The whole row of people stood up to let them pa.s.s, and every kind of look--glances of amus.e.m.e.nt and curiosity, of annoyance and of sympathy--followed the oddly a.s.sorted pair, as they made their way out of the slip and then up the aisle.

Once outside the door, the tension of Miss Becky's face relaxed, but she did not waver in her determination.

"There, child!" she cried, as they walked down the slight incline of the long pa.s.sageway to the street. "There! I am glad I had strength given me to do my duty by you!"

"But, Miss Becky, there wasn't a bit of danger," Nannie protested, bravely keeping the tears back in her cruel disappointment. "Really, there wasn't. Won't you _please_ go back with me, and just stand inside the door and see the end of it? I'm sure they'd let us stand inside the door."

"Nannie Ray," Miss Becky replied, looking very fiercely at the girl's flushed cheeks and imploring eyes, "if you knew as much about firearms as I do, you wouldn't ask such a thing. But there! It's jest because you're young and inexperienced that your ma wanted me to come and look after you. I guess she'll be thankful she was so foresighted when she hears of the danger you was in."

In her exultation and relief of mind, Miss Becky marched on, regardless of jostling crowds and thronging teams. Her whole att.i.tude had changed. She was no longer the timid, shrinking old woman; she was the responsible guardian, aware of the importance of her charge, and nothing was ever to convince her that she had not as good as saved Nannie's life on that occasion.

Then Nannie, as became a hostess, accepted the situation with the best grace in the world.

"I tell you what let's do, Miss Becky," she said. "Let's go and get some ice-cream. That is, if you like it."

The stern old face relaxed.

"Oh, yes; I like ice-cream, especially vanilla. But--do you think we've got time enough?"

"We've got an hour and a quarter before the train goes. Let's come in here and get it."

From the crowded street they pa.s.sed in at the doorway and walked between marble counters to what seemed to Miss Becky a scene in fairyland. Ascending two or three broad steps, on each side of which an antlered stag kept guard, they stepped upon a great carpeted s.p.a.ce, lighted from above,--a s.p.a.ce in the middle of which was a fountain, springing high into the air, and splashing back into a round basin lined with shining sh.e.l.ls and pebbles, over and among which goldfish swam and dove like animated jewels. Ferns and palms grew all about the basin, and in among the greenery was a little table where Nannie and her guest sat hidden safe away from the world.

"Well, this doos beat all!" the old lady exclaimed, gazing at the fountain with an expression of rapt delight--just the expression that Nannie had counted upon seeing among the wrinkles.

"Do you like it?" she asked, all her disappointment and chagrin forgotten.

"Like it? Why, it's the most tasty place I was ever in! It's better than any play; it's like bein' in a play yourself! Jest see them pillows supportin' that gallery! 'N' them picters of tropical fruits!

'N' this ice-cream! Why, it's different from what we hev at the Sunday-school picnics! 'Pears to me it's more creamy!"

Now, at last, Miss Becky had lost all thought of the pa.s.sage of time.

She took her ice-cream, just a little at a time, off the tip-end of her spoon, and with every mouthful the look of content grew deeper.

One of the little cakes that were served with the ice-cream was a macaroon with a sugar swan upon it--"a reel little statoo of a swan,"

Miss Becky called it. She could not be persuaded to eat it, but she studied it with such undisguised admiration that Nannie ventured to suggest that she take it home with her. Again Miss Becky was enchanted. She wrapped it in her pocket-handkerchief, and placed it carefully in her reticule, whence it was to emerge only to enter upon a long and admired career as a parlour ornament.

"And now, Miss Becky," Nannie queried, as they sat there embowered in palms and ferns, listening to the plash of the fountain, "didn't you enjoy the play at all?"

"Oh, yes," said Miss Becky, "I had a very pleasant time before they got so reckless with their guns. But--I wonder whether they take sech pains with the the-etter's they used to? Why, when I went with Uncle 'Bijah Lane that time, they all wore the most beautiful clothes. Even the men was dressed out in velvets and satins, and they wa'n't anybody on the stage that didn't make a good appearance."

"But, you know, this was a different sort of play, Miss Becky. The folks in _The Shaughraun_ weren't kings and queens, but just every-day people."

"Well, s'posin' they was! I don't see no excuse for that man Con goin'

round lookin' so slack. I sh'd think he might at least git a whole coat to wear when he 'pears before the public!"

