The professor's girls

Chapter I. A Houseful Of People

“God, who sees each separate soul,

Out of commonplace lives makes his beautiful whole.”

O NE afternoon in midwinter two young girls were going home from school through the quiet village streets. No one meeting them would have supposed Madge and Ruth Preston to have been sisters. Madge, the elder, was sixteen, a merry, independent little body with big black eyes, curls of chestnut hair, a brunette skin and rose-red cheeks. Before she opened her lips one was sure her language would be largely made up of adjectives — that she was the sort of girl to find life very bright or very dull, according to her mood. To-day she was vigorously swinging her school-

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books by their strap and grumbling to herself with an earnestness which might be aimless, but for the time was energetic. She would have made her grievances audible if she had supposed Ruth was listening, but half the time Ruth did not listen, particularly to complaints. This younger sister was taller, more fragile and mature in appearance ; her complexion was as delicate as the tint of a pearl-shell, her hair a silky, pale yellow, but there was nothing insipid in her clear-cut features, for the small chin was very firm in outline. Her blue-gray eyes could gleam with spirit, and, while she rarely spoke with half Madge’s decision, her words always carried more force. This night she was watching the sunset. A flood of yellow light filled the sky, tinted the snow, and, as the girls began to ascend a hill, Ruth, seeing half the spires and housetops of the village outlined on the golden background, suddenly exclaimed,

“It is like the sunset last Wednesday, only then there was a flush of crimson over it all.”

“Do you remember last week’s sunset,

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Ruth Preston?” cried Madge. “Well, you are queer! Why, I should as soon think of reflecting on some apple-dumpling that I ate a year ago yesterday. Such things, with me, are the accidents of the moment, as Professor Parks said of something to-day.”

“ If a sunset did not mean anything more to me than a dumpling, I should not remember it ; but I can’t help remembering it as if it were a beautiful picture. The way with you is you don’t take the trouble to look at it,” returned Ruth, in a quiet voice, without the least air of superiority.

“ Yes, I suppose so ; but it does not seem to concern me, and it will be gone in a minute, while my present trouble will remain with me.”

“ What is your ‘ present trouble’ ?”

“It is yours too, or I should suppose it would be: I am tired of being poor. I want a beautiful new plaid cashmere school - dress, and a sealskin muff and boa, and a new piano, and a house like Judge Hodge’s, and sloping shoulders like Belle Gates’s, and a mother who approves of sending me to

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dancing-school, and a dancing-scliool to send me to if — ”

“If you only had a mother who would send you to one if there was one,” laughed Ruth, adding mischievously, “Upon my word, I think you might just as profitably be thinking about the last year’s apple-dumpling.”

“ Now, don’t you go to talking about what is profitable, Ruth. I hate profitable work and study, and all that. I want something extravagant and extraordinary. If only something astonishing would happen ! Everything is so monotonous ! Ever since I can remember, the family flour-barrel has been getting empty and mother has been dreading to tell father of it. Every time father has been told he has sighed. I declare, when you picture to yourself a whole world full of empty flour-barrels and sighing people, life does not seem very desirable;” and Madge’s face grew very long.

Ruth did not give her sister’s state of mind one thought ; she knew that an hour or two later Madge would be consuming unlimited bread and butter, and probably laughing uproariously. The fancy, however, of a world wherein was so much poverty did impress Euth in a certain way, and after a moment she suddenly exclaimed,

“Yes, Madge, I get discontented often, and I wish for all sorts of things that we can’t have ; and I suppose we are in a sense poor, but then, again, when you think of the real poverty there is even in this village, you know we are wonderfully well off.”

“ Well, I suppose we are, when you come down to hard common sense,” returned Madge, brightening a little, and adding, after a moment, “ There cannot be a better father or mother than ours in the whole world.”

To this Euth gave an emphatic assent as they swung open a wooden gate and went up a plank walk to the door of an old-fashioned yellow wooden house. They opened the unlocked door, entering a very wide and singularly cozy hall. One would hardly think to call it a hall at all, for it was evidently a room in which the family sat to read or to sew or to receive callers. On the wall was a cheerful yellow-tinted paper, and here and there hung some old family por-

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traits. At the lower end, filling all the space except that taken by the door into the dining-room, were shelves of books. None of these books had fine bindings, none were in “ sets,” but there seemed to be an endless variety of them. To the girls each one had an individuality of its own, from the theological works that had come down from their mother’s great-grandfather to the wellthumbed Hollo books and Hans Andersen’s fairy-tales. On one side the hall was a long, deep haircloth lounge with great, soft, red-covered cushions, and : opposite this was an open fireplace where always glowed a beautiful fire. On the mantelpiece above it stood a quaint Chinese jug and two tall bronze and crystal “ girandoles,” or big branched candlesticks, while each side of the fireplace was a comfortable great armchair with rockers. The carpet was worn and dull, but Grandma Grey, as the children always called Mrs. Preston’s mother, a dear old lady who lived with them, had braided of gay woolen some mats that were as pretty as they were useful in covering the worn places.

