CHAPTER X
HAPPIE'S TEMPTATION
WHEN it was all over, and "the rest" had been met by easy andreassuring stages, Bob said that he believed Gretta _was_ worth thetrouble. Happie was satisfied with this concession; she expected nogreater enthusiasm from Bob on the subject of a mere girl.
When Don Dolor was led out, Happie saw the force of his christening.Polly said, without intent to be funny, that "he was more like aclothes horse"; the framework of his anatomy was nearly as fully inevidence.
"Oh, the poor thing!" cried Happie, instantly loving him because of hisunloveliness.
"My goodness, it's time he was sent into the country for his health!"cried Gretta, shocked into forgetfulness of her shyness. "But he isn'told, and he doesn't look sick; he's been starved and overworked. He'llcome out all right."
This dictum was a great comfort, for Gretta was supposed to know moreabout horses than many of the Crestville men; she loved them, and hadlearned about them through that love.
"I don't think he ought to walk about," said Polly anxiously. "Helooks as if he might go all to little bits. Can't you just rest him,Bob?"
"We're going to let you ride him up and down in your doll carriage,Polly," said Ralph.
"It isn't big enough," said serious Polly, and Gretta laughed asheartily as the others.
Gentle Mrs. Scollard's greeting left the girl timid and awkward, whileMiss Keren-happuch she answered without hesitation, and with a laugh inher eyes, to Happie's surprise, who had looked for the reverse effects.
Then Don Dolor was led back to his sore-needed rest, and as Gretta saidshe must not stay this first time, Margery and Happie walked down theroad with her.
All down the road Margery laughed at Gretta's funny sayings, whileHappie looked as proud as a cat with a kitten.
"Come soon again, come often after tea," said Margery, as they pausedat the Neumann gate for the prolonged parting of girlhood.
"I shall," said Gretta with a prompt decisiveness that delightedHappie. "After I get my work done, my cousins haven't any right to keepme home, and I'm coming if you'll leave--let me."
"We'd be only too glad," said Margery heartily. "We haven't any girlsup here to run in; all our friends are in New York, so come up to keepus from getting lonely, Gretta."
Happie only squeezed Gretta's hand. She was delighted that Margery andher "treasure trove," as the boys called her, got on so well together,and bright visions of Gretta's future danced before the warm brown eyeswhich revealed to the world the love in Happie's generous heart.
* * * * *
A week later Miss Bradbury came down in the morning with the ravages ofsleeplessness plainly visible on her face.
"I've heard noises all night," she said in reply to inquiries. "I don'tknow what they were, but I dislike them. Boys, I wish you would drivedown to the store and buy that watchman's rattle we saw there, and stopat Peter Kuntz' and tell him I'll buy his dog."
"There wouldn't be much use in rattling, dear Miss Keren," laughed Mrs.Scollard. "Nobody could hear you."
"And don't you know you asked us to put those bean poles in the garden,and set the pea brush?" added Bob. "They really need doing, and wecan't do that and go to the village too."
"Then Happie must get Gretta to drive down with her," said MissBradbury decidedly. "I haven't been free from nerves all my life to letthem get the upper hand of me now without an effort to check them. Imust have the rattle and the dog. Don Dolor is able to make the tripnow."
He was. If any one doubted the effect of plenty of food and care, DonDolor Bonaparte, could he have met the sceptic, would have convertedhim by the most eloquent of preaching--personal example. In that oneweek he had become another horse. He had put on flesh, he had begun toget glossy, he held up his head as hope awoke in his equine breast, andhe showed unmistakable symptoms of returning to the beauty that hadonce been his. Bob was devoted to him; he had hard work to tear himselffrom him long enough to perform his tasks on the farm, which were manyand irksome, and took a great deal of time.
When they had leisure, Bob and Ralph took their books into the orchardwhere they allowed the don to graze while they read, prostrate in thelong grass. Poor Don Dolor appreciated the kindness to which he was notaccustomed. Sometimes when Bob was deep in his plot, the don would comeup and nose him caressingly as one who would say: "You can't imaginehow different all this is, nor how I thank you!"
So he was entirely able to go to the village in pursuit of hismistress' rattle and dog, and Happie was only too glad of the chanceto borrow Gretta and take the drive. She had found the drive up fromthe station almost too much for her on that April night when she hadfirst taken it, but how pleasant it was now to go slowly along theshaded road, hearing the quail whistling in the fields, and the catbirdwarbling his June ecstasy!
