At Aunt Anna's

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Chapter I

^H^ll bet you couldn^t stand on your head on top of this gate-post,’^ said Ted, swinging his black-stockinged legs as nearly on each side of the broad stone gate-post on which he was seated as their length allowed them to come.

“ Neither could you,^’ said Dolly promptly, from the corresponding gate-post on which she was more decorously perched.

YouVe often seen me stand on my head,^’ said Ted resentfully.

Yes, on the floor, or on the grass,” retorted Dolly, “ where there’s a place for your legs to fall when you tumble over. There isn’t any place on the post but 1

’way down to the ground, and you wouldn’t dare.”

Boys always dare,” said Ted. “ Girls are ’fraid. You’d just put your both hands on the top of the post, and your head down between ’em, and stick your legs up straight, and there you’d be.”

No, you wouldn’t; you’d be there.’^ And Dolly pointed to the hard driveway five feet below them. You can’t stand on your head one minute ’thout you wobble, and in less’n another minute you go fiat. I guess you’d better not try it on a gate-post.”

“Well, could you do it?” persisted Ted, getting away from the discussion of his own skill.

“ No, sir, I could not,” said Dolly frankly. “ And if I could, I wouldn’t be such a silly.”

“ It would be nice if we both could do it,” said Ted thoughtfully. “ One on each post, like the lions before big houses. You’d be on your head on one post, and I’d be on my head on the other, and folks driving by would stop to look, and be int’rested. We’d get 2 right side up for breath when there wasn’t anybody coming. I should think Aunt Anna would be pleased to have her place have something different in front of it from the other places in Methley.”

Mrs. Tarleton would not leave her husband alone to suffer the city heat during a long summer, while she enjoyed the country coolness and beauty. On the other hand, she said that it was out of the question to let her eight-year-old twins, Theodore and Dorothea — Ted and Dolly, as they were always called — stay cooped up between brick walls when summer-time beckoned them away to the freedom of green fields. So in June Ted and Dolly were packed off to Methley, where Mrs. Tarleton’s elder sister, the twins’ dear Aunt Anna Shirley, lived, and were given into her charge with many warnings as to wet feet, and swimming, and getting lost, and strange dogs, and lonely walks, and above all, never to disobey Aunt Anna. And in the beginning of August Mrs. Tarleton came to Methley, and in the middle of that 3 month Papa Tarleton came too, for his two weeks^ vacation, and in the first week of September the four Tarletons went home to the city till another spring, when the same delightful program was repeated.

Ted and Dolly said they had a mother and a half — mama was mama all the year round, but in summer Aunty Anna was mama too, and they loved her almost as well as their real mother — not as well, of course, because the best of aunts is an aunt, and mama is something quite different.

Methley was a very nice place to visit. It was hilly, but not with such high hills that a person of eight could not run over them without being tired, or in danger. And it had a river, but not a wide, awful stream; rather a tame river, gentle and safe to play with, having lovely little curves and bends, and shady places where you could wade on hot days, feeling cool ripples flow over your bare feet and ankles, and scoop — or try to scoop — up nervous little “ minnies,” which made themselves into the letter 0 in their 4 efforts to get away — and it was just as exciting that these efforts were usually unsuccessful. And you could not possibly get drowned in this friendly river — as Ted assured Dolly — except much below Aunt Annans — unless you dug a deep hole and lay down in it — and that wasn’t a very likely thing to happen, as the most timid grown person would have to admit.

There were lovely woods in Methley — woods where you might walk with safety and be always likely to find the dearest shy fiowers. Woods which were never dull, because, being safe, you could play in them alone, and fill them with Indians and wild animals such as you never could get in really dangerous woods, where adventures might be honest, true ones, for in this sort of woods grown people had to be with you to watch you, and then you had no fun; neither real dangers, nor the ones you played at having when you were alone and free.

There was a village of Methley — nice to drive to and with very interesting shops, be- 2 5 cause they had so many different kinds of things in them, and somehow it looked queerer to see things mixed up that way in the tiny, dusty places than it did in the big department stores at home. There were children in Methley — down in the village part — but Ted and Dolly did not know them. They used to look at them solemnly when they drove through, and the village children stared back even more solemnly, because their eyes were shaded with flapping straw hats or sunbonnets, as the case required, but they did not meet, and the twins felt that they could not ask Aunt Anna why she did not invite them up to the house, because she never said anything about it herself, and it was her house.

