Blue Robin, the Girl Pioneer Part 8

"Never mind, daughter, perhaps it will keep me from worrying," was the reply; "as 'tis said, there is nothing like work to keep up one's spirits."

"Oh, Mumsie," the girl cried impulsively, rubbing her hands caressingly over her mother's cheek, "don't let's worry any more. We're just silly to cry over what may not happen," and then she added hopefully, "I'm sure things will come out all right."

Mrs. Page's eyes filled as she bent forward and kissed her would-be-comforter. "Yes, we are silly, no doubt," she smiled through her tears, "to waste time and strength worrying over what, after all, may not happen."

"But, Mother," suddenly questioned the girl with uneasy eyes, "do-do you think I ought to become a Pioneer?"

"Why not, Nathalie?" inquired Mrs. Page in surprise. "Perhaps it will teach you some of the many things you should know, for if we are to be poor, you may have to earn your own living. Resourcefulness, courage, those will be the things-" her mother's voice ceased abruptly.

Nathalie remained silent; there was a note in her mother's voice that seemed like reproof. A sudden depression seized her again as it came to her with renewed force how helpless she was, what things Helen did to help her mother, and the many useful things the Pioneer girls-plain girls, too, who had never had the advantages that she had had-could do.

But mentally pus.h.i.+ng these reproachful thoughts aside with the rebellious feeling that she had never been brought up to do these things, that she had been born a lady, she stooped and kissed her mother hastily and hurriedly joined Grace on the veranda.

"Where shall we walk?" she asked that young girl, as they pa.s.sed down the street. She glanced up at the blue sky, where snowy clouds drifted like rudderless s.h.i.+ps at sea.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you, but Mrs. Morrow has asked me to deliver a note to 'The Mystic.'"

"'The Mystic?'" echoed Nathalie in doubting amazement, "why I thought she had never had anything to do-"

"To do with the people of the town," finished Grace. "Well, she doesn't as a rule, but she is one of Dr. Morrow's patients and had the grace to return Mrs. Morrow's call. I hate to go, as I know she dislikes young people, but of course I could not say no to Mrs. Morrow, and then, too, I rather think she is writing to ask her if we could have her lawn for one of our demonstrations. We had a lovely idea for a May-Day celebration, but we had to give it up, as we had no place to hold it."

"What were you going to have?" inquired Nathalie, as the two girls turned up the hill leading to the big gray house enclosed in its barrier of gray wall.

"We were going to get some ox carts and decorate them with Mayflowers, and parade to the grounds. There we were to choose a queen and dance around the May-pole in welcome to the G.o.ddess of spring. Fred was to be Robin Hood-O dear," she suddenly e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed with a dismayed face, "I do believe I left the note at home. What a ninny I am! Why, I pinned it to the cus.h.i.+on so I wouldn't forget it and then walked straight off and left it."

The girls stared blankly at one another a moment and then Grace cried, "Come, we might as well go back for it; do you mind? It is only a few blocks out of our way."

On receiving Nathalie's a.s.sent she added contentedly, "I'll get Dorcas to make us some lemonade to cool us off, and-why, I can show you my Pioneer room!"

"Oh, I should just love to see it!" enthused Nathalie; "Helen told me about it. She said she was going to suggest that the groups of the Pioneer band have a Pioneer room."

"Isn't it old-timey?" she mused a half hour later, as Grace ushered her into a low-ceiled room whose walls were flauntingly gay with a paper of many-colored tulips, which, Grace proudly admitted, was decidedly Dutch and for that reason had been selected.

Nathalie's keen eyes were lured to the photographs, water-colors, etchings, and cuts from magazines, all representative of pioneer days, that peeped from between the gorgeous rows of tulips. An etching of New Amsterdam dated 1650, with rows of one story houses, with their gable ends notched like steps, and weather vanes surmounted with grotesque designs of horses, lions, and geese, proved a great contrast in its quaint simplicity to the New York of to-day.

