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+Project Gutenberg's Four Girls and a Compact, by Annie Hamilton Donnell
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+Title: Four Girls and a Compact
+
+Author: Annie Hamilton Donnell
+
+Posting Date: February 5, 2015 [EBook #9505]
+Release Date: December, 2005
+First Posted: October 7, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOUR GIRLS AND A COMPACT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Joel Erickson, David Garcia and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+FOUR GIRLS AND A COMPACT
+
+By Annie Hamilton Donnell
+
+
+1908.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+"Wait for T.O.," commanded Loraine, and of course they waited. Loraine's
+commands were always obeyed, Laura Ann said, because her name was such a
+_queeny_ one. Nobody else in the little colony--the "B-Hive"--had a
+queeny name.
+
+"Though I just missed it," sighed Laura Ann. "Think what a little step
+from Loraine to Laur' Ann! I always just miss things."
+
+T.O. was apt to be late. She never rode, and, being short, was not a
+remarkable walker. To-night she was later than usual. The three other
+girls got into kimonos and slippers and prepared tea. In all their minds
+the Grand Plan was fomenting, and it was not easy to wait. A cheer
+greeted T.O. as she came in, wet and weary and cheerful.
+
+"You're overdue, my dear," Loraine said severely. But of course T.O.
+laughed and offered a weak pun:
+
+"The 'dew' is over me, you mean! Oh, girls, this looks too cozy for
+anything in here! All the way up town I've been blessing you three for
+taking me in."
+
+Said Laura Ann: "If I were pun-mad, like some folks, I could do
+something quite smart there. But there, you poor, wet dear! You sha'n't
+be outdone in your specialty, no you sha'n't! Get off your things quick,
+dear--we're all bursting to talk about the Grand Plan."
+
+It was, after all, Billy that started in. Billy was very tired indeed,
+and her lean, eager face was pale.
+
+"Girls, we _must!_" she said. "I can't hold out more than a few
+weeks more. I shall be a mental wreck and go 'round muttering,
+_one_-two--three--four, _one_--two--three--four--flat your b's,
+sharp your c's--one--two--three--four--_play!_" For Billy all day
+toiled at pianos, teaching unwilling little persons to play. Billy's
+long name was Wilhelmina.
+
+They were all toilers--worker-B's. The "B" part of the name which they
+had given to the little colony came from the accident of all their
+surnames beginning with that letter--Brown, Bent, Baker, Byers. It was,
+they all agreed, a happy accident; the "B-Hive" sounded so well. But,
+as Laura Ann said, it entailed things, notably industry.
+
+Laura Ann finished negatives part of the day to earn money to learn to
+paint the other part. She was poor, but the same good grit that made her
+loyal to her old grandmother's name, unshortened and unbeautified, gave
+her courage to work on toward the distant goal.
+
+Loraine taught--"just everlastingly taught," she said, until she could
+do it with her eyes shut. Cube root, all historic dates, all x, y, z's,
+were as printing to her, dinned into the warp and woof of her by patient
+reiteration. She was very tired, too. The rest of the long June days
+stretched ahead of her in weary perspective.
+
+That these three had drifted together in the great city was sufficiently
+curious, but more curious yet was the "drifting together" of T.O.--a
+plain little clerk in a great department store. She, herself, humbly
+acknowledged that she did not seem to "belong," but here she was,
+divesting herself of her wet wraps and getting ready for tea in the tiny
+flat. Handkerchiefs, initialed, "warranted,"--uninitialed,
+unwarranted--were behind her and ahead, but between she forgot their
+existence and took her comfort.
+
+"Well?" she said presently. "I'm ready." They sat down to the simple
+little meal without further delay and with the first mouthfuls opened
+again the rather time-worn discussion. Could they adopt the Grand Plan?
+Oh, _couldn't_ they? To get out of the hot, teeming city and
+breathe air enough and pure enough, to luxuriate in idleness, to
+_rest_--to a girl, they longed for it. They were all orphans, and
+they were all poor. The Grand Plan was ambitious, indefinite, but they
+could not give it up. They had wintered it and springed it, and clung
+to it through bright days and dark.
+
+Suddenly Loraine tapped sharply on the table. "All in favor of spending
+the summer in the country say 'aye,'" she cried, "and say it hard!"
+
+"Aye!"
+
+"Aye!"
+
+"Aye!"
+
+"_Aye_!" appended Loraine, and said it hard. "It's a vote," she
+added calmly. Then, staring at each other, they sat for a little with
+rather frightened faces. For this thing that they had done was rather a
+stupendous thing. T.O. recovered first--courage was as the breath of her
+little lean nostrils.
+
+"Girls, this is great!" she laughed. "_We've gone and done it!_
+There's nothing left but to pack our trunks!"
+
+"Except a few last trifles, such as deciding where to go and what to pay
+for it with," put in Laura Ann with soft irony. "We could decide those
+things on the train, I suppose--"
+
+"Let's decide 'em on the spot," rejoined T.O. imperturbably. "Somebody
+propose something."
+
+Here Billy was visited with one of her inspirations and promptly shared
+it with her usual generosity. "We must hunt up a place to--er--'bunk'
+in--just bunk and board ourselves. Of course we can't afford to
+_be_ boarded--"
+
+"Of course," in chorus.
+
+"Well, then, one of us must go out into the waste places--oh, anywhere
+where the grass has room to grow and there are trees and birds and
+_barns_--I stipulate barns." Billy made a splendid, comprehensive
+gesture that took in all the points of the compass impartially. "One
+of us must take a few days off and go and hunt up a nice, inexpensive
+little Eldorado for us. There!--there, my friends, you have the
+solution of your knotty little problem in a nutshell. I gladly give
+my 'services' free."
+
+"Who's going?" demanded practical Laura Ann. "Does anybody kindly
+volunteer?"
+
+No volunteers. Silence, broken only by the chirp of the cheery little
+teakettle. The immense responsibility of setting the Grand Plan in
+motion was not to be lightly assumed. The utter vagueness of Billy's
+"waste places" was dismaying, to say the least. There might be many
+nice, inexpensive little Eldorados waiting to be "bunked" in and
+picnicked in, but where? The world was full of places where there were
+trees and birds and barns, but to pick out the particular one where
+four tired-out young toilers could lay down their tools and rest
+_inexpensively_, looked like a big undertaking.
+
+Billy had settled back in her chair with an air of having done her part
+and washed her hands of further responsibility. The rest must do their
+parts now. Billy, who was the youngest and frailest of the little colony
+of workers, had fallen into the way of dropping asleep whenever
+opportunity offered; she did so now with a little sigh of contentment.
+Her girlish face against the faded crimson back of the chair looked
+startlingly white. In her sleep she moved her lips and the others caught
+a pathetic little "_one_-two-three-four" dropping from them. Poor
+Billy! She was giving a music lesson in her dreams!
+
+Loraine made a little paper shade and shielded her pale face from the
+light, and Laura Ann tilted the clumsy patent rocker backward and
+trigged it with a book. Both their faces, tired, too, and pale, were
+sweet with kindness. T.O., who did queer and unexpected things, went
+round the table on her toes and kissed Billy's forehead openly. Her face
+had a puckering frown on it, oddly at variance with the kiss and with
+the look in her eyes. The kiss and the look were the things that
+mattered--the frown was a thing of insignificance.
+
+"You poor little blessed!" she murmured.
+
+"'Flat your b,'" murmured Billy wearily, and no one laughed. They were
+all laughers, but the picture of Billy toiling on monotonously in her
+sleep failed to appeal to them as humorous. T.O. went back silently to
+her seat.
+
+What the initials T.O. stood for in the way of a name had been the
+subject of much guessing in the B-Hive, for the owner of the initials
+refused whimsically to explain them. Perhaps she would sometime when the
+moon was full or the wind was in the right quarter, she said. Meanwhile
+T.O. did well enough--as well as "Billy," anyway, or "Laura Ann"! And
+they fell in gayly with her whimsy and called her T.O. The nearest they
+had ever come to an answer to their guesses was one night when they had
+been discussing "talents" and comparing "callings," and T.O. had sat by,
+a wistful little listener and admirer. For T.O. had no talent, and who
+would call selling handkerchiefs from morning till night a "calling"?
+Even sheer, fine handkerchiefs, warranted every thread linen!
+
+"Talentless One," she broke out startlingly. "You want to know what
+'T.O.' stands for--that's it!" And the amused look in the girls' eyes
+changed quickly to understanding at sight of her face. "Well," she
+challenged, "why don't you say what an appropriate name it is? It's a
+wonder you _talented_ ones didn't guess it long ago! Listen!