"Somehow I feel as if I had never seen the country till this year,"said Happie looking about her with ineffable content as she and Grettawound carefully down the steep hill. "It's queer, because I used to goaway every summer till the last two, but I feel as if something hadawakened in me this year; it all seems different and lovelier."
"That's because you had a hard time before you came. It makes peoplesee and feel to have a hard time--unless it's a hard enough time todull them," said Gretta. "That's one reason, and the other is that youhave a home here this year. I never was away from here, but I'm prettysure no other place ever looks the way home does. You wouldn't see thisroad as you do if you didn't feel your home was at one end of it."
Happie turned in her seat to look at Gretta. She considered her clever,but she was perpetually surprised at the insight this girl betrayed,now that she dared reveal herself.
"I see that's true when you say it, Gretta," she cried. "But I don'tbelieve I should have found it out for myself. How do you know thingslike that?"
"I've been alone 'most all the time," said Gretta. "That makes a bodythink; I always thought more than I talked. Then not having any realhome of my own makes a difference. I always felt I'd love my own home,because I love Crestville so, even if I can't love Eunice's house much.I guess it's because I've had hard times myself that I know what hardtimes teaches people."
"Teach, dear, when there are more than one thing of which you arespeaking," said Happie, with a pat of apology for the correction.
But Gretta did not mind being corrected. "Teach, then," she said. "Butit seems queer to take off an s on one word, when you put it on theother. I'll never learn."
"You learn wonderfully; it doesn't matter much anyway," said Happiewith a new perception of essentials of which she would not have beencapable a year before. "But it does matter that you have hard times!Cheer up, pretty Gretta! I'm certain they won't last much longer."
"They're half over already since you came," said Gretta with heradoring look.
"You love this place," Happie resumed, acknowledging this remark with asqueeze, "and you'd like to live here all your days--you'd be perfectlyhappy if you owned a house like the Ark, for instance. Yet here am Iwondering if I can stand living in it, for unless mother gets decidedlybetter, Aunt Keren says we may stay on in the Ark all winter, and ofcourse we should have to. Isn't life queer and mixy? By the way, whatdid your Cousin Eunice mean that day when she made me so hopping, bysaying you ought to own that house?"
"Nothing; just nonsense; Eunice is always saying things," said Grettahastily. Which was so true that Happie accepted the answer withoutfurther thought.
They drew up at the little store, which was at once a miniaturedepartment store and the post-office. A rail ran along the upperside of the store for the convenience of customers whose horseswould not stand without tying; here the girls fastened the don, whostood out quite beautiful in contrast to a dingy white horse on hisright, a horse all speckled with black, as if some one had been doingspatterwork on him with an unsteady hand and too coarse a comb. On thedon's left, to enhance his line lines, drooped Joel Lan
ge's _cafe aulait_ mule, and Happie suddenly felt proud of her well-built steed.
Happie took her mail and followed Gretta to the other side of thestore. There were two letters for her mother, one for Margery andthree for herself, besides Miss Bradbury's daily budget of letters andpapers, and Ralph's equally reliable letter which came every day fromhis mother and Snigs.
It proved how far Happie had traveled on the road to contentment andinterest in her new home that she no longer tore open her New Yorkmissives with trembling fingers and brimming eyes as she had doneduring her first six weeks of exile from her friends.
Gretta was buying blue and white checked gingham for aprons, thread,outing flannel of a despondent shade of gray to match Eunice's sample,stove blacking and a bread pan, bartering for a small portion of thecost of these, twenty-seven eggs which her cousins had confided to hercare for this end.
Happie bought only darning cotton, but she invested in fig paste andsour balls, the most attractive candy that she found in the boxesranged side by side in the show-case. They had red-lettered labels ontheir ends of such misleading character that it was evident that theywere boxes remaining from bygone days, whose original contents had longbeen purchased by youthful Crestvillians.
"I can't get the brown calico Reba wanted; it's all," said Gretta, andthen blushed at her relapse into the vernacular and added hastily: "I'mready if you are."
"I'm ready," said Happie, wrenching herself from the contemplationof the portraits on a poster of some incredibly corpulent hens andpigs, professing to have been nourished by a powder which the posteradvertised.
"Wait here and I'll bring the horse to the steps," said Gretta, goingwith indifference between Don Dolor, the _cafe au lait_ mule and thespatterwork horse.
Happie jumped into the buggy, smiling with pleasure. There wassomething cozy about a trip to the village store, doing everything foroneself, and watching life at close range. She had completely forgottenthe original errand on which she had come.