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When the girls opened the door, the old lady sat by the fire in the warm twilight. She had been knitting, but the sleek old tabby-cat had bounced into her lap, and now persisted in rubbing her head on the knitting-needles.

“ Is it cold out, children ?”

“ Yes, it is very cold,” replied Ruth, shivering and kneeling down close to the bright fire.

Madge fluttered about, hung her outer garment in a little closet one side the front door, found a big apple somewhere, and soon was eating and chatting and rocking all at once. When she had learned that her mother was out, her father not home, and that nothing had happened since she left the house at noon, she began to ask questions of which she already knew the answers; but then she must talk of something.

“ You were rich when you were my age, were you not, grandma?” she asked.

“Well, my parents were in very good circumstances.”

“You had an old family tea-set, didn’t you — pure silver ? and colored servants, and

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our great-grandfather’s coach had a coat-ofarms on it ? Oh dear ! I wish we had an old family tea-set.”

The dining-room door had suddenly opened to let in a boy of ten, a short, sturdy chap with a big head and a face so full of quizzical good-humor one forgot to call him homely.

“ We have,” he remarked, coolly — “ three old family teapots all in a row on the top shelf in the buttery. One was not meant to stand on the stove, so, of course, you put it there, and the bottom melted off; one lost its nose a night when I helped get supper, and one was honorably discharged with a hole in its side.”

“ Oh, nonsense, Johnny ! What I would like is real splendor,” said Madge, dolorously, while Johnny pulled the cat down for not unkind but very unceremonious treatment.

Now, Grandma Grey was a rather stately old gentlewoman, and at all times was pleased to tell the children of a kind of life that seemed to them rare and delightful ; but she was an earnest Christian, a sweet,

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contented soul, so to-night she replied to Madge’s girlish words in a different strain :

“ My dear child, thank the Lord every day for your countless blessings. You have a home full of love and good cheer, a mother who is the very heart of it all, and a father wise enough to teach you anything. At your age I had no mother, my home was sad if it was fine, and I was often very lonely. Splendor is nothing to be compared with contentment, and one can learn to be contented anywhere God puts him or her.”

Madge was about to speak, when Ruth, who had not changed her position since she had entered and knelt before the fire, suddenly swayed back and dropped for a second on Johnny’s shoulder, then slipped off and fell to the floor. He thought her in play at first, but, seeing her face in' the firelight, he cried,

“What ails her, grandma? Look how white she is!”

They discovered at once that she had fainted, and Madge stretched her out on the rug, while grandma worked over her and Johnny ran for water. She recovered consciousness in a moment or two, and was able to be helped to the lounge.

“ You need not be frightened,” she said, laughing a little hysterically. “ I was tired and very cold ; when I began to get warm, I felt myself floating off and dissolving into nothing.”

4 4 You had not dissolved when you struck me : you came like a hundred pounder,” put in Johnny.

44 Hush, little boy ! I am afraid your sister is sick. — Do you feel better now, dear ? You are as white as a sheet of paper,” said the old lady, rubbing Ruth’s hands in her own withered ones.

Before Ruth could reply the door opened and in came their mother. Her sweet, bright face lengthened in a second as she espied the little group about Ruth, and Madge had to exclaim hastily,

44 It is nothing, mother ; it is all over now. Ruthie’s fainted away. I declare, I wish, now, it had been my experience. Nothing interesting ever does happen to me — even fainting away.”

Of course the mother had to ask all sorts of anxious, tender questions, and it came out that Ruth was not very well. She had constant headache and a little cough, the walk to school gave her a pain in the side, and altogether she needed the petting and the nursing that she was now sure to get in this warm home-nest.

“ I shall have Dr. Hickox examine you right away, and you must not go to school another day until you are stronger.”

“ Oh ! and stop my literature lessons, mother, and all the rest?” cried the little girl among the red cushions.