+Loraine's talent is writing--we all know she'll be an author some day.
+Laura Ann's is art. Oh, you needn't laugh--need she, girls? One of these
+days we're all going to a 'hanging,' and _it'll be Laura Ann's!_
+Billy's talent everybody knows. She can play wicked folks good, if
+there's a piano handy. Well, what is my talent? Don't everybody speak at
+once!" The girl's flushed face defied them. It was bitter with longing
+to be a Talented One.
+
+[Illustration: "YOU POOR LITTLE BLESSED!" SHE MURMURED.]
+
+"Dear!" It was like gentle Loraine to begin with a "dear," and like her,
+too, to cross the room to T.O. and touch her little bitter face with
+cool fingers. "Dear, don't you worry--your talent is _there._"
+
+"Where?" demanded T.O. Then she laughed. "I suppose you mean buried in
+a handkerchief! But I shall never be able to dig it out--never! There's
+such an awful pile of them on top! They keep piling on new ones every
+day. If I keep on selling handkerchiefs till I'm seventy-five, I'll
+never get down to my talent."
+
+It was, after all, quite true, though none of them would acknowledge
+it--except the Talentless One herself. She was, as she insisted, the odd
+one in the busy little B-Hive. Her very face, small and dark and lean,
+was an "odd" one; the faces of the other three were marked by an
+indefinable something that she called talent, and she was not far wrong.
+A subtle refinement, intellectuality, asserted itself gently in all
+three of them. The dark little face of T.O. was vivacious and keen, but
+not refined or intellectual.
+
+Billy was the baby "B," as Loraine was the acknowledged queen. They all
+favored Billy and took care of her. Was it a rainy morning? Somebody got
+Billy's rubbers, somebody else her umbrella! Was the child paler than
+usual? She must have the softest chair and be babied. Poor little
+toiler-Billy, created to have a mother and a home, to sit always in soft
+chairs and be taken care of! Yet without them all she was making a
+splendid struggle for independence, with the best of them, and they were
+conscious of a certain element of heroism in her toiling that none of
+the rest of them laid claim to in their own. The other B.'s were proud
+of Billy.
+
+T.O. was as small and thin as Billy, but no one thought of taking care
+of T.O. or babying her. Instead, T.O.--the Talentless One--took care of
+them all. She had always been a toiler, always been alone, and to the
+rest it was comparatively a new experience. T.O., as she herself said,
+was able to give them all "points."
+
+While tired Billy slept to-night, the Grand Plan discussion was taken up
+again and entertained with new enthusiasm. It was now a definite Plan,
+since they had voted unanimously to adopt it--it was no longer merely
+a unanimous wish, to be bandied about longingly. It remained only to
+choose a brave soul to go forth and find for it a "local habitation."
+
+"When Billy wakes up, we'll draw lots," Loraine decided gently. "The one
+who gets the longest slip _will go_--but mercy! I hope I sha'n't be
+the one! Girls, there really ought to be one to--er--oversee the drawing
+of the lots--"
+
+"Hear! Hear!" from T.O.
+
+"You will take your chances with the common herd, my dear," Laura Ann
+said firmly. "You really need not be alarmed, though, for I shall draw
+the fatal slip. I always do. Then I shall go up-country and engage four
+boards at a nice white house with green blinds, and forget to ask how
+much they will cost--the 'boards,' I mean--and whether they'll take
+Billy at half-price. You'll all like my white house, but you won't be
+able to stay more than one night on account of the expense. So you'll
+turn me out of the B-Hive and I shall--"
+
+"Oh, don't do anything else--don't!" T.O. groaned. "That will be doing
+enough."
+
+"We shall have to find a _very_ cheap place," Loraine said,
+thoughtfully, too intent on the fate of the Grand Plan to listen to
+pleasantries. "Somewhere where it won't cost much of anything."
+
+"Such an easy place to find!" murmured Laura Ann. "I see myself going
+straight to it!"
+
+"We've _got_ to go to it, on account of--" Loraine nodded toward
+the sleeping little figure in the softest chair. "Girls, Billy is all
+worn out."
+
+"So are you," Laura Ann said tenderly.
+
+"And you," retorted Loraine.
+
+The Talentless One, unintentionally left out, sighed an infinitesimal
+sigh, preparatory to smiling stoutly.
+
+"Of course we're going to find the right place," she said convincingly.
+"You wait and see. _I_ see it now"--this dreamily; it was odd for
+the Talentless One to be dreaming. "It looks this way: Green, grassy and
+pine-woodsy and roomy. And cornfields--think of it!"
+
+"'Woods and cornfields--the picture must not be over-done,'" quoted
+softly and a little accusingly Laura Ann. But the Talentless One had
+never heard of Miss Cary's beautiful poem, and went on calmly:
+
+"And a--pump. Girls, if _I_ find the 'Eldorado,' there'll be a
+pump--painted blue!"
+
+Here Billy woke up. There was no time to discountenance the pump.
+
+"Why, I believe I've been asleep!" Billy laughed restedly. "And I've
+been somewhere else, too. Guess!"
+
+"To Eldorado," someone ventured.
+
+"Well, I have. It was the loveliest place! There weren't any pianos or
+schools or photograph salons or _handkerchiefs_ in it!"
+
+"Then we'll go there!" the Talentless One cried.
+
+Loraine was busy cutting strips of paper. She cut four of varying
+lengths and dropped them into an empty cracker-box.
+
+"Somebody shake them up, everyone shut her eyes and draw one," she
+ordered. "And the person that draws the longest slip must be the one
+to find our Eldorado."
+
+They shut their eyes and fumbled in the cracker-box. The room was oddly
+quiet. Laura Ann, who always drew the fatal slip, breathed a little
+hard.
+
+But the lot fell to the Talentless One.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+"Why, I didn't get it!" exclaimed Laura Ann, in surprise. "And maybe I'm
+not thankful! Poor T.O.!"
+
+"Yes, poor T.O.!" agreed Loraine and Billy. The honor of drawing the
+longest slip was not, it appeared, a coveted one. But T.O. actually
+beamed!
+
+"Needn't anyone pity me!" she said, briskly. "I like it! You see," she
+added, explanatorily, "I never did anything remarkable before! Of course
+I sha'n't blame you girls any if you shake in your shoes while I'm gone,
+but I'll promise to do my little best. If you thought you could trust
+me--"
+
+"We do! We do!" Loraine said, warmly, speaking for them all. "And we
+pity you, too, poor dear! It looks like an awful undertaking to me."
+
+"How long can you take? Are you sure they'll let you get off down at
+Torrey's?" asked Billy, languidly.
+
+"Oh," the Talentless One said, calmly, "I shall get a substitute, of
+course. They let the girls do that, if the substitute suits 'em. There's
+a girl that used to be at the handkerchief counter that will be glad
+enough to earn a little money, I know. She'll be tickled! And she can
+keep the place open for me when I get back from the country in the
+fall--" Suddenly the Talentless One laughed out joyously. "Hear me!
+'When I get back from the country!' Doesn't that sound splendid! Makes
+me think of cows and chickens and strawberries and--"
+
+"Pumps painted blue!" laughed Laura Ann. "We're in for a blue pump,
+girls!"
+
+       *        *        *        *        *
+
+The substitution at the handkerchief counter could not be arranged
+for at once, so the proposed voyage of discovery was a little delayed.
+Meanwhile the Grand Plan and a newly-born family of lesser plans
+occupied the interim of waiting. One thing they all agreed upon.
+It was tired little Billy who voiced it.
+
+"We won't be good this summer, will we? I've been good so long that
+I want to rest!"
+
+"It would seem comfortable not to have to be, wouldn't it?" Loraine
+laughed. As if Loraine could rest from being good! "Not to have to do
+anything for anybody--just be good to yourself! Now, I call that the
+luxury of selfishness! And really, girls, we deserve one little
+luxury--"
+
+"We'll indulge ourselves," T.O. nodded gravely. "I'm sure I've been
+polite to people and patient with people long enough to have a
+vacation--a summer vacation!"
+
+"Give me a paper and pencil, somebody, quick!" This from Laura Ann.
+She fell to scribbling industriously. The purring of her pencil over
+the paper had a smooth, wicked sound as if it were writing wicked things.
+It was.
+
+"Be it known," read Laura Ann, flourishing her pencil, "that we, the
+undersigned, having endeavored, up to the present, to be good, consider
+ourselves entitled to be selfish during our summer vacation. That we
+mean to be selfish--that we herewith swear to be! That we do not mean to
+'do good unto' anybody except ourselves! Inasmuch as we have faithfully
+tried to do our several duties hitherto, we feel justified in resting
+from the same until such time as we may--er--wish to begin again.
