"But their mother will think that something has happened to them,"

protested Mary. "She'll be frantic."

Meliss pushed her way through the crowd to the carriage. "No'm, she won't, Miss Ma'y. She won't worry none. Her haid aches fit to bus' this mawnin'. I'll tell her _you's_ takin' keer of 'em, and she'll be only too thankful to you-all for a free day."

"It's Meliss who will be thankful for a free day," thought Mary, still hesitating. She rebelled at the thought of her own day being spoiled, and realized that for discipline's sake the children ought not to be allowed to carry their point. Mr. Barnaby settled the question by stepping into the carriage and gathering up the reins.

"Tell their mother I'll bring them back before night," he said to Meliss.

The sobs and tears stopped as suddenly as they had begun. Presently Mr.

Barnaby glanced back over his shoulder, saying:

"This load doesn't seem equally divided. Here, one of you kids climb over into the front seat with me." At the invitation both children threw themselves violently on Mary and clung to her, beginning to sniffle again. He looked back at her with the humorous one-sided smile that she always found irresistibly droll.

"First time I ever came across that particular brand of youngsters.

Strikes me the old Nick has put his ear marks on 'em pretty plain.

You're crowded back there, aren't you, with that dog sitting on your feet? Here, sir! Come over here with me!"

With one bound Uncle August sprang over on the front seat, and sat up beside his host, looking so dignified and so humanly interested in everything they pa.s.sed that Mr. Barnaby laughed. He laid a caressing hand on him, saying, "So you're the dog that's been to college. Well, it has made a gentleman of you, sir! I admire your manners. It's a pity you can't pa.s.s them around the family."

Charmed by the novelty of the drive, the children cuddled up against Mary, and were so quiet all the way to the ranch that she felt remorseful when she remembered how near she had come to depriving them of the pleasure.

Mrs. Barnaby threw up her hands in surprise when she saw the three self-invited guests who calmly followed Mary out of the carriage, but when the situation had been explained in a laughing aside, she said in her whole-souled, motherly way, "Now, my dear, don't you worry one mite!

We are used to children, and we'll find some way to keep them from spoiling your day."

Her first step in that direction was to take them out to the kitchen and fill their hands with cookies, and send them outdoors to eat them. She also gave them instructions to stay out and play. A low swing and a seesaw between the kitchen and the garden gate showed where her grand-children amused themselves hours at a time on their annual visits.

When she went back into the living-room Mary had seated herself in a rocking-chair with a sigh of content.

"What a dear old room this is," she said, looking up with a smile. "It makes me think of Grandmother Ware's. I love its low ceiling and little, deep-set windows and wide fireplace. I could sit here all day and do nothing but listen to the clock tick and the fire crackle, and rest."

"Well, you do just that," insisted Mrs. Barnaby, hospitably. "I have to be out in the kitchen for a while. I've got pretty fair help, but she needs a good deal of oversight, so you sit here and enjoy the quiet while you can."

The early rising and the drive had made Mary drowsy, and as soon as she was left alone the deep stillness of the country Sabbath that filled the room seemed to fold about her like a mantle of restfulness. She closed her eyes, making believe that she really was back at her Grandmother Ware's; that the sunshine streaming in at the open door was the sunshine of a Northern June instead of a Texas January; and that the odor of lemon verbena which reached her now and then came from an outside garden instead of the potted plant on the deep window-sill at her elbow. The old place was so a.s.sociated in Mary's memory with a feeling of perpetual, unbroken calm, that she had never lost one of her earliest impressions that it was the place of "green pastures and still waters"

mentioned in the Psalms.

"Jack always said that I'll have my innings when I'm a grandmother," she said, drowsily, to herself. "I wonder if I'll ever get to a place where I can always be as serene of spirit as she was, no matter what happens.

I wonder if she ever had anything as upsetting as Brud and Sister to try her nerves in her young days."

