"Don't you think you had better get out of this and leave me?" she asked. "Perhaps you don't know that I have lost my badge. I shall be a dead Scout for a week, and I don't care in the least whether I ever wear it again or not."

Elise came close and laid a hand on Lucy's shoulder, but the girl shook it off.

"_Don't!_" she said pettishly.

"I knew that you had resigned your badge for the so small time of a week," said Elise gently, "but one week soon pa.s.ses."

"Do you know _why_ I lost it?" asked Lucy harshly.

"No," said Elise, "and I do not so much care. That is for you to know, and our dear Captain. I am just so so sorry that you are unhappy. But you will be happy again. Always unhappiness goes away. We do not forget, but it ceases to wound. And if the fault makes you so unhappy, why, certainly you will never, never so do again; will you, dear Lucy?"

To her surprise and dismay, Lucy turned and, hiding her face in her arms, leaned against the cracked old wall and sobbed.

"Oh, I _am_ unhappy!" she cried. "I am unhappy, and I don't know what to do! Sometimes I think I will run away!"

"Oh, don't do that; don't do that!" cried Elise. "Think of your dear mama and your father. Oh, you could never have a fault that would make you need to do anything that would make them so unhappy!"

Lucy laughed her bitter little laugh.

"I think I will tell you what has happened," she said, "and then you can see just how I feel."

"Can you not tell to someone more wise than I?" asked Elise, her dismay growing. "I will be so glad to listen, but for advice, I am so ignorant, so what you call it? I speak your English so poorly, that maybe I say to you the wrong thing."

"You needn't say anything," said Lucy. "You were so good to come and speak to me, and I want to talk to someone. I had advice from Miss Hooker but I shall not take it."

"Was it not good advice?" asked Elise, who thought every word that Miss Hooker uttered was a pearl of wisdom.

"I suppose so," said Lucy with a sneer, "but she does not understand.

Oh, Elise, I shall _die_, I am so unhappy."

"No," said Elise softly, "you will not die so. If it could be, I would be dead long since but I am not, and I am happy--so very, very happy just as my most dear ones who are dead would wish me to be. So it will be with you."

"I want to talk to you," said Lucy.

"Let us sit here then," said Elise, "where no one comes. There is a what you call 'meeting' which my maman is here to attend. It goes on in the upstairs, and she told me it would meet for an hour or two. Tell me all your woe."

She pulled Lucy down on a pile of velvet curtains and patting her hot little hand, said softly, "I wait."

CHAPTER X

"When I was only two years old, my real mamma died," Lucy commenced, "and papa's sister, who was a great deal older than papa, came to take care of us. I had a brother five years older than I. Aunt Mabel was so kind to us, and let us do just as we pleased about everything. I don't see why things could not have gone on like that always, because as soon as I grew up I intended to take charge of the house and run it for papa.

I am thirteen now so it wouldn't have been long before I could have done it. But when I was ten years old, my brother died, and after that, papa stayed away from the house all he could, although Auntie Mabel was always talking to him about his duty to me.

"Well, one day, when I was eleven years old, papa came home, and the very minute I saw his face I knew something had happened.

"'Goodness, papa,' I said, 'you look as though you had had good news!'

'I have, my dear,' he said, and then somehow as I looked at him I had such a funny feeling. All at once I didn't want to _know_ what made him look so glad. So I just sat there and said nothing.

"'Don't you want to know what it is?' he said, and I said, 'I don't know whether I do or not.'

"Papa came over and put his head down on my shoulder the way he used to when he called me his little comforter, and said, 'Oh, yes, Lucy, you want to know! Please say you want to know what your daddy has to tell you.'

"So I said, 'All right,' and Elise, he was going to get married! Oh, I just hated it! He told me lots about the lady. She was from Boston, and that was why I had never seen her, and had never heard about it. She had never been in Louisville. He said she was beautiful, and she did look nice in the picture he had in his pocket case, and he said she was just as lovely as she could be. I just sat there and let him talk, and finally he said, 'Well, chicken, what do you think about it?' I don't know what made me say what I did. Somehow it popped out before I thought. I said, 'Are you sure she isn't marrying you for your money?'

"And papa sort of stiffened up and looked hard at me, and finally he said in a queer voice, 'Good Lord, how old are you?' I said, 'I am eleven,' and he said, 'Well, you sound like Mrs. Worldly Wiseman, aged fifty. I suppose you will feel better if I say that the lady has more money than I have, and that I will be lucky if people do not claim that _I_ have been the fortune hunter.'

"'Well, what _is_ she going to marry you for?' I asked. 'She says she loves me,' papa said. I said, 'We don't want her here! We are getting along all right.' Oh, I didn't mean to be so ugly, but somehow I _hated_ to have papa marry anyone, and I didn't know this lady. So papa went off awfully cross at me and the next person was Auntie Mabel. Papa had told me first; he thought he ought to, and then he went up and told Aunt Mabel. She came down pretty soon. I was right there in the big chair, trying to imagine what it would be like to have a stranger in the house.

