Mildred's Inheritance Part 2

"I am sure you will like that better than anything," she wrote. "Make your visit to Miss Barbara first. I wish I could have you come on the first of February, as I invited you to do, but, unfortunately, Mr.

Avery's mother and sisters are with us just now, and they occupy all our spare room. They do not expect to stay long after my cousin's reception on the third, however, and I will write as soon as they leave, and let you know just what day to come."

The first week of Judith's visit in Packertown fairly flew by. Miss Barbara was away much of the time, both morning and afternoon, with her music pupils, but Judith busied herself with the making of the dainty white dinner gown, and wove happy day-dreams while she worked. In the evenings she and Miss Barbara pored over a map of Was.h.i.+ngton until they could locate all the prominent places of interest, and then Miss Barbara brought out a pile of borrowed magazines in which were interesting descriptions of those very places, and they took turns in reading aloud.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "SHE AND MISS BARBARA PORED OVER A MAP OF WAs.h.i.+NGTON"]

When the dress was completed they had a little jubilee. Judith wore it one evening, with its dainty flutter of ribbons, for Miss Barbara to admire, and they invited the landlady and her daughter in to have music and toast marshmallows.

"You don't look a day over eighteen," Miss Barbara declared. "You ought to wear white all the time."

"It is given only to saints and the 'lilies that toil not' to do that,"

answered Judith, gaily. "I am satisfied to be arrayed just on state occasions." And then because she was so happy she seized the little music teacher and waltzed her round and round before the mirror. "It's all your doing, you blessed Cousin Barbara! See how you have metamorphosed me."

Several days later she stood idly turning the calendar. "This is the day of the reception," she said; "the Averys will certainly be going home soon, and I ought to hear from Marguerite."

But no letter came the next day, nor the next, nor all the following week, although she went to the post-office several times daily.

It grew dull waiting, with Miss Barbara gone so much, and with nothing to do. She read the few books at her disposal, she paced up and down in the two little back bedrooms that she and Miss Barbara occupied. She took long walks alone, but the little mining town was even smaller than Westbrooke, and she found scant material with which to fill her letters home.

The two weeks for which she had been invited came to an end, and Judith grew desperate over her fruitless trips to the post-office. She knew that Miss Barbara had just made the payment that was due the Building and Loan a.s.sociation in which she was putting her little earnings, and would be almost penniless until the end of another term. Besides, she had accepted all that she was willing to take from the hard-worked little music teacher.

"I have packed my trunk and am going home to-morrow, Cousin Barbara,"

she announced. "Mr. Avery's family have evidently stayed longer than Daisy expected, and she can't have me. Maybe some of them are ill."

"Then she should have written and told you so," said Miss Barbara, waxing so indignant over the neglect of her _protegee_ that she grew eloquent on the subject of her hobby--punctuality, especially in correspondence.

"I suppose you wouldn't want to write again?" she suggested.

But Judith shook her head. "Oh, no, no!" she insisted; "Daisy understands perfectly that I can stay here only two weeks. I explained the situation fully in my letter. I mailed it myself, and I am sure that she received it. And I couldn't thrust myself upon her, you know. She has probably forgotten all about her invitation by this time; this visit doesn't mean as much to her as to me."

"But I can't bear to be disappointed after going so far," said Miss Barbara. "She'll surely write in a few days. You'll just have to stay another week. I can arrange for that long. The landlady wants the room after the twenty-first for a permanent boarder, but you can't go until then."

In spite of all Judith's protestations, Miss Barbara kept her, and never did a week drag by so slowly. It snowed incessantly. Miss Barbara was unusually busy. Judith took a severe cold that confined her to the house. Her eyes ached when she attempted to read, and all she could do was to pace up and down the room and look out of the window, or watch the clock in feverish impatience for Miss Barbara to return with the mail.

But not until the sixteenth, the day of the musicale, did she lose hope.

When the hour came in which she should have been listening to the famous violinist in Marguerite's elegant drawing-rooms, she threw herself on the bed and cried as if her heart would break. It had been years since she had given away to her emotions as she did then, but the disappointment was a bitter one. She must go back home without even a glimpse of the city of her dreams, and without meeting a single interesting person. True, she had had a pleasant visit with Cousin Barbara, but they both had thought of it as only the stepping-stone to what lay beyond. Then at the thought of Miss Barbara's disappointment, second only to her own, she cried again. And again for her mother's disappointment and the girls', and her mortification when it should be discussed in every house in Westbrooke. She sobbed so long that finally she fell into a deep sleep of exhaustion.

Miss Barbara, coming in later in the twilight, found her lying on the bed, with a feverish flush on her cheeks. The grieved, childlike droop of the sensitive little mouth told its own story, and Miss Barbara set her lips sternly together.

"I wish Daisy Avery could see her now," she muttered, savagely; "it's cruel to disappoint any one so. I don't care what the cause is, it's wickedly cruel to be so careless."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'I WISH DAISY AVERY COULD SEE HER NOW,' SHE MUTTERED, SAVAGELY."]

Four days later Judith went home. In the course of a week a letter was forwarded to her from Packertown. It was from Marguerite:

"How can you ever forgive my abominable carelessness? I intended to answer immediately after our guests left, but Mr. Avery and I were invited to a little house-party in the country, and I thought a few days wouldn't make any difference to you. Then, after our return, so many things interfered and the days slipped by so fast, that the month was nearly gone before I realized it. But then I always have been such a poor correspondent.

"I hope that it hasn't inconvenienced you any, and that you have been having a good visit with Miss Barbara. You know my unfortunate way of doing things, and I'm sure you'll forgive me, like the darling you always were.

