But to her surprise the young man did not seem to be more than half listening to her words. He seemed to be studying her face with deep intention that was almost embarra.s.sing. The soft color stole into her thin cheeks, and she stopped speaking and looked at him in dismay.

"I beg your pardon," he said, seeing her bewilderment, "but you can't understand perhaps how interested I am in you. I am afraid I have been guilty of staring. You see it is simply amazing to me to find a woman of your refinement and evident culture and education who is content--I might even say joyful--to live in a _barn_! I don't know another woman who would be satisfied. And you seem to have brought up all your children with just such happy, adaptable natures, that it is a great puzzle to me. I--I--why, I feel sort of rebuked! I feel that you and your children are among the great of the earth. Don't thank Elizabeth and me for the little we have been able to do toward making this barn habitable. It was a sort of--I might say homage, due to you, that we were rendering. And now please don't think anything more about it.

Let's just talk as if we were friends--that is, if you are willing to accept a couple of humble strangers among your list of friends."

"Why, surely, if you put it that way!" smiled the little woman.

"Although I'm sure I don't know what else we could do but be glad and happy over it that we had a barn like this to come to under a sweet blue sky, with a bird and a tree thrown in, when we literally didn't know where we could afford to lay our heads. You know beggars shouldn't be choosers, but I'm sure one would choose a s.p.a.cious place like this any day in preference to most of the ordinary city houses, with their tiny dark rooms, and small breathless windows."

"Even if 'twas called a barn?"

"Even if 'twas called a barn!" said the woman with a flitting dance in her eyes that reminded him of the girl Shirley.

"Well, I'm learning a lot, I tell you!" said the young man. "The more I see of you all, the more I learn. It's opened my eyes to a number of things in my life that I'm going to set right. By the way, is Miss Hollister here? I brought over a book I was telling her about the other day. I thought she might like to see it."

"She went over to the vesper service at the little church across the fields. They'll be coming home soon, I think. It must be nearly over."

He looked at his watch.

"Suppose I take the car and bring them back. You stay here, Elizabeth.

I'll soon be back. I think I can catch them around by the road if I put on speed."

He was off, and the mother lay on the couch watching the two girls and wishing with all her heart that it were so that her children might have these two fine young people for friends. But of course such things could not very well be in this world of stern realities and mult.i.tudinous conventionalities. What, for instance, would be said in the social set to which the Grahams belonged if it were known that some of their intimate friends lived in a barn? No, such things did not happen even in books, and the mother lay still and sighed. She heard the chatter of the two girls.

"You're coming home with me to stay over Sunday pretty soon. Sidney said he would fix it all up with your mother pretty soon. We'll sleep together and have the grandest times. Mother likes me to have friends stay with me, but most of the girls I know are off at boarding-school now, and I'm dreadfully lonesome. We have tennis-courts and golf links and a bowling-alley. Do you play tennis? And we can go out in the car whenever we like. It's going to be grand. I'll show you my dog and my pony I used to ride. He's getting old now, and I'm too big for him, but I love him just the same. I have a saddle-horse, but I don't ride much. I'd rather go motoring with Sid----"

And so she rattled on, and the mother sighed for her little girl who was being tempted by a new and beautiful world, and had not the wherewithal to enter it, even if it were possible for her to do so.

Out in the sunset the car was speeding back again with the seats full, Doris chirping gleefully at the ride, for her fat legs had grown very weary with the long walk through the meadow and Shirley had been almost sorry she had taken her along.

The boys were shouting all sorts of questions about dogs and chickens and cars and a garden, and Graham was answering them all good-humoredly, now and then turning around to throw back a pleasant sentence and a smile at the quiet girl with the happy eyes sitting in the back seat with her arm around her little sister.

There was nothing notable about the ride to remember. It was just one of those beautiful bits of pleasantness that fit into the mosaic of any growing friendship, a bit of color without which the whole is not perfect. Shirley's part in it was small. She said little and sat listening happily to the boys' conversation with Graham. She had settled it with her heart that morning that she and the young man on that front seat had nothing in future to do with each other, but it was pleasant to see him sitting there talking with her brothers. There was no reason why she should not be glad for that, and glad he was not a sn.o.b. For every time she looked on his clean, frank face, and saw his nice gray eyes upon her, she was surer that he was not a sn.o.b.

The guests stayed a little while after they all got back, and accepted quite as a matter of course the dainty little lunch that Carol and Elizabeth, slipping away un.o.bserved, prepared and brought in on trays,--some of the salad left from dinner, some round rolls that Shirley had brought out with her Sat.u.r.day, cut in two and crisply toasted, cups of delicious cocoa, and little cakes. That was all, but it tasted fine, and the two self-invited guests enjoyed it hugely.

Then they all ranged themselves around the piano and sang hymns, and it is safe to say that the guests at least had not spent as "Sabbathy" a Sabbath in all their lives. Elizabeth was quite astonished when she suggested that they sing a popular song to have Carol answer in a polite but gently reproving tone, "Oh, not _to-day_, you know."

"Why not? Doesn't your mother like it?" whispered Elizabeth.

"Why, we don't any of us usually sing things like that on Sunday, you know. It doesn't seem like Sunday. It doesn't seem quite respectful to G.o.d." Carol was terribly embarra.s.sed and was struggling to make her idea plain.