But Ted and Dolly were never lonely, for that is where the point of being twins comes in; there are two of you, and there is no chance to be lonely. At home they went to school, and they liked other children, and often had company to spend the afternoon, but they agreed perfectly in thinking that 6

TED AND DOLLY ARE SET FREE they had the best times when there wasn^t another child about except their two intimate little selves, as cozy as two little peanuts in their shell.

The twins did not look much alike. Ted was brown-eyed and sturdy, boyish but not one bit rough, probably because he had had Dolly to tone him down. He was a brave little lad, and for that reason he was a very kind and tender-hearted one, because only a coward at heart is ever anything but gentle and merciful. Dolly was blue-eyed, with long dark lashes, and soft hair that was full of golden tints, though it was a light brown, and growing darker. She was a sweet little maiden, dainty in all her ways, and with a quiet, quaint little manner of her own that made big people call her old-fashioned.

More devoted twins never looked admiringly at each other out of eyes of any color. Ted knew that other little girls might be nice, and pretty, and even good, but that his sister was all these things more perfectly than they could hope to be.

And Dolly never doubted that other boys were strong, and clever, and true, but she knew there was just one boy who was all right in every way at once — and that was her twin. They shared everything, from their name turned about, but the same, to every book, and toy, and bit of candy — that wasnT being generous, Dolly said; that was because nothing was any good without Ted. And Ted had to fight a boy once — in the kindergarten it was and perfectly awful to think of — because he had laughed at him for wrapping up the caramel the boy gave him and putting it in his pocket to take home, so Dolly and he could eat it together, each taking a suck, turn and turn about, quite fairly.

There was another reason for never being at all lonely at Methley — there were animals, animals, so many it took a person a week each year to get used over again to the joy of having so many, and getting acquainted with the new ones.

Bevis, the horse — named after a horse in 8

TED AND DOLLY ARE SET FREE a poem called Marmion, which mama read to the twins because they liked the sound of it — of course he was there every year, and Ted and Dolly knew him like an old friend. Then there were the cows — beautiful Jerseys, Clover and Sweet Briar, and Lady Belle, the soft-eyed Alderney — the twins had known these for two and three years. But there were nearly always new calves to be introduced to, and teach to eat out of their hands, and this year there were three, and Ted and Dolly were to name them. Besides, this year Bevis had another horse come to live with him in his model stable, and help him; a very young horse, with flashing eyes, and a silly way of starting at anything and nothing, because he was too young to have seen much of the world. His name was to be Roderick Dhu — Rod, for short — out of another of Sir Walter Scott’s poems, the Sir Walter who w^rote Marmion — and this was partly because he was as black as night, and Dhu means black in old Scotch.

Of course there were chickens, and Ted 9 and Dolly knew most of them by names of their own choosing, and could tell almost to a pin-feather differences in hens which looked exactly alike to grown-up people, who can not seem to see animals very clearly, somehow. Dear Trusty, the big dog, with his plume of a tail, and his swinging gait which kept the plume always waving, Ted and Dolly had known him ever since they were four years old, and Trusty had been but one. He was a friend worth knowing, and he wouldnT touch a cat, not for anything. Lady Mew, the striped gray cat that Aunt Anna thought so very much of, let him lick her kittens, and when a mother cat does that there is no doubt of the dog’s character, because she knows whom she can trust, and that there are not many dogs she can let come near her babies, much less touch them.

Then there was Pukka Boy,” a Maltese cat, only two years old, and as beautiful as a cat can be, who got his queer name out of Rudyard Kipling’s stories, because pukka ” in the language of India, means several 10 things that fitted this handsome beastie. And there was white Billy, just grown up out of kittenhood, as gentle and loving a little fellow as ever looked out on a friendly world with golden eyes. He was Dolly’s darling, for he had such sweet ways, and never a claw, and cooed so winningly in answer to you when you spoke to him, that he won his way into her heart, just as he purred and rubbed his way into her lap, and then up into her neck when he saw her.

So nobody that had any taste — nobody of eight — could be lonely at Methley, and the best of it all was that these animals had always been so lovingly treated, and never teased, nor frightened, that they were just as ready to make friends as the twins were to have them; Aunt Anna would not have a man on her place who was unkind to the dear, dumb friends who depended upon her.

Maybe we might as well get down, if we can’t be figures on the gate-posts,” said Ted at last.

“ Why can’t we be lions lying down? ” 11 asked Dolly, sorry to have her brother unsatisfied.

Oh, well; what’s the use? ” said Ted.

I thought it would be fun to stand on our heads, because it would be so different. But lions lying down — nobody would know what we were.”