"Auntie said, 'Well, Lucy, what do you think of the news?' I said, 'It is nothing to us; we can keep in our rooms most of the time.'

"'I can't,' said Aunt Mabel, 'because I shall leave when she comes. Not that I have the slightest objection, but all the same off I go. I knew it would happen sooner or later, but Henry waited so long that I hoped he was going to let well enough alone. But men are all alike!' And she _did_ go, Elise, the very day before papa brought the lady home. And I _couldn't_ go because there was no place for me to go and Auntie wouldn't take me with her because she said it would make papa angry. So I had to stay whether I wanted to or not. It was perfectly awful!"

"Poor, poor Lucee!" murmured Elise, patting the hand she held.

"I was expecting to see a lady 'most as old as Auntie, and papa came up the steps with somebody _young_. Why, she was _awfully_ young, and had as much powder on her nose as anybody. I was looking through the curtains, and when I saw them coming, I ran upstairs and hid. Papa hunted and called, but I wouldn't answer, and I heard him getting angry, and then she said, 'Don't mind, Henry; it is the most natural thing in the world. Let me find her, I know just where to look,' and papa said in the silliest way, 'Go ahead, darling, the house is yours, and the child too if you will have such a bad one.'

"Well, Elise, she came up those stairs and straight to the table I was under, as though someone had told her! The cover went down to the floor, and she lifted it up, and said 'Coop!' but I came out crosser than ever, and we had a horrid time.

"So that is the way it went. Worse and worse all the time. Papa was not cross with me because she wouldn't let him be, and I felt pretty mean to think a stranger had to tell my own father how to treat me. At first she tried to act so sweet to me, and used to want to play with me. I told her I thought it was silly, but she said she had lots of brothers and sisters, and they always romped around together and had a fine time, and she said if I would only be friends we could have such larks. I told her I hoped I was polite and all she said was to wonder where I got my disposition.

"At first they used to make me stay down with them at night after dinner, but by and by I was allowed to go upstairs. I said I wanted to study. I always kept a study book open on the table, and would go to reading it as soon as they came up. Papa used to come in once in awhile, and she was always asking me if she could help me with my lessons. She said she used to help her brothers.

"After a year, one of the brothers came to visit. He was a real nice boy, and I would have liked him only he was so silly about her; used to want to be with her all the time, and put his arm around her and all that! We had a real good time though, and I thought that I had been real nice to her before him until the day he went home. I was in the library, and he came in. I was just going to ask him to put his autograph in my alb.u.m when he said: 'Gee, you are a disagreeable little mutt! My sister would half kill me for saying it, but honest, I don't see how she stands you!'

"Of course I just walked out of the room. I knew then that she had been telling things about me. And I knew that must be the reason why papa was so different to me."

"But _was_ he?" asked Elise wonderingly.

"Yes, he was, and Miss Hooker says it is all my fault. I had been coldly polite to her for a good while before that. I read about a girl who was abused by a stepmother and the girl was too n.o.ble to abuse her in return. She was just 'coldly polite,' the book said, and so was I. But after that horrid boy went home I let myself be as mean as I could."

Elise nodded. "I saw it in your face," she said.

"And the more I thought of it, the more I was able to _act_ ugly. It is so funny, Elise, the way she makes everybody like her. Papa just gets worse all the time, and the servants _adore_ her, and she is so popular with all the people who come to the house. She makes them all like her--all but me."

"We will talk about that later," said Elise.

Lucy sighed. "Well, things have been getting worse and worse, but I think we have both tried to keep it from papa. We hate each other, but we don't want him to know how bad things are in the house. Papa is not happy, though. Oh, he has talked and talked to me and threatened to send me to school, and I always tell him I wish he would. But the other day the worst happened. Papa had gone to the office, and I was reading in the library, and she was walking around and around, fussing and singing under her breath and sort of acting happy. It made me so mad. Presently she saw me looking at her, and she said, 'Don't you wonder why I am singing?' and I said, 'No, I had not noticed.' She went right on: 'I have had some good news, wonderful news, and I wonder if you would like to hear it, Lucy?'

"I said, 'I am not at all interested,' and went right on looking at my book. She came over and leaned down on the table close to my face, and stared and stared at me. She said, 'Look at me, you bad, difficult, cruel child, look at me and tell me why you are bound to hate me so!' I never saw anyone look so angry. Then her face changed and got pleasant again, and she said, 'What have I _done_? Your own mother, if she can see this house and its unhappy inmates, knows that I have tried to make friends with you.'

"I remembered how furious the girl in the book was when her stepmother spoke of her mother, and I raised my hand and slapped her."

"Oh, oh, oh!" cried Elise, covering her eyes. "The poor, poor lady!"

Lucy went doggedly on.