"Yes?" softly queried Dorothy, but Sybil, with back-thrown head, regarded him with an angry suspicion he could have shaken her for. Still he proceeded, blandly: "A man I highly esteemed, and have long hoped to meet again. You have, then [regretfully], quite forgotten me? You used to be rather fond of visiting my wife and swinging----"

"Oh, Mrs. Bulkley!" exclaimed Dorothy, catching Sybil's arm. "Don't you remember our fall from the swing, and how good she was to us?" And maliciously interrupted Sybil: "How angry Mr. Bulkley was? Yes, I remember you, sir!"

And looking into each other's eyes, they hated one another right heartily. But Dorothy, thinking only of what a pleasant surprise this finding of an old friend would be to her father, hastened to say: "Papa will remember you well, Mr. Bulkley, I'm sure!"

"Thank you!" beamed that gentleman. "And your charming mamma, how is she? Well? So glad! A very lovely woman. May I ask your present address, and your kind permission to call upon your parents--that, according to our foreign critics, is, I believe, the correct formula, since they declare that parents are governed absolutely by their children in America. Woodsedge? Broadway? Ah, yes--yes, near the new park the city is about opening--quite so! I--I shall do myself the pleasure of driving out to present my compliments to your mamma and renew my friendship with your father. Do allow me, Miss Dorrie--no trouble at all. I am on my way uptown, and I shall esteem it a pleasure to see you young ladies on to your home train."

And almost forcibly removing various packages from both girls' hands, he const.i.tuted himself their escort and guardian, feasting his eyes upon the fresh young beauty of Dorothy when the noise prevented talking. At the station he added to their parcels a couple of magazines and a box of chocolates, and, seeing them safely through the door that admitted them to their train's platform, he doffed his hat in farewell. And Dorothy gave him a rather forced smile and hasty good-by, while Sybil, with unsmiling lips, gave a short nod of her haughty young head, and William Henry Bulkley said, low: "You d.a.m.ned little cat," put on his hat again and went out, and, climbing into a car, added to himself: "But the other one--good Lord! When you come to talk about peaches, why----"

CHAPTER V

"THE WOMAN OF FATE"

At the back of Woodsedge there was a place of green and fragrant mystery. In former years it had been an orchard, but unlimited sun and rain had combined, with man's neglect, to reduce it to this state of ruinous beauty. At one end the trees were so close, the boughs so intermingled, that their foliage seemed a canopy dense enough to turn aside the sharpest sun-lance, and the orchard, ab.u.t.ting, as it did, upon the forest growth belonging to the park, seemed but the more like a wilderness. For the girls it had many delights, the chief one being that the unsc.r.a.ped, uncleaned trunks, the unpruned branches, the weedy, seedy growths by the walls, all provided food in incalculable quant.i.ties for innumerable birds--long before fruit time. Your bird hates the well-cleaned, sc.r.a.ped-down, poison-washed, eggless, larvaeless orchard of the commercially inclined farmer; but this seemed to be the general refectory for all the birds in the county. Baltimore orioles hung a nest from the tip of an elm bough directly over it. Orchard orioles, cat-birds, thrushes, and robins took apartments in it. A cuckoo and his wife dropped an inadequate and slovenly nest into an overgrown shrub, and though their slim, gray shapes were seldom seen, their "chug, chug, chug" was so often heard that Lena indignantly declared: "Dem rain crows c.u.m make great lies in dis country. In de olt country, ven dey says 't-chug, t-chug,' ten it rain by jiminy! But here dey youst say 't-chug, t-chug' to make you worry mit de clothes dryin'," while the dainty antics of a jewel-like little redstart filled her with laughter.

"I vork youst behind dat grapevine arbor, und I see him, my Miss Ladies; and he got von frau--youst so big as my tum, und so qwiet, und he make to dance und yump before her--und c.o.c.k de eye at her, und he shiver out dem orange und black fedders for her to look at, und he svitch de leetle tail dis vay und dat vay, und she youst look up und say, plain, my Miss Ladies: 'Gott in himmel! Vas dere eber such a bird-mans as dis von of mine?'" And though the refectory was visited by warblers of many kinds, none of them made music sweeter than the innocent laughter of the sisters over the bird courtship Lena described.

On this particular morning the girls had gone to the tangled old orchard for secret conclave. The ground was white with spring's snowstorm of fruit blossoms, and they could feel the petals falling lightly upon their uncovered heads as they walked. Sybil pulled a monster dandelion, and, after touching the great golden disc with her lips, she drew the long stem through her dark hair, leaving the blossom blazing just above her ear.

