Authors: Grace Livingston Hill
So she stepped inside the hall, and asked Martha for a pencil.
“Just go into the livin’-room, an’ set down at Miss Elsie’s desk,” said Martha, grandly waving the guest inside.
In amazement Katharine looked about her at the pleasant room with its altogether delightful furnishings, the open fire burning sleepily away in the fireplace, the books and magazines, and, above all, the flowers. A great mass of chrysanthemums on the mantel, repeated in the mirror; a tall glass vase on the piano, holding pink and white carnations filling the room with their spicy breath; and on the table a bunch of lovely little rosebuds like the ones Elsie had worn at the concert. Of all things! Who keeps her in flowers this way? It must be serious if all these things come from one person.
She dropped down at the desk, a lovely little mahogany affair, well-appointed and standing open for the convenience of anyone. Nothing could have been more cozy and delightful than the whole charming room. Katharine could scarcely write, so filled with amazement she was.
She left her note in Martha’s hands with many injunctions to have her mistress ready for their return. She telephoned to Rose Maddern, and found her delighted to go motoring with them, and then went out to the waiting company.
Halsey Kennedy was only half appeased with Rose Maddern for company. He kept half a grouch during the entire afternoon. On the whole, Katharine did not enjoy her ride so much as she had expected to do. She kept puzzling over those flowers and the general air of prosperity that had reigned in that living-room. Somehow she did not feel just so sure that her cousin would be eager to come back to the city to live now that she had seen that pleasant room. She was not altogether sure, even, that her mandates for that evening would be obeyed. She kept casting uneasy glances at Halsey Kennedy, and inquiring what time it was, until her companion told her she was a regular crab.
When they returned to Morningside, it was fully half-past five, and Katharine was keyed up tensely, resolved to resort to any lengths rather than fail of bringing Elsie back to the city with her. She could hardly wait for the car-door to be opened that she might fly to the house and insist that her cousin hurry out.
But Elsie forstalled her plans by suddenly rushing out of the house to greet them and insisting that they all get out and come in if only for a few minutes. She looked so pretty with her cheeks all glowing from her recent ride that everyone obeyed her forthwith in spite of Katharine’s protest that they would need to hurry right home because Mamma would expect them and have dinner all ready.
Elsie had them all into the living room eagerly, joyously, and was pulling off motor-veils and cloaks before they could stop her.
“Yes, you must,” she declared laughingly. “I’ve got hot chocolate with whipped cream all ready for you. It will warm you up for the ride. See! Here it comes. It won’t delay you a minute.”
Martha entered with a tray bearing little cups with the steaming chocolate, a great bowl of whipped cream, a plate of tiny sandwiches, another of little cakes; and the company surrendered. Somehow there was something about Elsie that commanded the whole situation and threw out Katharine’s calculations entirely. She moved about among them, offering more cream and cakes, and saying all the little pleasant, winning things that Elsie had always known how to say, and Katharine sat and stared at her, wondering how it could be possible that Elsie had seemed to take her surroundings with her into the country, and not to be at all upset by having all these festive young people coming out to search for her in her seclusion. In fact, half of Katharine’s plans were spoiled by having the house look so different from they way it had in the days when she used to come out to see her cousins years ago. Katharine had expected the contrast to be greater, and had thought that from very shame Elsie would want to come with them to keep the others from finding out how plain and shabby her present home was.
But on the contrary Elsie was quite eager to show them all about, and kept saying how delightful it was to have them come to her. When the chocolate and cakes were finished and Katharine began to clamor for her cousin to get her hat and cloak and come on, Elsie quietly drew her cousins up into her room on the pretence of smoothing their hair; and on the way up she began to explain.
“Katharine, I’m so sorry I have another engagement tonight—” she began.
“Engagement! Oh, bother the engagement! You’ve got to break it and go with us. That’s what we brought the boys along for, to take you by force if you wouldn’t go any other way. You’ve simply
got
to come, or Halsey Kennedy will eat us all up on the way home. He had the worst kind of a grouch all the afternoon because I hadn’t telephoned you we were coming. You can’t get out of it this time!”
