Happy House Part 18

Peter's face looked very much as though he was tackling some problem of drainage--or a new incubator.

"When you get right down to plain facts, it's a question of conserving time. You're wasting it--somewhere. I believe you can double up a bit. Let Aunt Milly listen to Belinda, and teach Aunt Milly to help Nonie. I'll take care of Davy. You say Aunt Milly likes to feel she's useful--if you start her she can help Nonie a lot and Nonie'll give her something to think about, too."

Nancy considered this with brightening eyes. "I believe you're right!

I've just been selfish, trying to do everything myself just because I loved to, and stupid--to think no one else could do it! Of course Aunt Milly can read with Nonie--and play with her, too. I'll begin this very day. I'll have a school here in the orchard and Nonie and B'lindy and Aunt Milly shall come. It'll be the funniest school you ever heard of," Nancy laughed. "I'll teach B'lindy the joy of seeing Hopworth 'young 'uns' eat her best mola.s.ses cookies!"

Nancy's face showed that she was mentally leaping far ahead in her plans. Peter felt that he had been left out.

"Let me be the head taskmaster or whatever you call it. You'll doubtless need a strong hand now and then. Anyway, you don't know how much it helps _my_ work mixing a little fun with it!"

Now that her problems were straightening Nancy felt very kindly and gracious and happy.

"Of course, you may come to the orchard--whenever you want! Oh, you _have_ helped me so much," she cried, with a smile that brought a sudden gleam in Peter Hyde's eyes. "Now, if you'll give me a hand putting these pages together, I'll run in and prepare Aunt Milly and B'lindy."

Following along the lines of Peter's suggestion, Nancy's "school"

developed rapidly. She covered sheet after sheet of paper with "schedules" and finally to her satisfaction, blocked off every waking moment of her pupils' day. Aunt Milly fell heartily in with her plans; she was proud to know that she could help. The books for Nonie that Nancy had spirited to Happy House were as fascinating to her as to Nonie.

After the first day Aunt Milly thought of a great many new "lessons"

they could begin for Nonie. With the promise that after awhile she could make for herself a "pinky" dress, like Nancy's, Aunt Milly taught her to hem and seam and tuck. At the same time Nonie learned that it was quite as bad to wear a torn, soiled dress as to say "him and me" or "I ain't."

"You're _wonderful_, Aunt Milly," Nancy had declared, after this innovation in the school. "I never would have thought of it, myself."

She laughed, ruefully. "I'd better study with Nonie, I guess, and learn to mend, myself."

Nancy had told Aunt Milly, too, of Nonie's pretend-mother. Perhaps that was why Aunt Milly's voice was very sweet and tender as she and Nonie talked and played and read together. Nonie liked to wheel the chair; she began to look forward to bolder excursions beyond the gate to the village.

B'lindy, in her heart still a little distrustful that "no good could come from encouragin' them Hopworths," nevertheless found countless excuses to join the little group under the apple trees, sometimes bringing some hideous lace crocheting that had been years in the making but would some day--if B'lindy lived long enough to complete it--cover a bed. Sometimes she brought a basket of goodies and other times came empty-handed and just sat idle with a softened look in her old eyes as they rested on the purple rim of mountains across the water.

"I guess it makes a body work better for restin' a spell," she said, after one of these intervals.

But with the success of Nancy's new plans were two little clouds--small at first but growing with each day. One was the realization that very soon her work for these dear people could go on without her. And though in one breath she told herself that this was fortunate, because her stay at Happy House must end with her father's return, in the next she was swept with a sharp jealousy that, after she had gone, Aunt Milly and B'lindy and Nonie and Davy would still gather under the apple tree.

Since the afternoon Peter Hyde had found her with the ma.n.u.script she had not laid eyes upon him!

A sense of hurt at his neglect did not grow less when she learned from old Jonathan, after one or two questions, that he had gone over to Plattsburg; rather it gave way to a resentment that Peter, considering what good chums they had grown to be and the "school" and everything, should have gone off on any such trip without one word of parting!

"He'll see how well we can get along without him," she had declared to herself after the third day. After all he probably _was_ hiding something; this sudden disappearance must have some connection with it.

