Witch Winnie's Mystery, or The Old Oak Cabinet Part 25

He's so good-natured too; doesn't mind helping fellows outside of hours.

He goes out rowing with me every Wednesday night in a two-oared gig on the Harlem."

"Were you rowing with him on the 10th?" Adelaide inquired eagerly, for this was the night of the Catacomb party.

"Yes," Stacey laughed, "and we were late, and I got a special blowing up for it, too. You see, they lock the door at ten, and I had to ring the janitor up, and he was raving, for he had already been disturbed to let Ricos and b.u.t.tertub in, and he was in no mood to pa.s.s it over. He reported us all to Colonel Grey, who gave us order marks for it."

"Ah!" thought Adelaide, "this is encouraging. b.u.t.tertub and Ricos were out late on the night of our party, and Stacey can prove an alibi for Terwilliger. I shall report all this to Mr. Mudge."

Jim returned persistently to the idea of the entertainment for the Home of the Elder Brother. "I wish you would see to it, Stacey. What are the boys doing now?"

"Tennis, and base-ball. You ought to see Woodp.e.c.k.e.r; he is going to be our tennis champion; he can make the neatest underhand cut. He's simply great."

"Any better than the club down at the Pier?" Jim asked.

"What! the Sand-flies? They can't hold a candle to us."

"It would be nice to have the Cadets play the Sand-flies," Jim suggested. "Colonel Grey would give the tennis club a field-day if you asked him, and the excursion to the Pier by boat would be lovely. Mrs.

Roseveldt says she's going to open her cottage earlier than usual this year, and she will get the Sand-flies interested. Say, is it a go?"

Stacey lashed his boots lightly with his riding-whip; for he was on his way to the Park for a ride.

"We couldn't make a success of the affair without Miss Milly's help," he said, "and after the way she treated me at the games I'll never ask another favor of her--never."

Jim was much distressed.

"That tournament scheme was such a good one," he said. "The Sand-flies are already interested in the Home of the Elder Brother, and we could make a big affair of it and rake in lots of money for the Home. I mean to talk with Mrs. Roseveldt about it, any way."

"All right," Stacey replied as he rose to take his leave; "so long as you don't talk with Miss Milly. She would think it a put-up job between us."

"Now it was real vexatious in Stacey to say that," Jim remarked, after his friend had left. "I meant to have it out with Miss Milly the next time I saw her. Won't you wrestle with her, Adelaide?"

"I'm afraid it's of no use," Adelaide replied, but Jim would not give up the idea so easily. He talked it over with Mrs. Roseveldt, who approved of the tennis tournament. It would be just the thing with which to open the season. The Cadet team would be a great attraction.

She would intercede with Colonel Grey to allow them to remain several days. "It must take place early in June," she said, "just after Milly's commencement exercises, and while Adelaide and you are visiting us, before your father and mother return and take you away. I will drop a line to Milly that I want her to come home for my last reception this season, and I'll invite Stacey to talk it over."

Jim was afraid that Milly might not be inclined to receive Stacey's proposal with favor, and he accordingly wrote her a long and labored epistle, urging her, for the sake of the Home of the Elder Brother, to bury the war hatchet. Jim's intentions were better than his spelling, which was even worse than Milly's, and his letter amused her very much.

One phrase struck her as especially diverting: "Stacey says you treated him worse than a Niger."

Jim had spelled the word with an economy of g's, and a capital letter, which suggested visions of Darkest Africa. Milly laughed till she cried.

"Perhaps I have been impolite to him," she thought. Milly had a horror of being discourteous, and she wrote Jim that if Stacey would not be "soft," she would be nice to him for the sake of the Home of the Elder Brother. Jim considered this quite a triumph, and showed the letter to Stacey on the occasion of his next visit.

Stacey did not look as pleased as Jim had expected.

"Catch me being soft with her," he muttered. "I'll show Miss Milly how much I care for her airs. By the way, Jim, we are to have two invitations each to give away for the prize essays and declamations at the close of school. I intend to invite Miss Winnie De Witt and Miss Vaughn. I thought I would mention it, as it might influence your invitations."

Jim opened his eyes aghast at what he heard. "You don't mean to say that you are not going to send Miss Milly one of your tickets?"

"Yes, I do."

"And you are going to invite that hateful, horrid Vaughn girl?"

"I heard b.u.t.tertub boast that he was going to invite her, and I thought it would be rather a pleasant thing for him to receive his ticket back again with the information that as she had already accepted mine she had no need for it."

Jim could hardly believe his ears. "Well, of all things," he said. "You shan't do it, Stacey; you shan't do it! I'll invite Miss Milly, with sister, if you don't want to, but it's a downright insult to fill her place with such a pimply faced, common, loud----"

"I do not see that it is the young lady's fault if she has a _humorous disposition_, and as for her being loud----"

"You said yourself that you could hear her hat at the Battery if she was walking in Central Park. Sister says she toadies fearfully, and she flirted like a silly at the games, and at the drill. I think you must be hard up to ask her."

Stacey coloured, but was too proud to back down, and he left Jim in tears. Poor little fellow, as he expressed it, it seemed as if all the sticks which he tried to stand up straight were determined to fall down.

He could see that something was wrong with his hero, for Stacey's disappointment at the games had cut deeply, and the boy was on the verge of falling into a dangerous state of "don't care." When Jim asked him what subject he intended to choose for his essay, Stacey said that he had about decided not to compete. The subject must be connected with Greek history or life, and he despised the whole business, and the honour wasn't worth the trouble.