Her eyes swept from this pictured history to the four-poster with its dimity valance, and then on to the oval dressing table, resplendent with silver candle-sticks, snuffers, and a curious little Dutch lamp with a funny mite of a tinder-box by its side.

"But that clock is a dear!" she murmured as her gaze lingered admiringly upon a tall grandfather's clock in the corner, which returned her glance with such old-time solemnity on its ivory-tinted face that Nathalie's brain became a movie screen, one scene after another presenting themselves to her vivid imagination.

"Father gave that clock to me last birthday," informed Grace with pride; "it belonged to the Very Reverend Henricus Van Twiller, one of my forebears. See, there's his picture over the mantel," pointing to a seamed and dingy-looking canva.s.s of said forebear, who looked down at them with stolid complacency.

"Yes, it is very old," continued Grace, "some unimaginative relative of Papa was going to chop it up with Georgie's little hatchet, but Father rescued it just in time. But you must look at the spinning-wheel.

Grandmother gave it to me for being a thief."

"Yes," she rattled on, "I stole a satin bow from her old wedding gown for a souvenir, and when she discovered what I had done, the old dear not only forgave me, but added this spinning-wheel to my collection of things ancient. See, here is the bow on the distaff. But come, let's go down and have the lemonade, I'm dying for a cooling drink."

As the two girls sat sipping the beverage, Grace suddenly sprang up crying, "Oh, there's Fred! I want you to meet him!" She began to wave and call frantically in the direction of the lawn, where a tall, well-formed youth was striding, nonchalantly swinging his tennis-racket.

"Oh, I say, kid, what do you want? I'm in a hurry!" came in response a moment later, as the youth stopped and eyed his sister impatiently, vigorously mopping his face, for the day was warm.

But as he caught sight of Nathalie, his excuses suddenly ceased, and with a few strides he reached the veranda and was eyeing the new girl's health-flushed face and sparkling brown eyes with much favor. After a hearty shake of the hand in answer to his sister's introduction, he dropped into a chair by Nathalie's side, and soon they were all chatting and laughing merrily as Fred told of some Scout adventure that had happened on their last hike.

"But you had an adventure, too, did you not?" he asked suddenly, looking at the young girl by his side with a glint of mischief in his eyes, "the day you were rescued by the Pioneers?"

"Oh, did you hear about that?" Nathalie cried, her face taking on a deeper tinge of pink. She had always felt the least mite ashamed of that mishap.

"Yes, and how about the blue robins?" he continued in a quizzing tone.

"Oh, Grace," exclaimed Nathalie, "you have been telling tales!" and then with a laugh, she told of finding the bluebird's nest, excusing her ignorance by the plea that she was a city-bred girl.

The conversation soon drifted to Boy Scouts, Fred being a Patrol Leader, and greatly interested in the organization. Finding that Nathalie had had some difficulty in learning knot-tying, he kindly volunteered to give her a lesson in that intricate art. His pupil proved an apt scholar, as it was not long before she had mastered the weaver's, the overhand, the reef, and had gained a fair insight into several other knots. Before the lesson had ended Fred had asked if he might not come up some evening with Grace, and give her another lesson and meet her brother d.i.c.k.

Nathalie's face dimpled; she hastened to a.s.sure him that she would be pleased to welcome them at the house, and that she knew her brother would be more than delighted to know a Westport lad. And then she told him all about her brother's misfortune, and how depressed he grew at times without his chums to drop in and cheer him.

The clock had just struck four when the girls, escorted by Fred, who claimed he was going their way, neared the high stone wall overtopped with gray turrets and nodding trees that looked as if they yearned to leap beyond their barrier.

"Wasn't it a queer idea to build a beautiful house like this and then fence it in like some old monastery?" questioned Grace. "See, here's a bell in the stone gate, the way they used to have it in olden times."

"Ugh! I hate to go in-the place gives me the creeps!" she s.h.i.+vered nervously. "Oh, Fred, do come in with us, we shall not be long."

Fred took out his watch, and finding that he was not hurried for time yielded to his sister's entreaties and rang the bell. Presently the door was opened by a stern-looking man in overalls, evidently a gardener.