Let’s play these are towers, and we’re watching for the enemy,” said Dolly, with a happy thought. You be a knight, and I’ll be a lady’s chatelaine — isn’t that what mama said you called the lady of the castle in old times? ”

No, not a lady’s chatelaine — that’s the chain mama hangs her salts and fan and things on,” said Ted. It was Lady Chatelaine — like Lady Washington, you know — that’s her name.”

Oh! Well, I’ll be that, and we’ll watch, because the foe is coming to destroy our castle,” said Dolly, scrambling to her feet on the top of the broad gate-post.

Yes, and I’ll tell you: We have to stay here until we’re relieved, because there’s a 12 wide sheet of water flowing around this castle — they call it a moat, you know, though I do not see how it could get in anybody's eye, though it says in the Bible about seeing a mote in your brother’s eye,” said Ted.

Well, anyhow, there’s a moat all around us here, and the drawbridge is cut off, so we’re prisoners on the towers. And you’ve got to stay, Dolly, till you’re relieved — that must be until aunty or some one comes to fetch us — no matter how tired you are.”

All right,” chirped Dolly joyously. “Now we’ve begun; we’re there.”

“ Do you see dust down the road, my lady? ” asked Ted, shading his eyes with his hand, and gazing afar as he leaned forward, one knee bent, and his left hand resting upon it.

“ Methinks I do,” said the lady. “ Dost you think ”

“Gracious, Dolly!” cried Ted, dropping his assumed character for his real one under the strain of this slip on the part of the Lady Chatelaine. “Don’t say Dost you! 13

Don’t you know it’s always thou in those times? ”

^‘Yes. Now don’t stop again, please, Teddy. Dost thou think it is the soldiers? ” Meseems it may be. Yet it looks — looketh — like the butcher. No rescue yet, my lady! ”

The Lady Chatelaine heaved a tremendous sigh. We shall starve if no help comes,” she groaned. This seemed hard, with the butcher coming down the road, but Ted did not see the funny side of this remark.

“ My feet ache, and my legs are getting stiff; our tower is narrow, my lady. If we must spend the night in this fearful place I doubt that I shall see the morning,” he said.

‘^The wagon has turned into the other road; it was not our soldiers,” said the lady. “ I see figures far down, though, and they are coming toward us. Dost thou think they are coming to save us? ”

I hear a bell,” said the knight on the other tower. And the figures cross over a 14

TED AND DOLLY ARE SET FREE good deal. I think they are the cows belonging to the next castle.”

No fair for a minute,” said Dolly.

Say, Ted, do you think this is much fun? Let^s get down.”

“ Now, Dolly, we said we’d stay no matter how tired we were,” said Ted reproachfully. Here comes Trusty, wagging down the driveway. He’s looking for us. He’ll do for rescue. Now be the chatelaine a minute. My lady, my lady, here comes our faithful friend. Sir Trusty; we’re saved. What news. Sir Trusty? ”

Ted bent down to ask the question, and the big dog, seeing him, bounded toward him, and stretched up to lick Ted’s face, barking the while excitedly. Then he bounced over to Dolly’s post and repeated the performance.

“ He says that he has brought up his soldiers in the rear, and that we are safe. He says that the drawbridge is mended, and we may come down, my lady,” interpreted the knight.

“ Sir Trusty, we thank thee awfully,’^ said Dolly, sitting down on the post, and sliding to the ground without the loss of a: nrorctent.

Ted swung his arms three times, preparing to jump on the lawn, but thinking better of it, followed his sister’s example, and came down in the less glorious but safer way.

Trusty barked and capered, and ran to fetch a stick, making believe that it was the first time that he had ever seen one, and that he had just discovered what a nice toy it would be, if only some boy or girl would throw it for him to run after.

The three ran up the lawn to the house. Aunt Anna met them on the piazza.

I sent Trusty to call you, Twinsies,” she said, kissing each fiushed little face. “ I thought you would be late to get polished up for tea — it is half past five. But you are just in time.”

CHAPTER I

SETH

Ted and Dolly were having apple pie and a small piece each of mild cheese down in the orchard under the apple-trees. Apple pie at the table was not very attractive to the twins, but apple pie out-of-doors was glorious. There not only did it catch a new, fine fiavor from the sunshine and June winds — and maybe — who could tell? — from the honey-laden bees fiying past it, but it became an exciti} g adventure to eat it, for it was so hard to hold it, and bite it, and not let one bit ooze out between the crusts and drop on a clean shirt-waist that it kept a person on the jump to manage it just as much as playing puss-puss-in-the-corner did.