+
+"Furthermore, resolved: That any or all persons hereunto subscribed, who
+fail to keep the letter of this compact, be summarily _dropped!_"
+
+(Signed) "LAURA ANN BYERS."
+
+The paper went the rounds and was soberly signed by each girl in turn.
+Loraine, the last, traced three words in her tiny handwriting at the
+head of the paper.
+
+"The Wicked Compact!" read Billy over her shoulder, and nodded
+agreeingly. "That's a good name for it. Doesn't it make you feel lovely
+and shuddery to belong to a Wicked Compact! Oh, you needn't think I
+shall go back on the rules and regulations! If somebody gets down on his
+knees and implores, 'Which note shall I flat?' I shall turn coldly away,
+or else say, 'Suit yourself, my dear!' But, girls, oh girls, I hope
+there won't be any pianos in Eldorado!"
+
+"Probably there will be only cabinet organs--don't worry, dear!" soothed
+Laura Ann.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The day after the Wicked Compact was drawn up and signed, T.O. started
+on her quest for Eldorado. She would have no one escort her to the
+station; she would give no intimation of her plans. They were all to
+wait as patiently as possible till she came back. It was only because
+she had to, poor child, that she accepted the contributions of the
+others toward her expenses of travel.
+
+At the station she straightened her short stature to its utmost and
+approached the ticket window. She might have been, from her splendid
+dignity of manner, six feet instead of five.
+
+"Will you please tell me which road is the cheapest to travel on?" she
+asked, clearly, undismayed outwardly, inwardly quailing before the
+ticket man's amazement. His curious eyes surveyed her through the little
+opening.
+
+"Why--er--well, there's the most competition on the X & Y Road," he
+said, slowly. "The rates on that line are about down to the limit--"
+
+"Thank you," the dignified one said, and turned away. She found the time
+table of the X & Y Road on the station wall, and studied it
+thoughtfully. She had resolved to select the place with the most
+promising name. Back at the ticket window she patiently waited her turn
+in a little stream of people. The woman ahead of her was flourishing a
+dainty, embroidered handkerchief, and she wondered idly if it had come
+from her counter at Torrey's. If so, why was it not a little white flag
+of truce that gave her a right to say "How do you do?" to the woman?
+The Talentless One suddenly felt a little lonely.
+
+"Ticket to Placid Pond, please," she said, when her turn came. The very
+sound of the peaceful little name gave her courage. Placid Pond! Placid
+Pond! Could any place be more indicative of rest? Then she bethought her
+of the Wicked Compact, and felt almost impelled to hand back the
+ticket--Placid Pond could not be the right place to be bad in!
+
+But it was too late!
+
+"Two-twenty," the ticket man said, monotonously, and she fumbled in her
+lean, little purse. To Placid Pond she would go, and, if there were
+barns and cornfields and a blue-painted pump--the thrill of expectancy
+ran through her veins, and she forgot the Wicked Compact.
+
+The Talentless One had never glided through green places like this
+before, between slow, clear little streams, by country children waving
+their hats. She had never seen far, splendid reaches of hills,
+undulating softly against the sky. Wonder and delight filled her. She
+found herself envying the little, brown children who waved their hats.
+
+"It's pretty, ain't it?" a fresh, old voice said in her ear. When she
+turned, it was to look into a fresh, old face behind her.
+
+"Ain't it a pretty world the Lord's made? The 'firmament showeth his
+handiwork,' don't it? Where are you going to, deary?"
+
+"A place called Placid Pond," answered the girl, smiling back.
+
+"_No?_ Well, I declare! That's where Emmeline Camp lives that was a
+Jones an' spelt out o' my spellin'-book! If you see Emmeline, you tell
+her you saw me on the cars. Emmeline and I have always kep' up our
+interest in each other. She'll be tickled--you tell her I've learnt that
+leaf-stitch at last! She'll understand!"
+
+The thin, old voice tinkled on pleasantly in the Talentless One's ears.
+
+"Come back here an' set with me, deary, an' I'll tell you which house is
+Emmeline's, so, if you go past, you'll know it--it's painted green! Did
+you ever! But Emmeline was always set on green. She was married in a
+green silk, an' we girls said she married a green husband!"
+
+T.O. laughed enjoyingly. She began to feel acquainted with Emmeline, and
+to hope she should find the green house--perhaps it would be the
+Eldorado house! Wonders happened sometimes.
+
+"I don't suppose--there isn't a blue pump, is there? I've set my heart
+on a blue pump!" she laughed, as if the little, old woman who knew
+Emmeline would understand. The little, old woman smiled delightedly--as
+if she understood!
+
+"Dear land, no! I hope Emmeline ain't painted her pump blue--and her
+livin' in a green house! But she'd go out an' do it--it would be just
+like Emmeline, if she knew anybody wanted a blue pump! Here we are,
+deary! This is Placid Pond we're coming to! You see that sheet o' water,
+don't you? Well, that's it!"
+
+The Talentless One buttoned her jacket and clutched her little black
+bag. Her thin cheeks bloomed suddenly with tiny red spots of excitement.
+She seemed on the edge of an Adventure; and, to one who had stood behind
+a counter nearly all her days, an Adventure began with a capital A.
+The train slowed up and stood panting--in a hurry to go again.
+
+"Oh, I wish you were going to get out here!" T.O. said, wistfully.
+
+The little, old woman seemed like an old friend to her. She felt oddly
+young and inexperienced. Then, remembering the girls left behind in the
+B-Hive and their confidence in her, she threw up her small head and
+hurried away valiantly.
+
+"Good-by!" she called back, from the bit of platform outside.
+
+"Good-by! Give my love to Emmeline!" nodded and beamed the little, old
+face in the car window.
+
+It was a tiny place. T.O. could see only the great, placid sheet of
+water and the diminutive station at first. She accosted the only human
+being in sight.
+
+"Which way is the city--village, I mean?" she asked.
+
+He was an old man and held a scooped palm behind his ear.
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"The village--please direct me to it."
+
+"Well," he laughed good-humoredly, "all the village they is you'll
+strike yonder," pointing. "You keep a-goin', an' you'll git thar!"
+
+She thanked him and set out courageously. She kept "a-goin'." The
+country road was shady and dusty and sweet with mystic, unseen, growing
+things. Her feet, used to hard pavements, sank into the soft dust
+luxuriously. She breathed deep and swung along at a splendid pace. It
+was hard to believe that she was a clerk at Torrey's! There did not seem
+to have ever been handkerchiefs in the world--even all-linen, warranted
+ones!
+
+"This is Eldorado!" she said aloud, and was proud of herself for finding
+it so soon--coming straight to it! Lucky she had been the one to draw
+the longest strip.
+
+She passed one or two houses, but none of them were painted green. She
+said to herself she would keep on to "Emmeline's" house. The whim had
+seized her and was holding on tight that Emmeline's might be the Right
+Place. So she swung on buoyantly.
+
+[Illustration: "WHICH WAY IS THE VILLAGE?" SHE ASKED.]
+
+A stone wall bordered the road on one side, and over the wall she spied
+a sprinkling of little flowers that called, "Come and pick us!" to her.
+She did not know that they were bluets, but she knew they were dainty
+and sweet and beckoned to her. She paused an instant uncertainly, and
+then climbed the wall. It was rather an arduous undertaking for a clerk
+at a handkerchief counter, and she went about it clumsily. The wall was
+high and the stones "jiggled" in a terrifying way. One big stone climbed
+down on the other side with her--they went together unceremoniously.
+
+The Talentless One laughed a little under her breath as she sat up among
+the little flowers, but she was not quite sure that she wanted to laugh.
+The big stone was on her foot and she regarded it with disfavor. It
+required considerable strength to roll it off--then she got up. Then she
+sank down again very suddenly.
+
+"Oh!" she cried, sharply. For several moments she said nothing more, did
+nothing more. The discovery she had made was not a pleasant discovery.
+In Eldorado clumsy people who could not climb stone walls came to grief.
+She had come to grief. When she moved her foot, terrible twinges of pain
+were telegraphed all over her body. She sat, a sorry little heap, among
+the stranger flowers that had brought about her ruin. The roadway
+stretched dustily and emptily up and down, on the other side of the
+wall.
+
+"Oh!" breathed the Talentless One. It had been a sigh before, now it was
+a groan. What was she to do? A sort of terror seized her. She had never
+been really frightened before. The beautiful country about her no longer
+was beautiful. It was no longer Eldorado to her.
+
+Then she discovered a green fleck down the road, a different green from
+the grass and trees. If it should be Emmeline's house--if she could get
+to it!