He frowned unpleasantly when the girls asked to see Mrs. Van Vorst, but when Grace produced her note and said she had been sent by Dr. Morrow's wife, he reluctantly held the gate open for them to enter.

Nathalie gazed eagerly down the garden path, with its old-time hedge and tall pines that swayed gently to the rhythm of the May breezes, leading to the handsome modern structure at the end. It was colonial in design, with low French windows and overhanging Juliet balconies here and there.

A long veranda ran across the front, with high white pillars, and a porte-cochere.

"This is the old Dutch shack," remarked Fred irreverently a moment or so later, as they stood in front of the weather-beaten landmark that clung like some ugly parasite to the stately mansion which towered above it.

Nathalie's eyes were awe-struck as her glance traveled over the sloping roof with its red chimneys, where quaint dormer windows stood forth like thrust out heads from its gray s.h.i.+ngles. The long, low porch, only a foot from the ground, was almost lost to view behind the vines of honeysuckle and rambling roses screening the trellis. Bushes of hollyhocks, white peonies and many old-time posies grew in a riotous hedge around it.

Fred showed her the hatchet-scarred door-lintel, a memento of savage ferocity, and told of the little Dutch maiden who, from a small window above the door, fired on a group of redskins as they hammered against it, killing two. In the rear of the homestead he pointed out a gra.s.s-grown mound, where it was claimed an outhouse once stood, leading to an underground pa.s.sageway, where the settlers at times took refuge when hearing the fiendish war-whoop.

As the girls nervously ascended the low steps leading to the broad-floored veranda of the gray house, Fred turned back towards the gate, promising to wait outside for them.

As the great door swung open in answer to their ring, and the butler's impa.s.sive face stared stonily at them, the girls were tempted to turn tail and follow Fred as he went whistling down the path. But Grace conquered the inclination, and with a.s.sumed boldness asked for Mrs. Van Vorst.

For an instant Nathalie thought the man was going to shut the door in their faces, but when Grace held out the note for confirmation of her words his impa.s.sivity relaxed somewhat, and with stiff formality he asked them to walk in. With hushed breath they gazed curiously about the hall, while a stag's head above a quaintly-carved table eyed them gla.s.sily.

The rusty swords, the flint-locks, and many other curios that decorated the cas.e.m.e.nt, beneath faded canva.s.ses of ancient dames and sires, possessed a weird charm for the girl. She was particularly beguiled by the wide oaken staircase with its daintily carved bal.u.s.trade that rose spiral-like to the floor above, and to her imaginative ear there came the swish of a brocade gown as some haughty fair one, kin to the canva.s.sed beauties on the tapestried walls, came with tap of dainty heel down the broad stairway.

But no romantic thing occurred as the butler, still retaining his sphinx-like mask, ushered them into a little reception room opening from the hall fitted up to simulate a Chinese paG.o.da. The girls seated themselves on two teakwood chairs and stared silently at the many curios that gleamed from cabinet and screen, each betraying some eccentric custom of the land of the yellow peril.

"O dear, I feel as if I were a beggar!" observed Grace with an apprehensive s.h.i.+ver. "Ugh, I should hate to have that grim-looking man come back and tell me my company wasn't wanted."

Nathalie burst into a giggle, which was quickly suppressed in sympathetic recognition of her companion's mood. Her eye was caught by a huge mandarin who grinned at her with a hideous leer, and she s.h.i.+vered, half wondering if some of the many evil spirits believed to inhabit China were not hidden behind his wrinkled brown skin, and were looking at her through his bead-like eyes, trying to hypnotize her with his sinister glare. Surely those glittering, s.h.i.+ny specks of eyes did move-oh, what was that? She jumped to her feet, crouching all of a heap in abject fear as she stared with horror-stricken eyes at the mandarin, as if that weird, shrill scream that had suddenly broken the grim silence had come from his mummy-like lips.

"Oh, what is it?" whispered Grace in a hoa.r.s.e whisper, as she stared in paralyzed appeal at Nathalie.