"My heavens, Lucinda!" she exclaimed, sharply. "I wish't there was a school to teach outsiders the use of an ear-trumpet. They can't seem to hit the medium between either mumblin' or splittin' one's ear drums."

Lucinda was too much out of breath from her effort to attempt any audible penitence. Her mistress continued:

"Well, you find him wherever he is, and tell him to harness up the buggy and go and get Mr. Stebbins as quick as ever he can. Hurry!"

Lucinda exited with a prompt.i.tude that fulfilled all that her lady's heart could wish. She found Joshua whetting his scythe.

"She wants Mr. Stebbins right off," said Lucinda.

"Then she'll get Mr. Stebbins right off," said Joshua. And he headed immediately for the barn.

Lucinda ran along beside him. It did seem to Lucinda as if in compensation for her slavery to Aunt Mary she might have had a sympathizer in Joshua.

"I guess she wants to change her will," she panted, very much out of breath.

"Then she'll change her will," said Joshua. And as his steady gait was much quicker than poor Lucinda's halting amble, and as he saw no occasion to alter it, the conversation between them dwindled into s.p.a.ce then and there.

Half an hour later Billy went out of the drive at a swinging pace and an hour after that Mr. Stebbins was brought captive to Aunt Mary's throne.

She welcomed him cordially; Lucinda was promptly locked out, and then the old lady and her lawyer spent a momentous hour together. Mr. Stebbins was taken into his client's fullest confidence; he was regaled with enough of the week's history to guess the rest; and he foresaw the outcome as he had foreseen it from the moment of the rupture.

Aunt Mary was very sincere in owning up to her own past errors.

"I made a big mistake about the life that boy was leadin'," she said in the course of the conversation. "He took me everywhere where he was in the habit of goin', an' so far from its bein' wicked, I never enjoyed myself so much in my life. There ain't no harm in havin' fun, an' it does cost a lot of money. I can understand it all now, an' as I'm a great believer in settin' wrong right whenever you can, I want Jack put right in my will right off. I want-" and then were unfolded the glorious possibilities of the future for her youngest, petted nephew. He was not only to be reinstated in the will, but he was to reign supreme. The other four children were to be rich-very rich,-but Jack was to be _the_ heir.

Mr. Stebbins was well pleased. He was very fond of Jack and had always been particularly patient with him on that account. He felt that this was a personal reward of merit, for it cannot be denied that Jack had certainly cashed very large checks on the bank of his forbearance.

When all was finished, and Joshua and Lucinda had been called in and had duly affixed their signatures to the important doc.u.ment, the buggy was brought to the door again and Mr. Stebbins stepped in and allowed himself to be replaced where they had taken him from.

Joshua returned alone.

"There, what did I tell you!" said Lucinda, who was waiting for him behind the wood-house,-"she did want to change her will."

"Well, she changed it, didn't she?" said Joshua.

"I guess she wants to give him all she's got, since that week in New York," said Lucinda.

"Then she'll give him all she's got," said Joshua.

Lucinda's eyes grew big.

"An' she'll give it to you, too, if you don't look out and stay where you can hear her bell if she rings it," Joshua added, with his usual frankness, and then he whipped up Billy and drove on to the barn.

Arethusa returned late in the afternoon, very warm, very wilted. Aunt Mary looked over the cotton purchase, and deigned to approve.

"But, my heavens, Arethusa," she exclaimed immediately afterwards, "if you had any idea how dirty and dusty and altogether awful you do look, you wouldn't be able to get to soap and water fast enough."

At that poor Arethusa sighed, and, gathering up her hat, and hat-pins, and veil, and gloves, and purse, and handkerchief, went away to wash.

CHAPTER TWENTY - JACK'S JOY

About the first of July many agreeable things happened.

One was that Mr. Stebbins found it advisable to address a discreet letter to John Watkins, Jr., Denham, conveying the information that although he must not count unduly upon the future, still, if he behaved himself, he might with safety allow his expenditures to mount upward monthly to a certain limit. This was the way in which Aunt Mary salved her conscience and saved her pride all at once.

"I don't want him to think that I don't mean things when I say 'em," she had carefully explained to Mr. Stebbins, "but I can't bear to think that there's anybody in New York without money enough to have a good time there."

Mr. Stebbins had made a note of the sum which the allowance was to compa.s.s and had promised to write the letter at once.

"What did you do the last time you were in the city?" Aunt Mary asked.