+
+"I must!" she said, and hobbled to her feet. Somehow she got over the
+wall, and went stumbling toward the green spot. The agony in her foot
+increased every moment; she grew dizzy with it.
+
+It must be Emmeline's house--a little, green-painted one beside the
+road! There could not be two green houses in Placid Pond. With a long
+breath of relief she got to the door. After that she did not know
+anything for a little time, then her eyes opened. Someone with a kind,
+anxious face was bending over her. It was Emmeline! It looked like the
+face of an old friend to the poor, little Talentless One.
+
+"There, there, poor dear! Never mind where you be, or who I be--you
+'tend right to gettin' out o' your faint! Sniff this bottle--there!
+You'll be all right in a minute. It's your foot, ain't it? It's all
+swollen up--how'd you sprain it?"
+
+She had the injured foot in her tremulous old hands, gently loosening
+the shoe. The girl, though she winced with pain, did not utter a sound.
+
+"There ain't any doctor this side of Anywhere," the kind voice ran on,
+"but never you mind. I'll risk but what I've got liniments that will
+doctor you up."
+
+And the girl, looking up into the peaceful old "lineaments," smiled
+faintly, and knew there was healing in them. Even in her throbbing pain
+she could think of this new pun that she would regale the girls with
+when she got back to them--if she ever got back!
+
+"You are 'Emmeline,' aren't you!" she presently questioned, feebly, like
+an old woman, for the pain seemed to have made her old. "I'm so glad you
+are Emmeline!"
+
+Poor dear, she was wandering in her mind, and no wonder, with a foot
+swollen up like that! It was queer, though, hitting on the right name
+in that way.
+
+"There! there! Yes, I am Emmeline, though I might've been Sophia or
+Debby Jane! Namin' people is sort o' accidental. I always wished they'd
+named me somethin' prettier by accident! But I guess Emmeline will have
+to do."
+
+It was long after this before any explanation was made. The fact that
+it was Emmeline was enough for those first hours.
+
+"Now, you kind of bear on to yourself, poor dear! This boot has got to
+come off!" the kind voice crooned. But, in the awful process of "bearing
+on," the Talentless One shot out into the dark, as if pushed by a heavy
+hand. How long it was before she came back into the light she did not
+know--it seemed to be a point of light that pricked her eyes. She shut
+them against it, and longed to drift away again; the dark had been cool
+and pleasant.
+
+It was a lighted lamp on a tiny, round table. She found it out the next
+time she opened her eyes. She was in a little bedroom, on the bed. The
+door was open, and a voice drifted in to her:
+
+"She was coming to beautifully when I left her. I thought mebbe she'd
+feel more at home to come to alone. I've got her ankle all dressed nice,
+but it would make your heart ache to see it! The poor dear won't walk
+again this one while--"
+
+"But, Emmeline Camp, what are you going to do with her all that time?"
+The second voice was a little shrill.
+
+"Sh! I'm goin' to doctor her up, just as if she was the little girl the
+Lord never gave me. I've always known what I'd do if my little girl
+broke anything--There! you'll have to excuse me, Mrs. Williams, while
+I take this cup o'tea in."
+
+It is odd how many little confidences can be exchanged in the time of
+cooling and drinking a cup of tea. The caller had gone away, and the old
+woman and the girl were left alone. Little by little the story of the
+B-Hive and the quest for an Eldorado came out. Emmeline Camp sat and
+nodded, and clandestinely wiped her eyes.
+
+"I see--I see, deary! Now, don't you talk any more and get faint again.
+I'll talk. You no need to worry about anything in the world--not yet!
+When it's time to commence, I'll tell you. How does your foot feel now?
+Dear, dear! When I was fussing over it, it seemed just as if it was my
+little Amelia's foot! I've always known what I'd do if she sprained
+hers, and so I did it to yours, deary!"
+
+"Is Amelia your daughter?"
+
+The old face wavered between a smile and tears. "Yes," she nodded, "but
+she warn't ever born. It's a kind of a secret between me and the Lord.
+He knows I've made believe Amelia. I've always been kind of lonesome,
+an' she's been a sight of company to me. She's been a good daughter,
+Amelia has!" Now it was a smile. "We've set an' sewed patchwork
+together, ever since she grew up. When she was little--there, deary,
+hear me run on! But you remind me so much of Amelia. You can laugh just
+as much as you want to at me runnin' on like this about a little girl
+that warn't ever born--mebbe laughin' will help your foot."
+
+She took up the empty cup and went away, but she came back and stood a
+minute in the doorway.
+
+"There's this about it," she laughed, in a tender, little way, "if she
+warn't ever born, she won't ever die. I sha'n't lose Amelia!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To the three girls waiting at the B-Hive came a letter. They read it,
+three heads in a bunch:
+
+"Eldorado, June 26.
+
+"Come whenever you want to. Directions enclosed."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+There was a postscript. It was like T.O. to put the most of the letter
+into the postscript.
+
+"P.S.--Never call me the Talentless One again" (as if they ever had!),
+"when I came straight to the Eldorado--tumbled right into it. I've
+decided to stay here until you come--please tell my substitute so. I
+know she'll be so glad she'll throw up her hat. Bring your sheets and
+pillow-cases. Come by way of the X. & Y. R.R. to a place called Placid
+Pond."
+
+The three readers, bunched together over the letter, uttered a cry of
+delight. "Placid Pond!"--of all the dear, delightful, placid names! The
+very look of it on paper was restful; it _sounded_ restful when you
+said it over and over--"Placid Pond. Placid Pond. Placid Pond."
+
+"Oh, she's a dear--she's an _artist!_" cried Laura Ann, who
+measured all things by their relationship to art. This was an own
+cousin!
+
+"Read on--somebody hold the letter still!" Billy cried excitedly. And
+they read on: "Take the only road there is to take, and keep on to a
+house that's painted green. It will be Emmeline's house, though they
+might have named her Sophia, she says, by accident. But you will be glad
+she is Emmeline. She has a beautiful daughter that never was born and
+never will die--oh, girls, come as quick as ever you can!"
+
+Yours, "The Talented One."
+
+"P.S. No. 2.--Don't climb any stone walls. The stones are not stuck on."
+
+For a tiny space the three girls looked at each other in silence. The
+letter in Loraine's hand was a masterpiece, full of enticing mysteries
+that beckoned to them to come and find the "answers." What kind of an
+Eldorado was this that was called Placid Pond, and was full of
+mysteries? How could they wait! They must pack up and go at once!
+
+"'Talented One,' indeed!--she's a genius! See how she's left us to guess
+things, instead of explaining them all out in a nice, tame way--oh,
+_girls_"--Laura Ann's eyes shone--"won't we have the greatest
+time!"
+
+"What I want to know is, who is Emmeline--"
+
+"Yes, who is Emmeline?"
+
+"And who _can_ her daughter _be_? She sounds so lovely and ghostly!"
+
+"Everything sounds lovely and ghostly. When can we go, girls?" This from
+practical Loraine. "_I_ can't till after the Fourth."
+
+"Nor I," groaned Billy, dolefully.
+
+"I could, but I shall not--I shall wait for you two," Laura Ann said
+quietly.
+
+Loraine turned upon her. "You needn't," she said, "now that you've
+signed the compact--you can do whatever you _want_ to now, you
+know. Needn't think of anybody but yourself."
+
+"The privilege of being selfish doesn't begin till we get to Eldorado,"
+laughed Laura Ann. "You'll see what I do then!"
+
+It was arranged that they should start on the fifth of July. "With our
+sheets and pillow-cases," appended Billy. No one thought of writing to
+T.O. for further particulars. No one wanted further particulars. The
+uncertainly and mystery that enveloped Eldorado was its greatest charm.
+They speculated, to be sure, at odd moments, as to the identity of the
+person who might have been Sophia but was Emmeline, and they wrestled a
+little with the hidden meaning of Postscript Number Two. Why were they
+especially bidden not to climb stone walls? And _why_ was the
+Talented One "staying over" till they came?
+
+"Why? Why? Why?" chanted Billy, "but don't anybody dare to guess why!
+Who wants to know!"
+
+"Not me!" echoed ungrammatically Laura Ann.
+
+While they waited and speculated mildly, and packed and repacked their
+things, T.O. lay on the bed in Emmeline Camp's little bedroom and winced
+with pain whenever she moved her wounded foot. But she was very happy.
+"Peace is in my soul, if not my _sole!_" she thought, a slave still
+to the punning habit. She had never been so peaceful in her life. The
+little old woman who had befriended her bustled happily in and out of
+the little bedroom. She bathed and rubbed the swollen ankle, and smiled
+and chattered to the girl at the other end of it. Her "lineaments" were
+working a cure, surely.