"Oh!" Elizabeth said, and stood looking wistfully, wonderingly at her friend, and finally stole out a soft hand and slipped it into Carol's, pressing her fingers as if to make her know she understood. Then they lifted up their voices again over the same hymn-book:

"Thine earthly Sabbaths, Lord, we love, But there's a n.o.bler rest above; To that our longing souls aspire With cheerful hope and strong desire."

Graham looked about on the group as they sang, his own fine tenor joining in the words, his eyes lingering on the earnest face of his little sister as she stood arm in arm with the other girl, and was suddenly thrilled with the thought of what a Sabbath might be, kept in this way. It had never appealed to him quite like that before.

Sabbath-keeping had seemed a dry, thankless task for a few fanatics; now a new possibility loomed vaguely in his mind. He could see that people like this could really make the Sabbath something to love, not just a day to loll through and pa.s.s the time away.

When they finally went away there was just a streak of dull red left in the western horizon where the day had disappeared, and all the air was seething with sweet night sounds and odors, the dampness of the swamps striking coolly in their faces as the car sped along.

"Sidney," said Elizabeth after a long time, "did you ever feel as if G.o.d were real?"

"Why, how do you mean, kid?" asked the brother, rather embarra.s.sed.

These subjects were not discussed at all in the Graham household.

"Did you ever feel as if there really was a G.o.d somewhere, like a person, that could see and hear you and know what you did and how you felt to Him? Because they do. Carol said they didn't sing 'Tipperary'

on Sunday because it didn't seem quite respectful to G.o.d, and I could see she really meant it. It wasn't just because her mother said she had to or anything like that. She thought so herself."

"H'm!" said Graham thoughtfully. "Well, they're rather remarkable people, I think."

"Well, I think so too, and I think it's about time you fixed it up with mamma to let Carol come and visit me."

"I'm going to get mother to go out there and call this week if I can,"

said Graham after another longer pause, and then added: "I think she will go and I think she will like them. After that we'll see, kid.

Don't you worry. They're nice, all right." He was thinking of the look on Shirley's face as she sat at the piano playing for them all to sing.

CHAPTER XIV

The first few days in the new home were filled with wonder and delight for them all. They just could not get used to having plenty of room indoors, with all outdoors for a playground. Doris's cheeks took on a lovely pink, and her eyes began to sparkle. She and Harley spent all day out-of-doors. They were making a garden. Not that they had any experience or any utensils. There was an old hoe and a broken spade down in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the barn, and with these Harley managed to remove a few square feet of young turf, and mellow up an inch or two of soil depth. In this they planted violet roots and b.u.t.tercups and daisies which they found in the meadows. Doris had a corner all her own, with neat rows of tiny stones from the brook laid in elaborate baby-patterns around the edge, and in this she stuck twigs and weeds of all descriptions, and was never daunted, only pained and surprised when they drooped and died in a day or two and had to be supplanted by others.

It had been decided that Harley was to stop school and stay at home with mother and Doris, which indeed he was quite willing to do under the glamour of the new life. The school itself never had much attraction for him, and "the fellows" were almost forgotten in searching for angleworms and building dams in the creek.

Carol went to high school every morning with Shirley and George on the trolley. There were only six more weeks till the term was over, and it was better for Carol to finish out her year and get her credits.

Shirley thought they could afford the extra carfare for just that little while, and so all day long mother and Doris and Harley kept quiet home in the old barn, and the meadows rang with Doris's shouts and Harley's answers.

One day the doctor came out in his machine to see Mrs. Hollister as he had promised to do, and found her so much better that he told her she might get up and go around a little while every day if she was very careful not to get over-tired. He prophesied a speedy return to health if she kept on looking happy and breathing this good air. He praised the good sense that brought her out into the country to live, in preference to any little tucked-up house in town, and said if she could only get well enough to work outdoors in the ground and have a flower-bed it would be the making of her. Her eyes brightened at that, for she loved flowers, and in the days of her youth had been extremely successful at making things grow.

The doctor was deeply interest in the barn. He walked about with his hands in his pockets, looking the rooms over, as delighted as a child at seeing a new mechanical toy.

"Well, now this is great!" he said heartily. "This is simply great! I admire you people for having the nerve to go against conventionality and come out here. If I had a few more patients who could be persuaded to go out into the country and take some of the unused old barns and fix them up to live in, I'd have to change my occupation. It's a great idea, and I mean to recommend it to others if you don't mind. Only I doubt if I find two others who have the nerve to follow your example."

The invalid laughed.

"Why, doctor, I can't see the nerve. We really hadn't any choice. We couldn't find a decent place that we could afford, and this was big and healthful and cost less than the worst little tenement that would have done in town. Any one would be a fool not to have come here."

"Mrs. Hollister, do you know that most people would rather starve and swelter, yes--and _die_ in a conventional house, than to do such an unheard-of thing as to live in a barn, no matter how delightful that barn might be? You are a great little woman, Mrs. Hollister, and you deserve to get well, and to see your children prosper. And they will.

They have the right spirit."

After his visit Mrs. Hollister began to get up a little while every day, and her improvement in health was rapid. She even ventured out to see Doris's garden and watch the "budie" in his nest in the tree.

One day a drayman stopped at the place and left several great rolls of chicken-wire, and a couple of big crates. One crate was bigger than the other and contained half a dozen big yellow hens and a beautiful rooster. The small crate held two lovely white rabbits.

The children hovered joyfully over the crates.

"Mine wabbits!" declared Doris solemnly. "Nice Mistah Dwaham give Doris wabbits."