Ruth was very ambitious and exceedingly studious. For a few moments it seemed to her that she could not stay away from school ; but when Mrs. Preston had talked to her a while after this, the whole affair took a different aspect. She saw that the history and the literature could go on at home, with her mother to make these lessons delightful. Now she could have time to finish the remarkable scrap-book long ago begun ; and so, weak and tired as Ruth felt to-night, it was soothing to hear the kind old grandmother telling how “the poor child must have a rest and get more sleep, with some change and diversion. She doesn’t eat enough, either; we must tempt her appetite.”

“Now, Johnny, just see how things go in this world,” Madge was saying. “ Here Kuth wants to go to school, and I would just as lief as not be delicate this term if I could shirk those horrible examples of partial payment.”

“ Yes, ’tis too bad. But say : now you have seen how it is done, couldn’t you faint away when it comes your turn to go to the blackboard ?”

“Yes, for once, maybe; but I couldn’t faint every day at every example, could I ?”

“ No, and you couldn’t turn white to save your life ; so that’s no go.”

Madge’s troubles were soon past, and in a few moments she was planning for Buth many pleasant ways of passing the time, so that the home-staying sister should not get lonely. By this time a certain savory odor came from some unseen region, and Johnny exclaimed,

“Abbey’s making waffles for supper; that

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is why she has not been in to look at Ruth. She doesn’t know she fainted.”

“ Father is late to-night,” said Mrs. Preston, putting away her bonnet and shawl.

A little later he came, very glad to get into the genial warmth, and reporting that it was very dark and cold out of doors. He was a tall, thin, scholarly-looking man with gray hair, clear, kindly-gleaming eyes and a grave voice. Ill-health had forced him years ago to leave the ministry, and at this date he was principal of a boys’ and girls’ academy. He listened quietly to the various versions of the late episode; then, softly stroking Ruth’s hair, he remarked,

“Your mother is quite right: no more hard study and confinement in school for you until you are stronger.”

“Supper is ready,” announced Johnny, after an exploring-expedition ; and, throwing open the door into the dining-room, he dashed at his grandmother with an absurd flourish and begged to escort her to the table. Johnny was, as his father frequently remarked, “somewhat of a monkey.” They persuaded Ruth to lie still on the lounge

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and let Abbey bring her supper to her. She consented, and watched them as they sat pleasantly chatting around the table. The dining-room was another unconventional, cheerful place, full of old-fashioned furniture, with bright chintz curtains and a south window full of flowering shrubs.

When Abbey came with Ruth’s supper, Ruth sat among her cushions, and, laughing at her own “laziness,” replied to the girl’s minute questions as to what “a real faint was like, any way.”

Now, as Abbey is not an unimportant inmate of this house, we may as well speak of her in passing. Mrs. Preston had taken Abbey from an orphan asylum when the latter was a child of seven. She took her out of pity. The Prestons were then living next to the asylum, and Abbey used to come and confide her troubles to the lady through a hole in the fence — how she longed to “ live in a little house, and eat at a little table,” and own “a doll, and wear cloth clothes.” She used pathetically to tell that there seemed to be so many of her she was sick of seeing herself. By this she meant that

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every child in the asylum wore a dingy, nondescript uniform and looked like every other one. Mrs. Preston took her, treated her very kindly, and in return Abbey gave to her most unbounded gratitude and affection. When the children came, she was their devoted slave. As time ran on she developed striking qualities. At twenty-two she was “ one of the family for life,” as she declared ; but no member could be less exacting and more useful. In person Abbey was short, almost a dwarf. She had a round, good-natured face, prominent greenish eyes and brown hair which she would keep short enough to stand erect all over her large head. She was skilled in all kinds of housework, and was a good seamstress. Anything which must be learned from a book she had always detested. It was only after pangs, tears and mighty rebellions that she had ever learned to read. She counted on her fingers like a savage and spelled (when forced to spell) phonetically, but after no system ever devised by man. When she was of an age to earn wages, Mrs. Preston began to pay her what she thought

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was right. At first Abbey resented it with grief and wrath, as if she were being degraded in rank. When persuaded to look at the matter more calmly, only one argument had moved her — namely, that people would call the Prestons stingy and unjust if they took her services for nothing but her board and clothes. Once, when finances were at a very low ebb, Mrs. Preston begged her to go away where she could earn more money ; but Abbey pleaded in a hurt way : “ You might just as well turn off Ruth or Madge, and it is awful cruel to make me feel like a hired girl and nothing more. ,, After that it was settled that Abbey should share their fortunes, good or ill. It was necessary, however, to put her wages for her in the savings-bank, experience having proved that when they were paid to her she spent them in marbles, taffy or jointed dolls, according to the latest whim of the children. We have given considerable space to Abbey, but she deserves all the honor due to unselfishness.