"I'm afraid you're sorry you came," said Nannie, very meekly, feeling quite ashamed of her poor little party.

"Oh, no, I ain't! Why, child, I'd hev come _barefoot_ to see this place here, with the founting a-splashin' and the fishes a-gleamin'!

_Barefoot_, I tell ye!"

It was a forcible expression, yet Nannie was not quite rea.s.sured. She still demurred.

"But the play was the princ.i.p.al thing, you know."

"The play? Well, I don't know," said Miss Becky, thoughtfully. "I don't know's I'm so terrible sot on the the_ett_er's I thought for.

I'd a good deal ruther hev you come over 'n do that sleep-walkin'

piece for me. I don't want nothin' better'n that. 'F I can see you act that once in a while, 'n' hev this here Garding of Eden to think about,--a founting playin' right in the house, 'n' all,--I ain't likely to want for amus.e.m.e.nt."

The best bonnet was still very much askew, but the pleasant old face within, whose wrinkles had resumed their accustomed grooves, was irradiated with a look of unmistakable beat.i.tude; and somehow it was borne in upon Nannie that her theatre party had been a success after all.

OLIVIA'S SUN-DIAL

CHAPTER I

OLIVIA'S SUN-DIAL

"It's all we need to make it the prettiest garden in Dunbridge."

"Hm! And why must we have the prettiest garden in Dunbridge?"

"Why shouldn't we?"

Here was a deadlock--a thing quite shockingly out of place in a garden, and one's own particular garden at that!

Olivia Page could make almost anything grow, as she had abundantly proved, but even her garden-craft could hardly suffice for the setting of a sun-dial on a pedestal of snow-white marble over there where the four triangular rose-beds converged to a circle, and where the south sun would play on it all day long.

For a year Olivia had dreamed of this, and, since she was not a churlishly reticent young person, it was not the first intimation her father had received of her desire. Not until to-day, however, had she asked outright for what she wanted.

"I wish you would say something more," she remarked, glancing sidewise at the professor's deeply corrugated countenance, which, for all their intimacy, was sometimes difficult to decipher. She had heard of girls who could twist their parents round their fingers; she wondered how they did it.

The two were sitting on the white half-circle of a bench that stood at the west boundary of the old tennis-court, just where one end of the net used to be staked up. Excepting for that break, three sides of the garden were fenced in by the high wire screen originally designed to keep the tennis b.a.l.l.s within bounds, and now doing duty as a trellis over which a luxuriant woodbine clambered, waving its reddening tendrils in the light September breeze. Wide flowerbeds bordered the entire court, the central turf being broken only by the cl.u.s.ter of rose-beds at the further end. From the white bench one looked across the gra.s.s to a broad flight of veranda steps, flanked on the right by a ma.s.s of white boltonia, while on the left a superb growth of New England asters reared their st.u.r.dy heads.

The garden had been a great success this year, quite the admiration of the neighbourhood. Really, Papa must be proud of it, and it was all Olivia's doing. Who would ever guess that it had had its modest beginnings in half a dozen tin cracker-boxes with holes bored in the bottoms, where, in March, two years ago, she had planted queer little brown seeds as hard as pebbles, which Nature had straightway taken in hand, softening and expanding them down there in the dark, till they came alive, and began feeling their way up to meet the sun. Ah, the bliss of seeing those first tiny shoots turn into stems and leaflets, ready to play their part in the great spring awakening! Would Olivia ever love any flowers quite as she had loved those first seedlings, especially a certain pentstemon, which blossomed "white with purple spots," exactly as the seed-catalogue had promised?

Yes, the garden was a great success, and just now it was at one of its prettiest moments, gay with autumn colours; the rudbeckia in its glory, and the great pink blossoms of the hibiscus spreading their skirts for all the world like ladies in an old-time minuet, while over yonder the soldier spikes of the flame-flower threatened to set the woodbine afire. Olivia loved the Latin names, but somehow "tritonia"

did not seem to express those spikes of burning colour. And the roses!

How lovely those late hybrids were! Why, the way that Margaret d.i.c.kson drooped her head above the pansies, still blooming freely at her feet, was enough to melt the heart of a Salem gibraltar! A pity that the professor's attention seemed for the moment to be riveted upon the toe of his boot!

"I wish you would say something more," Olivia repeated.

"Something different, you mean," and Doctor Page smiled, benignly and stubbornly.

"For instance, you might tell me why you are opposed to it."

"You wouldn't understand."