It had not been there that morning, Persis knew.

She ran toward it with a conviction of calamity which only took concrete form when she heard her brother's call issuing from the depths of the earth.

"The well," she cried with self-accusing anguish. "The old well." But when she stood by its edge and sent her voice ringing down into its depth, it was steady and strong.

"I'm going for help, Joel. 'Twon't be much of any time now. Just a little longer."

Mary and the children had never seen the Persis who came running toward them. They shrank back from her stern presence, half afraid.

"Mary, take the children into the house and keep them there. Call up the doctor and tell him to get here as quick as he can. And have that coil of new rope that's in the shed ready for me by the time I'm back."

She had leaped into the machine while she was giving her orders. It described a dizzy circle in the gra.s.s, shot down the driveway, and sped screaming along the dusty road. Before the trembling Mary had had more than time to discharge her commissions the car was back with half a dozen strong men, harvesters from the farm just below, crowded into the seats. And when Doctor Ballard turned his sweating horse up the drive half an hour later, Joel and Celia were between hot blankets, and stimulants had already stirred their sluggish blood.

It was eight o'clock before the doctor left. "I've got to see the Packard boy, or I wouldn't go. I'll come back and stay the night through."

Persis nodded. "I'd feel easier to have you in the house. There won't be no need for you to lose your sleep. The spare room's all made up."

Some twenty minutes later Joel roused and spoke. His respiration was hurried and articulation difficult.

"Persis--Celia?"

She understood the syncopated sentence.

"Celia's doing fine, the doctor thinks. She's got a little temperature, but a child's likely to have fever for any little thing."

He waited some time before putting the next question, rallying his strength for the ordeal of speech.

"Don't s'pose--'twould do for me--to see her?"

Persis looked at him with a curious tightening of the lips, in her eyes an unaccustomed blending of tenderness and pride.

"You shall see her, if you want to, Joel. 'Tain't going to hurt her--to speak of."

From the room across the hall she brought Celia, a chrysalid child, sleeping heavily, closely wrapped in an old plaid shawl, and laid her on Joel's bed. Celia's thatch of black hair fell untidily across the pillow. The fever gave her olive skin an unwonted color. Joel made an ineffectual effort to lift his arm. Then as he desisted, sighing, his sister gently lifted his hand till it touched the hot fingers of the sleeping child.

"They're--such little--things--Persis." His labored breath made speech fragmentary. "It's funny, how--they fill up--all the room in--a man's heart."

"Yes, I know, Joel. But I guess maybe you'd better not talk."

"Makes me think of--what the Good Book says, Persis. 'A little child--'"

He did not finish the quotation. After Persis was sure that he was asleep, she carried Celia back to her bed and renewed her watch. The doctor came in about ten o'clock and stood for a little with his fingers on his patient's pulse.

"You'd better not lose your sleep, Doctor," Persis suggested, glancing at the weary young face. "You go into the spare room and I'll call you if I need you."

"I'm not tired," the doctor answered. "I'd as soon sit here for a while." But he did not meet her eye.

It was an hour later when the struggling breath lengthened into a sigh, deep-drawn and profound, irresistibly suggestive of untold relief. The doctor was at the bedside instantly, but after a moment he laid the limp hand gently down and turned away.

Persis sank upon her knees, putting her hands over her face down which the tears were streaming, those strange illogical tears which are life's tribute to death, however it may come. Yet even while she wept, phrases of thanksgiving sang melodiously through her brain and echoed in her heart. For to this brother of hers it had been given to redeem a life of weakness and failure by a single heroic sacrifice and to die a man.

CHAPTER XXII

EAVESDROPPING

The winter following Joel's death was unusually severe and to Persis seemed well-nigh endless. Though Celia had escaped the attack of pneumonia antic.i.p.ated by the doctor, her long hours of exposure, coupled with the shock, had told on the sensitive child, and it was months before she seemed her usual blithe, audacious self. Without question Celia sorely missed her vanished play-fellow, and Persis, who had postponed her entering school for another year, because she did not feel that the child was strong enough for the confinement of the school room, sometimes doubted her own wisdom and was half convinced that the companionship of other children and the distraction of Celia's thoughts would have proved sufficient advantage to counterbalance all drawbacks.

The others of Persis' flock with occasional digressions varying in seriousness from chilblains to croup, maintained as satisfactory a health average as the mother of a young family can expect.

After the unprecedented severity of the winter the spring came early, as if nature had repented her harshness and had set herself to make amends. The sparkle came back to Celia's eyes and the lilt to her voice. The children who had been models of deportment while the cold lasted, developed a frisky unruliness, resulting in Malcolm's playing truant and Algie's coming home with a black eye, trophy of his first fight. Persis was too thankful over being able to raise every window in the house and have the sweet spring air flooding in upon her, to take these enormities very much to heart. Indeed, she was almost too busy to deal with the culprits as they deserved.

