It was Sunday. The inevitable May cold spell was over. Like half-perished insects, the Lawtons gathered on the porch and basked in the early sunshine. Presently John Lawton, who was sensitive to heat, particularly on Sundays, remarked that by the calendar it was May, but by his feelings it was late June. And Sybil dabbed at his forehead with her wisp of a handkerchief, and answered, with affectionate impertinence: "Well, it's not excessive originality of thought that wears you out, papa, for yesterday you made the dignified and impressive statement that the calendar said it was May, but your feelings told you it was November. No, don't apologize, dear," and she gave him an explosive kiss, "but put your little calendar idea away now for a while--say till fall, and it'll come out quite bright and useful."

Mrs. Lawton exclaimed: "Sybil!" then, in an excusing tone, "Ah! if we had our former surroundings I'm sure your manners and words would be quite in consonance with them!"

"No doubt of it!" promptly acquiesced Sybil, while Dorothy cried: "Papa, positively you ought to take strong measures with Syb, even though she is as tall as you are--you should shake her!" And the utter absurdity of the suggestion sent them indoors in a gale of laughter that Mrs.

Lawton denounced from behind the coffee urn as "absolutely heretical."

Instantly Sybil, with lance in rest, came charging at her mother: "Ho--ho! To the rescue! The English language is in danger! Mamma, had I so misused a word, you would have rapped me on the head with your thimble, _a la_ governess Anna Smith, of evil memory."

Mrs. Lawton pushed up the quite dry bandage from her brows--that bandage was generally visible on Sunday mornings till after church bells ceased their troubling--and said: "'Pon my word, Sybil, your conduct sometimes approaches the contumacious! Dorothy, a smile may degenerate into a grin, and what amuses you is beyond my power of vision. I do know, however, that my English is una.s.sailable."

"But," Dorothy tremulously ventured, "but, by heretical laughter, mamma, did you not mean instead that our noise was inappropriate, or----?"

"Miss!" broke in Let.i.tia Lawton, "I meant what I said. It's Sunday, and it's heresy to laugh aloud on that day! Pa.s.s your father the cream-jug; I've lived with him in honorable wedlock for twenty years, but I can't sugar or cream his coffee right to this day."

"But, mamma," said Sybil, crunching a tiny radish, "is not heresy an unsound opinion----"

"Well, it's got to be an opinion opposed to Scripture!" and Mrs. Lawton hammered the words to the table with her knife-handle.

"Not necessarily," mildly objected John Lawton, as he pushed his cup toward the deity behind the urn. "People have committed heresy against other things than the Scriptures. You can have an unsound opinion without its being a religious one."

"There! That's just what I said!" cried Mrs. Lawton. "Immoderate laughter on Sunday is ill-bred, and is, therefore, unsound religious conduct, which is worse than unsound opinion, which you, yourself declare to be heresy. Thank you, John, you seldom back me up so readily.

Why! those girls have scarcely tasted breakfast, and there they go rushing upstairs. Oh, well, the walk is rather long to St. John's, and I suppose they wish to take their time over it!" And she settled down contentedly to her own dilly-dallying meal, while Mr. Lawton, with a very red face, silently drank his second cup of coffee.

After the girls had gone churchward, and Lena was in full control of the apartment, which Mrs. Lawton always referred to till three o'clock as the breakfast-room, and afterward as the dining-room, father and mother again resorted to the porch, each occupying one of its corners. Mrs.

Lawton, who prided herself upon the propriety of her att.i.tude toward the church, sat with the prayer-book open at the lesson for the day, feeling that the bandage on her brow so fully justified her absence from the church that she was exceptionally devout in thus following the service at the correct moment, and making her responses distinctly a few times, so that she might properly impress her dangerously lax husband.

