know what everybody else knows. Elsie’s father,
Nick Frazier, is a thief. He stole some securities, or something, from
Miss Frazier.”

Kate did not even exclaim. She had slowed her steps for the great
revelation and was now gazing straight ahead. It took some seconds for
her to react at all to what Jack had said.

Jack paced on beside her, protecting her from the gusty rain by
dexterous manipulations of the green silk umbrella.

“That wouldn’t have been enough in itself to make them so rabid,
though,” he went on, worriedly. “You see they blame your aunt some. She
adopted him, you know—anyway, let him call her ‘aunt’—and took him into
her home and prepared him herself for Harvard. He wasn’t even in school.
He was working in some mill in spite of being just a kid, fourteen or
something like that, when she discovered him. He hadn’t any
family—didn’t even know who his family were, had been brought up in some
institution or other. Well, Miss Frazier treated him just as though he
belonged to her, gave him her name and everything. This is all an old
story in this village. Rose and I were brought up on it. Then when he
was in college Miss Frazier expected him to be asked everywhere to
holiday affairs here, and she gave parties in her house. She acted just
as though he were a Frazier really. The young people liked him, though
it seems he was something of a diamond in the rough, you know, ’spite of
Harvard and all. But the parents grumbled. That was our grandmothers,
you see. They only let it go on because your aunt was a Frazier and
could do almost anything, they being such a fine old New England family.
The parents always said no good would come of it, though. ‘Blood would
tell.’”

“Yes, yes,” Kate agreed, tremulously. “That’s what your grandmother said
last night.”

“What! Still mumbling over that? Talk about fixed ideas! When he stole
those securities—he did it while your aunt was abroad or somewhere—and
she let him go to prison for it, everybody said, ‘Now Katherine
Frazier’s learned her lesson, I guess.’ That was two years ago or more.
But then right away his wife died, and Elsie came to live here with Miss
Frazier, and Miss Frazier expected us all to treat her just as we always
had when she visited before, just as though she _were_ Miss Frazier’s
regular niece and not the daughter of a convict who doesn’t even know
his own name. That got the old folks’ goat right enough. They said
they’d tried that once on their own children. But would they let it be
perpetrated on their grandchildren? You can bet, no. And there was a
great to-do. And, well, we haven’t been exactly cordial to Elsie.”

Kate said nothing when he stopped. Jack wondered what she was thinking.
He felt very hot and ashamed. “But that’s all past now,” he said. “Elsie
isn’t to blame. Why should she suffer?”

“Now I’ll keep my mouth shut until she speaks,” he told himself.

But Kate did not break the silence until they came to the foot of the
steps leading up to Miss Frazier’s front door. Then she looked up at
Jack as she took her bundles from him. “Thanks for telling me everything
like that,” she said, gravely. “I think it’s all pretty hard on Aunt
Katherine and just simply awful for Elsie. No wonder she thought I was a
beast. Why, I called her a ‘thief’ herself, and said we were being
followed by that detective as though we were thieves. Now I understand a
lot of things! I’ve—I’ve—just _wallowed_ in _breaks_. I hope my mother
gets here to-night.”

“Do you play Mah Jong?” Jack asked quickly. “Why don’t you and Elsie
come over to play this afternoon? There’s nothing much we can do
out-of-doors.”

“Elsie’s sick in bed, so I’m afraid we can’t. Thank you for carrying the
things—and for everything.” In spite of her perturbation she flashed her
peculiar Chinese smile when Jack raised his hat. What nice manners he
had!

Jack himself, walking slowly back to his own door, was obviously deep in
thought. But in the midst of worrying over the ethics of what he had
done in going into all that unpleasant business with Kate, he suddenly
thought, “She isn’t nearly so pretty as last night. But it’s awfully
jolly when she smiles, and I guess when she isn’t being pestered with
sickening scandal and such stuff she smiles a lot.”




                              CHAPTER XVII
                         INTO THE ORCHARD HOUSE


Isadora opened the door for Kate as she came up the steps. There was a
yellow envelope in her hand.

“A telegram for you, Miss Kate. It came just a minute ago. Oh, I do hope
there’s no bad news.”

Kate caught a glimpse of Julia wavering at the farthest end of the hall
in shadow, and there was Effie just inside the drawing-room,
deliberately watching while she opened the envelope.

“I’m sure it’s not bad news,” Kate informed these anxious friends of her
mother’s as she tore open the end of the envelope. “I _expected_ a
wire.” She felt some importance in saying that, and she was glad to
clear the air, for it was charged with keenest apprehension.

Kate’s message had gone and Katherine’s reply arrived all within an
hour. Katherine had certainly not hesitated over a decision. Kate nodded
as she read and smiled.

  Am autoing to Ludlow Junction to catch back way express Oakdale
  five-five whatever situation keep cool and brave in a few hours Mother
  will be with you rejoiced you’re not sick. K.

Katherine certainly had not counted the words!

When Kate looked up, the anxious watchers had vanished, dispersed by her
smile as she read. She sat down in a chair standing against the wall.
Her arms dropped at her sides and she leaned her head against the
high-carved back of the chair, crushing a little her mother’s best hat.
For the minute she was too absorbed in her own thoughts and too
fatigued—the fatigue that is apt to come with sudden complete relief of
mind—to remember such an item as a hat.

A step on the stair made her look up. Bertha was hurrying down, rustling
in a raincoat, a scarf tied over her head.

“You’re here,” she exclaimed. “I saw you coming, from a window upstairs.
Are these the things?”

Kate nodded, and Bertha took the packages and pocketbook from the floor
where Kate had carelessly dropped them to tear open her telegram.
Bearing them carefully she went away _through the drawing-room_.

“Well, she can’t get to the kitchen that way,” Kate mused, hardly
caring. “And why the raincoat? Oh, well, What’s the use of trying to
puzzle anything out any more? Mother’s coming, Mother’s coming, Mother’s
coming!”

After a little while, yawning and half asleep, she wandered into Aunt
Katherine’s own sitting-room—a graceful, comfortable little retreat
tucked away in an isolated corner of the big house. The outstanding
feature there was an oil painting of Kate’s mother at the age of sixteen
in a blue party frock standing against dark velvet portières. It was a
painting by Hopkinson in his earlier manner, executed with finish and
most delicate feeling. The painting was one of Miss Frazier’s most
valuable possessions, and Kate had surmised, when her aunt had shown it
to her, one of the dearest. Certainly it was a painting with a spell
over it, a spell of beauty and something besides, unnamable and
illusive. Perhaps it was the spirit of youth which the artist had with
such genius caught there, that gave it its magic.

Kate unfolded an afghan that lay conveniently on the foot of the sofa
beneath the portrait, and curling herself up under it, settled down for
a nap. She felt perfectly safe in losing herself for the time because
Elsie had given her promise to stay in bed until luncheon.

But at one o’clock Bertha brought down the news that the doctor had
ordered Elsie to remain in bed all afternoon, too. She was asleep now,
and Bertha thought she would sleep for several hours. Her temperature
had gone down to normal and she was comfortable. Later, when she woke,
Bertha would take her up a light meal.

Lunching alone for Kate was a rather dreary procedure in spite of the
coziness of the breakfast-room where Miss Frazier had thoughtfully
ordered the meal served, and the merry little fire crackling on the
hearth. Kate had had a good sleep and she was now so rested in body and
mind that she could think about things with some clarity. She leaned her
elbow on the table and her chin in her hand and regarded the fire as
though it were her companion at the meal.

Elsie’s father was a thief! How would it feel to have your father a
thief and in prison and everybody knowing it? Kate had never known a
father, so she found it difficult to put herself in Elsie’s place. But
suppose it were her mother? Oh, supposing that was too painful, and
certainly it wasn’t like that for Elsie. Perhaps Elsie cared as little
for her father as she had for her mother. (Kate had never recovered from
the horrid shock of that disclosure.) She certainly never mentioned him.
But she was not allowed to mention him. What had Aunt Katherine’s letter
said on that point? “Nick’s name is not mentioned here, either by Elsie
or the servants,”—something like that. But imagine consenting to forget
your father for _any one_! No, of course Elsie had no such devotion for
her father as Kate’s for her mother. Not likely. No use to try to
compare, then. Besides, the mere notion was altogether too painful.

Let’s begin at the beginning, though. Why had Elsie bought bread and
eggs and lettuce and nuts which she surely had no use for herself; and
why had she been so urgent that Kate should buy more to-day? Surely she
didn’t expect to take such perishable things with her in her flight from
Aunt Katherine’s house! There had been no sign of eatables when Kate
unpacked the runaway’s suitcase last night. Oh! An idea! Had Elsie
planned to run away only as far as the orchard house, and was the food
supply stored there? Was that the mystery about the orchard house? Had
she discovered a secret room or something and was planning to live in it
like a hermit without any one’s knowing? Kate built up quite a plot
around that idea. It would be exciting and fascinating to live right
under your guardian’s nose while that guardian was scouring the country
for you. But in spite of the possibilities of this story-like mystery,
Kate finally let it go as an explanation. It was too far-fetched.

A better solution! Had Nick, her father, escaped from prison? Elsie was
shielding him, perhaps. Why, of course, she was hiding him in the
orchard house. Kate’s heart began to hammer. Stupid, not to have thought
of that at once, just the minute Jack told her about Elsie’s father
being a thief. All the food had been for him. The book she couldn’t
afford to buy, too! She had wanted it for him. How very simple it all
was! And they were going to escape together. They would escape into
Canada or somewhere. No, vague memories of something called “extradition
papers” came to mind. They would simply hide themselves in the crowds of
some big city. They would vanish. Oh, well, from the very first Elsie
had been a vanishing comrade. When she ran away with her father she
would vanish for good.