As if in answer to her mere thought of them, the two children came racing around the house. They fairly fell into the room, and, throwing themselves across her lap, demanded that she come out at once and see the peac.o.c.ks. Had they said any other kind of fowl she would have resented the intrusion more than she did, but peac.o.c.ks recalled Warwick Hall so pleasantly that she got up at once and went with them. She had seen none since leaving school. These had not been near the house on her former visits to the ranch. The stately birds strutted up and down in the sunshine, their tails spread in dazzling gorgeousness.

"They're Sammy's," called Mrs. Barnaby from the kitchen door. "He takes the greatest pride in them. That c.o.c.k took a prize at the last San Antonio fair."

Mary had met "Sammy" the last time she was at the ranch, and had heard of him ever since her first conversation with Mrs. Barnaby. He was an elderly cousin of her husband's who had made his home with them for years. A few minutes later she came upon the old man in the barnyard.

The children, having once obtained possession of her, had dragged her down there to see a colt that they had discovered.

Sammy was sitting on the fence in his Sunday clothes, busy with his usual Sunday occupation of whittling. His bushy gray beard made him look older than Mr. Barnaby, and the keen glance he gave the children from under his s.h.a.ggy eyebrows made them sidle away from him. They, too, had met him before, under circ.u.mstances which they did not take pleasure in recalling. Only a few moments before he had caught them chasing the ducks until they were dizzy, and stopped them with a sternness that made them wary of him. They had had an encounter with him one day in town also, soon after their arrival in Bauer. They had climbed into the wagon, which he left hitched in front of the grocery, and had poked holes into every package he had piled on the seat, in order to discover what they held. When he came out little streams of rice and sugar and meal were dribbling out all over the wagon. When he started after them with a threatening crack of his whip they escaped by darting into the front door of the butcher shop and out of the back, but they always felt that it was one of the narrowest escapes they ever made, and that a day of reckoning would come if he ever got close enough to them to reach them with his whip.

It was a trifling disconcerting to come across him suddenly on this peaceful ranch, and they pulled Mary away as soon as they could. She was enjoying the conversation they had drifted into, starting with the colt.

He spoke with a strong New England tw.a.n.g, and his quaint sayings and homely comparisons suggested the types and times portrayed in the Bigelow Papers.

Despite her determination not to have her day taken up by the children, Mary found herself devoting the entire morning to their entertainment.

Country sights and sounds were so new and strange to them that it seemed selfish not to answer their eager questions, and when their wanderings around the place led them to a deserted cabin where the Indians had once killed two Mexican shepherds, she repeated the thrilling story as she had heard it from Mrs. Barnaby, with all its hair-raising details. When they went in to dinner she had been answering questions and entertaining her pupils for two hours, as diligently as on any week-day.

It was an old-fashioned "turkey dinner" to which they were summoned, and the variety and deliciousness of the dishes may have had much to do with the children's conduct. They were so quiet and well behaved that Mary watched them in surprise. Beyond yes and no and politely expressed thanks, Brud spoke not at all, and Sister only once. That was to say, when Mrs. Barnaby addressed her as Sister, "Call me Nancy. I'm trying that name now."

Seeing the look of surprise that circled around the table, Mary explained, feeling that Sister, as usual, was enjoying the limelight that this peculiar custom of hers called her into.

"Hump!" exclaimed old Sammy. "Something of a chameleon, eh? If she changes her nature to suit her name it must keep her family busy getting acquainted with her."

"I think it does have some slight influence," answered Mary. "Then she'd better drop the name of Nancy," said old Sammy, with a solemn wag of the head. "In an old blue poetry book that I used to read back in Vermont, it said,

"'Little Nancy would never her mother obey, But always did choose to have her own way.'

"She came to a frightful end, jumping up and down in her chair.

"'In vain did her mother command her to stop.

Nan only laughed louder and higher did hop,'

till she fell over and cracked her head. The only Nancys I have ever known have all been self-willed like that."

Garrulous Cousin Sammy was only indulging in reminiscence. He had not intended to tease the child, but she resented his remarks, and thrusting out her tongue at him, screwed up her face into the ugliest grimace possible for her to make. Fortunately the arrival of a huge pumpkin pie turned his eyes away from her just then, for Sammy Bradford, old bachelor though he was, had strict New England notions about the rearing of children, which he sometimes burned to put into practice for the good of the general public.