Then--well, the book seemed to be a long way off--the printed words ran together, jumped apart, whirled round about, a warm haze closed softly down--she, she could not see. She slept, while over in the other corner Mr. Lawton sat by the Sunday paper that itself occupied an entire chair, and in its bulky entirety might well have required the ice-man's tongs to carry it up the hill. And in St. Johns, that church, picturesque and time-honored, that, gathering the little town about its knees, stands with it in the very centre of a hill-girdled hollow, and is in May already greenly veiled with tender ivy and young clambering rose, there sat none more devoutly attentive to the stately service than those two fair sisters from the old White house. Both were used to attracting more or less attention; therefore, when they rose for the Gospel, Sybil's "Glory be to Thee!" died away in her throat from sheer astonishment at the burning blush she saw sweeping over Dorothy's face from chin to down-bent brow. With swift, indignant eyes she searched for the cause of her sister's embarra.s.sment, and no sooner had she found the guilty man, who stood at gaze, wrapped in what truly seemed unconscious admiration for that sweet face, than she gave a violent start of recognition; then, with sharp question in her eye, turned back to Dorothy, to find that blush even hotter, redder than it was before, and knew instinctively that she, too, had recognized the grave young man of the city car--he who had frustrated Mr. Bulkley's plan; and with a sudden swelling of the throat the conviction came to her that these two had fallen in love at sight, and in a very pa.s.sion of tenderness for her sister Sybil whispered to herself, "Dorrie! little Dorrie! what are you doing, dear?

He looks brave and gentle, and--and exacting, and--you dear little idiot, you are conscious of nothing but his gaze! And he, grave as he is, has quite lost track of any other presence here but Dorrie's--my little Dorrie, who is barely done with dolls!" And Sybil's dark eyes were dimmed with tears for a little time.

While they were sitting through the sermon, the dozing Let.i.tia and John were being sorely confused and disturbed by the unexpected arrival of the oppressively opulent Mr. Bulkley. Poor Mrs. Lawton had been the last to awaken, and the glittering trap and big high-stepping sorrel with the wickedly rolling eye were coming up the unused gra.s.s-grown driveway before her eyes opened. She could not fly; she was fairly caught in bedroom slippers and bandaged head. There was but one thing to do, she decided, as John Lawton with drowsy eyes went forward to welcome his guest; she must hide her feet and play up to the bandage. In pursuance of this plan she instantly became very languid in manner and patiently enduring in expression; nor did she forget the bright bloom on her cheeks, but touching their cool surface with the back of her hand announced resignedly that she supposed her fever was coming on again.

And Mr. Bulkley frowned at the trees and talked malaria and quinine and thinning out; and finding the young ladies absent, decided to await their return. And so the evil moment came when Mr. Lawton had to confess himself unable to offer hospitality to the fretting sorrel, who was fidgeting and stamping and throwing gravel all over the place. And Mr.

Bulkley had ordered his man to take the horse back the road a bit to a stable attached to a road-house they had pa.s.sed and put him up there; and as Let.i.tia heard him add, "You can also get your dinner at the house, Dolan," her heart sank like lead before a vision of her almost empty pantry.

As the returning girls stepped aside to let the horse and trap pa.s.s out they heard Mr. Bulkley's big laugh from the porch, and in an instant two frightened blue eyes were staring into two troubled dark ones, while both girls exclaimed, in absolute terror: "Dinner!"

To those who have lived in the midst of plenty all their days, this dinner question may seem very amusing or very absurd, but the genteel poor understand it well. They know the humiliation and torture the sensitive hostess feels in trying to entertain the uninvited stranger within her gates; and here was this great, flaunting, high-feeding old man! There were people to whom the girls could have frankly offered bread and b.u.t.ter and tea, or crackers and cheese and a cup of coffee, but not to this "big animal," as Sybil called him. Dorothy laid her hand on her sister's arm and whispered: "Let us climb through the break in the wall and go up to the orchard and signal Lena to come to us, and there arrange what we are to do."

"Good idea, that!" agreed Sybil, "for you--er--I mean, we shall never be able to escape papa's ponderous friend after we once make our appearance upon the scene." So in the orchard the sorely troubled three held secret conclave.

"Uf id vasn't Suntay!" Lena kept groaning, "or uf id vas breakfas'

alretty instet of dinner, ven tings get chopped all up mit demselves so peoples don't know vat tings dey com' eat; but der dinner, Himmel! Und dat old mans, he eat--ach! I know he eat like dot great hop-up-on-to-mus at der park! Himmel!"