"If this was only a rare growth," said she, "how people would rave over its beauty. Dorothy, take warning--don't be common! Always remember old gardener Jake's words to us when we were little: 'Make yerselves skeerce, young ladies, and y'ell be valley'd accordin'.' But what's the use of trying to teach wisdom to a girl who shows she's chock full of black superst.i.tions!"

For beyond a doubt Dorothy was earnestly searching for a four-leaf clover, and presently she held out a five-leaf specimen for Sybil to look at. But she waved it away, gloomily misquoting: "That clover doth protest too much, methinks. You will do better to cling to the three-leaf, that, promising nothing, has no power to disappoint you, Dorrie!"

"Oh, but I'm looking for the four-leaf for _you_, Sib dear! If I find it, you will get the introduction you long for without another such disappointment as yesterday."

"Oh, don't!" cried Sybil, leaning her brow against a tree trunk; "don't talk about it!" though that was exactly what they had come out there for--to talk over the failure of Sybil's last, best, most natural seeming plan for an accidental meeting with the woman of her dreams. She was busy winking back her tears when Dorothy gave an exclamation, thrust out her hand to brush aside a big, yellow-belted, booming b.u.mble-bee, then plucked and held up triumphantly a four-leaf clover, and, her face all flushed with heat and excitement, she cried: "See that! She's yours, dear! The Woman of Fate--she's yours! Now you see if she isn't!"

Sybil took the little emblem of good luck, and, putting her arm around her sister's waist to hug her close, she laughed: "Oh, Dorrie, for a girl who says her prayers every night and morning, you are the most superst.i.tious little beast--what's that?"

"It's her!" answered Dorothy, in ungrammatical delight; and Sybil, catching some of her spirit, held the little emblem above her head, crying, laughingly: "Now let the poor leaf get in its fine work!"

The words were scarcely out of her lips when clear and sharp there rose the sound of metal's ringing blow against stone, followed by a quick "Ho--la" in a woman's voice, and the instant stoppage of the regular "click-klack, click-klack" of a trotting horse.

Down under the gigantic willow--his favorite tree--had been sitting John Lawton, reading his paper, and now the girls saw him rise and hasten out to Broadway; saw him, with hat off, speaking to the fretful chestnut and his blue habited rider, who pointed backward with her crop. The watching girls, without hesitation, clambered over the low stone wall and came nearer. They made out that their father remonstrated, and the woman laughed. And then they caught from her the words: "Very kind, and in half an hour," and she was away again; but this time the "clipperty-clapperty-clip" told that she rode at a gallop. The girls fairly tore down the hill, crying "Papa--papa! what was it? Tell us about it!" But first he pointed to the disappearing pair, saying: "Look at that--that's not bad riding for a woman to do without a stirrup!"

"Without a stirrup?" questioned the girls. "Why, what do you mean, papa?"

"Just what I say. I told her it wasn't safe, but she says it's a poor horsewoman who can't ride from balance, and on she went; but she's--just wait a bit," he broke off, "I'll be back in a moment;" and he went down the road, crossed over to a large stone at the roadside, and, stooping, picked something up. Returning, the girls saw that he carried a woman's stirrup.

"That's what we heard clear up in the orchard!" said Sybil.

"Is she going to send for it?" asked Dorothy.

Sybil's very breath was suspended as she waited for the answer. How slow he was about it! At last, feeling in his pocket for a bit of twine, he replied:

"No; she's going to stop here and pick it up on her way home."

Sybil went white for an instant, then flushed red from brow to chin.

Dorothy squeezed her hand sympathetically. Mr. Lawton took up the stirrup and examined the leather straps critically.

"I'm going to try to tie this thing on when she comes back. She rides all right enough for looks without it, but if that horse should shy, and I don't believe he's a bit above it, for he's as nervous as a headachy woman, she might be unseated, so I'm going----"

The girls did not wait for him to finish, but hand in hand they made a rush for the house, and flew up the outraged and groaning old stairs, to bathe their flushed faces and to brush into propriety certain flying locks of hair, and, in old-time parlance, to "prink" themselves generally for the coming interview. As they hastened down again they were disappointed to see their father standing at the gate.

"Oh!" cried Dorothy, "why did he not stay here and let her ride up to the porch for the stirrup. Then we could have appeared naturally and as a matter of course; now----"

"Now!" broke in Sybil, "as a matter of course we'll appear unnaturally, thrusting ourselves forward like ill-bred children! Oh, let's run down and bring papa back!"

And away they started, but almost immediately the "clipperty-clapperty-clip" of the approaching horse was heard, and they stopped. Dorothy, noting how swiftly the color came and went on her sister's cheek, said, piteously: "I wonder if--oh, I hope she will be nice, dear!"

