"This is the Lady of the Roses' story--SHE made it up--only she talked it as if 't was real, of course, just as you did. She said another thing, too. She said that she happened to know that the Princess had got all that magnificence around her in the first place just to see if it wouldn't make her happy, but that it hadn't, and that now she had one place--a little room--that was left just as it used to be when she was the girl, and that she went there and sat very often. And she said it was right in sight of where the boy lived, too, where he could see it every day; and that if he hadn't been so blind he could have looked right through those gray walls and seen that, and seen lots of other things. And what did she mean by that, Mr. Jack?"

"I don't know--I don't know, David," half-groaned Mr. Jack. "Sometimes I think she means--and then I think that can't be--true."

"But do you think it's helped it any--the story?" persisted the boy.

"She's only talked a little about the Princess. She didn't really change things any--not the ending."

"But she said it might, David--she said it might! Don't you remember?"

cried the man eagerly. And to David, his eagerness did not seem at all strange. Mr. Jack had said before--long ago--that he would be very glad indeed to have a happier ending to this tale. "Think now," continued the man. "Perhaps she said something else, too. Did she say anything else, David?"

David shook his head slowly.

"No, only--yes, there was a little something, but it doesn't CHANGE things any, for it was only a 'supposing.' She said: 'Just supposing, after long years, that the Princess found out about how the boy felt long ago, and suppose he should look up at the tower some day, at the old time, and see a ONE--TWO wave, which meant, "Come over to see me."

Just what do you suppose he would do?' But of course, THAT can't do any good," finished David gloomily, as he rose to go to bed, "for that was only a 'supposing.'"

"Of course," agreed Mr. Jack steadily; and David did not know that only stern self-control had forced the steadiness into that voice, nor that, for Mr. Jack, the whole world had burst suddenly into song.

Neither did David, the next morning, know that long before eight o'clock Mr. Jack stood at a certain window, his eyes unswervingly fixed on the gray towers of Sunnycrest. What David did know, however, was that just after eight, Mr. Jack strode through the room where he and Jill were playing checkers, flung himself into his hat and coat, and then fairly leaped down the steps toward the path that led to the footbridge at the bottom of the hill.

"Why, whatever in the world ails Jack?" gasped Jill. Then, after a startled pause, she asked. "David, do folks ever go crazy for joy?

Yesterday, you see, Jack got two splendid pieces of news. One was from his doctor. He was examined, and he's fine, the doctor says; all well, so he can go back, now any time, to the city and work. I shall go to school then, you know,--a young ladies' school," she finished, a little importantly.

"He's well? How splendid! But what was the other news? You said there were two; only it couldn't have been nicer than that was; to be well--all well!"

"The other? Well, that was only that his old place in the city was waiting for him. He was with a firm of big lawyers, you know, and of course it is nice to have a place all waiting. But I can't see anything in those things to make him act like this, now. Can you?"

"Why, yes, maybe," declared David. "He's found his work--don't you see?--out in the world, and he's going to do it. I know how I'd feel if I had found mine that father told me of! Only what I can't understand is, if Mr. Jack knew all this yesterday, why did n't he act like this then, instead of waiting till to-day?"

"I wonder," said Jill.

CHAPTER XXV

THE BEAUTIFUL WORLD

David found many new songs in his violin those early winter days, and they were very beautiful ones. To begin with, there were all the kindly looks and deeds that were showered upon him from every side. There was the first snowstorm, too, with the feathery flakes turning all the world to fairy whiteness. This song David played to Mr. Streeter, one day, and great was his disappointment that the man could not seem to understand what the song said.

"But don't you see?" pleaded David. "I'm telling you that it's your pear-tree blossoms come back to say how glad they are that you didn't kill them that day."

"Pear-tree blossoms--come back!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the old man. "Well, no, I can't see. Where's yer pear-tree blossoms?"

"Why, there--out of the window--everywhere," urged the boy.

"THERE! By ginger! boy--ye don't mean--ye CAN'T mean the SNOW!"

"Of course I do! Now, can't you see it? Why, the whole tree was just a great big cloud of snowflakes. Don't you remember? Well, now it's gone away and got a whole lot more trees, and all the little white petals have come dancing down to celebrate, and to tell you they sure are coming back next year."