After two years in which she had hardly touched a needle, except for the children's little garments, Persis was again busy dressmaking. For she had not forgotten her promise to Diantha Sinclair, and Diantha's wedding-day was approaching, simultaneously with her eighteenth birthday. Backed up by Persis, Diantha had declared her intentions and put in a plea for a church wedding. And when her mother stormed and threatened, Diantha made her defiance.

"Oh, very well, mama. Only I'm going to be married in church. And if you won't give me a wedding, Miss Persis will."

In a frenzy Annabel appealed to her husband. Since he felt as keenly as she in the matter of what he called "Miss Dale's unwarrantable interference," their mutual indignation was actually proving a bond between that ill-mated pair. Since Persis had committed the indiscretion of reminding her of her age, Annabel had never spoken to her quondam dressmaker, and even such a crisis as the present could not bring her to the point of submitting to another interview, in which she might hear other truths equally unwelcome. If was her husband who faced the enemy.

Persis listened unperturbed while he stated his grievance. "Mr.

Sinclair, if it hadn't been for me that girl of yours would have been married a year ago. It would have been a runaway match if I hadn't coaxed her into giving up and waiting until she could marry with the law to back her up in doing as she pleased. I made Diantha some promises then, and I'm going to keep 'em."

"Your conscience is too tractable, I suppose, to trouble you over setting a young girl like Diantha against her parents."

Persis regarded him with a slow smile, the significance of which Sinclair plainly had no difficulty in understanding. He flushed to the roots of his whitening hair.

"Mr. Sinclair, when a girl's happy at home, I do think it's a pity for her to jump into being a woman at eighteen. More'n one I've coaxed into waiting. But when a girl's disposition is wearing thin through bickering and nagging day in and day out, the sooner she's in a home of her own the better."

"I am glad you are ready to guarantee the success of this affair for which you are so largely responsible," remarked Mr. Sinclair. This was more of a home-thrust than he knew, but Persis did not wince.

"As for guaranteeing that anybody's going to be happy anywhere, Mr.

Sinclair, only the Almighty can do that. My idea is that Diantha has a better chance with a young man who loves her than with a mother who is jealous of her and a father who hasn't got the courage to take her part."

"If you're going to fall back on vilification, Miss Dale," remarked the other partic.i.p.ant in the dialogue, plainly in a towering rage, "the sooner this interview terminates, the better."

"Well, Mr. Sinclair, I guess you're right about that. Talking things over won't convert either of us. And you understand," continued Persis, following her caller to the door, "that you're not to feel driven to give Diantha a church wedding. Only if you don't, I will."

It was due to Persis' effective championship that Diantha's wedding bade fair to prove what the reporter of the _Clematis Weekly News_ called "A social event of almost metropolitan importance." There were to be bridesmaids and ushers and a best man. Admission to the church was by card, and the ensuing reception at the home of the bride's parents was scheduled to set a new pace for Clematis society. And while Annabel, inwardly raging, struggled to put a bold face on her defeat, Persis was busy with the gown she was resolved to make her masterpiece. The children were not allowed to enter the room where the work was progressing, though they sometimes took awe-stricken peeps through the crack at the mysterious, sheet-draped object suspended from hooks, and in the twilight taking on an aspect distinctly ghostly. It was necessary, too, to carpet the floor of the workroom with sheets when Diantha had a fitting, all of which added enormously to the romance and mystic glamour inevitably connected with a wedding dress.

The children, with whom Diantha had always been a prime favorite, instead of rushing tumultuously to meet her, now stood off when she presented herself, and looked her over, as if like the dress in Persis's workroom, she had become enveloped in mystery.

Mingled with the sc.r.a.ps of white satin which littered the floor were sc.r.a.ps of black silk. After the wedding-day had been fixed upon, the mother of the groom swept down upon Persis, wheedling and peremptory by turns.

"Persis Dale, I don't care if you are worth enough to buy and sell me twice over, you've got to make me a dress to wear to my boy's wedding.

It's no use for you to shake your head, Persis, I ain't had a waist-line since you went out of business. And when I think how Annabel Sinclair's going to be rigged out, I'm worried for fear Thad will be ashamed of me. They say she's going up the city every week for fittings, just as if she was going to be the bride 'stead of Diantha."

It was clearly reprehensible in Mrs. West after throwing herself on Persis' sympathy and carrying her point, to be late to a fitting.

Persis, who planned to clear the cobwebs from her tired brain by an exhilarating spin in her car at four o'clock, had appointed two for Mrs. West to try on the black silk. By quarter past she was fidgety, and as the clock struck the half hour, she waxed indignant.

"Now, Etta West needn't think I'm going to put myself out to make her dress if she can't keep her appointments. Folks that ask favors ought to be particular not to make any more trouble than they can help."