Theodora laughed.

"All five of us? Remember, you aren't used to such a horde, and we may overrun you entirely. You'd better arrange to take us on the instalment plan."

"We're not timid," Billy a.s.serted. "Really, I think we can stand it, Miss Teddy."

Theodora shook her head.

"You've not seen Babe yet, and you little realize what she is. In fact, you've hardly seen any of us. I want you to know Hope. You'll adore her; boys always do."

"In the meantime," Mrs. Farrington interposed; "I want to know something about--" she paused for the right word,--"about your new mother. Some one told me she was at Va.s.sar. That is my college, you know. What was her maiden name?"

"Holden. Elizabeth Holden."

"Bess Holden!" Mrs. Farrington started up excitedly. "I wonder if it can be Bess. What does she look like?"

"I've only seen her once."

"Was she tall and dark, with great blue eyes?"

"Yes, I think so, and I remember that her eyebrows weren't just alike; one was bent more than the other."

"It must be Bess." Mrs. Farrington rose and moved to and fro across the lawn. Theodora watched her admiringly, noticing her firm, free step and the faultless lines of her tailor-made gown. She felt suddenly young and crude and rather shabby. Then Mrs. Farrington paused beside her. "If it is Bess Holden, Miss Teddy, your father is a happy man, and I am a happy woman to have stumbled into this neighborhood. She was the baby of our cla.s.s, and one of the finest girls in it. When she comes, ask her--No, don't ask her anything. It is eighteen years since we met, and I want to see if she'll remember me. Don't tell her anything about me, please."

A week later, the McAlisters were sitting under one of the trees on the hill, a little away from the house. It was a bright golden day, and Theodora had lured them outside, directly after dinner. The doctor had been called away; but the others had strolled across the lawn and up the hill as far as a great bed of green and gray moss, where they had thrown themselves down under one of the great chestnut-trees. At their right, an aged birch drooped nearly to the earth; behind them, a pile of lichen-covered rocks cropped out from the moss, against which the twins were resting in an indiscriminate pile. To Mrs. McAlister's mind, there was something indescribably pleasant in this simple holiday-making, and she gave herself up as unreservedly to the pa.s.sing hour as did the young people around her.

All at once, Theodora pinched Hubert's arm, and laid her finger on her lip. Her quick ear had caught the familiar sound of Billy's wheeled chair, and, a moment later, Mrs. Farrington came in sight over the low crest of the hill, followed by Patrick, whose face was flushed with the exertion of pushing the chair along the pathless turf.

Absorbed in listening to Hope, Mrs. McAlister heard no sound until Mrs.

Farrington paused just behind her. Then she rose abruptly, and turned to face her unexpected guests.

"This is rather an invasion," Mrs. Farrington was saying, with a little air of apology; "but the maid said you were all out here, and she told me to come in search of you."

For an instant, Mrs. McAlister gazed at her guest, at the slender figure and the small oval face crowned with its ma.s.ses of red-gold hair. Then, to the surprise of every one but Theodora, she gave a joyous outcry,--

"Jessie Everett!"

"Bess!"

Side by side on the moss, a little apart from the others, the two women dropped down and talked incoherently and rapidly, with an interjectional, fragmentary eagerness, trying to tell in detail the story of eighteen years in as many minutes, breaking off, again and again, to exclaim at the strangeness of the chance which had once more brought them together. On one side, the tale was the monotonous record of the successful teacher; on the other was the story of the brilliant marriage, the years of happiness, of seeing the best of life, and the swift tragedy of six months before, which had taken away the husband and left the only son a physical wreck. The years had swept the two friends far apart; their desultory correspondence had dropped; and in this one afternoon of their first meeting, they could only sketch in the bare outlines, and leave time to do the rest.

"And this is my only child," Mrs. Farrington said at last. "You have so many now, Bess, be generous with them, and let Will have as much good of them as he can. Your Teddy has been very kind to him already."

"Teddy?"

"Yes, Theodora as she calls herself. She has been making neighborly calls by way of the fence, and she and Will are excellent friends already. What an unusual girl she is!"

There came a little look of perplexity in Mrs. McAlister's eyes.