+
+It had all been decided upon. The B-Hive was to be transplanted for the
+summer to the little, green-painted house trailed over with
+morning-glory vines and roses. Emmeline Camp had wanted, she said, for
+forty years, to go upon a long journey, to visit her brother. Here was
+her chance. The small sum she had at last consented to be paid for the
+use of her little house would pay her traveling expenses one way, at
+least, and John would be glad enough, she said, to pay her fare home,
+to get rid of her! Only she was quite able to pay it herself.
+
+"I've kind of hankered to go to see John all these years. Forty years is
+quite a spell to hanker, isn't it? But I never felt like leaving the
+house behind, and I couldn't take it along very conveniently, so I
+stayed to home. And then--my dear, you can laugh as well as not, but
+I didn't like to leave Amelia."
+
+"But you might have taken her with--"
+
+"No," seriously, "I couldn't 've taken Amelia. I think, deary, it might
+'ve killed her; she's part of the little house and the morning-glories
+and roses. I'd have had to leave Amelia if I'd gone, and it didn't seem
+right."
+
+"But now--"
+
+"Now," the little, old woman laughed in her odd, tender way that "went
+with" Amelia, "now she'll have plenty of young company--all o' you here
+with her. I shall make believe she's coming and going with you, and
+it'll be a sight of comfort. Yes, deary, I guess this is going to be my
+chance to visit John."
+
+"And our chance to have a summer in the country," completed the Talented
+One. "Oh, I think you are--_dear_! Whatever will the other girls
+say when I tell them about you!"
+
+One day T.O. remembered the blue pump. She gazed out of the window at
+the brown one in the little yard. "Who would have thought," she sighed,
+"that I could be so happy without a blue pump!"
+
+"What's that, deary?" The little, old woman was sewing patchwork near by.
+
+"Oh," laughed the girl, "I always _did_ want a pump that was
+painted blue. I saw a picture of one once when I was a little mite, and
+it impressed me--such a lovely, bright blue! I thought it went
+beautifully with the green grass! But I can get along without it, I
+guess."
+
+"We have to get along without having things painted to suit us," nodded
+the little, old woman philosophically. But she remembered the blue pump.
+There was a can of paint out in the shed room, and there was Jane
+Cotton's Sam.
+
+Jane Cotton's Sam was a "feature" of Placid Pond--a whole set of
+features, T.O. said. He was a lumbering, awkward fellow, well up to the
+end of his teens, the only hope of widowed Jane. The Lord had given him
+a splendid head, but the Placid Pond people were secretly triumphing in
+the knowledge that Sam had failed to pass in his college examinations,
+"head or no head." Jane had always boasted so of Sam's brains, and
+predicted such a wonderful future for him! All her soul was set on Sam's
+success--well, wasn't it time her pride had a fall? Mebbe now she'd see
+Sam wasn't much different from other people's boys.
+
+Jane's heart was reported to be broken by the boy's failure, and Sam
+went about sulkily defiant. He made a great pretense of lofty
+indifference, but maybe he didn't care!--maybe not! Emmeline Camp knew
+in her gentle old heart that he cared. She worried about Sam.
+
+All this the Talented One learned, little by little, in the way country
+gossip is learned. She learned many other things, too, about the
+neighbors--things that she lay and pondered about. It seemed queer to
+find out that even a placid little place like this, set among the
+peaceful hills, had its tragedies and comedies--its pitiful little
+skeletons behind the doors.
+
+"That's Old '61," Mrs. Camp said, pointing to an old figure in the road.
+"See him go marching past!--he always marches, as if he heard drums
+beating and he was keeping time. I tell 'em he _does_ hear 'em.
+He lives all alone up on the edge o' the woods, and folks say he spends
+most all his time trying to pick march tunes out on the organ. A few
+years ago he got some back pension money, and up and spent it for a
+cabinet organ! Dear land! it seemed a pity, when he might have got him
+some nice clothes or something sensible. But there he sets and sets over
+that organ, trying to pick out tunes! Well,"--the gentle old voice took
+on charity--"well, if that's his way of being happy, I s'pose he's got
+as good a right to it as I have to--Amelia," a whimsical little smile
+lighting up the old face, but underlying it the tenderness that the girl
+on the bed had come to look for whenever any reference was made to
+Amelia.
+
+"We've all got our idiosyncreases," added Emmeline Camp, "only some of
+'em's creased in a little deeper'n others. I guess mine and Old '61's
+are pretty considerable deep!"
+
+The early July days were cloudless and full of hot, stinging noises.
+T.O. crawled out to lie in the grass under a great tree, and exult in
+room and freedom and rest. Her ankle was still very painful, but she
+regarded it with philosophical toleration: "You needn't have climbed a
+stone wall, need you? Well, then, what have you to complain of? The best
+thing you can do is to keep still." Which was, without doubt, the truth.
+"Anyhow, it isn't becoming in you to be so puffed up!"
+
+It was decided that Mrs. Camp should start on her trip before the other
+girls arrived. Hence, on the morning of the day they had set to come,
+the little old woman and her bags and bundles rode away down the dusty
+country road. Her lean, brown, crumpled old face had an exalted
+expression; the joy of anticipation and the triumph of patient waiting
+met in it and blended oddly. It was a great day for Emmeline Camp.
+
+"Good-by, deary. Keep right on rubbing, and don't go to walking 'round.
+There's some cookies left in the cooky-crock, and a pie or two on the
+shelf to kind of set you going. Take good care o' yourselves."
+
+"And Amelia," whispered the girl, drawing the old face down to her.
+"We'll take good care of Amelia."
+
+It was a little lonely after the old stage rumbled away. The Talented
+One turned whimsically to Amelia for company. She tried to imagine her,
+as the little old woman did, but in vain. She could not conjure up the
+sweet, elusive face, the hair, the eyes, the grave little mouth of
+Amelia. The little old woman had taken away with her love, the key. She
+must have taken Amelia away with her, too, the girl thought, smiling at
+her own fancy. So, for company, she must wait until Loraine and Billy
+and Laura Ann came, on the further edge of the day. She lay in the cool
+grass, and made beatific plans for all the long, lazy days to come. No
+hurrying, or worrying--each one for herself, happy in her own way. Only
+themselves to think of for the space of a golden summer!
+
+"I am glad she took Amelia," the girl in the grass laughed softly.
+"We'd never be able to keep to the Compact with Amelia 'round--Amelia
+would never have signed a 'Wicked Compact'!" Which, in the event of
+gentle, unsinning Amelia ever having been born, might or might not have
+been true. It would have been harder work, reflected the girl in the
+grass, for Amelia to have been unsinning and gentle, if she had been born.
+
+Jane Cotton's Sam came lounging down the road, cap over one eye, face
+surlily defiant. T.O. watched him with displeasure. So that was the kind
+of a boy that gave up? Poor kind of a boy! Why didn't he try it again,
+especially when his poor mother's heart was breaking? Didn't he know
+that giving up was worse than failing in his examinations? Somebody
+ought to tell him--why, he was stopping at Mrs. Camp's little front
+gate! He was coming in!
+
+The girl lying in the long grass under the tree sat up hurriedly. Quick,
+quick! what was his name? Oh, yes, Sam!
+
+"Good-morning, Sam," she said pleasantly. But the boy, with a mere nod
+of his splendidly-modeled head, hurried away toward the tiny barn. The
+girl had seen the dark flush that mounted upward from his neck over his
+pink and white cheeks.
+
+"Poor thing! He knows _I_ know that he didn't pass--that is the
+only 'out' about living in the country: everybody knows everything.
+Well, if it makes him blush, then his mother needn't break her heart
+_yet_. I like the looks of that boy, if he does go 'round
+scowling." Whereupon the Talented One promptly dismissed Jane Cotton's
+Sam from her meditations. It did not occur to her to question his right
+to be on Mrs. Camp's premises. She lay back in the grass and took up
+again the interrupted thread of her musings. By gentle degrees odd
+fancies took possession of her.
+
+[Illustration: THE BOY, WITH A MERE NOD, HURRIED AWAY.]
+
+The sprinkling of great, white daisies in the grass beside her--suppose,
+now, this minute, they changed into white handkerchiefs, spread out on
+a green counter! Then she would have to sell them to passers-by; it was
+her business to sell handkerchiefs. Someone was coming marching up the
+road--suppose she tried to sell him one, for the fun of it!--to make a
+good story for the girls. Laughing, she got up and leaned on the fence.
