"She's good as gold," said her mother. "And she's perfectly wild about you. She calls you the Princess Moss-rose and makes up stories about you after she goes to bed."

Elsie smiled and colored.

"Don't tell her I told you," warned Mrs. Howe, "she'll be right back.

She had the baby's clean dress ready to pop over his head the moment he woke up."

Elsie looked up quickly as if she were about to speak. But though she said nothing, Mrs. Howe seemed to reply.

"She takes most all the care of him when she isn't in school," she admitted. "Some people think she's too young and that it's too hard for her. But I hardly think so. She's naturally thin, just as I am, but she's never sick, and she likes it, though, of course, like any child, she'd like more time to herself. But she's a born mother. And she really seems to make better use of her spare time than most of the little girls she plays with. And though I suppose I ought not to say it, she and Charles Augustus are ever so much better-behaved and better-mannered than most children who have nothing to do but play--and sometimes it seems they're happier. You see I taught school three years up in the State of Maine, which is my home, and I understand children pretty well, by and large."

Mattie came in at that moment with the baby, a fair, rosy, fat little fellow in a starched white dress and petticoats. She put him through all his tricks to please the visitor, and then asked Elsie if she wished to hold him. Elsie accepted the honor, though she felt rather apprehensive. It wasn't bad, however; indeed, the confidence with which the baby nestled into the arms that didn't know how to enfold him was rather sweet to the girl. And when he made a sudden dash for the pink rose in her leghorn hat, she didn't mind it at all.

Watchful little Mattie minded, however, and took him away quickly lest he injure any of the princess's royal finery. Then the mother took him from her, that the little girl might have the major part of Miss Moss's attention. For the same reason she forbore to call in the other two children, little girls of five and seven, who were playing with dolls in the yard.

But when Charles Augustus came home, his mother proudly summoned him into the parlor. Elsie had seen him at the library--a solemn, big-eyed little fellow with a prominent forehead and spectacles.

When he had shaken hands, his mother told Elsie how much she relied upon his help. He fetched and carried all the clothes she laundered, and had recently made a new body for his old cart which would carry a good-sized clothes-basket.

"I don't see how you do it--other people's washing," said Elsie suddenly.

"I couldn't if Mattie and Charles Augustus didn't help me so much,"

replied Mrs. Howe.

The girl glanced about the pretty room, at the attractive mother in her neat, faded muslin gown, at the thoughtful children, and the rosy baby.

How dreadful it seemed to wash soiled clothing for four strange families!

"Don't you hate it?" she asked with a directness rare to her.

"Oh, no," said Mrs. Howe quietly. "I love to iron, especially pretty things, and I don't mind washing, now that I've got set tubs. You wouldn't believe, would you, that your uncle is responsible for my having them? He thought of it himself. The first I knew of it was that the men came to put them in. Isn't that just like him?"

Elsie agreed.

"But don't you get awfully tired?" she demanded.

"Well, yes, Miss Moss, I do. But so does almost every mother of a little family. You come to take it for granted, you know. A mother rather sinks her life in that of her children, and--after all, she doesn't lose half so much as she gains. And getting tired--why, I know just from what Mattie has told me about the way you do at the library that you understand the satisfaction of doing for others, and that getting tired's a part of it."

Reaching the parsonage, Elsie didn't go in, but sat on a bench in the garden for an hour, not thinking, hardly musing, but in a sort of spell as it were. As she rose at the stroke of six, she was saying to herself: "I never knew life was like that!" And she repeated it as she entered the house.

On the hall-table was a letter from the Elsie in New York. Taking it to her room, she perused it eagerly. One paragraph she read over twice, and yet twice again at bedtime.

"Oh, Elsie-Honey," the pa.s.sage ran, "I was so relieved and thankful to get your letter and feel convinced that you like Uncle John and Aunt Milly just as well as I do Cousin Julia--though I don't see how you can--quite. It came to me the night before I got your letter--suppose you should want to swap back? The cold shivers chased one another up and down my spine and nearly splintered it. Of course, I should have done it without a word, but oh, Elsie-Honey, I don't mind telling you now that it would have broken my heart for sure. For I'm simply mad about Cousin Julia--so dotty over her that I believe if she'd told me I couldn't on any account study for the stage, I should have kissed her hand like a meek lamb. Instead of which she knows and approves--that is, she is willing. Only an angel from heaven would really approve--and I suppose he (or she) wouldn't. At any rate, my present job is trying to keep from bursting with happiness."

CHAPTER XV

"Elsie, I rather want to hear that Elsie-Marley-Honey-thing again,"

remarked Miss Pritchard. "Would you mind doing it now?"

The two sat alone on the veranda of the hotel at an hour when other guests were resting after the midday meal. Before them, beyond a stretch of mosslike lawn and a broad sandy beach, rolled the sea, brilliantly blue, with the waves curling dazzlingly white. Miss Pritchard, comfortably dressed in a plain pongee-silk suit with a long jacket, was ensconced on a willow settee with some recent English reviews. Elsie, perched on the railing, her back against a pillar, gazed at the far-away sky-line. She wore a pale-pink linen frock. Her small face with its dark eyes and big dimples, her bobbed hair, and her exceeding slenderness of form gave her such an appearance of youthfulness that she seemed a very tall child, rather than the small girl she was.

