"Yes, dear, I know," the Mother said, hastily. Then they both gazed out of the window, and saw the Boy's little, rough-coated, ugly dog moping under the Boy's best-beloved tree. The Boy had pleaded hard to be allowed to take the dog on the journey. They both remembered that now.

"He's lonesome," murmured the Mother, but she meant that they two were. And they had thought it would be such a rest and relief! But then, you remember, the Boy had never been away before, and he was only ten.

So one day and one more after it dragged by. Two from seven leaves five. The Mother secretly despaired. The second night, after the others were asleep, she stole around the house and strewed the Boy's things about in all the rooms; but she could not make them look at ease. Nevertheless, she let them lie, and, oddly enough, no one appeared to see them next morning. All the family made fine pretence of being cheerful, and spoke often of the quietude and peace--how restful it was; how they had known beforehand that it would be so, without the whooping, whistling, tramping, slamming Boy.

"So relieving to the nerves," the Patient Aunt said.

"So soothing," murmured the Mother, sadly.

"So confoundedly nice and still!" the Father muttered in his beard.

"Haven't had such a chance to work for ten years." But he did not work. The third day he said he must take a little run to the city to--to see his publishers, you know. There were things that needed looking after;--if the Mother would toss a few things into his grip, he'd be off;--back in a few days, of course. And so he went. It was a relief to the Mother, and a still further one when, on the fourth day, the Patient Aunt went away on a little visit to--to some friends.

"I'm glad they're gone," nodded the little Mother, decisively, "for I couldn't have stood it another day--_not another day!_ Now _I'm_ going away myself. I suppose I should have gone anyway, but it's much pleasanter not to have them know. They would both of them have laughed. What do _they_ know about being a Mother and having your little Boy away? Oh yes, they can laugh and be relieved--and rested--and soothed! It's mothers whose hearts break with lonesomeness--mothers and ugly little dogs." She took the moping little beast up in her lap and stroked his rough coat.

"You shall go too," she whispered. "You can't wait three days more, either, can you? It would have killed you, too, wouldn't it? We are glad those other people went away, aren't we? Now we'll go to the Boy."

Early the next morning they went. The Mother thought she had never been so happy before in her life, and the ugly little beast yelped with antic.i.p.ative joy. In a little--a very little--while, now, they would hear the Boy shout--see him caper--feel his hard little palms on their faces. They would see the trail of the Boy over everything; not a make-believe, made-up trail, but the real, littered, _Boy_ thing.

"I hope those other two people are enjoying their trips. _We_ are, aren't we?" cried the happy Mother, hugging the little ugly dog in her arms. "And they won't know;--they can't laugh at us. We'll never let them know we couldn't bear it another minute, will we? The Boy sha'n't tell on us."

The place where the Boy was visiting was quite a long way from the railroad station, but they trudged to it gayly, jubilantly. While yet a good way off they heard the Boy and came upon his trail. The little dog nearly went into fits with frantic joy at the cap he found in the path, but the Mother went straight on to meet the little shouting voice in her ears. Half-way to it she saw the Boy. But wait. Who was that with him? And that other one, laughing in his beard? If there had been time to be surprised--but she only brushed them both aside and caught up the Boy. The Boy--the Boy--the Boy again! She kissed him all over his freckled, round little face. She kissed his hair and his hands and his knees.

"Look out; he's wiping them off!" laughed the Patient Aunt. "But you see he didn't wipe mine off."

"You didn't kiss me. You darsn't. You ain't my mother," panted the Boy, between the kisses. He could not keep up with them with the back of his brown little hand.

"But _I_ am, dear. I'm your mother," cooed the Mother, proud of herself.

After a while she let him go because she pitied him. Then she stood up, stern and straight, and demanded things of these other two.

"How came you here, Mary? I thought you were going on a visit. Is this the way you see your publishers, William?"

"I--I couldn't wait," murmured the Impatient Aunt. "I wanted to hear him shout. You know how that is, Bess." But there was no apology in the Father's tone. He put out his hand and caught the Boy as he darted past, and squared him about, with his st.u.r.dy little front to his mother. The Father was smiling in a tender way.

"He is my publisher," he said. "I would rather he published my best works than any one else. He will pay the highest royalty."

And the Mother, when she slipped across to them, kissed not the Boy alone, but them both.

The next day they took the Boy back in triumph, the three of them and the little dog, and after that there was litter and noise and joy as of old.

Chapter III

The Adopted

The Enemy's chin just reached comfortably to the top fence-rail, and there it rested, while above it peered a pair of round blue eyes. It is not usual for an enemy's eyes to be so round and blue, nor an enemy's chin to reach so short a distance from the ground.