His comrades.h.i.+p had grown very pleasant, she admitted, but, she told herself, it belonged to the real Anne Leavitt, like Aunt Milly and Nonie and the others, he must drop out of her life when she left Happy House.

So that he might not even be missed by Davy and his cronies, Nancy devoted one entire afternoon to teaching the boys of the club how to build a fire without matches. When, after repeated and discouraging failures, the last one had joyfully succeeded, Nancy had promised to teach them to wig-wag at the very next meeting.

When Nancy returned to the house, flushed and tired from the hours on the beach, old Jonathan, at the door, presented her with a half-blown rose, its stem thrust through a folded sheet of paper.

"Mr. Peter, over to Judson's, asked me to give it t'you."

With a certain set of the college men and girls Nancy had been very popular; more than once pretty tributes of flowers had come to her.

She had accepted them rather indifferently, had kept them with dutiful care in water and had pasted the cards that had come with them in her remembrance book. But this gift was different; it was quaint--and _so_ pretty!

"If you will meet me at seven in the orchard I will tell you a surprise that will tickle you to pieces," Peter Hyde had scrawled across the paper.

"How--_funny_!" laughed Nancy, reading and re-reading the lines. "What can it be?"

If Nancy had asked herself why she sang as she dressed for supper she would have thought, truthfully, that it _was_ because she was ravenously hungry and B'lindy's supper smelled very good; and she chose to wear, from her slender wardrobe, a pink organdy, because it would be cool--_not_ that she even dreamed, for a moment, of doing such a silly thing as going to the orchard at seven o'clock, to meet Peter Hyde!

A dozen times, during the evening meal, she resolved that Peter Hyde's surprise could wait. He presumed, indeed, to think that, after he had absented himself for so long without one little word of explanation, she would go running at the crook of his little finger!

However, she put the pink rose in her belt and occasionally slipped it out to smell of it. It was the most beautiful rose she had ever seen--she must ask Jonathan its variety.

At five minutes of seven she picked up her knitting and sat resolutely down between her aunts on the hollyhock porch. Just as Aunt Sabrina was telling her how, back in 1776, Robert Leavitt had dined with Benedict Arnold on the flags.h.i.+p of his little Champlain fleet, two days before its engagement with the British, the old clock within the house struck seven. With her breath caught in her throat Nancy counted sixty, twice--then suddenly sprang to her feet and rushed off the veranda.

"Why, Nancy--dear," cried Aunt Milly, startled.

"Humph," grunted Aunt Sabrina, clicking her needles faster than ever.

Peter was in the orchard. He had been there since quarter of seven.

He was disappointed at the coolness of Nancy's greeting; it seemed to him that he had been gone for ages, and he had, during his absence, quite foolishly, been looking forward to this meeting.

He had hoped, too, that she might wear the rose.

"One guess where I've been," he commanded lightly, as he held out his hand to a.s.sist her into the tree.

"Dear me, how can I tell? Buying plows or pigs or----"

Nancy tried to make her tone seem airily indifferent, when all the time she was really consumed with curiosity and a desire, too, to tell him how splendidly her work was going.

"I have seen Theodore Hoffman!"

"_What?_"

"Don't look as though you thought I'd gone mad. He's human. I happened to hear that he was staying at Bluff Point, so I went over to see the gentleman."

Nancy's eyes _did_ say that she thought he had gone quite out of his mind!

"How did you _dare_?"

"I know a fellow that knows him. He was very nice--as I said, he's human, terribly human. You should see him playing tennis!"

"What--_what_ did you say to him?"

"I told him I had a little friend who was soon to become one of the greatest playwrights in the world and----"

"_Peter!_" Nancy lifted an imploring finger. "Honest, what _did_ you say? And why----" she was suddenly abashed. He had done this for her.

Peter kept his tone light.

"You see I did have some pig business over that way, so it was easy enough to do a favor for a little pal at the same time. Hoffman was very nice--he's going to be around up here for some weeks and promised me he would drive over here. Now it's up to you to have the ma.n.u.script ready."

"Oh, Peter, I'm _frightened_! You're a darling! I shall _always_ bless pigs! Of _course_ I'll have it done--I'll work night and day.

I'll go straight back to the house now." She jumped to the ground. In her haste she forgot the poor rose she had hidden behind her.