Don Dolor trotted along briskly, head up and his black flanks shiningin a way that reflected credit on Bob's amateur grooming, for theyshone enough to reflect anything else as well as credit.
"I'll read my letters if you don't mind, Gretta," said Happie. She hadfallen into the habit of reading the girls' letters to this lonely girlat her side. Happie's friends belonged to the world into which herfather and mother were born, a world of wealth and pleasure, and theirletters gave Gretta insight into lives very different from her own,into which they brought new personal interests. She had grown to knowHappie's friends through this introduction. Happie now read pages ofmerry-making at the seashore, whither Edith had gone early; of stillgayer doings in New York, where Elsie Barker lingered, going to roofgardens and summer operas to her lively heart's content, and of themost delightful times of all which Eleanor Vernon was having travelingup the Hudson to Niagara, the St. Lawrence, Montreal and Quebec.
Happie drew a long breath as she laid down this last letter. "That'sthe trip I most want to take on this side the ocean," she said soberly.
Gretta looked at her anxiously. She was more than desirous that Happieshould not miss her old friends, nor long for the pleasures of town,and her chief earthly hope just now was that Happie might become tooattached to Crestville to be willing to go back.
"I don't see how you stand it," she said, with the deep design ofhearing what Happie would reply. "Don't you wish that one of thefairies you were reading me about would fly down and offer you thechance to get away from here, and have the kind of good times yourfriends are having?"
"It might frighten Don Dolor; I think from his appearance when he camethat he isn't used to good fairies," laughed Happie. Then the smilefaded and she looked gravely up the road ahead of her. It ascendedsteeply, and as they followed it the mountains began to come in sightover the hill crest. All along the way the huckleberries were in bloom,and the sheep laurel touched grayness of rocks, and brownness ofill-nourished brambles into brightness with its purpling pink.
Up the rough roads which opened at intervals through the woods oneither side of the main road, one saw masses of pink and white beauty,announcing the perfection of the mountain laurel growing and blossomingaside from the thoroughfares. And the rhododendron buds of the previousautumn were swelling and showing pink along their cone-like edges,under the light brown of their sticky outer covering. Soon the roadsidewould be glorified by their splendor. Cleared fields made patches ofvivid green against the serried trunks of the trees in the woods, andthe breeze blew down, pure and vivifying from the mountains.
Happie drew another long breath. She would like to join her friends,but this was beautiful. It seemed, even to her inexperience, a life ofgreater reality; of peace that was beyond estimate, and she was notsure that she would give it up if she could.
"I don't know, Gretta, whether I wish for that fairy or not," she saidseriously. "I do begin to love my life here. Of course those lettersset my feet twitching and my heart throbbing to go after those nicegirls and their nice times, but I'm not sure. And when I think of you,and that you'd miss me and be more lonely for having had me, then I amsure! I am glad to stay here, Gretta," she added, remembering that thiswas what Gretta was longing to hear her say.
Gretta smiled, and then sighed. "You try to think so, but I wouldn'tlike to give you the chance to get away; I'm afraid Crestville couldn'thold you."
Gretta jumped down at the Neumann gate and Happie drove home alone, atask that would have been adventuresome, considering that she had neverdriven, had not Don Dolor a strong desire to get back to his stable andan accurate knowledge of where to find it.
"Hallo there, Icaria!" cried Bob coming around the corner to help hissister. "How did you get on driving the borrowed chariot?"
"I couldn't be as classical as you are, not if I were a WinglessVictory," said Happie, stubbing her toe as she jumped from the buggy,and landing on one knee on the turf.
"You're wingless all right," laughed Bob. "That comes of trying towither your brother when he makes graceful allusions to Icarus--getshis genders right, too!"
"Pooh! You got Ralph to help you with that careless allusion; got outyour Bulfinch's Age of Fable to find out who it was that drove hisfather's chariot, most likely, to be ready to impress me," said Happierubbing her bruised knee. "We got on all right; I believe the don'sgoing to turn out a fine horse."
"He's one already," said Bob. "Come to ride to the barn, Penny?" heasked as Penny appeared on the top step looking wistful. "And Laura,the dignified? Ralph is going to take the horse around. Any one elsecoming forth? You can ride in layers such a short distance."
"I don't mind if I come fourth," said Polly, misinterpreting Bob'smeaning. "That'll be two for the seat, and another two in their laps."
"Twice two are four, problematical Polly," laughed Bob. "You are_forth_ already in my sense, but you may be _fourth_ in yours, if youwant to be. Go ahead, Ralph. I'll be there on foot in a week or so tounharness."