After dinner Mr. Barnaby retired to his room for his usual Sunday nap.

Cousin Sammy took his pipe to the sunny bench outside the open door, and Mrs. Barnaby provided for the children's entertainment by bringing out a box of toys that had been left behind at different times by various grand-children. She arranged them on a side table in the dining-room, with some colored pencils, paper and scissors.

Brud and "Nancy," ever ready to investigate anything new, seated themselves at her bidding, and began to paw over the games and pictures with apparent interest. Thereupon Mrs. Barnaby and Mary went into the next room, and drawing two big easy chairs into the chimney corner, they settled themselves for a long, cosy _tete-a-tete_. It was the first opportunity Mary had had to explain to Mrs. Barnaby that she had undertaken to teach the children in order to prevent her mother from sewing for other people.

They had had about ten minutes of uninterrupted quiet, when the door opened and "Nancy" walked in with her hat and coat on. Her lips were drawn into a dissatisfied pout, and she threw herself across Mary's lap, whining, "I don't like those old things in there! Tell us about the Forty Thieves _now_!"

"No, Nancy," said Mary, firmly, hoping to appease her by remembering to use the new name. "I told you before you came out here that I'd not tell you a single story to-day."

"But you already have," cried Brud, triumphantly, appearing in the doorway also in coat and hat. "You told us about the Indians killing the shepherds."

"Oh, but that was just a true happening that I told to explain about the cabin we were looking at," was the patient answer. "That was different from sitting down on purpose to tell you a story, and I shall _not_ do that to-day."

"Then come and play with us," demanded Sister, seizing her by the hands, after one keen glance at her to see if she really was in earnest. "Come on, Brud, and help me pull. We'll _make_ her come!"

"Sh!" warned Mary, attempting to free herself, as they began shouting and tugging at her. "I came out here to visit Mrs. Barnaby, and I'll not play with you till to-morrow. If you don't want to make pictures or cut paper or work the puzzle games you'll have to go outdoors and amuse yourselves. But you must not make such a noise. Mr. Barnaby is asleep."

"Then if you don't want us to wake him up you've _got_ to play with us to keep us still!" cried Brud. "Hasn't she, Sister?"

"Call me Nancy when I tell you!" screamed Sister, in an exasperated tone, stamping her foot. Then, fired by Brud's suggestion, she dropped Mary's hands and darted across the room to the piano, which was standing open in the corner. It was an old-fashioned one, its rosewood case inlaid above the keyboard with mother-of-pearl. The yellow keys were out of tune, but they had never been touched save by careful fingers, for it was one of Mrs. Barnaby's cherished treasures. Now she rose as if she had been struck herself, as both children began pounding upon it ruthlessly with their fists, making a hideous, discordant din.

"Stop, children! Stop, I say!" she demanded. But her commands fell on unheeding ears, and they pounded away until she laid vigorous hands on them and forcibly dragged them away from the piano. Instantly they struggled out of her grasp, and rushing back, pounded the keys harder than before. Mary, who had never seen them act like this, was distressed beyond measure that she had been the cause, even though the unwilling one, of such an invasion. She started to the rescue, thinking savagely that they would have to be gagged and tied, hand and foot, and that she would take pleasure in helping do it.

Old Sammy reached them first, however, his Puritanical soul resenting both the disobedience and the Sabbath-breaking uproar. With one swoop he caught up a child under each arm, and carried them kicking and struggling out-of-doors.

"Here ye'll stay the rest of the afternoon!" he announced, in a gruff voice, as he put them down. "There's all out-of-doors to play in, and if you so much as step over the door-sill into that room until I give ye leave, I'll _withe_ ye!"

It was a mysterious threat, since neither child had ever heard the word _withe_ before, and he said it in a deep, awful voice that made Brud think creepily of the Fee-fi-fo-fum giant in his picture-book at home, who went about smelling blood and saying, "_Dead or alive, I will have some!_"