Happy House Part 5

Nancy's spirits were soaring; instinctively she felt that she had won B'lindy! It was a good beginning. She opened the great oak door and stepped out upon the path. At one time the grounds of Happy House must have been pretentious--they were quaintly beautiful now in their age and half-neglect. Flowering perennials had crept out from their old beds and had spread unchecked around among the giant trunks of the trees so that from hedge to hedge there was a riot of color.

Among the gay blossoms Nancy picked her way, skirting the walls of the house to discover what might lie beyond. In the back she found Jonathan pottering among some raspberry bushes that bordered the flagged walk. He was very bent and very old and very wrinkled; his eyes twitched and blinked as he lifted his head to look at her.

"Good afternoon! I am Anne Leavitt," Nancy called blithely. He was such a perfect part of the old, old garden that she loved him on the spot.

"Wal, wal--little Anne Leavitt," and he nodded and blinked at her.

"I wish you'd call me Nancy," Nancy ventured. "Everyone does, and I don't seem nearly big enough to be Anne. I love your flowers and oh, what a lot of berries you are going to have!"

The old man straightened his shoulders--at least he tried to! His flowers were his children.

"In my younger days this here garden was the show of the Island," he answered proudly. "Folks come from all round to look at it!

Thirty-two kinds of posies and that want countin' the hollyhocks that grew like trees--taller'n I am. And vines and berries and vegetables.

But I can't work like I used to, and Miss Sabriny don't like anyone but me to touch things. So things have to go abit. Miss Nancy, huh! Ye _are_ a little thing." But his smile was kindly. "And I hope ye bring some suns.h.i.+ne to Happy House."

Suddenly Nancy exclaimed: "Oh--the lake! I didn't realize how close we were to it."

Beyond the raspberry patch and the kitchen garden stretched an old orchard. Through the trees Nancy had glimpsed the sapphire blue of Lake Champlain.

"Is that orchard ours?" she asked Jonathan.

"That it is. I helped my father plant those thar trees myself and they're the best bearin' on the hul of Nor' Hero!"

Nancy stood irresolute. She wanted to explore further--to run out among the apple trees to the very cliff of the lake. But she was bursting to write to Claire--there was already so much to tell her.

So with one long, lingering look she retraced her steps back to the house. As she pa.s.sed slowly under the trees she was startled by the movement of a single slat in one of the upstairs blinds. And instinctively she knew that an eye peeped at her from behind it.

Miss Milly--it must, of course, be the "poor Miss Milly" of whom Webb had spoken!

Nancy closed the front door softly behind her that it might not disturb Miss Sabrina's hour of rest. Then she tiptoed up the long stairway.

It took but a moment's calculating to decide which door led to the room where the blind had opened. She stopped before it and tapped gently with one knuckle.

"Come in," a voice answered.

Opening the door, Nancy walked into a room the counterpart of her own, except that a couch was drawn before the blinded windows. And against it half-lay a frail little woman with snow-white hair and tired eyes, shadowing a face that still held a trace of youth.

As Nancy hesitated on the threshold a voice singularly sweet called to her:

"Come in, my dear! I am your Aunt Milly."

CHAPTER IV

AUNT MILLY

"So this is Anne Leavitt!"

But Aunt Milly did not say it at all like Aunt Sabrina, or even crisply, like B'lindy's "so _you're_ the niece," but with a warm, little trill in her voice that made Nancy feel as though she was very, very glad to have her there!

Two frail little hands caught Nancy's and squeezed them in such a human way that Nancy leaned over impulsively and kissed Miss Milly on her cheek.

"I am so very glad to know you." Aunt Milly dashed a tear away from her cheek. "I've counted the hours--after Sabrina told me you were coming. To-day I lay here listening for Webb and then must have fallen asleep, so that when you really came I didn't know it. Wasn't that silly? Sit right down, dear--no, not in that old chair, it's so uncomfortable--pull up that rocker. Let me get a good look at you!"

Nancy did not even dread Miss Milly's "good look"--she was so delightfully human! She pulled the rocker close to the lounge and stretched out in it with a happy little sigh.

"I thought _I'd_ never get here! It seems as though this is way off in the corner of the world. And I'm just tired enough to find the--the _quiet_ downright restful."