And Sybil threatened. "Dorrie! Dorrie! stop laughing this moment! Don't you dare grow hysterical! Lena, hold your tongue, and only answer direct questions. One chicken, you say? Only one? For five people? Dear heaven!

But, Lena, has mamma her head bandaged up yet? Yes? Oh, joy! She need have no helping, then! She will be too sick, you see!"

"Nein! nein!" cried Lena, "der mistress lofes der dinner too mooch!"

"Yes, I know all that," sternly answered Sybil, "but she will restrain her appet.i.te to-day for the reputation of her house! Dorrie, you _must_ manage that mamma demands in her most plaintive tone some very thin toast and some tea, and she must shiver daintily at the merest suggestion of dinner. Promise her eggs for late supper, to comfort her."

Lena was for broiling their solitary chicken, but a cry of condemnation burst from Dorothy. "Broil it? Never! It must be eked out in some way.

Lena, you can fry it--can't you? And make a great deal of cream sauce, and have some diamonds of toast around the edge of the dish to make it look full?"

"Ja!" nodded the willing Lena, "but dat young hens only make four goot pieces for all dat gravy sauce; und you can't be sick too, my Miss Ladies!"

"Oh!" cried Sybil. "Listen, Dorrie, listen! Lena, was there not a bit of veal left from dinner yesterday?"

"Ja!" answered Lena, "but dat goes mit de oder sc.r.a.ps to be chopped for der breakfas'!"

"No, no!" interrupted Sybil, "put them on the platter with the chicken; cover them well with sauce and drop a tiny morsel of parsley on each piece to mark it; and we will coach papa, Dorrie, to help us to the parsley marked portions without letting the old dear know just why, and with a little care on our part no one need guess we are not eating chicken. That will leave the whole of it for the gentlemen, and Mr.

Bulkley can have the second helping he will want, for you can cook a chicken a la Maryland as well as any aunty, Lena!" Then they agreed that neither one of them would care for salad that day, but might freely indulge in coffee, though sharing very delicately in dessert. And so, patting Lena's st.u.r.dy shoulder in sign of their trust and grat.i.tude, they picked up from the gra.s.s their shabby old prayer-books, and presently made demure appearance, coming slowly up the steep path that led to the weary, sagging, old porch.

And William Henry Bulkley, who for the last half hour had been calling himself every kind of a fool, ran his greedy old eyes over the tempting loveliness of Dorothy and changed his mind suddenly, feeling that the boredom caused by John and Let.i.tia Lawton was not too high a price to pay for the pleasure of loitering by the side of this wonderful girl.

And so he made his devoirs in most expansive fashion; cast dust in Mr.

Lawton's mild blue eyes by referring, in quite a fatherly tone, to his daughters as little Dorrie and Sybbie, was deferential in the extreme to Sybil, and confessed to a distinct recollection of every horse, every equipage, of Mrs. Lawton's ownership in the past, even to one or two she had owned only in her imagination. But never, she observed, did he for one moment lose sight of Dorothy.

At last Sybil, like a pitying angel, placed herself between Mr. Bulkley and her mother's slippers, and covered that lady's retreat to her own room to arrange herself for dinner. And it was Sybil who had sternly to replace the bandage and coach the hungry and irate mother in her part of delicate sufferer, closing the scene with the words: "I know, darling, you're too proud to allow anyone to guess at the straits we are in."

Then, kissing the hungry tears from her mother's eyes, she added: "Just say to yourself, now and then, 'Eggs! eggs!' and that will keep your courage up--that and the knowledge that you are the only woman alive who can wear a handkerchief about her forehead and yet look pretty."

And Let.i.tia simpered, and sprinkled a little bay-rum on her hair to suggest headache; ate a handful of crackers to take off the sharp edge of her keen appet.i.te, and languidly descended to the distinctly musty parlor.