"I like your manner of speaking of my specialty, Cousin Julia," she remarked. "Pray tell me why you want to hear it again, if you have such scant respect for it?"

Miss Pritchard smiled. "If you must know, child, I want to listen more critically this time. I'm quite sure I must have praised it far above its deserts. And now that I understand the situation I ought to be a better judge."

Despite her lightness of tone, Miss Pritchard was really desirous of applying the test. Less than a fortnight after the girl's arrival, she had learned of Elsie's desire to be an actress. The knowledge came like a blow, it must be confessed. Broad as she was, she couldn't help regretting that the girl's desires--and apparently her talent--seemed to lie in the direction of the stage. Though she had declared she had no patience with Pritchard notions and pretensions, she couldn't help feeling that it was hardly decorous for the last of the Pritchards to become an actress. Moreover, she feared that Elsie's capability did not point to what is called the legitimate drama; it looked from the first as if she would make straight for vaudeville and, perhaps, never go further. After her training she might fill a soubrette's part acceptably for a few years, but Miss Pritchard sighed when she tried to look beyond that. To her it seemed like a limited outlook with a closed door blocking the way at a point long before the age when one's career should have reached the apex.

But Elsie's heart was set on it, and Miss Pritchard, despite her misgivings, was full of sympathy and entered cordially into plans and ways and means. Her newspaper work had given her friends among critics, managers, and various theatrical people, and she helped Elsie select a school wherein to begin her studies. That accomplished, Elsie reluctantly agreed to accompany Miss Pritchard to the sh.o.r.e to spend her six weeks' vacation.

"What I cannot understand," said Miss Pritchard at this time, repeating very much what she had said before, "is, how you ever did it--how you could possibly get any such idea into your head with your bringing-up.

For the life of me, I can't imagine your family countenancing any such thing!"

"They didn't take to the idea with any enthusiasm," Elsie replied truly.

"You certainly are the strangest Pritchard ever. You're less Pritchard than I, and that's saying a great deal," said Miss Pritchard with a sigh. "Dear me, when I was at Aunt Ellen's when you were a baby, they were so worried for fear you should have any Marley traits whatever, so anxious for you to be all Pritchard!"

"Are you siding with them now?" the girl asked soberly. "Are you disappointed in me, Cousin Julia?"

"Bless your heart, dear, I'm so satisfied that I'm frightened, and I think I'll throw my precious ruby ring into the sea. I wish I could say that I'd like you to be just so far Pritchard as not to have any desire for the stage; but I somehow don't dare even say that. You see, I couldn't risk losing any particle of Marley other than the stage-madness."

Elsie came to her side and kissed her warmly.

"Then suppose we chuck the Pritchards for good," she proposed.

Miss Pritchard fairly gasped. Such temerity took her breath. But she didn't give expression to her amazement. Already she had come to the conclusion that Elsie had not been happy at home; she who was so frank in all else was so brief and guarded in all her references to the family or her home life. Now it seemed as if she must have been exceedingly unhappy, to be ready to renounce the Pritchards in that wholesale way. And yet, how could any girl whose life had not been happy--nay, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with sunshine--be so gay and blithe and girlish and care-free as she? Could the reaction from strict repression possibly have that effect? Could the opportunity to realize her ambition work such a miracle? Miss Pritchard shook her head. It was beyond her, she confessed.

"Now you're down, you may as well do your stunt and have it over, Elsie," she remarked. And Elsie, standing back a little, repeated the performance in a manner that was only the more captivating.

Then, resuming her seat on the railing, she looked eagerly toward Miss Pritchard. The face of the latter was a study. With every line, every word, indeed, of the simple song, the actress in the girl had come out strongly. Admiration of the grace and skill and charm of it all, and wonder at the extraordinary sweetness of the girl's voice, mingled with regret at the significance of it.

"Do you know what you look like, Cousin Julia?" Elsie asked.

"No, my saucy Marley, I do not."

"Like 'Heaven only knows'"--the girl heaved a tremendous sigh--"'whatever will become of the naughty Brier-Rose.'"

"My dear, if you exhibit that sort of keenness," said Miss Pritchard, laughing, "I'll make a newspaper reporter of you, w.i.l.l.y-nilly. Then you'll be sorry for poking fun at your elderly relative."

"It's only that I'm so used to discouragement from my elders and betters that I'm familiar with the signs," returned Elsie. "Like as not, if any one were to say, 'Hooray! Bully for you! Go in and win!'

I shouldn't understand. I should think they were kidding me."

"Poor child!" laughed Miss Pritchard, but she was really secretly touched.

At this moment an artist Miss Pritchard had known for years, who always spent his summers at this hotel, appeared before them. A man between fifty and sixty, it was said of him that he had never succeeded; younger, struggling artists said it was because of his handicap of a fortune.

"Oh, Miss Marley, I wish I could persuade you to sing that again," he said. "I caught a bit and a glimpse at a distance--just enough to tantalize me."