Part 7 (1/2)

Theodora laughed.

”All five of us? Remember, you aren't used to such a horde, and we may overrun you entirely. You'd better arrange to take us on the instalment plan.”

”We're not timid,” Billy a.s.serted. ”Really, I think we can stand it, Miss Teddy.”

Theodora shook her head.

”You've not seen Babe yet, and you little realize what she is. In fact, you've hardly seen any of us. I want you to know Hope. You'll adore her; boys always do.”

”In the meantime,” Mrs. Farrington interposed; ”I want to know something about--” she paused for the right word,--”about your new mother. Some one told me she was at Va.s.sar. That is my college, you know. What was her maiden name?”

”Holden. Elizabeth Holden.”

”Bess Holden!” Mrs. Farrington started up excitedly. ”I wonder if it can be Bess. What does she look like?”

”I've only seen her once.”

”Was she tall and dark, with great blue eyes?”

”Yes, I think so, and I remember that her eyebrows weren't just alike; one was bent more than the other.”

”It must be Bess.” Mrs. Farrington rose and moved to and fro across the lawn. Theodora watched her admiringly, noticing her firm, free step and the faultless lines of her tailor-made gown. She felt suddenly young and crude and rather shabby. Then Mrs. Farrington paused beside her. ”If it is Bess Holden, Miss Teddy, your father is a happy man, and I am a happy woman to have stumbled into this neighborhood. She was the baby of our cla.s.s, and one of the finest girls in it. When she comes, ask her--No, don't ask her anything. It is eighteen years since we met, and I want to see if she'll remember me. Don't tell her anything about me, please.”

A week later, the McAlisters were sitting under one of the trees on the hill, a little away from the house. It was a bright golden day, and Theodora had lured them outside, directly after dinner. The doctor had been called away; but the others had strolled across the lawn and up the hill as far as a great bed of green and gray moss, where they had thrown themselves down under one of the great chestnut-trees. At their right, an aged birch drooped nearly to the earth; behind them, a pile of lichen-covered rocks cropped out from the moss, against which the twins were resting in an indiscriminate pile. To Mrs. McAlister's mind, there was something indescribably pleasant in this simple holiday-making, and she gave herself up as unreservedly to the pa.s.sing hour as did the young people around her.

All at once, Theodora pinched Hubert's arm, and laid her finger on her lip. Her quick ear had caught the familiar sound of Billy's wheeled chair, and, a moment later, Mrs. Farrington came in sight over the low crest of the hill, followed by Patrick, whose face was flushed with the exertion of pus.h.i.+ng the chair along the pathless turf.

Absorbed in listening to Hope, Mrs. McAlister heard no sound until Mrs.

Farrington paused just behind her. Then she rose abruptly, and turned to face her unexpected guests.

”This is rather an invasion,” Mrs. Farrington was saying, with a little air of apology; ”but the maid said you were all out here, and she told me to come in search of you.”

For an instant, Mrs. McAlister gazed at her guest, at the slender figure and the small oval face crowned with its ma.s.ses of red-gold hair. Then, to the surprise of every one but Theodora, she gave a joyous outcry,--

”Jessie Everett!”

”Bess!”

Side by side on the moss, a little apart from the others, the two women dropped down and talked incoherently and rapidly, with an interjectional, fragmentary eagerness, trying to tell in detail the story of eighteen years in as many minutes, breaking off, again and again, to exclaim at the strangeness of the chance which had once more brought them together. On one side, the tale was the monotonous record of the successful teacher; on the other was the story of the brilliant marriage, the years of happiness, of seeing the best of life, and the swift tragedy of six months before, which had taken away the husband and left the only son a physical wreck. The years had swept the two friends far apart; their desultory correspondence had dropped; and in this one afternoon of their first meeting, they could only sketch in the bare outlines, and leave time to do the rest.

”And this is my only child,” Mrs. Farrington said at last. ”You have so many now, Bess, be generous with them, and let Will have as much good of them as he can. Your Teddy has been very kind to him already.”

”Teddy?”

”Yes, Theodora as she calls herself. She has been making neighborly calls by way of the fence, and she and Will are excellent friends already. What an unusual girl she is!”

There came a little look of perplexity in Mrs. McAlister's eyes.

”Yes; and yet I find her the hardest one of them all to get at. The fact is, Jessie, I have two or three problems to deal with, and Theodora is not the least of them. Hope and Hubert are conventional enough, and Phebe is openly fractious; but Theodora is more complex. She's the most interesting one to me, but she is decidedly elusive.”