At the Little Brown House Part 15

They parted, and Peace slowly wended her way home again, somewhat relieved, and yet considerably alarmed over the doctor's words. Down to the barn she wandered, and up the rickety ladder she climbed into the cobwebby loft. A figure moved impatiently at the far end of the loose boards, and as Peace's eyes became accustomed to the dim light, she saw it was Faith, curled up among a lot of ragged papers and coverless magazines, musty and yellow with age.

"What are you ba--crying about!" asked Peace in awed tones, as the other girl sniffed suspiciously and then wiped her eyes, already red with weeping. She expected to be told to mind her business, but contrary to her expectations, Faith answered:

"This is the _saddest_ story,--all about a girl who loved one man and had to marry another."

Peace's nose curled scornfully, and she said, with great contempt, "I don't see any use in bawl--crying about that. Those story people never lived. Real folks have more sense."

But Faith had gone back to her magazine of sorrows, and never even heard this small sister's criticism. So Peace dropped down on a heap of sacking, propped her chin up with her elbows on her knees, and fell to studying the face opposite her, noting with alarm how thin it had grown, and how darkly circled were the brown eyes so like her own. Fear lest Dr. Bainbridge did not know how ill she really was gripped her heart, and she sighed heavily just as Faith finished her chapter and roused to search for the next number of the magazine.

"What is the matter?" she demanded, looking at the sober little face with surprise.

"Are you sick?" asked Peace in an awestruck whisper, ignoring her sister's question.

"No. Why? My head aches some, but that is all."

"I sh'd think it _would_ ache," cried the child in sudden indignation.

"Why did you poke up here where there ain't any window to read by?

You'll be blind some day if you _amuse_ your eyes like that. Teacher said so to all our cla.s.s the day she found Tessie Hunt reading on the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs. If you've got to read all the time, why don't you go out-doors or by a window? It's enough to make anyone's head ache the way you mope around reading all the time. Dr. Bainbridge says as soon as you get up and go to work you'll be all right."

Faith's face flushed angrily and she demanded, with some heat, "What do you know about what Dr. Bainbridge says?"

"I asked him a-purpose to see whether you were going to be an angel soon."

For a moment Faith was too startled for reply, and then she asked curiously, with a queer flutter in her heart, "What did he say!"

"He just howled, 'No--o!' as loud as he could shout, and after that he said, more quiet-like, that you'd never be an angel as long as you kept on the way you are going. He says you need a good, common dose of sense and a cannon under your chair. He said Gail and Hope are the angels, and when I cried and told him we could spare you easier'n we could them, he said that he didn't mean sure-enough angels which fly away and never come back, but good, _sensitive_ blessings that make the world better.

He says you've got a _cute minagination_, and when you wake up and help Gail bear the slender burden on your shoulders, everything will be all right."

Profound silence reigned in the barn for what seemed an eternity to Peace, and then Faith burst forth hotly, "I never saw such a meddlesome child in all my born days, Peace Greenfield! What did you tell the doctor? Why did you chase to him in the first place? Do you want to get the whole neighborhood to gossiping about our affairs? I suppose you gave him the whole family history, from the time of Adam."

"I never did!" Peace indignantly denied. "I don't know of any Adam 'mong our relations. I found Gail upstairs crying about you this morning, and Hope promised to do all your work. I couldn't see why Hope should do your work unless you were going to be an angel, so I went to the doctor about it, and that is why he told me. He said we must help Gail all we could--"

"Why don't you, then, instead of causing her trouble whenever you turn around? You are into something the whole time to fret and worry her.

Don't talk about me until you are perfect yourself!"

"I ain't perfect, but I _try_ to help, and you know it. Don't I help Cherry with the dishes every single day, and dust the parlor and bring in wood, and hasn't Hope turned over setting the table to me?"

"And don't you break half the dishes?"

"I've broken only one plate and three cups, and I bought new ones out of my snow money, so there! When summer comes I'm going to pick strawberries for Mr. Hartman, and when I've paid up for those I spoiled last year, I'm going to give the rest of the money I earn to Gail to help her all I can. 'F I could make the lovely cakes you do, I'd go 'round the streets peddling them."

"If you were I, you'd do wonders," Faith broke in bitterly.

"Well, Mrs. Abbott told me herself that if the village baker could cook like that she would get all her delicate things there instead of bothering the girl with them, 'cause, in a little subu'b like this, she can't get a cook and a second girl to stay at the same time, and a common hired girl doesn't know beans about cakes and nice cookery. Mrs.