When she had served Ruth and heard about her late attack, she looked her curi-

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ously over, as if expecting to find visible marks left on her somewhere; then she said,

“ It is books — just nothing else, Miss Ruthie. I don’t believe books was ever meant to be studied. If I’d been kept at ’em as your mother begun with me, I’d have been pilfering around some lunatic asylum this minute. I’m thankful she see what I was good for and let me do it.”

Ruth gave a little laugh at thought of honest Abbey “ pilfering around” anywhere; but, as she hardly knew what word Abbey wanted to use, she only laughed. It was of no use to set Abbey right on such trifles. Her waffles were delicious, so Ruth praised them and sent her away happy.

When supper was over, Madge and Johnny stayed in the dining-room to study ; for during the process of taking in learning the latter always swung his heels and buzzed as if a great deal of inside machinery were sadly in need of oil. Madge kept him company because where the rest of the family were she would talk instead of studying. The elder members of the household

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returned to the hall and sat about the fire to enjoy the evening in comfort after the labors of the day. Mrs. Preston, who had made a few calls that afternoon, told grandma a funny incident she had heard, together with some innocent bits of gossip. The “ Professor,” as every one called Mr. Preston, read his paper for a while, when, happening to put his hand in his pocket, he drew out a letter and exclaimed,

“ Well, well ! I forgot to tell you some news that will astonish you, Mary. Here is a letter I received this noon from John Pay nor. He is going to Europe in May on business for the firm, and at first he meant to return as soon as his business was done; but he needs a play-spell, and his wife — Cousin Jane — wants to travel a little. In view of these facts, he says, he shall stay abroad six or seven months.”

“ Will they take Bert with them ?” asked Mrs. Preston.

“ No, I think not. John says he wants very much to go, but for many reasons he does not think it wise. Bert has been interrupted in his studies and is backward for

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his age ; so his father says he must apply himself and waste no time for a few years. The reason of John’s letter, however, was not so much to say they were going to Europe as to tell us that they were coming to make us a brief visit as soon as he could leave his business.”

“We will enjoy their visit,” said Mrs. Preston, “ but it seems a little odd to come just before their trip, especially as they were here in the fall.”

“John says he does want to see us for some particular purpose. I cannot imagine what it may be.”

“ I devoutly hope,” exclaimed grandma, dropping her knitting in her lap, “ that he does not want to leave that awful boy in your care.”

Mrs. Preston looked grave, while the Professor laughed. Grandma had put into words the thought that had suddenly entered both their minds.

“ Such a little pest as he was that time they brought him last ! In fact, he always has been a dreadful child. Before he was out of dresses he put the parlor copy of

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Shakespeare in the tea-kettle and boiled it to rags/’ sighed the old lady.

It was singular that, while Grandma Grey considered boys in general terrible things, she never could be brought to own that her favorite Johnny was anything but a model child. Even when he dyed her cat indigo blue, she chose to consider it merely a sort of harmless experiment in chemistry.

“ Oh, he is not our boy,” returned the Professor, “ or else we would find him endurable ; but we won’t worry over anything so vague as this possibility.”

Mrs. Preston’s face brightened. She turned to speak to Ruth ; then, seeing her eyes shut, she thought her asleep. But Ruth was very wide awake : she was fancying how it would seem to travel — to wander, for instance, over some half-ruined castle where lords and ladies had lived in former ages, to look down from high walls, to peer into dark dungeons. Her waking dreams at last began to lose distinctness, and she was certainly dozing when some one lifted the old-fashioned knocker left on the front door and dropped it heavily. Before the Professor could rise from his easy-chair the door opened, and in walked a tall, thin, elderly man, who coolly remarked, “ How do you all do?” as he came toward the fire.

Everybody had conquered the first surprise in a moment. The Professor had said, “ Why, it is you , is it, Henry ?” and Mrs. Preston had given him a chair. He merely nodded in recognition of her action, and then, as an after-thought, held out his hand to Grandma Grey, but even to her said nothing.

“ Traveled far ?” asked the head of the house, with a twinkle in his eye.

“From Kansas City.”

“Are you well?”

“ Yes.”

“Have you had your supper?” asked Mrs. Preston.

“All I want,” was the quiet reply.