"Well, by ginger!" exclaimed the man again. Then, suddenly, he threw back his head with a hearty laugh. David did not quite like the laugh, neither did he care for the five-cent piece that the man thrust into his fingers a little later; though--had David but known it--both the laugh and the five-cent piece gift were--for the uncomprehending man who gave them--white milestones along an unfamiliar way.

It was soon after this that there came to David the great surprise--his beloved Lady of the Roses and his no less beloved Mr. Jack were to be married at the beginning of the New Year. So very surprised, indeed, was David at this, that even his violin was mute, and had nothing, at first, to say about it. But to Mr. Jack, as man to man, David said one day:--

"I thought men, when they married women, went courting. In story-books they do. And you--you hardly ever said a word to my beautiful Lady of the Roses; and you spoke once--long ago--as if you scarcely remembered her at all. Now, what do you mean by that?"

And Mr. Jack laughed, but he grew red, too,--and then he told it all,--that it was just the story of "The Princess and the Pauper," and that he, David, had been the one, as it happened, to do part of their courting for them.

And how David had laughed then, and how he had fairly hugged himself for joy! And when next he had picked up his violin, what a beautiful, beautiful song he had found about it in the vibrant strings!

It was this same song, as it chanced, that he was playing in his room that Sat.u.r.day afternoon when the letter from Simeon Holly's long-lost son John came to the Holly farmhouse.

Downstairs in the kitchen, Simeon Holly stood, with the letter in his hand.

"Ellen, we've got a letter from--John," he said. That Simeon Holly spoke of it at all showed how very far along HIS unfamiliar way he had come since the last letter from John had arrived.

"From--John? Oh, Simeon! From John?"

"Yes."

Simeon sat down and tried to hide the shaking of his hand as he ran the point of his knife under the flap of the envelope. "We'll see what--he says." And to hear him, one might have thought that letters from John were everyday occurrences.

DEAR FATHER: Twice before I have written [ran the letter], and received no answer. But I'm going to make one more effort for forgiveness. May I not come to you this Christmas? I have a little boy of my own now, and my heart aches for you. I know how I should feel, should he, in years to come, do as I did.

I'll not deceive you--I have not given up my art. You told me once to choose between you and it--and I chose, I suppose; at least, I ran away. Yet in the face of all that, I ask you again, may I not come to you at Christmas? I want you, father, and I want mother. And I want you to see my boy.

"Well?" said Simeon Holly, trying to speak with a steady coldness that would not show how deeply moved he was. "Well, Ellen?"

"Yes, Simeon, yes!" choked his wife, a world of mother-love and longing in her pleading eyes and voice. "Yes--you'll let it be--'Yes'!"

"Uncle Simeon, Aunt Ellen," called David, clattering down the stairs from his room, "I've found such a beautiful song in my violin, and I'm going to play it over and over so as to be sure and remember it for father--for it is a beautiful world, Uncle Simeon, isn't it? Now, listen!"

And Simeon Holly listened--but it was not the violin that he heard. It was the voice of a little curly-headed boy out of the past.

When David stopped playing some time later, only the woman sat watching him--the man was over at his desk, pen in hand.

John, John's wife, and John's boy came the day before Christmas, and great was the excitement in the Holly farmhouse. John was found to be big, strong, and bronzed with the outdoor life of many a sketching trip--a son to be proud of, and to be leaned upon in one's old age.

Mrs. John, according to Perry Larson, was "the slickest little woman goin'." According to John's mother, she was an almost unbelievable incarnation of a long-dreamed-of, long-despaired-of daughter--sweet, lovable, and charmingly beautiful. Little John--little John was himself; and he could not have been more had he been an angel-cherub straight from heaven--which, in fact, he was, in his doting grandparents' eyes.

John Holly had been at his old home less than four hours when he chanced upon David's violin. He was with his father and mother at the time. There was no one else in the room. With a sidelong glance at his parents, he picked up the instrument--John Holly had not forgotten his own youth. His violin-playing in the old days had not been welcome, he remembered.

"A fiddle! Who plays?" he asked.

"David."

"Oh, the boy. You say you--took him in? By the way, what an odd little shaver he is! Never did I see a BOY like HIM." Simeon Holly's head came up almost aggressively.

"David is a good boy--a very good boy, indeed, John. We think a great deal of him."

John Holly laughed lightly, yet his brow carried a puzzled frown. Two things John Holly had not been able thus far to understand: an indefinable change in his father, and the position of the boy David, in the household--John Holly was still remembering his own repressed youth.