Lacy said she'd take a cake reg'lar every week if she could get such nice ones as yours; and the butcher--guess what the butcher asked me yesterday! I went in his shop on my way home from the minister's, and he asked me when we were going to break up housekeeping here."

"What did you say?" cried Faith, as the meaning of his question dawned upon her, though Peace evidently had not understood.

"I didn't know what he was driving at, so I asked him, and he said he had heard that we were going to leave this house and go to live with different people in town. He wanted to know if he could have Cherry, 'cause he thinks she is so pretty. I told him he needn't joke with me like that, but he just laughed and _in_sured me that Mr. Strong was going to take Allee, and Dr. Bainbridge wanted Hope, and that you and Gail were to work in Martindale, and I was the broom of condemnation."

"The what?" cried Faith in amazement.

"The broom of con-dem-nation," repeated Peace slowly, seeing that she had made a blunder, but not understanding just wherein it lay. "It means when a lot of people want the same thing."

"Perhaps you are trying to say 'bone of contention,'" suggested Faith, somewhat sarcastically.

"Maybe 'twas. Anyway, he says Mr. Hardman wants me--but I don't want him, I can tell you that!"

"I thought you had signed a treaty of peace and were friends now,"

murmured the older girl, considerably amused at the child's belligerent att.i.tude, in spite of her troubled thoughts.

"Oh, we are friends all right, but not bad enough so's I want to go live with him. Though I don't know as it would be any worse there than with Judge Abbott, and he's the other fellow who wants me. My, the way he glared at me Thanksgiving morning, when we shoveled the snow off his porch, scared me stiff! I thought he was going to make us shovel it back on again, but he didn't. And the time my s...o...b..ll knocked Hector's teeth loose, I was sure he was going to 'rest me, but I couldn't help if Hec opened his mouth just in time to get that ball; and anyway, he deserved it, 'cause he was pulling Mamie Brady's red hair and calling her Carrots till she cried. I told the Judge that Hec needed to have more than just his teeth knocked loose, and he laughed and marched him home by the ear."

"Peace, have you told Gail this?"

"About Hec's teeth?"

"No, about what Mr. Jones said to you?"

"Not yet. I didn't think it was a very nice joke, so I never told anyone but you and the preacher. Mr. Strong said he'd see that the butcher didn't tease me any more."

"Well, if I were you, I would forget all about it, but don't ever tell Gail. She might take it in earnest and feel badly about it."

Peace eyed the older girl, as if trying to fathom her meaning, but Faith's face was like a mask, and after a brief pause, the child answered, "I don't mean to; but ain't I glad she can't guess all my thinks! Just s'posing everyone knew what everyone else was thinking, wouldn't some folks be sc.r.a.pping all the time? Brains are queer things.

I used to wish I could see one when it was doing its thinking, but I guess G.o.d knew his business when he put them inside our heads, where no one else can watch them."

"Peace, Peace! Where are you?" called an excited voice from below, and the brown-eyed philosopher jumped up from her burlap couch with the shout, "Coming, Allee! I hope you find your senses pretty soon, Faith, for the doctor says when that happens you will be all right and not have any more headache."

The faded red coat disappeared down the ladder, and Faith was left alone again. But she read no more. The sad story had lost its interest, and she cast aside the magazines without another glance. Was what Mr. Jones had told Peace true? Was there a possibility that the home must be broken up? Was the doctor right in his verdict? Did all the sisters feel that she could be spared the easiest? That was a fierce battle Faith waged with herself in the barn, but when it was ended a determined-faced girl rose from the dusty floor, descended the old ladder, and hurried away toward the village. It was noon before she returned, and the five sisters, anxious over her unusual absence, were just sitting down to a frugal dinner of mush and milk when she entered the door, looking excited and queer, but with a happier light in her eyes than had been there for months.

The minute grace was said, Peace demanded suspiciously, "Where have you been all this time?"

"Drumming up trade," was the startling answer. "I've got six regular cake customers, and several who promised to buy of me when they needed anything in my line."

Faith was awake at last.

CHAPTER X

COMPANY FOR SUPPER

"Cherry, do you know it's 'most night, and those girls aren't at home yet? They said they'd sure be here by four o'clock, and here 'tis five and they haven't come." Peace was plainly worried, and with a half-impatient sigh, Cherry closed her fascinating story book and joined her sister watching at the window for the belated girls who had gone in town with Mrs. Grinnell that morning.

"P'r'aps the horse run away," suggested Allee.