"Yes; and yet I find her the hardest one of them all to get at. The fact is, Jessie, I have two or three problems to deal with, and Theodora is not the least of them. Hope and Hubert are conventional enough, and Phebe is openly fractious; but Theodora is more complex. She's the most interesting one to me, but she is decidedly elusive."

"I wish she were mine," Mrs. Farrington said enviously. "I have so longed for a daughter, and she would be so good for Will. He doesn't know anybody here, and he is so handicapped that he can't get acquainted easily. I know he gets horribly tired of me. Women aren't good for boys, either; and now that he is so pitifully helpless, I have to watch myself all the time not to coddle him to death. I hate a prig; you know I always did, Bess, and I am in terror of turning my boy into one. I shall borrow your Teddy, as often as I can, for she is the healthiest companion that he can have."

Billy, meanwhile, had promptly been made to feel at home among the young people. With Theodora to act as mistress of ceremonies and introduce him, it had been impossible for him to feel himself long a stranger.

Patrick had retired to a distant seat, and the McAlisters settled themselves in a group around the chair, Theodora close at his side with her hand resting on the wheel, as if to mark her proprietorship. She was quick to see that both Hope and Hubert approved of Billy, and she felt a certain pride in him, as being her discovery. Even Hubert's prejudice against the crippled back and the wheeled chair appeared to have vanished at the sight of the alert face and the sound of the gay laugh.

Billy was in one of his most jovial moods, and Theodora knew well enough that at such times he was wellnigh irresistible.

Phebe, awed to silence by the chair and the cushions, eyed the guest in meditative curiosity; but Allyn was not so easily satisfied. From his seat in Hope's lap, he lifted up his piping little voice.

"What for you ride in a baby caj?"

No one heeded him, and he reiterated his query, this time accompanying it with an explanatory forefinger.

"What for you ride in a baby caj?"

"Hush, Allyn," Hope whispered.

"Yes; but what for?" Allyn persisted. "Why doesn't you get up and say, 'Pretty well, fank you'?"

Billy flushed and felt a momentary desire to hurl one of his cushions at the child. For the most part, he was not sensitive about his temporary helplessness; yet among all these strangers who had never seen him in his strength, he was uncomfortably conscious of the difference between himself and Hubert.

Theodora saw the heightened color in his cheeks. Without a word, she rose, picked up Allyn in her arms and bore him away to the house, sternly regardless of the protesting shrieks which floated out behind her. She was absent for some time. When she came back, it was to find that Hope had moved into her old place, and that there was no room for her beside the chair. Billy was talking eagerly to Hope, whose pretty, gentle face was raised towards him. Theodora felt a momentary pleasure in her pretty sister; but this was followed by an acute pang of jealousy to find herself quite unnoticed. For an instant, she hesitated; then she settled herself slightly at one side and back of the chair, in a position where she could be addressed only with an effort.

A little later, Billy turned and called her by name. She was sitting in moody silence, her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands.

"What?" she asked indifferently.

"Come over here, Teddy," Hope said.

"Thank you, I like it better here."

There was a crushing finality in her tone. For a moment, Billy's eyes met those of Hope, and his lips curled into a smile. It was only for an instant; but Theodora saw the glance, and it kindled all her smouldering jealousy of her sister. For two weeks she had been giving all her odd moments to her new neighbor, and now, because Hope was pretty and dainty and quiet and all things that she was not, Billy had promptly turned his back on her and devoted himself to Hope. In her pa.s.sing vexation, she quite forgot to take into account that she herself, not Billy, had been the movable quant.i.ty, and that the time she had given him had been hours of keen enjoyment to herself. Theodora was no saint. She was humanly tempestuous, superhumanly jealous. She could love her friends to distraction; she could give her time and strength and thought to them unreservedly; but in return she demanded a soleness of affection which should match her own.

"Where are you going, Ted?" Hubert called after her.

"Into the house."

"What for?"

"Because I want to. Besides, I must see to Allyn."

"Coming back?"

She turned her head and looked back. Billy was watching her curiously.

"No; not now."

Two hours later, she was searching her brain for an excuse for going over to the Farringtons'. She felt an imperative need to see Billy before bedtime, to a.s.sure herself that they were to meet on the old terms. No excuse came into her mind, however; and she pa.s.sed a restless evening and a sleepless night.