Now, how did the detective work into this solution of the puzzle?
Suddenly there was a snag. If Nick had escaped from prison, wouldn’t
state detectives be on his trail? Mr. O’Brien, Aunt Katherine had told
her, was a private detective. And if Nick had really escaped from prison
surely Aunt Katherine would not in any way be concerned in finding him.
That would be simply a matter for the police.

Kate turned her eyes uneasily to the open door, almost expecting to see
a plain-clothes man spying upon her from the rain out there. But there
was only the drenched garden and beyond, the orchard, wreathed in a haze
of wet weather.

One more snag: surely if Nick had escaped from prison it would have got
into the papers, and someone in Oakdale have seen it. Then Jack would
know, and he had not even hinted at such a thing.

But now for the most important consideration of all: the stranger in the
garden who had given her the note for Elsie last night? Who was he, and
where did he come in? The reasonable answer was that he was Nick
himself, Elsie’s father, the thief, the man who had stolen from his own
benefactress. But Kate did not harbour this idea for the fraction of a
second. That voice was not the voice of such a one, and such a one would
hardly be quoting from “The King of the Fairies.”

Deep down in her heart, deep beyond reason, Kate had connected that
stranger in the garden with what Elsie had said about fairies in the
orchard house. This man himself, who had given her the note, was a human
being, of course, She didn’t go so far as to think him unearthly; but he
might very well know about those fairies who “were in it somehow.” He
seemed a person who would indeed be _likely_ to know. Kate was ready to
connect that stranger with any mystery so long as it was a pleasant
mystery. With an unpleasant mystery—never. His note had told Elsie not
to run away; Elsie herself had said so. But he had known that she meant
to run away. That was apparent. Where had he come from out of the wind
last night?

What of that light she had seen in the orchard house her first night
here? Those three open windows? That closing door in the second
story—closing as though a knob had been turned?

Oh, there were just too many things to think of and to fit in. The
shortest cut to clearing up some of the mystery and giving her mother a
starting point to work from with Elsie when she should get here at five
o’clock to-night was to explore the orchard house now, right away. There
was her heart whacking at her sides again! Yes, but she must do it,
escaped convict or not. That was the first step to be taken. She had the
end of the string—Jack Denton had given her that—the orchard house came
next, made the first knot to be untangled.

“No, no dessert, thank you.” You couldn’t eat with your heart hammering
like that, could you? She walked to the door. The rain was stopping, had
almost entirely stopped. The key was upstairs, back in the drawer of her
dressing table where she had replaced it after wringing it from Elsie
yesterday. If she went for it now Elsie might hear and again weep her
into a promise to keep away from the orchard house. The key had been
only a matter of form, anyway. There were always the windows. Kate was
sure they couldn’t all be locked. She would try getting in that way
before she bothered about the key.

She glanced down at her rubber-soled canvas ties. No need for rubbers.
No need for a sweater or umbrella, either: the little showers of rain
blowing down from trees and bushes would do her chintz no harm.

She crossed the terrace, hoping neither Elsie nor Bertha was looking
from a window overhead, and walked through the orchard straight to the
orchard house. Before trying the windows, better try the door. That was
only common sense. The latch lifted under her fingers! Had the house
always stood open like this, and all that fuss about the key! She pushed
the door softly open and went in.

“Something to do with fairies,” Elsie had said. Kate remembered the
words as she crossed the threshold. And she felt surely as though it
might easily have something to do with fairies; she might have been
stepping into Fairyland itself for the eerie sensation that crossing the
threshold gave her.

She left the door open behind her, and a gusty wet wind followed her
like a companion. It filled the hall with the pungent scent of the
syringa bush by the step.

There was nothing in the hall but a little oblong table standing against
the wall at the foot of the stairs, a table with curly legs and a carved
top on which stood an empty card tray, and hung above the table was a
narrow long mirror in a gilded frame.

Kate looked into the mirror. How many, many times it had reflected her
mother’s face. How very unlike Katherine her daughter was, hair bobbed
so straight, rather slanting narrow eyes, full lips, freckles across the
nose! Kate surveyed this image with her usual slight sense of annoyance
upon meeting it in a mirror. She imagined Katherine, a Katherine of her
own age, looking over her shoulder in the glass, their two heads
together. It was the Katherine of the portrait, dark curly head, wide
misty eyes, olive cheeks ever so delicately touched with rose.

Oh! Had that face actually gleamed out there for an instant? Her mental
vision had been so clear that she could not be sure it had not, just for
a flash, taken actual form.

Well, if the Katherine of sixteen years ago had joined her now and was
going to accompany her in her exploration of the orchard house, so much
the better. Kate had always longed for a girl comrade more than for
anything else in the world. Come, let’s pretend she had one at last,
Katherine at fifteen.

First the parlour. It opened on the right. The door stuck. Kate pushed
with her knee and lifted up on the knob simultaneously. It opened
explosively. And a door up in the second story somewhere opened in
sympathy with it. Kate stood very still, listening. The jarring of the
walls was the cause, of course; but even with this explanation accepted,
it was creepy.

The little parlour was stuffy, as all closed rooms are stuffy. But
almost at once the syringa-scented air from the open front door had
remedied that; it was so much more vital than the smell of dust and
mildew. But why think of the parlour as “little,” for by any ordinary
standards it was certainly a good-sized room. Only in comparison with
Aunt Katherine’s spacious drawing-room did Kate feel it now small and
quaint.

The furniture was much as it had been left when Grandfather Frazier died
and the house was closed. But the books were gone from the low bookcases
that lined the walls. Those Aunt Katherine had sent to her niece, and
Kate had grown up in their company.

The bookcases, a Franklin stove with a worn low bench in front of it, a
big square library table between the windows, some oil paintings on the
walls (Kate guessed some of these to be Aunt Katherine’s work), a
comfortable-looking but very unfashionable chintz-covered sofa, and
several very shabby, very welcoming easy chairs with deep seats and wide
arms and curving backs—that was the parlour.

And the fifteen-year-old Katherine Frazier had gone in ahead of Kate.
She was moving about the room, poking up the fire (the fire that didn’t
exist) in the grate, throwing her school books on the sofa, reading
absorbedly curled up with her feet under her in the deepest chair by the
window, making toast at the coals in the grate while the blue teapot
kept itself warm on the stove’s top. Katherine had told Kate about this
room, how she loved it and what she did in it. Her father was there
usually in the picture, too, and often Aunt Katherine. But somehow Kate
imagined neither of them now.

What a merry, comfortable, _spirited_ room it was. Its spirit had been
created by that dark-eyed girl. And the smell of the syringa! Now Kate
knew why her mother could never get by the syringa bush at the corner of
Professor Hart’s lawn without stopping for deep breaths when the syringa
was in flower.

The dining-room was across the hall. The dining table was long and
narrow, the handicraft of Great-grandfather Frazier. It was curly maple
and mirror-like with the polishings of many years. Close at one end two
chairs were drawn up to it. Several more stood with their backs against
the wall. Did Grandfather Frazier and Katherine sit close together like
that at the end of the long table those years they lived alone? Kate
wondered. Yes, she was sure they did; for there was the Katherine of her
imagination pouring tea for her father and handing it to him with a
sweet, affectionate smile. No need for Nora to come in from the kitchen
to pass it. This father and daughter could reach each other.

The kitchen failed to hold Kate’s attention. She missed Katherine there.
The young Katherine had not liked housework. Indeed, it was still a
burden to her, however gracefully she carried the burden. Perhaps that
was why Kate could not find her in the kitchen.

If stepping across the threshold into this empty house had stirred
Kate’s imagination and made her feel the possibility of fairies hiding
somewhere in the apparent emptiness, going up the stairs stirred it even
more.

It was a steep, rather narrow, little staircase, painted black and with
the wooden treads deeply worn by generations of feet. And right in the
very middle of her ascent, on the seventh stair, to be precise, there
happened to her a thing that had sometimes happened before but never
quite so _definitely_. She thought and felt that she had done this all
before, that she had come up these stairs on exactly the errand she was
on now; she remembered herself on this identical stair, with her hand on
this identical portion of the railing. More than that she knew exactly
what was going to happen to her when she reached the top—why shouldn’t
she know when she had experienced it all before?

But even as she felt this and in fact knew it, her foot had left that
seventh stair and the memory had vanished. Now she only had a memory of
a memory, or to be exact not even that. She only remembered that she
_had_ remembered. The instant itself, the connection, was lost.

She looked into the guest-room first. It was a pretty room in spite of
the absence of curtains and bedding. The furniture was painted a creamy
yellow. Katherine had painted it a few days before her marriage. By the
window there was a dainty little writing table with pens and blotters
and even ink-bottle conveniently placed. But the ink had been long
evaporated and the pens were rusty. Above the bed there hung,
passe-partouted in white, a flower-wreathed quotation. Had Aunt
Katherine or her mother painted the flowers and illuminated the letters?
The flowers were morning-glories, very realistically done, and the
quotation from “Macbeth”: “Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of
care.”

“Morning-glories are incongruous with the words,” Kate mused, smiling.
She felt more sophisticated than the fifteen-year-old Katherine who had
admired this crude bit of art enough to hang it in the guest-room, who
perhaps was even herself its perpetrator. “Yes, morning-glories are
incongruous with the words.”

“_Are they. Why?_”

“Perhaps they aren’t,” Kate answered, aloud. She remembered her flight
that very morning toward the slowly opening many-coloured portals of
sleep. Morning-glories might very well be growing on Sleep’s walls.

But whom had she answered? Who had spoken? No one, of course. There was
no one there _to_ speak, except Kate herself.

On either side the hall there was another bedroom. Kate merely looked in
at their doors. One had been her mother’s, and it was entirely bare now,
for all the furniture had gone to the barn-house in Ashland years ago.
The other had been Grandfather Frazier’s room, and somehow Kate felt
that she did not want to pry there. It would be like getting acquainted
with him when his back was turned.