+She "dared" herself to do it. Then, courteously, "Can I sell you
+anything in handkerchiefs to-day? Initialed, embroidered--"
+
+The marching feet stopped. Shrewd old eyes studied her face and
+twinkled, responsive to the harmless mischief visible in it.
+
+"You got any with flags on--in the corners or anywhere? Or drums on?"
+It was Old '61. "Or red, white an' blue ones? I'd like one o'
+_them_--I fit in the war," explanatorily.
+
+"Yes?" The saleswoman was not especially interested in the war; it is
+not the way with many of her kind to be interested in things.
+
+"I fit clear through--in the Wilderness, and Bull Run, an' plenty more.
+They couldn't get rid o' me, the enemy couldn't! No, sir, where there
+was marchin' an' shootin', I was bound to be there! They hit me time 'n'
+again, but I didn't waste no unnecessary time in hospittles--I had to
+git back to the boys."
+
+She was interested now; she forgot she was to sell him a handkerchief.
+"Go on," she said.
+
+"It was great! You ought to heard the drums an' smelt the smoke, an'
+felt your feet marchin' under you, an' your knapsack poundin' your
+back--yes, sir, an' bein' hungry an' thirsty an' wore out! You'd ought
+to seen how ragged the boys got, an' heard 'em whistlin' 'Through
+Georgy' while they sewed on patches--oh, you'd ought to _whistled_
+'Through Georgy'!"
+
+The girl, watching the kindled old face, saw a shadow creep over it.
+
+"I useter--I useter--but someway I've lost it. It's pretty hard to've
+_marched_ through Georgy an' forgot the tune about. Some days I
+'most get holt of it again--I thought I could, on the organ, but I
+can't, not the hull of it. Someway I've lost it--it's pretty hard. It
+ha'nts me--if you ever be'n ha'nted, you know how bad it is."
+
+No, the girl who was leaning on the fence had never been ha'nted, but
+her eyes were wide with pity for the old soul who had marched through
+Georgia and forgotten the tune.
+
+"Some days I 'most ketch it. I don't suppose"--the old voice halted
+diffidently--"I don't suppose _you'd_ whistle it, would you? Jest
+through once--"
+
+But she could not whistle even once "Through Georgia." "I'm so sorry!"
+she cried. "I can't whistle, or sing, or anything. I wish I could!"
+She wished she were Billy; Billy could have done it.
+
+Old '61 marched on, up the dusty road, and the girl went back to her
+tree. She had not sold any daisy-handkerchiefs, but she had her story to
+tell the girls. She lay in the grass thinking of it. Once or twice she
+pursed her lips and made a ludicrous ineffectual attempt to whistle, but
+she did not smile. Jane Cotton's Sam clicked the gate, going out, but
+she did not notice. When she did at last look up, and her gaze wandered
+over the little yard aimlessly, she suddenly uttered a little note of
+surprise.
+
+"Why!" she cried.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+For the pump was a blue pump! A miracle had been wrought while she mused
+in the grass and listened to Old '61. The little old brown pump had
+blossomed out gayly, brilliantly.
+
+"Why!" Then a subdued chuckle reached her from some nearby ambush out
+beyond the fence. She put two and two together--the pump, the laugh, and
+Jane Cotton's Sam. Six! Jane Cotton's Sam, while she was day-dreaming
+and Marching through Georgia with Old '61, had painted the brown pump
+blue! That was his business on Mrs. Camp's premises. Mrs Camp had
+remembered--the dear, oh, the dear!--that she wanted a blue pump, and
+had got the boy to come and make one. And now, down behind the fence
+somewhere, the boy was laughing at her amazement. Well, let him
+laugh--she laughed, too! Suddenly she began to clap her hands by way of
+applause to her hidden audience.
+
+The pump itself was distinctly a disappointment. In gay-hued pictures,
+seen by childish eyes, blue pumps accord with green grass and trees--in
+nature, seen by maturer eyes, there is something wrong with the colors.
+They look out of place--either the green growing things or the gay blue
+pump do not belong there. The girl's loyalty to little, kind Emmeline
+Camp would not let her admit that it was the blue pump that didn't
+"belong." She was glad--glad--that it was blue, for it stood for a
+thoughtful kindness to her, and thoughtful kindnesses had been rare in
+her self-dependent, hustling life.
+
+"Hurrah for the blue pump!" she cried softly. She felt like going up to
+it and hugging it, but fortunately she did not yield to the impulse.
+
+The other girls arrived at dusk. T.O., her knee in a chair, had hitched
+laboriously from little kitchen to little dining-room and got supper.
+Spent and triumphant, she waited in the doorway. She could hear their
+voices coming up the road--Billy's excited voice, Laura Ann's gay one,
+Loraine's calm and sweet. She longed to run out to meet them. Next best,
+she sent her own voice, in a clear, long call.
+
+"That's T.O.! Girls, let's run!" she heard Billy say.
+
+"Why doesn't _she_ run?" Laura Ann demanded severely. "That would
+be perfectly appropriate under the circumstances."
+
+"'Tis queer, isn't it, that she didn't come to meet us?" Loraine added.
+In another moment they had reached Emmeline Camp's little green-painted
+house and found the Talented One waiting impatiently at the gate. Things
+explained themselves rapidly. Exclamations of pity crowded upon
+exclamations of delight and welcome. Four happy young wage-earners sat
+down to T.O.'s hardly-prepared little supper and four tongues were
+loosed. Even Loraine did her part of the chattering.
+
+"I feel so nice and _placid_ already!" enthused Billy.
+
+"Oh, so do I!--so do I!" echoed Laura Ann. "It's such a comfort to get
+one's chains off!--I felt mine slip off back there at that dear, funny
+little station."
+
+"Oh, was _that_ what I heard clanking?" offered quiet Loraine, and
+was promptly cheered.
+
+The meal was a merry one. And afterwards there was exploring to be done
+about the little yard and orchard and up and down the road, in the dim,
+sweet twilight, with the Talented One at the gate calling soft
+directions.
+
+"And I've got a blue pump for you," she laughed. "Just wait till
+daylight! Don't anybody feel of it in the dark to see if it's blue,
+because you'll find it's green! There's a story goes with the pump and
+one with its mother--I mean with the boy-who-painted-its mother! Placid
+Pond is full of stories."
+
+"Nice, dozy, placid ones, I suppose," Laura Ann returned lightly. But
+the Talented One shook her head.
+
+"Wait till you hear them," she said gravely.
+
+"Give us some of the titles to-night," coaxed Billy. They were all back
+on the little doorsteps and the moon was rising, majestic and golden,
+behind the trees.
+
+"Well--" she considered thoughtfully, "there's 'The Story of Amelia',
+and the story of 'The Boy Who Didn't Pass', and the one of 'Old '61'--",
+
+"Oh, tell us--tell us!" Billy pleaded, and would not be refused. It was
+never easy to refuse Billy. She had her way this time, and there in the
+mellow night-light, with soft night-noises all about them, T.O. told her
+stories. She had never told a story before in her life, and her voice at
+first stumbled diffidently, but as she went on, a queer thing
+happened--she did not seem to be telling it herself, but the little old
+woman who loved Amelia seemed to be telling it! Then the Boy Who Didn't
+Pass, then Old '61, in his tremulous, halting old voice.
+
+They listened in perfect silence, and even after the stories ended they
+said nothing. Billy, quite unashamed, was crying over poor Old '61.
+
+"You'd have thought, wouldn't you," T.O. murmured after a while, "that
+places like this would be humdrum-y and commonplace? But I guess there
+are 'stories' everywhere. I'm beginning to find out things, girls."
+
+The next day began in earnest the long-yearned-for time of rest. It was
+decided unanimously over the breakfast cups, to live and move, eat and
+all but sleep, out of doors. To devote four separate and four combined
+energies to having a good time. To abide by the rules and regulations
+of the Wicked Compact--long live the Wicked Compact! Laura Ann made an
+illuminated copy of it, framed it in a border of hurriedly-painted
+forget-me-nots and hung it on the screen door, where they could not help
+seeing it and "remembering their vows," Laura Ann said. It was a matter
+of gay conjecture with them who would be the first to break the Compact.
+
+"And be driven out of the B-Hive--not I!" Billy said decisively. "I
+shan't have the least temptation to break it, anyway--I feel selfish all
+over! You couldn't drive me to do a good deed with a--a pitchfork!"
+
+"Me either--not even with a darning-needle!" laughed Laura Ann. "If
+anybody asks me to lend her a pin, hear me say, 'Can't, my dear; it's
+against the rules.' Needn't anybody worry about losing me out o' the
+Hive!"