Ruth, who had risen from her reclining position at the new-comer’s entrance, but who had received no recognition whatever, now sank back to hide her smiles. This

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was her father's own brother, whom she had not seen in two years, but whose ways she well understood. Ever since she could remember, at intervals of from one to three years Uncle Henry had appeared thus among them. From whence he came, what he had been doing or where he went when he left them was known to the Professor if his guest saw fit to tell, not otherwise. His own peculiarity was simply this: he hated talk — or, rather, he hated to talk. He was a single man, of some means (how well off no one knew) ; he had no disagreeable traits. He dropped into the family circle, asking nothing but to be there and to be let alone. Sometimes he stayed a month, sometimes six months. When he left, he always put in Mrs. Preston's hand a sum of money equal to an ordinary board-bill, and departed with never a word of farewell. Naturally enough, the children were not enthusiastic in their affection for him, but they could not dislike him, as he in no way interfered with them. He spent his time in long walks or over a book. No one, after the first civilities, ever spoke to him unneces-

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sarily, and he himself made always the briefest response possible. Even this evening, when he had gotten himself into a warm corner, the flow of conversation went on as if he were not there. At intervals the Professor read paragraphs from the evening paper, and between-times Mrs. Preston planned how to remake the girls’ last-year merino dresses.

A little later Ruth found herself rubbing her eyes, while her mother’s laughing voice sounded in her ears :

“I declare, I shall have to shake you and unbutton your dress for you, as I used to when you were five years old and had this same trick of going sound asleep on this old lounge.”

“I say, Ruth,” whispered Johnny, “Uncle Henry is here. Same good boy he always was, you know ; ‘ seen-and-not-heard ’ sort. How they must have drilled that into him when he was young !”

“ Go right to bed,” said Mother Preston, sternly, but with a little pucker about her lips, which Johnny kissed as he departed.

And that day ended — the last of Ruth’s

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school-days for that term, as she said to herself half regretfully, half gladly ; for she was convinced her mother knew best in saying she needed a rest.

Chapter II. A Morning With Grandma

“The creed of the true saint is to make the best of life, and make the most of it.” — Chapin.

T HE expected arrival of guests at the Prestons’ always made a certain stir of preparation which the children found delightful. The house was not large enough for “ spare-rooms,” so that Madge must help her mother change about the sleeping-arrangements. If Abbey was a little busier than usual in the kitchen, Grandma Grey was always glad of an excuse to help in that department. Accordingly, a week or so after the evening last mentioned, everybody was somewhat excited to learn from a telegram that the Raynors would be in town that night. It happened, fortunately, to be Saturday, when Madge was home to help or hinder as the case might be. She tied a

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little red handkerchief over her glossy curls and at once attacked the pretty parlor, which was always her favorite field of action. She thought the big-figured Brussels carpet there, with its gay roses, the height of elegance ; she admired the linen window-shades, on which were painted tropical landscapes ; she found no fault with the ancient mahogany furniture when she had polished it until it shone like a mirror. The room was always in order, but Madge liked to rearrange the shells, the books of engravings, her grandmother's screens of painted velvet and some Indian curiosities. Johnny’s share of the work was to make a fire in the wood-burning stove — for they did not afford a fire here every day — and as he piled in the “ chunks," to keep all day “if the damper was shut," he asked Madge what Bert Baynor was “like."

“ I have not seen him since I was eight years old and he was eleven," she replied. “Then he was a great deal better-looking than you are, Johnny, but not half as good-natured. I never was in so much mischief in my life as during the week he was here. But I remember he was very generous, and was always buying candy.”

Johnny mused as he lighted the fire; then he remarked,

“He’s a big-feeling chap by this time. About eighteen years old, isn’t he?”

Madge was about to add some further information to that already given him, when grandma called her to stone raisins for a kind of spice-cake no one ever made quite as nice as the old lady. The kitchen was full of agreeable odors, for Abbey was making mince-pies and roasting fowls. Buth had ensconced herself in a quiet corner with her work-basket. Madge went to work at the raisins after a warning from her grandmother not to drop more into her mouth than she put into the bowl.

“What under the sun are you doing, Ruth ?” laughed Madge soon. “ I never saw you busy over such embroidery before.”

Ruth joined the laugh as she displayed a lapful of woolen socks in all stages of dilapidation, some toeless, some heelless, some almost soleless.

“These are Uncle Henry’s,” she explained.

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“ Mamma found them in his room, and was going to mend them herself; but, with all papa’s, Johnny’s and the rest, I think she has too many. Now I am out of school I mean to mend my own stockings and Uncle Henry’s.”

“ I am glad I go to school,” said Madge.— “ Grandma, did you have to darn stockings when you were young?”

“ I not only darned them, but in the long evenings I had my task in knitting,” replied the old lady. “ No young lady was thought ready to be married until she had knit herself a pillow-case full of stockings; so one had to begin early.”