Now there remained only the “playroom” and the upstairs “study”—a long
room at the back of the house, the room where the windows had stood open
that first night of Kate’s arrival—and ever since, for all she knew.
From her very first entrance into the house Kate had been _listening_
toward this room. It was in that room she fully expected to discover
Elsie’s secret. It was really the goal of her pilgrimage through the
house. But the nearer she drew to it physically the more she drew back
mentally. She was not exactly frightened. What did not frighten Elsie
need not frighten her. It was simply uneasiness in the face of mystery.

There was the playroom between, though. Kate was grateful to pause a
minute in the playroom.

The playroom was down a step, through a little low door. Kate had to
bend her head to go through the door. It was the smallest room she had
ever been in, about the size of a goodly closet. Shelves were built in
all around the walls, leaving space only for the one little low window
that reached the floor. Before the shelves, strung on brass rings to
brass rods, hung dusty, faded calico curtains, yellow flowers on a blue
background. Kate pushed back a curtain, jangling all its rings. The
shelves held a jumble of toys, birds, beasts, carts, engines, and on the
top shelf a row of dolls, some broken almost beyond recognition as
dolls, but two or three still healthy bisque beauties smiling blandly
over her head at the opposite wall.

There were three lilliputian chairs in the room, one a black rocker
painted on the back and seat with flowers and fruit. In one corner there
was a huge box of blocks, wooden building blocks that Great-grandfather
Frazier had made for Grandfather Frazier when he was a little boy.

Kate knelt by that box, and idly began constructing a house. She had
always adored building with blocks when she was a little girl, and now
the old fascination seized her; besides, she was putting off the minute
when she would open the door of that last room.

But as she completed the second wall of the house she turned suddenly
and looked over her shoulder. Had she heard something? A rustling, like
a dress coming down the hall and pausing at the door of the playroom?
Whom did she expect to see bending down at the low door and looking in
at her where she sat on the floor building with blocks like a little
girl? Strangely, it was not the sixteen-year-old Katherine she had been
imagining as her companion whom she pictured stooping down at that door
to look in. It was Katherine’s mother, Kate’s grandmother, who had died
when Katherine was still a little girl playing with blocks. Only she
would not look like an ordinary grandmother, of course. For she had died
when she was only twenty-four. She was a young woman, very graceful,
very gentle, lovely.

Of course she wasn’t really there at the door, wondering who had come in
her baby’s stead to play in the playroom. Of course she wasn’t there
with a spray of syringa flower at her belt. It was just Kate’s vivid
imagination. She was sensible enough to know that. The rustling of her
dress had been the leaves of the drenched apple tree boughs against the
window pane tossed by a rainy breeze. And the syringa scent had followed
Kate up here and even down into the little playroom.

It was a low little room, so low that Kate could but just stand up
straight in it. And it was entirely bare except for the shelves with
their treasure trove of toys, the box of blocks, and the lilliputian
chairs. But for all that the room was alive to Kate now. It was almost
giddy with life. And it was a life that did not concern her. She was an
intruder. She became uneasy as intruders are uneasy.

But she was not driven away precipitately. She stayed long enough to
replace the blocks in their place coolly. Then, still coolly, she stood
up and went out of the playroom, closing the door softly after her.

In the hall, however, she allowed herself to hurry. The door to the last
room, the study, was ajar. Had the figure of Kate’s imagination gone on
ahead to that room—the young mother? For an instant Kate hesitated with
her fingers on the knob.

“Psha! What are you afraid of! Silly!”

Downstairs, the hall door, which she had left open, blew shut with a
bang, A fresh downpour of rain rattled on the shingles just above her
head. (There was no attic above this part of the house.) Kate’s impulse
was to run down and secure at least the staying open of the front door,
so that she might have an unimpeded exit in case of panic. The door
fastened open, she would come back and have the fun of discovering for
herself Elsie’s secret which was the mystery of the orchard house.

But Kate did not follow her impulse. Instead, she squared her shoulders,
lifted her head a little defiantly, and pushed back that last door. She
stepped in.

“Oh! Oh!” But it was not a shriek. It was just a soft “oh! oh!” of
purest astonishment. For the room was occupied; but not by the ghost of
her grandmother.




                             CHAPTER XVIII
                             THE LAST ROOM


A man was sitting leaning forward over a table with his back to the
three windows, his face toward the door. His arms were spread out on the
table, his hands clasped. He leaned there waiting for something. It was
Kate for whom he had been waiting, for he had heard every movement of
hers almost since her first light step on the porch.

Kate stood now, smiling at him across the room. Her sudden smile
following upon her amazed “Oh! Oh!” surprised him almost as much as his
being there at all surprised her. He was prepared for her being
startled, angry, accusing, anything except charmed. On the tip of his
tongue there waited a reassuring word. That was why he had not risen
when she entered; he wanted to avoid any movement that might frighten
her. But all his careful precaution was wasted. Kate was not frightened.
She was charmed, purely and simply charmed.

“Why, you are the boy,” she exclaimed, “the boy in the dragony, flowery
picture frame!”

But even as she spoke she realized that although it was the boy indeed,
it was the boy grown older. The crisp curly hair was clipped very short
and was almost entirely gray. And there were deep lines about his eyes
and nose and mouth. The light in the face had grown, too, that peculiar
light betokening gaiety of the spirit and sympathy. Yes, it was truly
the boy, only the boy _more so_, in spite of lines and gray hair.

“The dragony, flowery picture frame?” he repeated after her in the voice
of the stranger in the garden.

He had spoken. He was real. Not just another one of her fancies.

“Yes, in the top drawer of Mother’s desk. That boy. Only excuse me, I
thought I was talking to a dream. Are you real?”

The man laughed, a very jolly laugh, and nodded.

“Did Mother know you would be here? Is that why she insisted that I come
into the orchard house the first minute I could?”

He shook his head. “No, she couldn’t know I would be here.”

He stood up then. But as he moved Kate noticed that he took special care
to stand between the windows where he could not be seen by any one who
might be in the orchard.

“You have made a mistake,” he said. “I don’t think I can be the person
you think. My picture wouldn’t be in your mother’s desk.”

But Kate nodded, perfectly sure of her facts.

“Oh, yes, you are. Mother’s always had you. You’ve been our talisman for
years, both of ours. And that’s funny, for neither of us knew about the
other’s feeling until just before I came away.”

His face had reddened. “Her talisman?” he asked, incredulously.

“Just as much hers as mine. It was very funny. But it’s even funnier—of
course I don’t mean funny, I mean strange—that I’ve found you here.”

“But don’t you know who I am?” the man asked.

“Only that you’re the talisman. I don’t know your name.”

“Exactly. Your mother didn’t want you even to know his name. Well, time
justified her. It fulfilled all their prophecies. He was a nobody first
and a convict afterward. No wonder she didn’t tell you his name.”

Kate looked at him steadily, trying to take it in, to connect it up. He
went on:

“Your mother didn’t tell you his name because it is the same as hers.
She is too ashamed. I am Nick Frazier. Now you know.”

The words sounded bitter, but the man’s manner belied them. He said it
all with a friendly smile, seeming more concerned that Kate should get
things straight and not be too shocked than airing personal bitterness.
But Kate protested.

“No, no. She did you some wrong once. That is why she couldn’t talk
about you to me. But she did say that she knew it would come right
sometime. She wouldn’t talk about it. So I mustn’t. But you know it
isn’t at all as you say. She isn’t ashamed of you at all.”

After a minute’s thought she added, “If you’re that boy, and you are,
then she didn’t know anything about—about——”

“That I am a thief?”

“Yes. Jack Denton told me that this morning. Well, I’m sure she didn’t
know that. And now I remember she said she had no idea why you and Aunt
Katherine had quarrelled. She was puzzled by that in the letter asking
me to come. She didn’t even know Elsie was living here. She didn’t know
anything about you at all.”

“Listen, Kate.” Nick spoke rapidly. “Tell your mother when you go back
all that Jack Denton told you. But tell her, too, that it isn’t so
black, not quite so black as it sounds. And tell her that all the King
of the Fairies taught those two kids in the orchard I have learned since
I went to prison. For I wrote ‘The King of the Fairies.’ I wrote it in
prison, thinking everything over. Tell her I shall never again accept
another penny from any one or let any one help me. What I took from your
aunt I’m paying back to-day with the royalties on the book. Will you
remember to tell her that?”

Kate nodded. Yes, certainly she would remember. But her whole mind was
taken up with delight that he, the boy in the dragony, flowery picture
frame, was the author of their precious book. That was what mattered
most, in this minute, to her.

He saw that she was not impressed with the fact of his having been a
convict. That he was her talisman come alive, and the author of “The
King of the Fairies,” both at once, was tremendous enough to wipe out
all the rest.

“Elsie’s father wrote ‘The King of the Fairies,’ that book! And she
never told me!”

Kate sat on the edge of the table and bombarded him with questions. He
answered them all. There were places that had puzzled even her mother in
the book. He clarified them for Kate now. “My new book is _clearer_,” he
said. “I am learning better how to say what I want to say.”

“Your new book! There is another!”

“Yes, it will be published this fall.” He told her about that. She was
enthralled. She clasped her hands and listened, the corners of her mouth
tilting up like wings.

Then it was her turn to talk. Nick was the sort of person who draws you
out. In all her life Kate had never experienced such sympathy in a human
being. That was Nick’s rare gift. She told him the story of her life,
quite literally, at least, from the year she was seven, beginning with
the day of her sharpest memory when she and her mother saw the fairy by
the spring. It was very much on her mind now because of that experience
at Madame Pearl’s and she told it all to Nick in detail. “How can it be
explained?” she asked. “How could Elsie be just exactly that fairy?”