+
+"Loraine will be the one--you see," T.O. said lazily. "And what I want
+to know is, how are we going to live without Loraine? I vote we append a
+by-law. By-law I.: 'Resolved, that we except Loraine--just Loraine.'"
+
+"Second the motion," murmured Billy, on her back in the grass, nibbling
+clover heads.
+
+"No," Loraine said severely, "I refuse to be put into a by-law."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The summer days were long days--lazy, somnolent days. The four girls
+spent them each in her own separate way. Sometimes the little colony met
+only at mealtimes--with glowing reports of the mornings' or afternoons'
+wanderings.
+
+Billy, it was noticed, although like the rest she wandered abroad, made
+no reports. Had she had a good time? Yes--yes, of course. Where had she
+been all the morning or all the afternoon? Oh--oh, to places. Woods?
+Yes--that is, almost woods. And more than that they failed to elicit.
+Nearly every day she started away by herself, and after awhile they
+noticed that she went in the same direction. She went briskly, alertly,
+like one with a definite end in view. Now, where did Billy go? Their
+vagrant curiosity was aroused, but not yet to the point of
+investigation.
+
+Old '61 knew. Every morning since that first morning he had strained his
+dim old eyes to catch a glimpse of a little figure coming blithely up
+the road. On that first morning it had stopped in front of his little
+house and said pleasant things to him as he sat on the doorsteps. He
+remembered all the things.
+
+"Good-morning! It's a splendid day, isn't it?"
+
+And: "What a perfectly lovely place you live in! With the woods so near
+you can shake hands with them out of your windows!"
+
+And: "Don't the birds wake you up mornings? I wonder what they sing
+about up here." Then she had glanced at his ancient army coat and added
+the Pleasantest Thing Of All: "I think they must sing Battle Hymns and
+Red, White and Blue songs and 'Marching Through Georgia,' don't they?"
+
+"Not the last one," he had answered sadly. "They never sing that. If
+they did, I'd 'a' learnt it of 'em long ago."
+
+"Do you like that one best--very best?" she had asked, and he liked to
+remember how she had smiled. He had stood up then and thrown back his
+old shoulders proudly.
+
+"Why, you see, marm," he had said simply, "I _marched_ through
+Georgy!"
+
+The next morning, too, she had stopped and talked to him. But it was not
+until the third time that he had ventured to ask her to whistle it. And
+then--Old '61, now peering down the road for the blithe little figure,
+thrilled again at the remembrance of what had happened. She had laughed
+gently and said she did not know how to whistle, but if he would like
+her to sing it--
+
+There had been eight mornings all told, now, counting this morning,
+which was sure to be. Yes, clear 'way down there somebody was comin'
+swingin' along--somebody little an' happy an' spry. Old '61 began to
+laugh softly. He could hardly wait for her to come and sit down on the
+doorstep and sing it. Two or three times--she would sing it two or three
+times.
+
+He had a surprise for her this morning. With great pains he had dragged
+his cabinet organ out onto the little porch. It was all open, ready.
+He went a little way down the road in his eagerness to meet her.
+
+"Good-morning!" Billy called brightly. "Am I late to-day?"
+
+"Jest a little--jest a little," he quavered joyously, "but I'll forgive
+ye! There's somethin' waitin' up there--I've got a surprise for ye!"
+
+"Honest?" Billy stood still in the road, looking into the eager,
+childish old face. "Oh, goody! I love surprises. Am I to guess it?"
+
+"No, no, jest to come an' play on it!" he quavered. Then a cloud settled
+over his face and dimmed the delight in it. "Mebbe you don't know how
+to?" he added, a tremulous upward lift to his voice.
+
+"How to 'play on' a surprise!" cried Billy. "Well, how am I to know
+until I see it? I can play on 'most everything else!"
+
+They had got to the little front gate--were going up the little
+carefully-weeded path--were very close to it now. Billy sprang up the
+steps.
+
+"I can! I can!" she laughed. "Hear me!" Her fingers ran up and down the
+keys, then settled into a soft, sweet little melody. Another and
+another--
+
+The old man on the lower step sat patiently listening and waiting. If
+she did not play it soon, he should have to ask her to, but he would
+rather have her play it without. Perhaps the next one--
+
+The next one was beautiful, but not It--not _It_--not the Right
+One.
+
+"There!" finished Billy with a flourish. "You see, I _can_ play on
+a surprise!" She stopped abruptly at sight of the disappointed old face
+below her. For an instant she was bewildered, then a beautiful instinct
+that had lain unused on some shelf of Billy's mind came to life and
+whispered to her what the trouble was.
+
+"Oh!" she cried softly, "Oh, I'm sorry I forgot!" She turned back to
+the little organ and began to play again.
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD MAN SAT LISTENING AND WAITING.]
+
+Up went the sagging old head, up the sagging old shoulders! Old '61 was
+back in "Georgy," marching through mud and pine-barrens, in cold and
+hunger and weariness--with the boys, from Atlanta to the sea. Hurrah!
+hurrah! the flag that made them free!
+
+He was not old, not alone and forlorn and cumbering the earth. He was
+young and straight and loyal, defying suffering and death, with glory
+and fame, perhaps, on there ahead. His country needed him--he was
+marching through Georgia for his country.
+
+Billy played it over and over, untiring. A lump grew in her throat at
+the sight of the old face down there on the lower step. For so much was
+written on the old face!
+
+Suddenly Old '61 got up and began to march, swinging his old legs out
+splendidly. Down the walk, down the road, he went, as far as the music
+went, then came marching splendidly back. Head up, shoulders squared,
+the "boys" marching invisible beside him and before him and behind him,
+he was no longer Old '61, but Young '61.
+
+The next day Billy ate her breakfast quietly, helped clear away the
+things, and went quietly away. She did not stop to read Laura Ann's
+gay-painted "Compact" on the screen door. It might even have been
+noticed, if anyone cared to notice, that she did not look at it, that
+she hurried a little through the door, as if to avoid it.
+
+Old '61 was waiting at the gate. She smiled at the eager invitation she
+read in his face.
+
+"No," she said, shaking her head for emphasis, "no, I'm not going to
+play it this time. I'm going to teach you to play it! I shall be going
+back to the city before long, and then what will you do when you want to
+hear it? Perhaps you couldn't keep the tune in your head. I'm going to
+show you an easy way to play it--just the air. I shall have to try it
+myself first, of course. But I'm sure you can learn how, if you'll
+practice faithfully." It was queer how her music-teacher tone crept back
+into her voice. She laughed to herself to hear it. "Practice faithfully"
+sounded so natural to say!
+
+She sat down at the organ and experimented thoughtfully, trying to
+reduce the old man's beloved tune to its very lowest terms. After quite
+a long time she nodded and smiled.
+
+Then began Old '61s music lessons. It was terrible work, like earning a
+living with the sweat of the brow. But the two of them--the young woman
+and the old man--bent to it heroically. For an hour, that first time,
+the cramped old fingers felt their way over the keyboard; for an hour
+Billy bent over them, patiently pointing the way. She had forgotten that
+she was not to think of piano-notes now--that she had signed the Wicked
+Compact. She had forgotten everything but her determination to teach Old
+'61 to play "Marching through Georgia." And Old '61 had, in his turn,
+forgotten things--that he was old, alone, a cumberer, everything but his
+determination to learn It.
+
+It was not a scientific lesson. It did not begin with first principles
+and creep slowly upward; it began in the middle, in a splendid,
+haphazard, ambitious way. The stiff old hands were gently placed in
+position for the first notes of the tune, the stiff old fingers were
+pressed gently down, one at a time. Over and over and over the process
+was repeated. It was learning by sheer brute patience and love.
+
+"That's all for the first lesson," Billy announced at the end of the
+hour. "You've got those first notes well enough to practice them.
+To-morrow we'll go a little bit farther." But she did not know the long,
+patient hours between now and then that the old man would "practice,"
+crooked painfully over the keys. She did not reckon on the miracle that
+might be wrought out of intense desire.
+
+The next morning Old '61 at the gate proclaimed proudly:
+
+"I've got it! I've got it! I can play an' sing fur as we've b'en!
+It's ringin' in my head all the time."
+
+"Did the birds wake you up singing it?" Billy asked, smilingly. She,
+herself, was all eagerness to learn of her pupil's progress. The lesson
+began at once. Already, she found, the miracle had begun to work. The
+old man sat down to the organ with a flourish that, if it had not been
+full of pathos, would have been a little comedy act. After a brief
+preliminary search the old fingers found their place and pounded out
+triumphantly the few notes they had been taught.