"Nice?" repeated Sybil, savagely. "Why should she be nice? She is on the top wave of success--we're two little n.o.bodies! Why nice, pray? But my pride is pushed well down in my pocket, Dorrie, and, if need be, I'll grovel for the help she alone can give me!"

She said no more, for the horse had already been pulled up, and with a laugh Miss Morrell held out her hand for the broken stirrup; but with almost incredible determination Mr. Lawton not only refused to give it up, but, leading the horse into the willow's dense shade, he produced an old awl and some twine, at sight of which the rider smilingly lifted her knee from the pommel and twisted about in the saddle, to give him a chance to find the broken strap--and the girls looked at her in amazement.

They had seen her often at the theatre--had wept themselves sick over her stage heart-break and death; but now they saw no faintest trace of that moving actress in the pleasant-faced woman before them--a fair-complexioned, wholesome-looking woman, with lots of brown hair, that had glittering threads all through and through it that were accentuated by the blackness of the velvet derby-cap she wore. Her straight nose was a little too short, her cheek-bones a little too high, her mouth a little too wide; in fact, she had escaped being a beauty so easily that one could not help feeling she had never been in danger. All of which did not prevent her from being adored by women. Presently Mr.

Lawton called: "Girls, come here and help me a moment! One of you keep this horse still and the other hold Miss Morrell's habit out of the way for me."

Dorothy, forgetting her timidity, ran to the big chestnut's head, so that her sister might take the place nearest to the rider; and as Sybil held the habit's folds out of her father's way, she raised such pa.s.sionately pleading dark eyes that the actress, ever sensitive to human emotions, felt her heart give a quickened throb, and said to herself: "What on earth is it this girl is demanding of me?" Then she spoke: "I beg your pardon, sir, but if these are your young daughters, will you not introduce them to me?"

And John Lawton, who had the twine between his lips and the awl just piercing the strap, jerked his head to the right, and mumbled: "M--m--my oldest daughter, Sybil," then jerked it to the left, with: "M--m--my youngest daughter, Dorothy--Miss Morrell."

And pulling off her loose riding-glove, Miss Morrell gave her hand to each of the girls with a close, warm pressure of the long, nervous fingers that was like the greeting of an old friend.

Dorothy chatted away, asking the name of the horse and making extravagant love to him. But what had happened to Sybil--the voluble, sometimes the sharp? She stood there dumb, and apparently unable to take her pleading eyes from the smiling face above her. At last the job was finished, and as Mr. Lawton placed the bronze-booted foot in the stirrup Miss Morrell's sigh of comfort and exclamation: "Ah, it does feel good to have it again, after all!" made that melancholy old gentleman laugh aloud from sheer self-satisfaction; and then, as she gathered up her reins, she gayly remarked: "Young ladies, since your father has introduced you by your first names only, perhaps you will now introduce him to me?"

And with much laughter they each took him by a hand and presented him in full name--"Mr. John W. Lawton."

Still feeling Sybil's glance, and being well used to adoring girls, Claire Morrell said, after thanking him for his kindness: "Mr. Lawton, I live just opposite, on Riverdale Avenue. If you go so far afield, will you not call upon me?" Then, touching the fading dandelion with her crop, she added: "I see you are fond of flowers. Perhaps your father will permit you and Miss Dorothy to come over some day and take a look at my posies?"

The color rushed over Sybil's face and her eyes fairly blazed in sudden joy, and the actress felt she had at least partly translated that beseeching gaze. Dorothy accepted the invitation very prettily for herself and sister, Mr. Lawton raised his hat, and as the actress wheeled her horse about her white glove fell to the ground and she rode on, leaving it there. Dorothy s.n.a.t.c.hed it up and pa.s.sed it to Sybil, while John Lawton looked after the rider and remarked, with emphasis: "A charming woman!"

And Dorothy answered, excitedly: "I always thought actresses had to be pretty women, though at night even this Miss Morrell looks----"

"Never mind what she looks!" interrupted her father. "She's a charming woman! You must go over some day and see her at home!" And he returned to his paper under the willow.

Dorothy went at once to her mother to give that lady a voluminous and detailed account of what had happened, and to be cross-examined at great length as to the make of the actress's habit, the quality of her horse, and the condition of her complexion, greatly doubting, as she did, Dorothy's a.s.sertion as to its naturalness. But Sybil fled upstairs and flung herself across the bed and pressed her hot cheek against the crumpled rein-rubbed glove. Her wish had been granted, and all had happened so unexpectedly. Nervous, foolish, joyful tears ran down her cheeks, and, as she recalled the comprehending blue eyes of her Woman of Fate, she knew in her heart that she had found help.

CHAPTER VI

A RECOGNITION AND A DINNER