“That’s a hard question,” he agreed. “But if there’s anything in what
these fourth dimensional experts are saying—then it might be explained
reasonably enough, even mathematically. You know they say time _is_ the
fourth dimension. Well, in that instant in the woods, they might say,
you got somehow into a four-dimension world.”

But Kate did not understand. Nick came from his station between the
windows and sat on the edge of the table beside her, forgetting the
hypothetical somebody in the orchard, and went into the subject more
deeply. Kate followed his reasoning for a time, almost as though she
were beginning to grasp something of the meaning of it all, when, bang!
She slipped back to her first position of ignorance. She didn’t
understand a bit.

Nick laughed. “It’s exactly the same with me,” he confessed. “I get a
little farther than you do now in grasping it perhaps, and then ‘bang!’
just as you say, I lose the steps by which I got there. However, we can
know that science itself is working toward some such explanation for
that fairy by the spring of yours and its like.”

“And so you don’t believe in fairies at all? I was really only looking
into the future, at Elsie as she would be years away, in that mirror of
Madame Pearl’s?”

“Nonsense. Just because we have reason to believe that what you saw
wasn’t a fairy—since it was Elsie and couldn’t be—proves no case against
the existence of fairies. Does it? Yes, I believe in fairies right
enough, but that’s a matter of faith with me rather than reasonable
conviction.”

It was all very fascinating. Nick led Kate’s mind a race, and she felt
as though she were “expanding.” She called it “expanding” when telling
her mother of it later. Why, Nick did to you exactly what his book did,
pushed roofs skyward and walls horizon-ward. And all the while he was so
jolly. He laughed and made you laugh often, laughter with a special
quality of joy in it.

But suddenly, right in the midst of everything, he looked at his watch.
“Do you know, it’s after five,” he said, “and I——”

Kate interrupted what he was about to say. “After five! Why, Mother may
be here already! I forgot about time! How could I!”

“Your mother? Here!”

“Yes, I telegraphed her to come.”

Kate had quite forgotten her anxieties about Elsie, and how much she had
imagined her in need of Katherine’s sympathy and help. Now everything
came back with a rush. “I must run.”

But Nick caught at her hand before she could run. “Kate!” he said,
excitedly. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Then he became calm, but still held
Kate back by the hand. He spoke very earnestly.

“Bring her out here. Your aunt isn’t at home. No one need know. I must
see her. Will you bring her? Tell her it may be our very last chance to
meet ever. Tell her that and _make_ her come.”

Kate looked into the face so suddenly become passionately earnest and
said in surprise, “But of course she will want to come.”

But as she sped through the orchard it occurred to her that she had
solved nothing, got nowhere, or almost nowhere, in the mystery. What was
Nick doing in the orchard house? Was he a fugitive from the law?
Somehow, though she had begun to wonder again, she was not a bit
bothered. Nick was Nick. Who wanted more?

Katherine had arrived in a taxi from the station a few minutes earlier
and presented herself anxiously at Miss Frazier’s door. She had no
trepidations about meeting her aunt now, no thought of their standing
quarrel. Her whole mind was taken up with her daughter. To say that she
was worried would be to describe her state of mind weakly. She was very
nearly frantic. She had read and reread Kate’s telegram on an average of
once every five minutes since its arrival, and in spite of all this
study was no nearer guessing at the nature of the “mix-up” than she had
been after the first reading.

Isadora was not one of the servants who had known and loved Katherine,
and so it is not surprising that when she opened the door and saw her
standing there with her suitcase she took her for an agent. Katherine
did not enlighten Isadora as to her identity, for she wanted to see Kate
first of all, and for the present Kate only. She made this very plain,
and then walked past Isadora and into the drawing-room with such an air
that in spite of the old black velvet tam and general lack of style in
the caller’s clothes, Isadora accorded her all due respect and went in
search of Kate.

But Kate was not to be found in the house. Would the caller wait? Yes?
Very well. Isadora withdrew with several curious backward glances.

As soon as Isadora was out of the way Katherine went through the French
doors on to the terrace. She paced back and forth, looking toward the
orchard house. Was Kate there? Had she forgotten the time? The maid
Isadora had appeared calm and collected enough. There certainly was a
sense of peace in the house. The “mix-up” perhaps was not such a
desperate one, after all. Katherine couldn’t wait here, though, doing
nothing—not after all those hours of waiting on the train. She walked
across the terrace and down into the garden toward the orchard house.
She met Kate just at the edge of the trees.

Kate returned her mother’s embrace and kiss almost absently. Then
Katherine held her off and looked at her. “You look all right,” she
said, breathlessly. “Kate, tell me nothing dreadful has happened. Tell
me you _are_ all right. Quick!”

“Yes, yes. Oh, Mother, don’t look like that! I am perfectly all right.
It’s about _Elsie_. But even that’s all right now. Mother, her father is
here. Nick is in the orchard house. He wants to see you. He says it may
be the last time you ever see each other. He wants you to come right
now.”

But if Kate’s words reassured Katherine about Kate’s safety, they flung
her into a new anxiety. “Nick? The last time? Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Only come.” Kate pulled at her mother’s hand.

Nick had come down the stairs and was waiting in the hall. When
Katherine followed Kate dazedly in, and she and Nick stood facing each
other, he exclaimed involuntarily; to him it was as though the girl of
eighteen he had known years ago had come back. In the black velvet tam,
raindrops sparkling in her hair that waved so softly at her ears and
brow, raindrops drenching her eyelashes, her face vivid with emotion,
her hands outstretched to him—why, she was as young and fresh as Kate
herself, more beautiful even than he had remembered her.

“I must talk with you.” He was very intense and at the same time shy.

“Yes, of course. Of course we must talk.” Katherine’s tone implied, “Why
not? Why shouldn’t we?”

“In the parlour, then. I’ll put up a window. No, I can’t do that.
Someone in the house might see.”

“But why shouldn’t someone see? I don’t understand.”

“There’s air enough from the door now. Smell the syringa!”

Katherine was standing in the window, her back to them. Kate knew it was
to hide strange tears. “The smell of the syringa did that,” she thought,
with her quick understanding where her mother was concerned. “Smells are
funny that way.”

Nick spoke to Kate then, with gentle imperativeness.

“Elsie will be coming out here in a minute. Yes, we are running away, if
you like. Go to her and tell her to wait. Tell her we will go surely
to-night, but she is to wait until your mother comes in. You keep her,
Kate—stay with her—_until your mother comes in_.”

“I don’t think I could. She will be furious with me. She wouldn’t do
what I said.”

“I’ll write her a note. She will understand that I want it.”

He pulled an envelope from his pocket and scrawled a sentence, holding
the paper against the wall. Katherine had taken off her coat and was now
sitting in the deep chair in the window. Her tears had vanished, if
there really had been tears, and her eyes were clear as happiness
itself.

But Kate was anxious as she hurried with the note to Elsie. If Elsie had
hated her before for interfering now she would hate her all the more.

She was sitting on the window seat in her room, dressed in the green
silk suit and brown straw hat, a bright green raincoat thrown over a
chair back near, and the suitcase of last night at her feet. Had she
seen Kate come from the orchard house and return there with her mother?
It was obvious that she had, for the face she turned to Kate was wild
and strained.

“What have you been doing now?” she asked as Kate came into the room.
“Who was that girl you took into the orchard house?”

“That wasn’t a girl. It was my mother.”

“Your mother! Why?”

“Your father wanted to talk to her. He sent you this.”

Elsie took the note and her face lost some of its wildness as she read.
When she looked up she was puzzled but almost serene.

“It’s all right. We’re going away just the same,” she said. “Nothing can
stop us now. I’m only to wait until your mother comes in.”

Kate nodded. If it was her father Elsie was running away with, she,
Kate, had no more responsibility. She didn’t see how it was fair to Aunt
Katherine or in any way right for them to do it that way, but she had no
doubt that somehow it could be explained. Once understood, there would
be no question of its rightness. So she put all that aside.

She said, “Oh, Elsie, why didn’t you tell me your father wrote ‘The King
of the Fairies’? Your very own father!”

“So you know now? He told you? Well, now you know, then, that I didn’t
lie. There _was_ something of fairy in the orchard house; Father had
finished his new book there. It’s all fairies.”

“And you are going away now, for good? Before Aunt Katherine comes
back?”

“If you will let me.” Needless to say this was spoken sarcastically.

“But of course. Now that I’ve seen your father! No harm can come to you
now, not when you’ve got our talisman, alive, real, to look after you.”

Elsie looked at Kate, puzzled. “What do you mean? Your talisman? You do
say the queerest things!”

Then Kate told her about the boy in the silvery, dragony, flowery
picture frame. When she had finished, it was a new Elsie that faced her.

“And your mother, too, felt like that?”

“Yes, Mother, too. Why not?”

“Why—because——”




                              CHAPTER XIX
                             ELSIE CONFIDES


The girls stayed there, sitting on the window seat, for over an hour,
watching for Katherine to come from the orchard. It was showering again,
sheets of rain silvering the gardens and drawing curtains of silver
magic about the orchard, swirling them all about the orchard’s borders.
There was plenty of time for the story which Elsie told haphazardly and
in broken sentences, led on by Kate’s interest, and her assurances that
now she had seen Nick she would never try to interfere with any of their
plans again. Kate’s story of the dragony, flowery picture frame had
knocked all Elsie’s guards flat, too. Her story, straightened out, was
this:

Elsie’s earliest memory was of her father. She had fallen down the house
steps and bumped her head. Nick, her father, had appeared as by magic to
kiss the hurt away and run back into the house with her in his arms. She
remembered him bending over her, washing the bruise with cold water;
then came the smell of witch-hazel. And though this was her first
conscious memory, still the very memory itself held in it the
inevitableness of this comfort from her father; so she was used to his
ministrations.