Dorothy had desired to go for a few wild flowers for the table, but she had not escaped from William Henry Bulkley. In all the immaculate glory of his spring attire, as tightly trussed up as a large fowl ready for the oven, he walked at her side when the path permitted, and breathed stertorously behind her when it wouldn't. And when with a cry of joy she discovered that a twisted old hawthorn had actually hung out some garlands of snowy blossoms, he nearly had an apoplexy from his frantic efforts to obtain them for her. He loaded her with fulsome compliments, and he looked so strangely at her that the poor child hurried back to the house, vowing it was the last time she would go out with him, if he were papa's friend twenty times over; and pa.s.sing him over to mamma in the parlor, she hastily arranged her handful of blossoms for the centre of the table, and captured her father and instructed him as to the serving of the chicken. As she spoke a trembling came upon his weak mouth, and his pained blue eyes looked away over her head. She put a pink-tipped forefinger on his lip and said, low: "Don't, papa, don't!

It's all right, only dear, dear papa, you won't forget, will you now--for Syb and me the portions with the bits of green--you understand, papa?"

And he sighed and answered bitterly: "Yes, I understand! G.o.d knows I understand!"

At last, then, they sat at table. Sybil, holding her hatchet behind her in temporary amity, glowed and sparkled, cheerfully proclaimed her interest in the cult of delicate feeding, and boldly challenged judgment on the princ.i.p.al dish before them, the chicken _a la_ Maryland, sorely frightening her family by her reckless daring. But Mr. Bulkley, with Dorothy's wistful blue eyes upon him, without hesitation gallantly declared it could not be equalled this side of Mason and Dixon's line; and, to poor Lena's sorrow, proved his sincerity by accepting a second helping, which was hard on that help-maiden, who had not even eggs to look forward to later on.

But Mrs. Lawton's shiver of repulsion at the offered soup and her faint consent to the making of a little thin toast--"oh, very, _very_ thin"--were so cleverly done that both girls mentally promised her a hug and a kiss by and by. And William Henry Bulkley, who lived solely for physical comfort and mental excitement, and was enjoying both at that moment, beamed and sympathized and complimented and ogled, and finally left the table swept so bare of food that the very locusts of Egypt might have gained points from the completeness of his ravages. And when with grateful hearts the Lawtons saw his red face smiling "good-by" from the gorgeous trap, as it went glittering down the drive, John went directly to his beloved willow, Let.i.tia flew to the dining-room, but Sybil, dashing her fist upon the porch railing, cried, with white lips: "Oh, what a tawdry farce life has become for us! Dorothy Lawton, I go to Miss Morrell's to-morrow! If she helps me--good! If she does not, I'll kill myself! I swear I will! Oh, mamma--Lena! Come quick! Dorrie has fainted!"

CHAPTER VII

A PRAYER AND A PROMISE

Next day, in spite of the faint her sister had frightened her into, Dorothy's cheeks and lips wore their usual clear, bright color, and it was Sybil's face that seemed drained of blood down to the edges of her scarlet lips, while faint violet shadows lay beneath her brooding dark eyes. True to the resolve formed the evening before, she prepared herself, early in the day, for a walk over to Riverdale Avenue. She did not ask Dorothy to go with her, but when the latter noted the preparations being made, she cast down the paper she was dawdling over and herself made ready to go out, and Sybil put her arm about her sister's neck for a moment, in sign of grat.i.tude for her companionship, and together they started forth to make the fateful call.

As they scrambled through the stony lane that made a short cut for them Dorothy said: "Did you pray to G.o.d to help you, Sybbie? I did."

"Oh!" recklessly replied Sybil. "I notice G.o.d generally helps those who help themselves!"

"You mean," corrected Dorothy, "who try to help themselves. All one can do by one's own self, Syb, is just to try. But G.o.d always keeps His promises, and will surely give help if you ask for it, _believing_ in Him. And you do believe--you do, don't you dear?"

Sybil shot a quick sidelong glance at her sister, hesitated a moment, then stopped, bent her head, and whispered, rapidly: "Lord! dear Lord!

who seems always so far off, hear me, I pray! Soften this woman's heart toward me, incline her to help me, not because of any merit, but because of my great need. In your blessed Son's name I ask it. Amen!"

And then she hurried on ahead, while Dorothy, radiant with faith, scrabbled and slipped and laughed quite happily as they came out upon the wide, shady avenue, short of breath but sound of limb and skirt and shoe. As they pa.s.sed the big gate and walked slowly up the driveway of The Beeches they saw a large red sunshade go bobbing around the corner of the house and halted.