"She's watching me," Margaret thought; "she wants to see if I've got far as she has. 'Fore I'd lean my chin on folks's gates and watch 'em!"

"She knows I'm here," reflected the Enemy, "just as well as anything.

'Fore I'd peek at people out o' the ends o' my eyes!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: 'Fore I'd lean my chin on folks's gates and watch 'em!]

Between the two, a little higher than their heads, tilted a motherly bird on a syringa twig.

"Ter-wit, ter-wee,--pit-ee, pit-ee!" she twittered under her breath.

And it did seem a pity to be quarrellers on a day in May, with the apple buds turning as pink as pink!

"I sha'n't ever tell her any more secrets," Margaret mused, rather sadly, for there was that beautiful new one aching to be told.

"I sha'n't ever skip with her again," the Enemy's musings ran drearily, and the arm she had always put round Margaret when they skipped felt lonesome and--and empty. And there was that lovely new level place to skip in!

"Pit-ee! Pit-ee!" sang softly the motherly bird.

It had only been going on a week of seven days. It was exactly a week ago to-day it began, while they were making the birthday presents together, Margaret sitting in this very chair and Nell--the Enemy sitting on the toppest door-step. Who would have thought it was coming? There was nothing to warn--no thunder in the sky, no little mother-bird on the syringa bush. It just _came_--oh, hum!

"I'm ahead!" the Enemy had suddenly announced, waving her book-mark.

She had got to the "h" in her Mother, and Margaret was only finishing _her_ capital "M." They were both working "Honor thy Mother that thy days may be long," on strips of cardboard for their mothers'

birthdays, which, oddly enough, came very close together. Of course that wasn't exactly the way it was in the Bible, but they had agreed it was better to leave "thy Father" out because it wasn't his birthday, and they had left out "the land which the Lord thy G.o.d giveth" because there wasn't room for it on the cardboard.

"I'm ahead!"

"That's because I'm doing mine the carefulest," Margaret had retorted, promptly. "There aren't near so many hunchy places in mine."

"Well, I don't care; my _mother's_ the best-looking, if her book-mark isn't!" in triumph. "Her hair curls, and she doesn't have to wear gla.s.ses."

Margaret's wrath had flamed up hotly. Mother's eyes were so shiny and tender behind the gla.s.ses, and her smooth brown hair was so soft! The love in Margaret's soul arose and took up arms for Mother.

"I love mine the best, so there!--so there!--_so there!_" she cried.

But side by side with the love in her soul was the secret consciousness of how very much the Enemy loved _her_ mother, too.

Now, sitting sewing all alone, with the Enemy on the other side of the fence, Margaret knew she had not spoken truly then, but the rankling taunt of the curls that Mother hadn't, and the gla.s.ses that she had, justified her to herself. She would never, never take it back, so there!--so there!--_so there!_

"She's only got to the end o' her 'days,'--I can see clear from here," soliloquized the Enemy, with awakening exultation. For the Enemy's "days" were "long,"--she had finished her book-mark. The longing to shout it out--"I've got mine done!"--was so intense within her that her chin lost its balance on the fence-rail and she jarred down heavily on her heels. So close related are mind and matter.

Margaret resorted to philosophic contemplation to shut out the memory of the silent on-looker at the fence. She had swung about discourteously "back to" her. "I guess," contemplated Margaret, "my days 'll be long enough in the land! I guess so, for I honor my mother enough to live forever! That makes me think--I guess I better go in and kiss her good-night for to-night when she won't be at home."

It was mid-May and school was nearly over. The long summer vacation stretched endlessly, lonesomely, ahead of Margaret. Last summer it had been so different. A summer vacation with a friend right close to you all the time, skipping with you and keeping house with you and telling all her secrets to you, is about as far away as--as China is from an _Enemy_ 'cross the fence! Oh, hum! some vacations are so splendid and some are so un-splendid!

It did not seem possible that anything drearier than this could happen. Margaret would not have dreamed it possible. But a little way farther down Lonesome Road waited something a great deal worse. It was waiting for Margaret behind the schoolhouse stone-wall. The very next day it jumped out upon her.

Usually at recess Nell--the Enemy--and Margaret had gone wandering away together with their arms around each other's waist, as happy as anything. But for a week of recesses now they had gone wandering in opposite directions--the Enemy marching due east, Margaret due west.

The stone-wall stretched away to the west. She had found a nice lonesome little place to huddle in, behind the wall, out of sight. It was just the place to be miserable in.

"I know something!" from one of a little group of gossipers on the outside of the wall. "She needn't stick her chin out an' not come an'

play with us. She's _nothing but an adopted!_"