The next memory was convalescence after measles when she was four. She
was sitting up in a chair in a window over the street, wrapped in an
eiderdown. Her father was reading to her from “The Psalms of David.” The
words sang a beautiful song to her, especially when he came to “The Lord
is my Shepherd.” And it was very comforting to have her father sitting
there so quietly, near her, as though he meant to stay a long time.

“But your mother?” Kate asked her. “Didn’t she read to you after
measles, too? Don’t you remember her?”

Yes, Elsie remembered her mother, though she thought it was a later
memory, and it was never a memory of _mothering_. Gloria had hummed in
and out of the house like a humming-bird. Later, when Elsie saw a
humming-bird for the first time, she felt as she watched it exactly as
she had always felt watching her mother; and the pains that she took not
to startle the little spirit away were exactly the pains she had always
taken not to startle her mother away, when by chance she hummed near.
Gloria looked like a humming-bird, as well as acted like one.
Humming-birds fascinated Elsie, and her mother had always entranced her
with the same fascination, no more.

But sometimes the humming-bird scolded at her father, pecked at him,
hummed all about him pecking. Then Elsie would run away, not fascinated
any more. The scolding was always about money. Gloria needed money just
as a humming-bird needs honey, and often there wasn’t enough.

They lived in New York near Washington Square. Elsie was cared for by
nurses—such a fast-marching procession of nurses in the same chic blue
uniforms, provided by the humming-bird, that Elsie remembered them as
“nurse,” not as individuals. Her father was the constant human factor in
her life, the one person to be counted on. Gloria was merely a dash of
colour beyond the nursery door somewhere, a shrill sweet voice at the
piano, a swish of silk on the stairs.

At eight, Elsie was sent to boarding school. But the school was in New
York, and so her father still saw her almost every day, and on Saturdays
he gave her and sometimes her friends “treats.” He took them to the
theatre or picture galleries, or for beautiful walks in Central Park.
Her mother never came to the school, but had her home once a month on
Sundays for dinner. This was a grief to Elsie, not because she felt any
need of her mother but simply because she would have been proud to show
her schoolmates what a magnificent and fashionable mother she had; also
she was humiliated by their curious questionings and pretended doubts as
to whether she had a real mother at all. But Elsie was sure that her
father was better than twenty mothers. She wouldn’t take a mother as a
gift except for show purposes.

Kate writhed at Elsie’s harshness. “Oh, you don’t know, Elsie! Don’t
talk so! How can you? It is terrible.”

“That’s what Ermina said when I talked to her about my mother. Ermina
was my best friend, but she didn’t stay out her first year at school.
Her mother died, and she went home for the funeral and never came back.
I knew that she loved her mother just as much as I loved my father. I
hid away in my room when they told me her mother had died. I pretended I
was sick. It was awful. But when I heard her go downstairs, at the very
last minute while they were saying ‘good-bye’ to her at the door, I
rushed down in my nightgown. I kissed her and hugged her and we cried
terribly. Miss Putnam, the principal of the school, never forgave me for
having made Ermina cry when she had been brave and not cried at all
before, and for having disgraced the school by standing in the door in
my nightgown. But I have been glad ever since. I had to say ‘good-bye’
and that I was sorry. And I don’t think crying out loud was any worse
than the crying _inside_ that Ermina must have been doing. Do you?”

Kate agreed with Elsie. She, too, was glad Elsie had gone to her friend
in her sorrow, even if she had waited till the last minute for the
courage.

Vacations had been spent either at camps or at Aunt Katherine’s. When
they were spent at Aunt Katherine’s, her father was usually with her,
having a vacation, too. And those were beautiful times.

Then, when she was twelve, came the terrible time. Nick had done badly
in business. He confided this to Elsie because Gloria only wanted happy
confidences, and besides, she was abroad, travelling with a party of
friends. There was enough to pay his debts and leave him clear to start
fresh, avoiding bankruptcy. But the debts paid, and his checking account
reduced to zero, money must come from somewhere to go on with until
business picked up. He knew a way in which two thousand dollars, if he
only had it, could overnight be turned into ten thousand. He told Elsie
about it, walking in Central Park, and said if he had only waited a
little to pay his debts, and not acted so hastily in his fear of
bankruptcy, everything would have been made right now. Aunt Katherine
would loan him the two thousand, he felt sure, if he could only explain
the nature of the speculation to her. But she was travelling somewhere
in England, and there would never be time to get into touch with her.
But he had the key to her safety vault in her Boston bank. He suddenly
told Elsie that he was going to Boston and would not see her again until
Sunday. She understood that he was going to borrow, on his own account,
two thousand dollars from Aunt Katherine overnight, trusting to her
unfailing generosity.

Nick wrote Aunt Katherine all about it on the train as he went. From the
vault he took two thousand dollars’ worth of securities which could
easily be replaced.

Aunt Katherine sailed for home before Nick’s troubled letter reached her
in England, and the second letter, telling how the two thousand instead
of blossoming into ten thousand had disappeared altogether, was never
sent, because just as Nick was going out of his door to post it, the
cablegram came announcing Gloria’s tragic death. That put all thoughts
of the letter out of his mind, and when he did remember it he thought he
had posted it as he meant to. It was found in the apartment months later
by the people who sublet the place furnished, and simply dropped into a
post box by them and sent to its address in England. It did not reach
Miss Frazier until six months later.

Miss Frazier on her arrival in Boston, and after a visit to her bank,
reported the missing securities to the police. Nick’s immediate
apprehension followed. Miss Frazier was on a train bound for California
when that most amazing bit of news reached her by telegram. She was
shocked almost beyond reason, and so horrified that it was impossible
for her to find any justification for her adopted nephew. She offered
him no help and had no words for him that were not bitter ones, but she
did write to offer his “innocent child” a home with her on the condition
that she should not speak her father’s name for the term of his
imprisonment, or correspond with him while she was in her care. That
letter ended, “If I had been one half as level-headed as my niece
Katherine or Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith about you, Nicholas, I should have
protected you against such temptation, and we might have all been spared
this catastrophe.”

In Elsie’s parting from her father he had shown her this letter. (Now
Kate knew why Elsie had grown cold always at mention of Katherine!) He
had begged her to accept her aunt’s conditions. Indeed there was nothing
else she could do, for her mother’s relations were now more estranged
from them than ever. They had not written one word, even bitter ones.

“Oh, Elsie! That must have been dreadful, not being allowed even to
speak of your father, to act as though he were dead!”

Elsie looked at her, her eyes black with remembered grief. “It was. I
was so lonely for him, Kate, I expected to _die_.”

In time Nick’s two letters about the “overnight loan,” forwarded and
reforwarded, had arrived in Oakdale. Then Aunt Katherine began to
understand a little how his deed had not been so pitchy black as it had
seemed in the first shock. He had done what she had always wanted him to
do, counted on her understanding and generosity. It had been a
crime—even Nick had accepted that judgment from the very first—and an
utterly foolish and desperate deed, but now Aunt Katherine was sorry she
had not lifted a hand to keep him from paying the penalty of
imprisonment. She looked about to see what could be done, and ultimately
was able to set wheels in motion that brought about his release at the
end of two years instead of three. But she had not told Elsie. She had
not been able to bring herself to speak of Elsie’s father to her at all.

Nick wrote Miss Frazier asking her to meet him at a certain spot on the
Common in Boston the day he was to be released. He wanted to discuss
Elsie and what they were to do about her. He knew that his appearance in
Oakdale would cause Miss Frazier painful embarrassment. He meant to
avoid that for her. But when he had waited for hours at the place he had
designated and she had not come, he had grown desperate. He was obsessed
with a fear that Elsie might be sick. Why, she might be dead, almost,
for all he knew. He had not had one word from her in two years. He
boarded a train, not stopping to leave his suitcase at a hotel or check
it in the South Station, and started for Oakdale.

Elsie was just coming down the steps of Aunt Katherine’s house as her
father got out of the taxi he had hired to avoid being seen in Oakdale
and to gain speed to his destination. Aunt Katherine was away and most
of the servants, for it was Thursday afternoon—a week ago last Thursday.
Father and daughter had longed to be alone, unobserved by any curious
eyes. The orchard house occurred to them as the best place to talk. They
went around the house and managed to reach it, unseen, through the
gardens. They had climbed in at a window at the back. Elsie was beside
herself with happiness, and Nick was like a boy in his joy and relief
about her.

He told Elsie that the first year in prison he had written “The King of
the Fairies.”

“There was so much in it that he had told me about the ‘other side of
things’ and the _more_ life that even stones have that we don’t see,
that when the book was published and I looked into it at the bookshop I
knew right away it must be Father’s. He had always wanted to write. At
the very first sentence I knew. It was like a letter from him. I read it
and read it and read it. Do you wonder I didn’t want you to snatch it
for yourself that very first morning, Kate?”

The second book was almost finished when Nick came out of prison. Only a
chapter remained. The publishers had promised an advance on the
royalties as soon as the manuscript was sent them. The first book had
already made over two thousand dollars. So the two decided, between
them, that Nick should live in the orchard house for a week, long enough
to finish the book, send it to the publishers and get their check. Then
he would leave the two thousand dollars, the earnings from the first
book, for Aunt Katherine. That was exactly what he had taken from her
vault. With the new check of five hundred dollars, he and Elsie would go
away together. He could write in the orchard house undisturbed, and
without any one’s knowing he was there. Elsie could bring him some food
now and then. But they would not run away together until he could leave
the two thousand that really belonged to Aunt Katherine behind them.

Kate interrupted there. “But how can you! How can you treat Aunt
Katherine so?”