Happie ran into the house. She found her mother sewing, and Margery,looking sweet and young ladyfied, bending over her Mexican work.
"Six letters, motherums; two yours, one Margery's, three mine," Happiesaid, throwing herself down and fanning herself with her hat.
Mrs. Scollard read her first letter, which proved to be but a note,then opened the second one, read it, glanced at her two daughters withheightened color, and read it over. The elder girl was reading herletter from a girl friend, and trying not to show that it moved her,while the other munched a square of fig paste, looking absently out ofthe window, blissfully unconscious of what was in her mother's mind.
"This letter is from Auntie Cam, girls," Mrs. Scollard said at last.
"Yes, I thought so," said Happie. "She's a nice Auntie Cam, nicer thanmost own aunts; what does she say? I was wondering, motherums, if AuntKeren would mind if we got a boulder and made a rockery out there onthe side of the lawn? Only it isn't a lawn; it's just grass."
"Now, Happie, why don't you let mother
tell us about Auntie Cam?"protested Margery. "As if you wanted to make a rockery this moment,right on top of your own question!"
"Somebody--two bodies, in a way--has an invitation from Auntie Cam thatI rather dread to deliver," said their mother slowly.
Happie straightened her listless young figure and Margery droppedher letter, turning to her mother with parted lips, that asked thequestion they did not utter.
"Auntie Cam says, my dear lassies, that she would like to haveHappie"--Margery turned away to hide the tears that sprang into hereyes in spite of herself, and Happie caught her breath--"have Happiecome to her in New York, where she has returned on business for a fewdays, and go back with her to spend the rest of the summer with herand Edith at Bar Harbor, coming home by way of the White Mountains inSeptember."
"Oh, mother, mother!" cried Happie springing up and whirling about in adelirium of joy.
"And she says, furthermore, that Elsie Barker will be there nextmonth," continued Mrs. Scollard.
"I know, I know; I got a letter from her to-day! Did you ever hear ofsuch a magnificent, glorious, blissful thing in all your life?" Happiedemanded of no one in particular.
"Auntie Cam says that she asks Happie because she is Edith and Elsie'sfriend, and because she regards her as especially her girl, but thatif for any reason Happie would not care to go, or could not go, shewill take Margery instead, and not quarrel with her good fortune, butconsider herself very fortunate--so she says--to be allowed to borroweither of my girls," said Mrs. Scollard with a smile of pleasure inthis appreciation of her girls. "Now the invitation is Happie's first,I gather from your showing no sort of reluctance when you heard of it,Hapsie dear, that you are willing to accept Auntie Cam's invitation.There isn't much need of asking if you want to go! I didn't realizethat you would hail the chance to get away with such boundless rapture;I really thought you were getting contented in Crestville. You havebeen a good child to hide your feelings so bravely, Hapsie-girl, andyou deserve your good fortune. What's the matter?"
Happie's ecstasy was fading out, and in its place a troubled look wascreeping into her eyes as she turned them upon Margery. Margery hadrisen, and was looking so hard out of the window that there was nopossibility of thinking she was interested merely in the familiar appletrees and the long grass, fast ripening into Don Dolor's hay. It didnot need the tear that splashed on the window sill to tell Happie thather sister was struggling to hide a disappointment too bitter to beborne without a struggle.
Happie spoke slowly, with an effort. "Why, I have been contented herelately, motherums," she said. "Of course I was glad at first when Ithought of going to Bar Harbor, and with Auntie Cam. It would be aperfectly scrumptious time! But when I remember how long it wouldbe--I'd have to be away from home so long--maybe I'd better--I don'thave to decide this minute, do I, mother?" She stopped her hesitatingsuggestions, feeling that her voice was getting unreliable. It seemedto her that never in all her life had she been so tempted.
Her mother saw her glance at Margery, and divined the truth.
"My dear, unselfish girl!" she thought. But all she said was: "Ofcourse you do not have to decide at once, Hapsie. You ought to have atleast one night in which to decide between the rival attractions of twosuch resorts as Bar Harbor and Crestville!"
Happie smiled dismally. "I'll go up-stairs to think; I can think betterthere. I'm afraid when I look out of our window at my mountains I'lldecide to stay here," she said, and ran away with her brown paper bagof plebeian candies on which a tear of sacrifice fell as she ran.
Six Girls and Bob: A Story of Patty-Pans and Green Fields Page 11