"We shall look for you to-morrow on the six o'clock train. Don't disappoint us, for we both shall be at the station to meet you.

"Devotedly, "MARGUERITE."

Judith read the letter aloud to the girls and then dropped it in the fire, watching it without a word, as it curled up in the flame. How long she had waited for that careless little letter! How anxiously she had hoped for it! A few days sooner it would have brought untold happiness. Now it was only a hollow mockery. Well, it was all over now.

Her hopes were in ashes like the letter. How high they had burned! And the little evening gown she had taken such pleasure in making--there would never be any occasion fit for its wearing in Westbrooke. She might as well fold it away. The letter had come too late. And she was asked to forgive it--the disappointment that would sting all her life long--simply because it was Daisy's way.

The silence was growing uncomfortable. Amy kept casting frightened glances at her sister's white, tense face. "Oh, dear," she sighed, finally, "if this had only been in a story it wouldn't have ended so dreadfully. Something nice would have happened just at the last minute to make up for the disappointment."

"But it isn't in a story," said Judith, slowly, rising to leave the room. "And nothing can compensate for such a disappointment. It will hurt always."

As the door closed behind her the girls exchanged sympathizing glances.

"If there had even been a good reason," sighed Lillian, "but it was only carelessness. And the trouble of it is, the world is full of Daisy Averys."

ANN'S OWN WAY

"Ann! Ann! Have you been home yet to feed the chickens?" The call came from the doorway of a big old farmhouse, where a pleasant-faced woman stood looking out over the October fields.

The answer floated down from an apple-tree near by, where a ten-year-old girl sat perched among its gnarled branches. She had a dog-eared book of fairy tales on her knee, and was poring over it in such blissful absorption that she had forgotten there were such things in all the world as chickens to be fed.

"No'm, Aunt Sally, I haven't done it yet, but I'll go in a minute," and she was deep into the story again.

"But, Ann," came the voice after a moment's waiting, "it is nearly sundown, and you ought to go right away, dear. Lottie says that you have been reading ever since you came home from school, and I am afraid that your mother wouldn't like it."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "SAT PERCHED AMONG ITS GUARDED BRANCHES"]

"Oh, bother!" exclaimed Ann under her breath, shutting the book with an impatient slap; but she obediently swung herself down from the limb, and went into the house for the key. The little cottage where Ann Fowler lived stood just across the lane from her Uncle John's big brown house, where she was staying while her mother was away from home. Mrs. Fowler, who had been called to the city by her sister's illness, had taken little Betty with her, but Ann could not afford to miss school and had been left in her Aunt Sally's care. The arrangement was very agreeable to the child, for it meant no dish-wiping, no dusting, no running of errands while she was a guest. Her only task was to go across the lane twice a day and feed the chickens.

As Ann came out of the house swinging the key, her aunt called her again: "Mrs. Grayson was here to-day. She came to invite you and Lottie to a Sat.u.r.day afternoon romp with her little girls to-morrow. She's asked a dozen boys and girls to come and play all afternoon and stay to tea. Her oldest daughter, Jennie, is going to give a Hallowe'en party at night, but she'll send you home in the carryall after tea, before the foolishness begins."

"Didn't she invite us to the party too?" asked Ann, who had heard it discussed at school all week by the older girls and boys of the neighbourhood, until her head was full of the charms and mysteries of Hallowe'en.

"Why, of course not," was the answer. "Jennie Grayson is fully eighteen years old and wouldn't want you children tagging around."

"But we can't work any charms in the afternoon," said Ann, "They won't come true unless you wait till midnight to do 'em. I found a long list of 'em in an old book at home and gave them to Jennie. I think she might have asked me. I'd love to try my fate walking down cellar backwards with a looking-gla.s.s in one hand and a candle in the other. They say that you can see the reflection of the man you're going to marry looking over your shoulder into the gla.s.s."

"Why, Ann Fowler!" exclaimed her aunt in a horrified tone, lifting up both hands in her astonishment. "I didn't think it of a little girl like you! Don't you go to putting any foolish notions like that into Lottie's head. Fate indeed! It would be more like your fate to fall down cellar and break the looking-gla.s.s and set yourself on fire. No, indeed!

Lottie shouldn't go to such a party if she had a dozen invitations."

Ann hurried away wis.h.i.+ng that she had not spoken. She had an uncomfortable feeling that her aunt considered her almost wicked, because she had made that wish. As for her aunt, she was saying to her husband, who had just come in, "Well, well! that child has the queerest notions. Her mother lets her read entirely too much, and anything she happens to get her hands on. And she sets such store by her clothes, too. I believe if she had her own way she'd be rigged out in her Sunday best the whole week long. I'm glad that Lucy isn't like her."

No one, judging by the appearance of the resolute little figure trudging across the lane, would have imagined that Ann's besetting sin was a love of dress. She was such a plain old-fas.h.i.+oned little body, with her short brown hair combed smoothly back behind her ears. But the checked sunbonnet, the long-sleeved gingham ap.r.o.n, and the stout calfskin shoes were no index of Ann's taste. They were of her mother's choosing, and Ann's mother was not a woman whose decisions could be lightly set aside.

In a bureau drawer in the guest-chamber of the little cottage was a dress that Ann had been longing to put on for six months. It was of dainty white organdy, made to wear over a slip of the palest green silk, with ribbons to match. And carefully wrapped in a box, with many coverings of tissue paper, was a pair of beautiful pale green kid shoes.

Ann had worn them only once, and that was in the early spring, when she had gone to a cousin's wedding in the city. Many a Sunday morning since, she had wept bitter tears into that drawer, at not being allowed to wear the costume to church.