“It’s this way. I’ve made Father see that she doesn’t like me. She is
awfully kind, but that’s not liking. If I vanish, it will be just a
relief to her. But she wouldn’t let me go, probably, if I told her. She
would argue and try to keep me because it was her duty. Even Father sees
that. Well, the new check has come. That was my special delivery
yesterday. Father wrote Aunt Katherine a long letter and put the two
thousand dollars in checks from his publishers into it. I’ve pinned the
letter to her pincushion for her to read when she gets back to-night.
Father hopes you’ll stay on here and your mother come back, too, and
everything be set right at last. We don’t belong in the Frazier family
at all, you know. We are sort of vagabonds, different, Father and I.
Father thinks the quarrel between Aunt Katherine and your mother was in
some way because of him. When we vanish, it will come right.”

“Oh, but it won’t, and it wasn’t, and you aren’t. Imagine you a
vagabond!” Kate exclaimed.

“That’s the beautiful clothes Aunt Katherine gives me. They make me look
just like anybody. But really underneath I belong in a tent or something
like that. Anyway, I’d rather tramp the country with my father than live
in a palace with any one else!”

Kate leaned toward her, taking her hand, not timidly now but with
assurance. “So would I,” she agreed, heartily. “So would any one, he’s
so splendid and wonderful. And we are friends now, you and I, aren’t we?
Will you write to me when you have gone?”

Tears brimmed Elsie’s eyes. “Really? Do you want me to write? Of course
I will. Let’s be best friends, chums. Even when I’m in California!”

Kate was embarrassed by the tears, but she was enraptured, too. She was
tingling with happiness, for she was face to face with the vanishing
comrade at last.

“Why didn’t we feel this way sooner?” she asked with reason.

“That was my fault. I’m sorry now.”

The girls had almost forgotten why they were watching the rain-curtained
orchard. But they were recalled sharply to the affairs of the minute by
Effie’s voice in the hall not far from their door. She was calling down
a stairway to Isadora.

“Tell Julia Miss Frazier’s just come in and will be here for dinner,
after all.”

The girls started. Elsie sprang to her feet. Kate still had her hand.
“Don’t worry,” she said, quickly. “I will help you to get out without
her seeing. You can go later to-night.”

“But Father’s note! Pinned to her pincushion! She will read it now! Oh,
why did she come back!”

“I’ll go to her room and try to get the note before she notices it,”
Kate offered. “You just wait here. I’ll do my best.”

“It’s on top of the tall bureau against the wall between the windows.
Oh, do you suppose you _can_, Kate?”

As Kate hurried through the passageways toward Miss Frazier’s bedroom
she wondered whether she really could. What excuse should she give for
disturbing Aunt Katherine while she was dressing?

There was no time to think that out. Aunt Katherine called “Come,”
almost before Kate’s knuckles tapped the door.




                               CHAPTER XX
                         A FAREWELL IN THE DARK


Miss Frazier was sitting before her dressing table attired in a blue
silk dressing-robe.

“Nothing the matter, Kate?” she asked, the minute that she realized it
was Kate and not one of the servants who had entered. “Bertha tells me
Elsie is better. I am glad I was able to get back for dinner, after all.
Both you and Elsie have been on my mind. Was it a dull day?”

“No, not dull a bit.” If Aunt Katherine only knew how very far from
dull!

Aunt Katherine put down the comb with which she had been “fluffing” her
hair. She looked at Kate questioningly. Why was her niece here, and
looking so discomfited, at the dressing hour?

Kate had already spied the note, across the room, pinned to the
pincushion on the bureau’s top. To the corner of her eye it appeared as
big as a flag! How had Miss Frazier ever avoided seeing it? It fairly
shrieked in the room.

“Well?” Her aunt was expecting something of her. She must say something
to make her presence reasonable. But what excuse could she ever make to
go ’way across the big room to that bureau? In this plight Kate blurted
out the news that her mother was there.

“Your mother!”

Aunt Katherine seemed frozen for an instant in her surprise.

“Not exactly here, but she will be in a few minutes, I think,” Kate
stumbled on. “I wired for her to come.”

“Why, Kate! Has anything gone wrong to-day? Elsie——”

“No, nothing. Oh, I can’t tell you now. Will you wait a little while,
until she’s here? I can’t explain anything yet.”

“What time is she arriving?”

Kate put her hand into her pocket and pulled out the yellow telegram.
“Here, this tells,” she said, vaguely. Now, oh, now while Aunt Katherine
was studying out that long message was the time to rescue Elsie’s
letter. Kate made a move toward the bureau. But Miss Frazier moved with
her! Her lorgnette lay beside the pincushion! Was there ever such luck!

She picked it up, and read, moving the glass along the paper.

She passed over the ambiguity to her of most of the message and fastened
her attention upon the time of arrival stated there. “Five-five!” she
exclaimed. “The train must be over an hour late. More than that. It’s
half-past six now. Ring the bell, please, Kate, and tell Isadora to send
Timothy to the station. He knows your mother and will bring her up here
in the car when the train does get in. That back-way train is seldom on
schedule, but this is unusually late. Tell Isadora to have an extra
place laid, too.”

Kate went over to the door and rang the servants’ bell there. Bertha,
not Isadora, answered. Kate stepped out into the hall and whispered
quickly, “Tell Effie to set another place. My mother will be here for
dinner.” The directions for Timothy were, of course, not given. Then
Kate went back to her aunt, with how beating a heart!

Aunt Katherine was standing with her face turned away, reading Nick’s
letter. Kate never thought of fleeing. She stayed stock still, waiting
for the storm, and deciding that even now Aunt Katherine need not know
that Elsie had not yet gone. Kate expected something quite scenic from
her aunt’s temper. Katherine had warned her that it was rare but
devastating.

After ages and æons, to Kate’s tense mind, Aunt Katherine folded the
letter, check and all. Then their eyes met. The one thing that the
expression in her aunt’s eyes told Kate was that she was surprised,
though _glad_, to find her still there. She stretched both her hands to
her.

“Kate, Kate,” she said with a rising inflection of happiness in her
voice. “I’ve been all wrong, wrong about Elsie’s father, but even more
wrong about Elsie! She has proved that by running away with her father.
The blessed darling! The poor lamb!”

Kate felt that she was on a merry-go-round of surprises. “You are glad
she has run away?”

“How can I be anything but rejoiced!”

Kate turned a little cold at that. “And you won’t try to stop them?” she
asked.

“No, no need. Nick says he will give me their address as soon as they
have one. Then I shall go to them, wherever it is. I will bring them
back. Kate, she must _adore_ her father! And all the while, just because
she kept the agreement not to speak of him, I thought her indifferent to
his sufferings, and unnatural. Why, from this, she must have suffered
more than he.” Miss Frazier tapped the folded letter with her lorgnette.
“He says that when he looked in at your party and saw Elsie so
beautifully gowned, and having such a good time, his heart failed him;
he decided that he must not take her away from all this. But Elsie
herself made him see that she would never be happy anywhere but with him
no matter how poor they were. It was Elsie who insisted on this
harebrained scheme of running away! Elsie, who I thought hadn’t a grain
of spirit or affection! Why, I’m just turned topsy-turvy by it all!
Bless that poor child! And Nick wrote ‘The King of the Fairies.’ I ought
to have guessed that instantly. Bless him, I say, too, the poor, abused,
misguided poet. Do you remember St. Francis? You know he, too——”

But Miss Frazier broke off in her song of praise.

“You poor child, you,” she cried, meaning Kate. “This must all be a
mystery. We’ll wait till your mother is here. Then we can talk it all
over.” She hugged Kate as she spoke, much as though she herself were a
young girl in the most exuberant of spirits.

“I shall wear my black lace,” she said, pushing Kate laughingly away
from her. “We must be gorgeous for your mother. Hurry into your pink
organdie. Why, she may be at the door this minute.”

Thus freed, Kate flew to Elsie. Elsie was waiting, almost ill with
anxiety. “Did you manage it?” she asked.

“No. And she has read the letter. But she is _glad_, Elsie. There’s just
to be no trouble about your getting away with your father at all.”

“Didn’t I tell you!” Elsie exclaimed. “It’s just as I knew. She is glad
to be rid of me.”

“We must plan quickly, though. How will you get out? It’s so dark now
you can’t see the orchard well at all. Let’s plan.”

Bertha was there, flushed and nervous. That morning Elsie had found it
necessary to confide the secret of her father’s being in the orchard
house to Bertha, if he was to have any breakfast or lunch that day at
all. They had let the food supply get very low, she and her father,
because, until he had looked in at the party, they had expected to fly
last night. Bertha was horrified at finding herself part of the
intrigue, but there was no help for it since Elsie could always “Wind
her around her little finger.” Now, the almost distracted maid promised
to stand by Elsie until the end. It would be the end for her as well as
Elsie, for she would certainly lose her place to-morrow, and her
character with it. For if Miss Frazier did not become aware for herself
that Bertha had taken food to Nick in the orchard house this morning,
and protected Elsie from the betrayal of her plans, Bertha meant to
confess these things to her.

The three in conclave now decided that Elsie should go, after Kate and
Miss Frazier were in the drawing-room, to the window seat on the stair
landing. There she could conceal herself behind the curtains with her
suitcase until Kate came out into the hall below, on some pretext to be
found by her, and whistled softly. The whistle would mean that Katherine
had come in and that Elsie could slip away to the orchard house
unobserved.

All this was rather fun for Kate except for the sorry fact that when it
was over she would have lost a comrade. To help stage a real
runaway—well, it doesn’t happen every day that one may be so at the
centre of exciting events.

With Bertha’s help Kate was dashing into her organdie while Elsie stood
in a balcony window watching the orchard. Elsie had come in to be near
Kate until the very last minute. But when a knock suddenly sounded on
Kate’s door Elsie wisely whisked away into her own room.

“Come,” Kate called in a tremulous voice. Was it her mother? No, it was
Aunt Katherine, and very fortunate it was that Elsie had been spry in
her whisking.

“I see you are dressed,” Miss Frazier said. “Come down, with me, then,
and we will be together in the drawing-room when your mother arrives. I
have ordered dinner delayed for her.”

