Quicksilver Sue Part 14

"but Papa says he will get me a new one, and I shall see that n.o.body gets that away from me. You never will see me again, Sue, but you will have those common Harts; I supose they will be glad enouf to take up with you again.

"So I remain, Miss Penrose,

"Yours truly,

"Miss CLARICE STEPHANOTIS PACKARD."

Sue's eyes remained fixed on the paper; her cheeks glowed with shame and mortification; she could not meet her friends' eyes. There was a moment of dead silence; then came a sound that made her look up hastily, blus.h.i.+ng still deeper.

"Why! why, you are all laughing!" she cried.

"My dear, of course we are laughing!" cried Mary, catching her in her arms. "What should we do but laugh? And we _are_ glad to take up with you again, aren't we, boys?"

"Rather!" said Tom. "Why, Sue, it's been only half living without our Quicksilver."

"Have you really missed me?" cried poor Sue. "Oh, Tom! Of course I know Mary has, because I know how wretched I have been, really, all the time, even at first, when I didn't know it. But you, too, and Teddy? Oh, I am so glad! so glad! And now there are five of us, aren't there, Lily?"

Lily answered with a warm caress. She knew privately that she was the happiest of the five, but she did not know how to say it.

"Five of us!" echoed Teddy. "I say! we ought to have a name. The Frisky Five! No! that isn't good. Somebody else try!"

"The Festive Five!" suggested Tom.

But Mary shook her head. "I have it!" she said. "Join hands, all! the Faithful Five! Hurrah for us!"

The five children stood up and held hands, looking at one another with a certain solemnity.

"The Faithful Five!" they repeated. "Hurrah for us!"

And Teddy added: "But we'll make a toast of it to-night with shrub--lots of shrub!"

"And now we must make the wigs!" said Mary. "We'll do that in the barn chamber, so that we sha'n't mess with the silk."

"And then can't we climb a tree?" said Sue, plaintively. "I haven't climbed a tree for a month, Mary! I will be Isabella of Buchan, if you like, and you can all capture me and put me in the cage in the greening-tree."

"All right!" "Hurrah!" "Come on!"

The joyous voices died away; and Mrs. Hart took off her gla.s.ses and wiped her eyes, but not before a tear had fallen on her work. "Bless them!" she said. "And hurrah for them! This may have been a good thing, after all."

An hour later Sue was bending once more over her journal; but this time Mary's arms were round her, and Mary's eyes were looking over her shoulder as she wrote.

"My troubles are over, and they were all my own fault; but now I am happy, and nothing but death can part me and Mary. I have the dearest and best friends in the world--"

"Oh, don't, Sue!" said Mary.

"I shall!" said Sue, and wrote on:

"And I have told Mamma all about everything, and she has forgiven me, and now we are all different, and she is perfectly lovely, and we understand all about things together, like Mary and her mother. And I hope I am going to be a better girl now all my life; but still the name I shall always love best is that I am Mary's own

'QUICKSILVER SUE.'"