^‘You see that apple-tree down there?’’ 17 said Dolly. No, not that one, but the next one to the next one to that — the one with the two sides to it and a kind of split place in the middle where it grows in two halves,’’ she added, as Ted nodded speechlessly, catching a bit of apple just as it was falling by a skilful twist of his pie, and a sudden dart of the tongue, like a humming-bird when he sees a shiny fly going by. Well, that apple-tree is bowing to us, and that split place is where it is smiling. It says it’s glad we like this pie, ’cause it grew the apples ’spressly for us, and this year it’s going to have them bigger and redder, ’cause last year it was just practising making apples.”

Ted received this information unmoved; he was used to Dolly’s making believe,” and liked to do it as well as she did, but that moment he did not feel in the mood of helping it out — perhaps because cheese and apple pie are solid facts, not helpful to imagination.

Dolly, seeing this, gave up this sort of 18

SETH play at once, and fell into Ted’s mood. She got through with her pie first — she was always quicker at everything than her other half — and removed the juice of the pie and the crumbs of soft cheese from her fingers just as Lady MeAv’s kittens would have got them off their paws — with her little red tongue, but so daintily that it looked quite as nice a way as using a fine damask napkin — besides, she had no napkin.

“ There’s a man poking along at the end . of the orchard,” she said. He is as slow as anything, but he’s coming this way. Do you think we ought to stay? He couldn’t be dang’rous, could he? ”

“ I’ve been seeing him for a long time,” said Ted, but I couldn’t tell you ’cause of the pie.” He, too, had put away the last bit, and was now free to talk. We can’t see him plain enough to tell how dang’rous he might be, but he’s too poky to do any harm.

I guess he’s going up to the house. If he was a burglar he wouldn’t act like that.”

Burglars creep along,” objected Dolly.

Oh, well, jes, I know they do. But there are creeps and creeps. They don’t do like that — they crawl and crawl. ’Sides, they don’t burgle in the daytime, nor in orchards. Burglars burgle around back windows, and in the night, when they have to have dark lanterns. I think he’s a caller.” Ted spoke as positively as if he had been on the police force for years, and knew burglars’ ways of old, but though Dolly was struck by his wisdom in such matters, her sense of social propriety led her to protest.

Aunt Anna wouldn’t have a caller coming up so funny through the orchard, Teddy,” she said in a shocked voice. Aunt Anna is a lady, and her callers act like ladies.”

This is a man, Twin-Doll,” Ted said.

Aunt Anna’s men callers don’t act like ladies.”

Well, he’s coming nearer and nearer — I hope he’s safe,” whispered Dolly. Look, Teddy; he’s sort of grubbing along, ’s if he’d lost something! No; he’s picking things; he’s got a handful of leaves already.”

SETH

The man had come near enough now to be in plain sight, and the twins felt no more anxiety. He was a slender man, not above medium height if he had stood straight, but his thin shoulders were bent as if from years of stooping, and this made him look small. His eyes were blue, and had a far-off look and a dreamy expression, as if what they saw was at one and the same time in another world, and within himself. His lips wore a sweet, uncertain smile, like that on the lips of a little baby, half waking, half sleeping. The children did not think of his age; if they had they would probably have said he was old, for he must have been about forty, but he was the sort of person who has no age, and when they knew him the twins understood that this was because the woodland fairies had touched him in the cradle, and made him their own. In his hands he held freshly gathered herbs, and he stroked them with his thin fingers in a way that reminded Dolly at once of her mother’s way of smoothing her hair before she tied the ribbon on it, 3 21 and her eyes filled with tears, though she did not know why, for she was not at all unhappy.

It w^as impossible to feel the least fear of such a man, and Ted and Dolly waited his coming as still as two rabbits, but with none of the rabbits’ desire to scuttle off.

It was the man who was startled when he saw the children, but after a slight backward movement, he smiled at them, because he saw that they were children, and he never minded coming upon little folk, though he liked to keep away from grown-up people.

Ted and Dolly smiled back at him, and he held out to them two beautiful flag blossoms — and the twins had looked in vain for the flower-de-luce along the river. Feeling that there was something out of the ordinary in a man who looked and smiled like this, so silently, and who could find the bright purplish blue blossoms where their keen eyes had failed, Ted and Dolly arose, and just as silently accepted the gift, looking up into the dreamy blue eyes which came 22

T pM.' sp;T

The three went throngli the orchard to the house.

SETH back from the far away to answer the children’s gaze with one of true comradeship and understanding.