Kate thought quickly. “Just a minute,” she said. “There’s something in
Elsie’s room I need. Will you wait?”

Kate closed the door behind her as though by accident. But Elsie was not
in the room. Kate looked all around but it was quite empty. The
vanishing comrade had vanished, physically this time. There was the
closet door. Was she hiding there? Yes, Kate heard a stir and saw dimly
through the hanging dresses—expensive dresses given Elsie by Aunt
Katherine, which she was not taking with her—Elsie herself squeezed back
against the farthest wall. Kate closed the closet door behind her and
groped her way across the dark closet. “It’s I, Kate,” she whispered
loudly.

The girls touched hands in the dark. They hugged and kissed each other,
mostly on noses and ears, but no matter; it was a grief-stricken
parting. “Good-bye, good-bye,” they whispered, and Kate said, “Write to
me from California.” But she must hurry back before it came into Miss
Frazier’s head to follow her in here with the idea of going through
Elsie’s door into the hall. She ran back to her own room and in her
anxiety created the impression of a small cyclone appearing.

Miss Frazier looked with some surprise on the violence of her return.
Then her eyes softened. Kate had not given thought to drying her tears.
“You mustn’t take it like this,” Aunt Katherine said, putting her arm
through Kate’s as they went down the passageways together toward the big
upper hall. “Elsie is happier than she has been in a very long time; she
is off with one of the most satisfying companions in the world. Nick
will take good care of her, infinitely better care than was ever taken
here by me, for he _knows her mind_. And oh, Kate, we mustn’t let your
mother run away with you, too. Then I _should_ be alone! You won’t be
without companionship. There are the Dentons just next door, and plenty
of others who will be wanting to know you now.”

“But they aren’t Elsie,” Kate responded, shamelessly using her
handkerchief, as the tears would keep flooding.




                              CHAPTER XXI
                             LIKE THE STARS


Miss Frazier was too excitedly nervous to take up a book or knitting
when they were in the drawing-room. She wandered about, looking at the
pictures on the walls, picking up magazines from tables to stare at them
vacantly and replace them again, changing the arrangements of flowers,
and all the time she was waiting for the sound of the opening front door
and Katherine’s step in the hall. Kate was listening, too, but not in
that direction. She expected her mother to come through the gardens and
in at one of the French doors, closed now, with the rain beating against
them. Kate was so absorbed with the consciousness of Elsie waiting up on
the stair landing for her chance to escape that she forgot her mother
had no umbrella and that she might be waiting in the orchard house until
this particular shower passed. She merely wondered what was keeping her
all this time, and what would happen when she and Aunt Katherine met.
Aunt Katherine would certainly be surprised when she caught sight of the
expected traveller through the glass doors on the terrace. There would
be questions and explanations about that. Nick would have warned
Katherine, of course, not to give away the secret of his being there;
but then what _would_ she give as her explanation to Aunt Katherine?

Would she be expecting to find Aunt Katherine here at all, though?
Wouldn’t Nick have acquainted her with the fact of Aunt Katherine’s
supposed absence? In that case Katherine, unprepared, would be hard put
to it to give any excuse for entering through the gardens from the back,
rather than by the front door, ushered in by Isadora. Kate was on
tenter-hooks. She felt that it was she herself who had caused the
muddle. But what could she have done differently? If she had told Aunt
Katherine, up in her room, that Katherine was here already, only out in
the orchard house, Aunt Katherine would certainly have gone straight out
there, and then what would have happened to Nick and Elsie?

It was a bad ten minutes for Kate. She sat with a book open before
her—what book she never knew—her eyes glued to the page, her ears cocked
for a sound beyond the glass doors. Aunt Katherine stopped before her in
her wanderings once or twice, about to speak, but she had too much
respect for a reader to break into such obvious absorption as was
Kate’s.

Now Miss Frazier was standing looking through the glass of one of the
doors into the rain-swept garden. Kate was seized with an idea. She must
run up to Elsie in the window seat—she must manage it without her aunt’s
noticing, now—and send Elsie to the orchard house to warn those two that
Miss Frazier had returned. After that, responsibility would be theirs.
They might fix up some scheme among them. Kate rose, softly, and took a
step toward the hall. But she was halted by an exclamation from Aunt
Katherine.

Miss Frazier had not turned; she was still looking out through the
glass. Kate, looking, too, saw two figures just at the edge of the
orchard. It was her mother and Nick. Well, she could do nothing now.
They certainly were counting on Aunt Katherine’s absence, for they were
coming toward the house. They were running toward the house, “between
the drops,” dashing like school children. They were holding hands, and
Nick was always a step ahead, rather dragging Katherine. Oh, why hadn’t
Kate thought about an umbrella! They were laughing! Kate heard their
laughter through the glass. So did Aunt Katherine. Her face, taken at
that moment, would have made a perfect mask to personify Surprise.

She opened the doors, and Katherine and Nick blew through them like two
drenched leaves. The rain had blurred the glass, and the running pair
had thought it was Kate standing there watching them and letting them
in. When they saw that it was Aunt Katherine they stood and simply
_stared_, with almost no expression, still gripping each other’s hands.

Miss Frazier’s first words were unexpected ones. “Where is Elsie?” she
asked Nick. That was all, just “Where is Elsie?” as though that, for the
instant, was the thing of prime importance to her. It was Kate who could
answer, though. Timidly she said, “Elsie’s up on the stair landing.”

“Well, that’s all right, then. I thought she might be in search of a
father in the South Station or some place. I thought, Nick, you two, you
and Elsie, had run away.”

Nick said, “We were going to. It is Katherine who has stopped us at the
very minute.” He still held Katherine’s hand. Now he turned and looked
at her. She looked back at him. Both Aunt Katherine and Kate, seeing
what passed between their eyes, gasped. But it forewarned them, and
Katherine’s words when she spoke were only an echo of what they had
seen.

“Nick and I are getting married, Aunt Katherine. We didn’t know you were
here, or we wouldn’t have burst in like this. We had come to tell our
children. Won’t you get Elsie, Kate?”

“You and Nick marrying? So at last you’ve come to your senses!” That was
Aunt Katherine.

“Yes. And oh, Aunt Katherine, she knows everything about me, and still
she wants to.”

“Well, of course she knows everything about you. I fancy _that’s_ had
publicity enough. But if this is the way you feel, Katherine, why didn’t
you write me one word when Nick got himself into trouble? Or since? Your
silence has been as cruel as any part of it all. It said plainer than
words, ‘Like Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith, I expected this sort of thing.’”

“Why, Aunt Katherine! How can you? If I had known Nick was in prison,
that something so terrible had happened, I should have written you right
away. No, I should have come. Trouble like that would have brought us
all together. But how could I know, when nobody told me?” Katherine’s
beautiful eyes were like a grieved, accusing child’s. “And what
hard-shelled little creatures we are! Why couldn’t my _soul_ have told
me?”

“Don’t talk about your soul telling you.” Aunt Katherine was brusque.
“What about your eyes? Don’t you ever read the papers?”

Katherine dropped her head. She had probably often dropped it so in the
past before her aunt. “You know,” she said, softly apologetic, “I never
did read the papers as you do, Aunt Katherine, or keep up with current
events.”

Aunt Katherine laughed. It was a nice laugh. Kate visualized their brook
in Ashland, when the ice was dissolving under the sun in the spring.
(Yes, she did. It may seem a strange time for her mind to wander so far,
but the fact remains. She saw the brook that zigzagged through the
meadows back of their barn-house, as she had seen it last spring, its
edges still frosted with ice, but down the centre the clear, laughing
water coursing.)

“Well, the news of Nick would hardly come under ‘current events’,” Aunt
Katherine was saying. “But I do remember now that you never did take a
proper interest in the papers. It never entered my head, though, that
you wouldn’t have learned of this from a dozen sources.”

Kate had been backing away toward the door, meaning to go for Elsie. But
there was no need. Elsie had heard her father’s voice the minute he had
come into the drawing-room. She had stolen down into the room now, and
gripped Kate’s hand. Together the two girls moved back toward the three
who were earnestly talking, still standing near the open door with the
rain, all unobserved, discolouring the polished floor.

Aunt Katherine was asking Katherine another question. “Why didn’t you
take Nick seventeen years ago?” she asked. “You seem sure enough of
yourself now. He wasn’t good enough for you then. Is he good enough now
after all that has happened?”

Again Katherine cried, “How can you!” But quickly she amended it. “Yes,
you have a right. You know yourself, Aunt Katherine, what was the matter
with me. It was pride of birth, blindness, love of luxury, Mrs. Van
Vorst-Smith’s head-shakings, a jumble of folly. You know perfectly what
sort of a girl I was. But now I’m different. Now I’m nearer to being
good enough for Nick.”

“Love of luxury!” Miss Frazier picked on that. “You want me to believe
your horrid description of yourself? If you loved luxury so much, why
have you been living as you have all these years, accepting nothing of
the luxuries I longed to give you?”

“But I tell you I changed. At twenty-two I was different from nineteen.
I welcomed poverty then. When they told me that Kate and I had actually
nothing to live on, I was delighted.”

“So it has been by way of penance, your hard life since?”

“If you want to call it that. It’s been fun, too.”

“But not fun for me.” Aunt Katherine’s eyes filled with tears. For a
person of Aunt Katherine’s character to cry openly like that was as
extraordinary a happening as though she had suddenly begun walking on
her hands. Only Katherine dared speak to her or try to offer comfort.
She put her arms around her shoulders, and led her to a chair. There she
made her sit down, and knelt by her side, leaning her head against her
arm, stroking her hand.

“Dear, dear, Aunt Katherine. Don’t, don’t,” she besought. “We can’t bear
it. Oh, what have I done to you! What have we both done to you, Nick and
I? Forgive us, Aunt Katherine. Love us again.”