Then she suddenly stopped in the door of the room, and stared around, speechless. To find a room like this, a lady’s bower, in the old house that she remembered as gloomy and poverty-stricken was too astonishing.
But Bettina cried out: “O Elsie! What a darling room! Who did it? Not you. It must have cost a lot of money! That sweet little desk, and that love of a bed and bureau! Just look at the walls, Katharine. Aren’t they a dream? And isn’t that a stunning rug? Who did it? Tell me quick! And that single rose in a cut glass vase! Who sends you all the flowers anyway? ’Fess up quick! You can’t fool us any longer. There’s some man out here, or you never would have come. We saw you Monday night at the concert. Come, tell us who supplies the flowers.”
Elsie smiled sweetly, and answered composedly: “Why, my brothers had the room done over when I came, and Jack brought me the rose last night. He almost never fails to bring me some kind of a flower once or twice a week. Eugene brought home the carnations yesterday afternoon, and the chrysanthemums came from a neighbor’s. She has a lot of them both indoors and out. The outside kind are all gone now, of course; but she’s wild over them, and raises them just for the fun of watching them grow.”
“And those perfectly nifty yellow buds downstairs?” demanded Katharine keenly. “You haven’t accounted for those.”
Elsie’s cheeks were a shade rosier, perhaps, but she answered quietly enough: “Mr. Stewart brought those over when he came to take me out in his car this afternoon.”
“Yes, I told you so! I knew some man brought you out here!” declared Bettina teasingly.
“Betty, dear, I came out here because I thought I ought to. Father and the boys needed me. Mother would have wanted me to. You don’t understand how things were and how much they needed a woman who loved them to make a real home for them.”
Katharine spoke up sharply.
“Now, Elsie, you needn’t get sentimental about them. You know perfectly well you were contented enough for five years without scarcely seeing them. You couldn’t have been pining with love for brothers and a father who never came near you.”
Elsie’s cheeks glowed; but a softness came into her eyes and voice, and she answered quietly: “Yes, I know, Katharine. I wasn’t very loving, and I didn’t come out here in the first place because I loved them. I came because I saw I was needed and nobody else could possibly take my place. Then when I got here and found how they loved me, the love came. Why, Katharine, look around! See this room. My brothers did all this for me before I came. They took their own money and bought this furniture, and had this room papered and fixed up. There was a rose in that vase when I came. They hung those pictures, and made everything as nice as they knew how. Do you think I wouldn’t love them after that? There hasn’t been a day since I’ve been home that this little vase has been empty of some kind of flower, and they watch me at every turn to see whether there is anything they can do for me.”
“Well, they ought to!” snapped Katharine to hide her emotion. “Look at what you gave up for them. Look how you are educated while they have been contented—”
But a shout from downstairs broke in upon her remarks.
“Elsie! Where are you? I’ve only a minute to catch the return car! Do you know where I put that theme I wrote last night?”
It was Eugene’s voice. He had evidently just burst into the front door, and had not yet realized the presence of strangers in the house. Elsie was at the head of the stairs instantly.
“Yes, Gene, I put the theme in the upper drawer of my desk. Wait, I’ll get it for you.”
“No, don’t bother to come down. I’ll get it. I brought out the tickets. I’ll lay them on your desk. Tell Jack there’s enough for him to take that girl along.”
Elsie, followed by her curious cousins, hurried downstairs, and found Eugene standing bewildered in the doorway of the living room.
“Eugene has to catch that car that’s coming; so please excuse us,” said Elsie to her guests.
Eugene came forward with unconscious ease, grasped the hand of each guest in turn quickly, and murmured a smiling, “Awfully sorry I can’t stay to get acquainted; but the team’s called early tonight, and I can’t miss this car.”
He grasped the paper Elsie handed him, gave her the tickets, told her to be sure to come to the Franklin Street entrance and not be late, and sped away just in time to whirl himself upon the tail end of the trolley as it passed the house.
Elsie, as she turned to glance at her cousins on the stairs, almost broke down laughing, they looked so astonished and bewildered.
“Eugene is on the varsity basketball team, and there is a game with Princeton tonight, you know,” she explained as the two young men turned away from the window where they had watched to see whether Eugene caught the car.