Suddenly Dolly slipped her hand into the one she and Ted had just emptied of the flowers, and she felt it tighten, cool and Arm, over her warm little palm. Then Ted put his hand into the man’s other arm — because that hand was full of herbs, and without a word of question or explanation, the three went up through the orchard to the house.

Aunt Anna did not seem surprised to see the stranger, though Ted and Dolly half expected her to be startled, and would not have been greatly astonished if she had not been able to see him, for they both had an undeflned feeling that he had dropped from fairyland, and if he had had fern seed in his pocket — which gives any one the power to go about unseen — as well as meadow herbs in his hand, it would have seemed only what was to be expected of their companion.

But Aunt Anna could see him; she came 23 out, smiling and nodding, and waited under the grape arbor at the back of the house for them to come up. And Trusty saw him — but that was less strange — and came whining and shaking down to them, and put his paws on the stranger’s shoulders and licked his ear, with an added wmrmth of touch over and above his usual kindliness. And a little farther along — Trusty now escorting the man, and making it very hard for Ted to walk, because he was determined to wag along close to his side — a little farther along Pukka Boy and Billy saw him, and trotted down to meet him, and Pukka Boy spread his fore-legs apart, and put his head down between them till he stood on the very top of it, which was his way of welcoming his friends, and Billy stretched up, and pulled and pulled the leg of his trousers, which was Billy’s way of showing joy at meeting. Nor was this all, for just before they reached Aunt Anna, Lady Mew came along, head well back, and a plump kitten looped up by the back of its neck between her teeth, and 24

SETH this she laid directly at the strange man’s feet, and rubbed herself joyfully against his boots, while he took it up and cuddled it in his neck.

All your friends, Seth, remember you,” said Aunt Anna, coming forward and offering her hand. “ Little folk in fur and feathers, and little folk in ginghams,” she added, with a glance at the entranced twins, all follow you and love you. And I think the plants must know you, because they show themselves to you, where no one else can find them.”

Seth gave her a shy smile, and dropped his eyes. “ People are made for people, and then again people are made for plants and dumb things; I was always most kin to these,” he said, and his voice was low and had a curious sweetness in it that made musical Dolly thrill to it without knowing why she did so.

Did you bring me anything to-day? ” asked Aunt Anna.

Not to-day, no’m,” said Seth. I came 25 to ask if I should make you up the same essences and extracts as last year. Vm. planning my season.’’

Yes, please, Seth, and a little more sage and marjoram — yes, and pennyroyal,” said Aunt Anna. And if you can spare more lavender, I’d like to have it. And thyme, and a larger bottle of anise essence, because that’s so useful in many ways.”

The children listened to these fascinating words, entranced, and more than ever certain of the stranger’s mystery. Marjoram, sage, lavender, thyme, anise — what these were they did not know, but they were beautiful words, the kind of words you would expect this man to deal in, and be names for things which he handled.

I’ll bring them, m’am,” said Seth.

Thank you.” He turned as if to go, but Aunt Anna said: Don’t go at once,

Seth. Come and sit on the piazza, and Nellie will bring you a glass of cold birch beer.”

“ I think I must go, m’am,” said Seth.

SETH

I’m going through the westerly woods. I can’t stop, thank you kindly.’’

Oh, don’t go,” cried Ted impulsively. << We’ve got the loveliest calves you ever saw in all your whole life. And we’ll show you Roderick Dhu — he’s black as anything, and just prances. He’s a dandy — please let me show them to you.”

Don’t go,” added Dolly softly. Lady Mew’s got three kittens — she only brought you one. And they’re lovely. And we want you to stay.”

Seth smiled down on the eager faces, his own lighting up with pleasure and with a gleam of fun.

I can’t stop, dears,” he said. But I’ll tell you what I will do. If your aunty don’t mind. I’ll take you with me through the westerly woods. I’m sure she won’t mind, because she knows I’ll take the best care of you, and nothing ever happens to my children — I have more child friends than most people. Will you go? ”

Ted and Dolly jumped up and down, 27 wringing their hands — or Dolly did — in agonized appeal to Aunt Anna, as if she were about to sentence them to death.

But Aunt Anna had no idea of sentencing them even to disappointment. She laughed outright at the two little figures bouncing up and down before her, and said: “ I’m only too glad for them to have such a pleasure, Seth, if you are quite sure you want them.’’

Dolly looked with searching anxiety into the blue eyes, but what she saw there made her clap her hands, while Ted, reading the kind face with equal eagerness, turned a somersault on the grass to express his satisfaction in the welcome he saw there, a welcome most unlike the patient affection with which growm people usually assent to a plan to give little people pleasure.