Aunt Milly laughed. "I've been worrying over the 'quiet.' It's so dreadfully quiet here--for young folks. I was afraid it would make you homesick. Now tell me all about your trip and your Commencement. I've been going over in my mind just what your Commencement must have been like--ever since Sabrina told me we had a niece who was a Senior in college. It must be wonderful!" she finished, with just the tiniest bit of a sigh.

Suddenly Nancy realized that here was someone hungry to know all that was going on in the world outside of North Hero--not the world of men and women, but her girl's world--that world that had ended Commencement Day. She told a few little things about Senior Week, then, a little homesick for all that had just been left behind, she rattled off one recollection after another with an enthusiasm that kindled an answering fire in Miss Milly's eyes.

"I can't _bear_ to think it's all over--except that life itself is one grand adventure and probably, after a little, I'll look back on the school days and think how empty they were of--real things!" Then Nancy, looking down at the frail white hand that clasped her own, thought with a sort of shock that life was scarcely an adventure for poor Miss Milly. But Miss Milly answered contentedly. "I love to hear all about it. I'm glad you had it, my dear. I hope you'll come in and talk with me often--it's like suns.h.i.+ne hearing your young voice!"

"Oh, I shall _like_ to. You won't think I'm dreadful, will you, if I tell you that Aunt Sabrina frightens me awfully and so does B'lindy--just a little. But you don't seem a bit like them."

Miss Milly laughed outright--a laugh that had a silver tinkle in it.

"No, I suppose I'm not--a bit like them."

"So when I'm so frightened I don't know what to do I shall come straight to you. And, please, Aunt Milly, will _you_ call me Nancy?

No one has ever called me anything but that and it makes me feel--like someone else--when they call me Anne. Aunt Sabrina was horrified when I asked her."

"Yes--she would be! Of course I shall call you Nancy--or anything that you wis.h.!.+ I can't be much company for you, dear, tied to this couch, but you can bring a great deal of happiness to me."

A wistful gleam in Aunt Milly's eyes made Nancy lean over and kiss her again. At that moment the door opened and Aunt Sabrina walked in.

Then it seemed to Nancy as though a shadow crossed Miss Milly's face.

The glow in her eyes died completely. She seemed to shrink back among the cus.h.i.+ons.

"Oh, you have met our niece," Aunt Sabrina said in her cold voice and with no curiosity as to how it had happened.

Nancy looked at Aunt Milly and Aunt Milly's glance seemed to say: "Please don't tell her I peeked through the blinds." Aloud she answered meekly: "I told her we were glad she had come!"

Aunt Sabrina nodded as though to approve such action. Her eyes turned around the room.

"Is there anything you want done? B'lindy's washed the other covers for your cus.h.i.+ons, but they aren't dry enough to iron. The color didn't run a bit--they'll be more sensible than those white ones, for they won't be needing was.h.i.+ng all the time, and B'lindy has enough to do!"

"Oh, yes, they'll be more sensible," Miss Milly agreed wearily. "No, I don't want anything."

There were two or three moments of silence. Aunt Sabrina went about the room straightening a picture here, a "tidy" there. Nancy watched her with angry eyes--what _was_ there about her that had killed that precious glow in poor little Miss Milly?

She rose abruptly. "May I go to my room? I want to write a letter."

Miss Sabrina said, "Why, of course, Anne," and Miss Milly flashed a little ghost of a smile that entreated: "You see what life is like for me, so please, _please_ come again."

Upon Nancy's face, as she closed her own door behind her, was a mixture of relief, indignation and apprehension. And a little of each of these emotions crept into the lines of the letter that--to give vent to all that was bursting within her--she dashed off to Claire.

"---- You'd just better believe that if I had that precious darling, Anne Leavitt, back in our beloved tower room I'd tell her that all the fortunes in the world and all the suffering Russians wouldn't hire me to spend one more day with her 'family.'

"And yet, Claire, darling, it's so _dreadful_ that it's funny. I just wonder that I haven't been scared _pink!_ Can you picture your little Nancy surrounded by mahogany, so old that it fairly screams at you, that it was brought over on the _Mayflower_ and walls as high as the Library tower (please subtract poetical license) and just oodles of Leavitt traditions--though I'll admit, just being a plain human mortal, I don't know yet quite _what_ the Leavitt traditions are, but believe me, I expect to, very soon, for Aunt Sabrina talks of nothing else!