Part 21 (2/2)

It certainly was not going back.

”We have got through ploughing-time, and now comes seed-time, and then harvest,” said Barbara. ”We shall raise, upon a bit of renovated earth, the first millennial specimen,--see if we don't!--of what was supposed to be an extinct flora,--the _Domestica antediluviana_.”

Arctura Fish came to us.

If you once get a new dress, or a new dictionary, or a new convenience of any kind, did you never notice that you immediately have occasions which prove that you couldn't have lived another minute without it? We could not have spared Arctura a single day, after that, all winter.

Mother gave up, and was ill for a fortnight. Stephen twisted his foot skating, and was laid up with a sprained ankle.

And then, in February, grandfather was taken with that last fatal attack, and some of us had to be with Aunt Roderick nearly all the time during the three weeks that he lived.

When they came to look through the papers there was no will found, of any kind; neither was that deed of gift.

Aunt Trixie was the only one out of the family who knew anything about it. She had been the ”family bosom,” Barbara said, ever since she cuddled us up in our baby blankets, and told us ”this little pig, and that little pig,” while she warmed our toes.

”Don't tell me!” said Aunt Trixie. Aunt Trixie never liked the Roderick Holabirds.

We tried not to think about it, but it was not comfortable. It was, indeed, a very serious anxiety and trouble that began, in consequence, to force itself upon us.

After the bright, gay nights had come weary, vexing days. And the worst was a vague shadow of family distrust and annoyance. n.o.body thought any real harm, n.o.body disbelieved or suspected; but there it was. We could not think how such a declared determination and act of Grandfather Holabird should have come to nothing. Uncle and Aunt Roderick ”could not see what we could expect about it; there was nothing to show; and there were John and John's children; it was not for any one or two to settle.”

Only Ruth said ”we were all good people, and meant right; it must all come right, somehow.”

But father made up his mind that we could not afford to keep the place. He should pay his debts, now, the first thing. What was left must do for us; the house must go into the estate.

It was fixed, though, that we should stay there for the summer,--until affairs were settled.

”It's a dumb shame!” said Aunt Trixie.

CHAPTER X.

RUTH'S RESPONSIBILITY.

The June days did not make it any better. And the June nights,--well, we had to sit in the ”front box at the sunset,” and think how there would be June after June here for somebody, and we should only have had just two of them out of our whole lives.

Why did not grandfather give us that paper, when he began to? And what could have become of it since? And what if it were found some time, after the dear old place was sold and gone? For it was the ”dear old place” already to us, though we had only lived there a year, and though Aunt Roderick did say, in her cold fas.h.i.+on, just as if we could choose about it, that ”it was not as if it were really an old homestead; it wouldn't be so much of a change for us, if we made up our minds not to take it in, as if we had always lived there.”

Why, we _had_ always lived there! That was just the way we had always been trying to spell ”home,” though we had never got the right letters to do it with before. When exactly the right thing comes to you, it is a thing that has always been. You don't get the very sticks and stones to begin with, maybe; but what they stand for grows up in you, and when you come to it you know it is yours. The best things--the most glorious and wonderful of all--will be what we shall see to have been ”laid up for us from the foundation.” Aunt Roderick did not see one bit of how that was with us.

”There isn't a word in the tenth commandment about not coveting your _own_ house,” Barbara would say, boldly. And we did covet, and we did grieve. And although we did not mean to have ”hard thoughts,” we felt that Aunt Roderick was hard; and that Uncle Roderick and Uncle John were hatefully matter-of-fact and of-course about the ”business.”

And that paper might be somewhere, yet. We did not believe that Grandfather Holabird had ”changed his mind and burned it up.” He had not had much mind to change, within those last six months. When he _was_ well, and had a mind, we knew what he had meant to do.

If Uncle Roderick and Uncle John had not believed a word of what father told them, they could not have behaved very differently. We half thought, sometimes, that they did not believe it. And very likely they half thought that we were making it appear that they had done something that was not right. And it is the half thoughts that are the hard thoughts. ”It is very disagreeable,” Aunt Roderick used to say.

Miss Trixie Spring came over and spent days with us, as of old; and when the house looked sweet and pleasant with the shaded summer light, and was full of the gracious summer freshness, she would look round and shake her head, and say, ”It's just as beautiful as it can be. And it's a dumb shame. Don't tell _me_!”

Uncle Roderick was going to ”take in” the old homestead with his share, and that was as much as he cared about; Uncle John was used to nothing but stocks and railway shares, and did not want ”enc.u.mbrances”; and as to keeping it as estate property and paying rent to the heirs, ourselves included,--n.o.body wanted that; they would rather have things settled up. There would always be questions of estimates and repairs; it was not best to have things so in a family.

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