“I didn’t know you had a brother in the university,” exclaimed Halsey Kennedy with a new note of respect in his voice, while Katharine and Bettina grasped the stair-railing and looked at each other in wonder, telegraphing each to the other not to let the men know that they had been unaware of their cousin’s progress.
“He entered this fall,” said Elsie coolly. “Of course it’s unusual for a freshman to get on the varsity team; but Tod Hopkins helped him along.”
“Tod Hopkins!” gasped Katharine. “Do you know Tod Hopkins?”
“Not yet,” Elsie said, smiling. “But he’s coming home to dinner with Gene next Thursday, and I expect to know him then. He’s been fine to Gene, and he’s already got Jack ’lined up,’ as he calls it, for next year. Jack is just crazy about Tod Hopkins.”
“Does Jack go to the university too?” burst forth Bettina, unmindful of her sister’s warning nudge.
“He expects to enter next fall,” said Elsie sweetly. “He’s studying hard, and is to take his entrance examinations in the spring.”
“I think we had better be going,” said Katharine haughtily. Things were getting on her nerves. “Mamma will be worried about us, and the dinner will be spoiled. Come, Elsie, aren’t you going with us?”
“I’m sorry, Katharine, but you know I couldn’t miss seeing Gene play his first game with Princeton. Besides Mr. Stewart and Miss Garner are going with us. It would be impossible, you know. I expect Jack in any minute.”
And with that word Jack rushed in, handsome, sparkling, his dark hair tossed from the old cap he yanked off as he came in, his face eager and flushed, his eyes full of anticipation. He looked a splendid picture of perfect young manhood.
“Hello, Elsie. Did the tickets come? I asked her, anyway. O—!” and then he spied the guests, and stopped, abashed.
But nothing could abash Jack for more than a second. He came forward easily the next instant.
“Why, hello, Katharine! Bettina! Awfully glad to see you! It’s ages since you were out here.”
He took his introductions to the two young men with nonchalance also, and Elsie watched him with pleased eyes. Certainly there was nothing about either of her brothers of which to be ashamed.
Bettina and Katharine perceived that their cousin was good to look upon. In fact, it suddenly dawned up them that they had been letting two perfectly good young men cousins, who would have made altogether interesting and ornamental escorts, stay in the background too long. They hurried down the last three stairs, and then proceeded to make up for lost time. Bettina especially was much taken with Jack, and began one of her pretty little flirtations.
“You never come down to see us anymore,” she pouted charmingly.
Jack looked at her in wonder, and grinned wisely. Something had changed the social atmosphere tremendously within the last few days. He wondered what it was. He looked at Elsie amusedly, and saw how pleased she was; wherefore, he refrained from several telling cuts wherewith he was about to chastise Bettina for her long neglect of them all, and with the most delightful effrontery proceeded to do what he called “kid” her. This Bettina liked.
“Mamma is going to have you all down to dinner soon,” she ventured, giving an audacious glance at Katharine; then a sudden silence settled on them all for an instant, and Elsie heard footsteps coming up the walk. They stumbled on the upper step and came on hurriedly, as of one out of breath. For an instant Elsie’s heart stopped beating, and she grew white to the lips. Could it be that her father had been drinking again? Was he coming in among them all to disgrace them? She took a quick step toward the door, and at the same moment Jack slid before her, his lips set firmly. If there was anything the matter with their father, he did not intend that their guests should know it.
But the door swung open hastily, and Mr. Hathaway, much excited, burst into the hall. Bettina and Katharine stood close by the living-room door, but he did not notice them. He spoke to Elsie.
“Say, Elsie, has my laundry come home yet? Jack’s telephoned me he has a ticket for me to go to the game in town this evening, and I ought to catch that half past six train. He says the car will be too late. I missed my usual car, and I’m late. I guess I’ll have to hustle. I should like to see Gene play.”
Elsie drew a long breath of relief, and smiled. His voice was clear and eager, and the pleasure of a child was in his face. There was no smell of liquor on his breath.
“Oh, that’s all right, Father; we have plenty of time. Mr. Stewart is going to take us all in his car. He left word that you were to go with us. Come in and see who is here.”