At that, even in the midst of her tears, Aunt Katherine laughed, and as
before Kate remembered the brook. “Again!” Aunt Katherine exclaimed.
“Did you think I had ever stopped loving either of you mad children?”

Nick nodded. “_I_ have forfeited your affection right enough. I
understand why you couldn’t meet me, Aunt Katherine, two weeks ago when
I asked you to. At least I understand now. I shouldn’t have asked it.
But how else were we to decide about Elsie?”

Aunt Katherine looked up at her adopted nephew, remembering. “But of
course I did go to meet you,” she said. “Did you think I wouldn’t! I
read the day, though, ‘Thursday’ instead of ‘Tuesday.’ It’s not often I
blunder so stupidly. Then I made frantic efforts to locate you. But you
had vanished. There wasn’t a trace. I set private detectives to work.
To-day they took me all the way to Springfield on a wild-goose chase.
They were sure they had located you there. Clever, those detectives!”

Aunt Katherine dried her eyes thoroughly as she spoke. She was scornful
of her tears. “That excursion has tired me,” she explained. “The
disappointment of it. I was so downhearted. Then having you suddenly
here again, right here at home, without warning, safe and happy—well,
perhaps a sphinx would cry.”

It was Nick’s turn to kneel and rub his cheek against Aunt Katherine’s
shoulder. She lifted a hand and stroked his hair. Kate, too, got as
close to her aunt as she could. Only Elsie stood aloof, for an instant
not in any way part of the group. It was Aunt Katherine who beckoned
her, and took her hand.

“Elsie,” she said, “I have been thinking you hard and selfish because
you kept my rule not to mention your father. I have wanted to speak with
you of him, but every time I led up to it I thought you drew away. It
seemed to me that you were suffering, not for him, but for your own
wounded vanity. Now I understand better. Perhaps, in time, you will
forgive me.”

Then it was Elsie’s turn to cry, and she did it so whole-heartedly that
the family devoted its complete attention to calming her.

It was later that Miss Frazier exclaimed as though she had just
remembered it: “So you two children are to be married, and Katherine
become a Frazier again! I wonder what Oakdale will say to that turn of
affairs!”

“If you really care what they say, Aunt Katherine”—Katherine spoke
quickly—“need they know at all? Ashland society notes will hardly
penetrate here. And you’ve had quite enough to bear.”

“Don’t think you could ever hide such a famous author as Nick has
become, with only his first book, under a bushel for long, my dear. And
as a matter of fact, quite apart from my joy that you are acting like a
sane girl at last, and for once, I shall be proud to death of the
marriage. I must call up the _Gazette_ to-morrow, before ten. You remind
me, Kate.” As well as pride there was a gleam of battle from Aunt
Katherine’s eyes.

“And it really doesn’t matter a bit what they do say, except for you,
Aunt Katherine,” Katherine offered. “There are four of us now, four in
this family. Enough of us to stand together, I should think, and not ask
much from society.”

“Four? Five!” Kate left Elsie’s side on the divan to perch on the arm of
her great-aunt’s chair. “Why, five of us are quite enough to start a
colony and make our own society.”

“Bless you, dear child, for counting me in,” Miss Frazier said with
sheerest gratitude.

“But of course, we all count you in, and there _are_ five of us,”
Katherine cried, “only we don’t want you to sacrifice too much.” And
that was the signal for a second close formation of happy people about
Aunt Katherine’s chair.

“Sacrifice! Why, all I want in the world is my family. Don’t talk about
sacrifice!”

It was much later that Aunt Katherine began wondering about dinner. What
had become of it? Nick and Katherine had utterly forgotten that one does
usually dine sometime before bedtime. They laughed at the suddenness of
their return to earth.

“Ring the bell, Kate, and see if the servants are dead or asleep,” Miss
Frazier said.

But at that instant Effie appeared in the door. She had heard Miss
Frazier’s words. “Julia put dinner off an hour,” she explained. “It’s
served now.”

The “now,” however, was almost lost in Katherine’s sudden pounce upon
the servant and her hearty handshake.

“Julia often takes a good deal upon herself,” Miss Frazier observed, as
linked with Katherine she led their little procession toward the
dining-room.

And their first view of the table justified Aunt Katherine in this
criticism of Julia. The polished surface of the cherished antique was
hidden under an enormous damask cloth. But worse than that, the jade
dish with its exquisite floating blossoms had given way to a huge, and
to Miss Frazier’s mind hideous, cut-glass punch-bowl full of roses,
dozens and dozens of roses, pink, red, and yellow!

“Why, they have made it into a festival,” Katherine cried, surveying the
effect. “Smell those roses.”

“See them, rather,” Miss Frazier responded. “It’s the servants. They
must have known you both were here; and yes, there are two extra places
set.”

“It’s Julia, the lamb!” Katherine declared. “Bless her dear heart. I saw
her looking from the kitchen window as we ran in. I’d go and kiss her
this second, but she wouldn’t approve of that until after dinner.
Julia’s a lion for etiquette.”

“Please be so considerate as not to begin spoiling the servants,
Katherine.”

Nick and Kate and Elsie looked at Aunt Katherine, surprised. But
Katherine simply answered lightly, “It’s they who spoil me.” She
accepted the tone of her aunt’s command without dismay. She knew that
the apparent sharpness had been only Aunt Katherine’s old habit of
criticism reasserting itself toward a beloved niece, who to her mind
could never possibly be anything but the child she had “brought up.”
Katherine had begun to understand her aunt to-night for the first time,
to see her in the “other light” that the King of the Fairies knew.

“You’d better excuse yourself to wash your hands and remove that
odd-looking rain-soaked tam,” Aunt Katherine picked on her again, the
minute they were seated. “Use my bathroom, it’s the nearest. And hurry
right back, or this surprisingly sumptuous-looking soup that Julia has
provided will get cold.”

Katherine, obediently leaving the room, looked rather like a humble
child, but Nick’s eyes, as he stood, followed as though hers might have
been the departure of an empress.

                            * * * * * * * *

Late that night the doors between the girls’ rooms blew shut in the wind
that was clearing the air of storm and rain. Never mind about the doors,
though; the spirit of Miss Frazier’s rule rather than the letter was
being kept to-night. For Kate and Elsie were curled up within whispering
distance of each other on Kate’s bed. Both were in dressing gowns; they
were supposed to have been asleep for an hour past.

“I’ve never been abroad, or even anywhere out of New England,” Kate was
whispering. “You went with Aunt Katherine last summer. Will it be so
wonderful as I expect?”

“We were only in England. And it will be a million times more wonderful
than then, for we shall be together. Why, two weeks from now, sooner, we
ought to be in Switzerland.”

“And two weeks ago we had never heard of each other,” Kate added.

“And one day ago,” Elsie took it up, “if you had told me that I would
spend the rest of the summer away from my father, travelling in Europe
with you and Aunt Katherine, I would have said you were crazy.”

“Oh, Elsie,” Kate asked quickly, “I haven’t said anything, but is that
awfully hard for you, leaving them in Ashland, while we go so far away?”

“Not any more awful for me to leave my father than for you to leave your
mother, I guess. Anyway, when _they_ like the plan so much, we’d be
funny daughters not to be pleased, too.”

“You say ‘My father, your mother’—Oh, Elsie, do you realize in just a
day or two it will be ‘our father and our mother’?”

Elsie nodded. “Yes, Kate,” she said. “You have given me a mother and I
have given you a father, and now we are a family. I feel, do you know,
as though my heart might burst!”

“Don’t let it,” Kate warned quickly. “You’ll need it strong for climbing
the Alps! Imagine! Oh, how glorious it all is!”

“And when we come home again and live in that funny little barn-house of
yours—I am thinking of that,” Elsie whispered. “That will be better than
travelling.”

“The Hart boys are going to be simply flabbergasted,” Kate said,
remembering them. “They kept telling me to bring you home with me, but
they never guessed you’d be my sister when you did come.”

“But do you think they will want to have anything to do with me?” Elsie
asked, diffidently.

“Why not, I should like to know?”

“Well, you see, that letter they wrote——”

Kate’s face reddened. “What a creature I was! Of course, they will
forget all about that now. Even if you weren’t my sister and Mother’s
daughter, they’d like you awfully just the first second they saw you.
They couldn’t help it.”

Before going to bed, finally, the girls put out the lights and went out
on to Kate’s flowery balcony to look at the clearing night. They stood
close together, their arms about each other’s shoulders, their dressing
gowns billowing in the fresh wind. Elsie lifted her face up toward the
sky. “It’s going to be a fair day to-morrow,” she affirmed. “See the
stars!”

Kate’s face was lifted, too. “Yes,” she said. “Do you remember what the
King of the Fairies told Hazel and her lover about the magic they had
made their very own, how it’s safer than the stars from troubling? Well,
do you know, _as a family_, I think we are going to have a lot of that
magic.”


                                THE END


                         THE VANISHING COMRADE
                         _by Ethel Cook Eliot_

Kate Marshall had plenty of boys for friends and a very companionable
mother. But when she visited her interesting Great Aunt Katherine she
did hope to find in Elsie a girl comrade of her own age to share her
dreams and enthusiasms.

However, this new comrade had a disturbing way of vanishing
unexpectedly.

And it all centered about the orchard house, where windows were found
open, doors were found locked, and lights flickered at night.

Parties and pretty clothes, misunderstandings and unusual mystery make
this an unusual story that girls will enjoy from start to finish.

          Another of Mrs. Eliot’s distinctive books for girls.




                          Transcriber’s Notes


--Copyright notice provided as in the original—this e-text is public
  domain in the country of publication.

--Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and
  dialect unchanged.

--In the text versions, delimited italics text in _underscores_ (the
  HTML version reproduces the font form of the printed book.)







End of Project Gutenberg's The Vanishing Comrade, by Ethel Cook Eliot