"I was much occupied with business," said the lawyer, "but I found time to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art and-"

"Good gracious!" exclaimed Aunt Mary, "who was takin' you 'round! I never had a second for any museums or arts;-you ought to have seen a vaudeville, or that gondola place! I was ferried around four times and the music lasted all through." She stopped and reflected. "I guess you can make that money a hundred a month more," she said slowly. "I don't want the boy to ever feel stinted or have to run in debt."

Mr. Stebbins smiled, and the result was that Jack began to pay up the bills for his aunt's entertainment very much more rapidly than he had antic.i.p.ated doing.

Another pleasant thing was that a week or so later-very soon after Mrs.

Rosscott had given up her town house and returned to the protection of the parental slate-tiles-Burnett's father, a peppery but jovial old gentleman (we all know the kind), suddenly asked why Bob never came home any more.

This action on the part of the head of the house being tantamount to the completest possible forgiveness and obliviousness of the past, Burnett's mother, of whom the inquiry had been made, wept tears of sincerest joy and wrote to the youngest of her flock to return to the ancestral fold just as soon as he possibly could. He came, and as a result, a fortnight later Jack came, and Mitch.e.l.l came, and Clover came. Mrs. Rosscott, as we have previously stated, was already there, and so were Maude Lorne and a great many others. Some of the others were pretty girls and Burnett and two of his friends found plenty to amuse them, but Burnett's dearest friend, his bosom friend, his Fidus Achates, found no one to amuse him, because he was in earnest, and had eyes for no feminine prettiness, his sight being dazzled by the radiance of one surpa.s.sing loveliness. He had worked tremendously hard the first month of daily laboring, and felt he deserved a reward. Be it said for Jack that the reward of which Aunt Mary had the bestowing counted for very little with him except in its relation to the far future. The real goal which he was striving toward, the real laurels that he craved-Ah! they lay in another direction.

Middle July is a lovely time to get off among the trees and gra.s.s, and lie around in white flannels or white muslins, just as the case may be. It was too warm to do much else than that, and Heaven knows that Jack desired nothing better, as long as his G.o.ddess smiled upon him.

It was curious about his G.o.ddess. She seemed to grow more beautiful every time that he saw her. Perhaps it was her native air that gave her that charming flush; perhaps it was the joy of being at home again; perhaps it was-no, he didn't dare to hope that. Not yet. Not even with all that she had done for him fresh in his memory. The humility of true love was so heavy on his heart that his very dreams were dulled with hopelessness, the majority of them seeming too vividly dyed in Paradise hues for their fulfillment in daily life to ever appear possible. But still he was very, very happy to be there with her-beside her-and to hear her voice and look into her eyes whenever the trouble some "other people" would leave them alone together. And she did seem happy, too. And so rejoiced that the tide of Aunt Mary's wrath had been successfully turned. And so rejoiced that he was at work, even in the face of her hopes as to his college career. And also so rejoiced to take up the gay, careless thread of their mutual pleasure again.

The morning after the gathering of the party was Sat.u.r.day and an ideal day-that sort of ideal day when house parties naturally sift into pairs and then fade away altogether. The country surrounding our particular party was densely wooded and not at all settled, the woods were laid out in a fascinating system of walks and benches which in no case commanded views of one another, and the shade overhead was the shade of July and as propitious to rest as it was to motion. Mitch.e.l.l took a girl in gray and two sets of golf clubs and started out in the opposite direction from the links, Clover took a girl in green and a camera and went another way, Burnett took a girl in a riding habit and two saddle horses and followed the horses' noses whither they led, and Jack-Jack smoked cigarettes on the piazza and waited-waited.

Mrs. Rosscott came out after a while and asked him why he didn't go to walk also.

"Just what I was thinking as to yourself," he said, very boldly as to voice, and very beseechingly as to eyes.

"Oh, I'm so busy," she said, laughing up into his eyes and then laughing down at the ground-"you see I'm the only married daughter to help mamma."

"But you've been helping all the morning," he complained, "and besides how can you help? One would think that your mother was beating eggs or turning mattresses."

"I have to work harder than that," said Mrs. Rosscott; "I have to make people know one another and like one another and not all want to make love to the same girl."

"You can't help their all wanting to make love to the same girl," said Jack; "the more you try to convince them of their folly the deeper in love they are bound to fall. I'm an ill.u.s.tration of that myself."

Mrs. Rosscott looked at him then and curved her mouth sweetly.

"You do say such pretty things," she said. "I don't see how you've learned so much in so little time. Why, General Jiggs in there is three times your age and he tangles himself awfully when he tries to be sweet."

"Perhaps his physician has recommended gymnastics," said Jack.