Adelaide took Stacey in hand and suggested a subject, in which he manifested some interest, but all this worried Jim and kept him from recovery.

Adelaide watched him anxiously. She had at first thought it best not to notify her parents of Jim's accident, fearing to spoil their tour; but as she felt certain that he was not improving she sent a cablegram, and received an answering one stating that they would sail for America at once. Adelaide watched eagerly for their coming. Jim pined for his mother, and one day, to give her little invalid something pleasant to look forward to, Adelaide told him that their parents were on the way home. The news did him more good than all the physician's tonics. He brightened every day and talked of his mother incessantly. Once it seemed to occur to him that his delight was a poor return for Adelaide's care, and he asked her anxiously, "You don't mind, do you, sister, that I am so glad mother is coming? You are the very best sister in all the world, but then you are not quite mother. You never can know just what she was to me when we were so very poor."

"Of course, I am not jealous, dear Jim," Adelaide replied. "I can well understand that you and mother are bound together even more closely than most mothers and sons, by that long fight together with poverty. I only wish that I had been with you to help you bear it. But then I do not know what father would have done. He suffered so much while you were lost to us, that if I had not been there to live for I think he would have died or have gone insane."

"I don't wonder that father loves you so much and is so proud of you, sister. I am very glad you were not with us when we were so very wretched. You ought not to know what it is to be poor, Adelaide. You ought to be a queen."

"I am a queen now, Jim, and I think I do know what it is to be poor.

When you told me all your bitter experiences, I felt them as keenly, it seemed to me, as if I had pa.s.sed through them myself. I believe that G.o.d sent us this intimate knowledge of how the poor suffer in order that we might sympathize with and help them." Then Adelaide told him of the tenement and described each of the families. Some of them Jim had known in that other life which has been related in a former volume, and he inquired eagerly for the inventor, Stephen Trimble, and for the Rumples, and others. Adelaide told him, too, of the two turtle-doves, and of the sad death of Miss Cohens, and how the Terwilligers were soon to be established in one of the best suites. This last information pleased Jim very much.

"I like Terwilliger," he said. "He is so funny; he drops all his h's, and calls everything 'bloomin'.' b.u.t.tertub is a 'bloomin' fool,' and Stacey is a 'bloomin' swell,' and when I got hurt he said it was a 'bloomin' shame,' and Ricos was a 'bloomin' cad,' and the fellows ought to have made a 'bloomin' row' about it."

That evening it happened that Mrs. Roseveldt was to give a _musicale_, and as Jim was feeling very bright, Adelaide had consented to take part.

She was a creditable performer upon the violin, and had decided upon a romance by Rubenstein. She came to the school early in the afternoon for her music, and, to give her more of a visit with us, Mrs. Roseveldt had suggested that she should remain until after dinner, promising to send the carriage for her. Stacey was expected to call that afternoon and would keep Jim from being lonely.

We were all delighted to have Adelaide with us once more, for we had missed her greatly.

I was painting in the studio, and Professor Waite had just told me that it was all for the best that I could not probably go to Europe in vacation.

"You are not ready for it," he said. "You will profit far more by European instruction after a year of thorough training in the Art Students' League. I would advise you to attend it next winter. Our disappointments are often blessings in disguise. Providence keeps the things for which we are not prepared, saved on an upper shelf for us until we deserve them."

As he said this, a joyful hub-bub rang out in the Amen Corner, led by a wild, Comanche shriek from Polo, who happened to be in the corridor: "Miss Adelaide's come! Glory! Oh, glory!"

Professor Waite flushed and paled, took two steps impulsively toward the door, and then sat down before my easel, and began insanely to spoil a sky with idiotic dabs of green paint. I wondered whether Providence was saving up Adelaide until he deserved her. If so, the shelf was for the present a very high one.

To my surprise, Adelaide tapped at the studio door a moment later. She greeted Professor Waite cordially. "I am so glad to find you," she said, "for I want to impose upon you for a little help."

Professor Waite beamed.

"Stacey Fitz Simmons has asked me for a subject for an essay and I have suggested 'The Athletic Contests of Ancient Greece,' as giving a subject in which he is greatly interested--athletic sports--a cla.s.sical turn, suitable for the dignified occasion. At first he thought he could make nothing original of it, but would have to crib everything from books of reference; but it occurred to me that he might treat it from a rather new standpoint by taking his information from remains of ancient sculpture. I told him he had better study the casts at the Metropolitan Museum, as that would be the next best thing to attending the games at Corinth. Can you give him any additional sources of information?"

Professor Waite threw himself into the idea with enthusiasm and poured forth at once a dissertation which would have taken the highest honours at the compet.i.tion. Then he made a memorandum of several works on art, which Stacey would do well to consult, and rummaged about in his portfolios for photographs of ancient statues of athletes and heroes, the procession from the frieze of the Parthenon, and the like.

When we finally got Adelaide into the Amen Corner, we scarcely gave her an opportunity to dress for the _musicale_, we had so many little nothings to talk over with her.

In the midst of it all Mr. Mudge called, and we opened fire upon him at once with the testimony which we had collected in favor of Polo and her brother. He was not greatly impressed with Stacey's avowal that he had been out rowing with Terwilliger on the night of the Catacomb party.