Part 26 (1/2)

Desire was with them when Luclarion came in, and heard it settled.

”How is it that things always fall right together for you, so? How _came_ Damaris to come along?”

”You just take hold of something and try,” said Luclarion. ”You'll find there's always a working alongside. Put up your sails, and the wind will fill 'em.”

Uncle t.i.tus wanted to know ”what sort of use a thing like that could be in a house?”

He asked it in his very surliest fas.h.i.+on. If they had had any motives of fear or favor, they would have been disconcerted, and begun to think they had made a mistake.

But Hazel spoke up cheerily,--

”Why, to wait on people, uncle. She's the nicest little fetch-and-carrier you ever saw!”

”Humph! who wants to be waited on, here? You girls, with feet and hands of your own? Your mother doesn't, I know.”

”Well, to wait _on_, then,” says Hazel, boldly. ”I'm making her a baby-house, and teaching her to read; and Diana is knitting scarlet stockings for her, to wear this winter. We like it.”

”O, if you like it! That's always a reason. I only want to have people give the real one.”

And Uncle t.i.tus walked off, so that n.o.body could tell whether _he_ liked it or not.

n.o.body told him anything about the Scarups. But do you suppose he didn't know? Uncle t.i.tus Oldways was as sharp as he was blunt.

”I guess I know, mother,” said Hazel, a little while after this, one day, ”how people write stories.”

”Well?” asked her mother, looking up, ready to be amused with Hazel's deep discovery.

”If they can just begin with one thing, you see, that makes the next one. It can't help it, hardly. Just as it does with us. What made me think of it was, that it seemed to me there was another little piece of our beehive story all ready to put on; and if we went and did it,--I wonder if you wouldn't, mother? It fits exactly.”

”Let me see.”

”That little lame Sulie at Miss Craydocke's Home, that we like so much. n.o.body adopts her away, because she is lame; her legs are no use at all, you know, and she just sits all curled up in that great round chair that Mrs. Geoffrey gave her, and sews patchwork, and makes paper dolls. And when she drops her scissors, or her thread, somebody has to come and pick it up. She wants waiting on; she just wants a little lightning-bug, like Vash, to run round for her all the time. And we don't, you see; and we've got Vas.h.!.+ And Vash--likes paper dolls.”

Hazel completed the circle of her argument with great triumph.

”An extra piece of bread to finish your too much b.u.t.ter,” said Diana.

”Yes. Doesn't it just make out?” said Hazel, abating not a jot of her triumph, and taking things literally, as n.o.body could do better than she, upon occasion, for all her fancy and intuition.

”I wonder what Uncle Oldways would say to that,” said Diana.

”He'd say 'Faugh, faugh!' But he doesn't mean faugh, faugh, half the time. If he does, he doesn't stick to it. Mother,” she asked rather suddenly, ”do you think Uncle Oldways feels as if we oughtn't to do--other things--with his money?”

”What other things?”

”Why, _these_ others. Vash, and Sulie, perhaps. Wouldn't he like it if we turned his house into a Beehive?”

”It isn't his house,” said Mrs. Ripwinkley, ”He has given it to me.”

”Well,--do you feel 'obligated,' as Luclarion says?'