+
+"Good! good!" applauded the teacher heartily. "Why, you do it
+splendidly! Now we'll go on a little farther--this finger on this note,
+this one here, your thumb _here_." She stationed them carefully and
+the second lesson began. It was nearer two hours than one when it ended.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Where have _you_ been, Billy?" Loraine asked at lunch. They had
+all been describing their individual pursuits and experiences of the
+morning.
+
+"Oh, to a place," answered Billy lightly.
+
+"What place?" Loraine persisted curiously.
+
+"Well," laughed Billy, "if you must know, I've been marching
+through--oh, a _place_!" she concluded hastily, repenting herself.
+"It was a pretty hard place, and I'm hungry as a bear. Wish somebody'd
+say, 'Won't you have another piece of pie?'"
+
+"Won't you have another piece of pie?" laughed Loraine, and nothing
+further was said of an embarrassing nature.
+
+The summer days grew into summer weeks. Patiently and joyously Old '61
+plodded his way to the sea. He practiced nearly all his waking hours,
+and when he was not at the little organ, practicing, he went about
+humming the beloved words. Pride and love, rather than any melody of his
+cracked old voice, made a tune of them.
+
+His progress astonished his teacher. Her praise was impetuous enough for
+further and greater exertions. One day Billy said the next time should
+be an exhibition, when he should play it all--from "Atlanta to the
+sea"--with her as audience, not helping, but sitting in a chair
+listening.
+
+She came to the Exhibition in a white dress, with sweet-peas at her
+waist. Her smiles at the foot of the steps changed to something like a
+sob when she discovered that Old '61 had been decorating the organ and
+the little porch. He, himself, was brushed and radiant, his old face the
+face of a little child.
+
+"The audience will sit on the steps," Billy said, a little tremulously.
+"Right here. Make believe I'm rows and rows of people! Now will you
+please favor us by 'Marching through Georgia'?".
+
+He went at once to the little gayly-bedecked instrument and began to
+play. The dignity and pride of the shabby old figure redeemed its
+shabbiness--the fervor of the pounded notes redeemed the tune. The
+audience--in "rows and rows,"--listened gravely, and at the end burst
+into genuine applause. The sound swelled and multiplied oddly, and then
+they saw the three figures at the gate who had listened, too. Billy was
+discovered!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+They escorted Billy home. It was rather a silent walk until the end.
+Loraine spoke first.
+
+"One less in the B-Hive," she said sadly.
+
+"Yes, I suppose I'm dropped now," responded Billy, not uncheerfully.
+"Of course I've got to take the consequences of my--my crime. But I don't
+care!" she added with vivacity. "I'd rather live alone in a ten-story
+house than have missed that Exhibition!"
+
+"Yes," mused Laura Ann thoughtfully, "it was a beautiful one. I'm glad
+_I_ didn't miss it. When I think of what it stood for--"
+
+She broke off suddenly and slipped her hand into Billy's arm. Another
+short silence. Then Laura Ann finished: "All the work and patience it
+stood for, day after day--girls, when I think of that I feel--"
+
+"I know--all of us know," T.O. hastily interposed. "That's about the way
+we all feel, I guess. No use talking about it, though. Billy's broken
+the Compact and we're under oath to drop her."
+
+"Not till we go back to work," Loraine put in emphatically, "and then
+she can live next door and come in every night to tea! There's nothing
+in the Compact against that, is there? Well, then, I invite you, Billy,
+for the very first tea!"
+
+"I accept!" laughed Billy. She did not seem at all depressed. In her
+ears rang the pounding refrain of Old '61 marching through Georgia.
+
+Nothing more was said on this subject. A little picnic had been planned
+for the afternoon, and they went briskly about making preparations for
+it, as soon as they got back to Mrs. Camp's little green house. While
+they worked they discussed Amelia.
+
+"If she hadn't gone with her mother we'd have taken her to the picnic
+with us," the Talented One said, over her egg-beating. "I wonder if
+Amelia likes picnics?"
+
+"Don't! You make me feel creepy," Laura Ann laughed. "What _I_
+wonder is how she'd have looked if she'd ever been born. I lay awake one
+night trying to imagine Amelia."
+
+"Blue eyes and golden hair," Loraine chimed in dreamily, "and a little
+dimple in her chin."
+
+"You needn't any of you lie awake nights imagining. I can tell you," the
+Talented One said. "She has blue eyes, but her hair is brown and the
+dimples are in her cheeks. Her hair just waves a little away from the
+parting--it is always parted. She sits very still, sewing patchwork--her
+mother told me," added the Talented One quietly. "She said she wished
+she knew how to paint so she could paint Amelia's picture. She told me
+where she'd like to have it hung--here in the dining-room, between the
+windows. Amelia'd always been very real, she said, but the picture would
+make her realer."
+
+"Did she ever say what kind of dresses Amelia wears?" asked Laura Ann
+without looking up from her stirring.
+
+"No, I never asked, but they must be white dresses, I think,--Amelia is
+such an innocent little thing," laughed T.O. softly. It was odd how they
+always laughed or talked softly when it was about little make-believe
+Amelia.
+
+The picnic was in the woods, in a lovely little spot Loraine had
+discovered in her wanderings. A brook babbled noisily through the spot.
+They spread their lunch at the foot of a forest giant and ate it
+luxuriously to the tune the brook sang. It was hard to believe they had
+ever been toilers in a great city.
+
+"There never were any public schools," murmured Loraine, lying back and
+gazing into the thick mesh of leaves overhead. "Nobody ever said
+'Teacher! Teacher!' to me."
+
+"There never were any negatives to be 'touched up'--nobody ever had
+their pictures taken," Laura Ann murmured, dreamy, too. "I've always
+been here beside this brook, lying on my back--what a beautiful world
+it's always been!"
+
+The Talented One sat rigidly straight. "There have always been
+handkerchiefs," she sighed, "and there always will be. I shall have to
+go back there and sell them. When I look at all these leaves, it reminds
+me--there are leaves on handkerchiefs, straggling round the
+borders--ugh!"
+
+It was foolish talk, perhaps, but it was the place and the time for
+foolish talk. After a little more of it they drifted apart, wandering
+this way and that in a delightful, aimless way. So little of their four
+lives had been aimless or especially delightful that they reveled in the
+sweet opportunity. Loraine wandered farthest. She came after awhile to a
+clearing where a small pond glimmered redly with the parting rays of the
+sun. A great boy lounged beside the pond dangling a pole. Loraine
+recognized him as Jane Cotton's Sam.
+
+"Oh!" she said, "now I've made a noise and scared away your fish!"
+
+"Ain't any fish," muttered the boy. He did not turn around. The pole
+slanted further and further, till it lay on the bank beside the boy.
+
+"Oh, maybe there are, if you wait long enough--and nobody comes crashing
+through the bushes! I don't suppose--I mean if you are not going to use
+it any more yourself--" Loraine looked toward the idle pole. "I never
+fished in my life," she explained. The boy understood with remarkable
+quickness.
+
+"You mean you'd like to try it?" he asked, and this time turned round.
+It was not at all a bad face on close inspection, Loraine decided. The
+veil of sullenness had lifted a little.
+
+[Illustration: "I NEVER FISHED IN MY LIFE," SHE EXPLAINED.]
+
+"Oh, but I just would! Only if I should have an accident and catch
+anything, whatever would I do! They--they are always cold and clammy,
+aren't they?"
+
+Jane Cotton's Sam laughed outright, and Loraine decided that it was a
+very good face.
+
+"I'll 'tend to all you catch," the boy said. He was busily baiting the
+hook; now he extended the pole to her.
+
+"Wiggle it--up and down a little, like this," he directed, "and don't
+make any more noise than you can help. If you feel a bite, let me know."
+
+"But I don't see how I can feel a bite unless they bite me--"
+
+Again the boy laughed wholesomely. They were getting acquainted. The
+fishing began, and for what seemed to her a long time Loraine sat
+absolutely still, dangling the pole. Nothing happened for a discouraging
+while. Then Loraine whispered: "I feel a bite, but it's on my wrist! If
+it's a mosquito I wish you would 'shoo' it off."
+
+Another wait. Then a real bite in the right place. In another moment
+Loraine landed a wriggling little fish in the grass. She did not squeal
+nor shudder, but sat regarding it with gentle pride.
+
+"Poor little thing! I suppose I ought to put you back, but you're my
+first and only fish, and I've _got_ to carry you home for the girls
+to see. You'll have to forgive me this time!" She turned to the boy.
+"I suppose he ought to be dressed, or undressed, or something, before
+he's fried, oughtn't he? I thought I'd like to fry him for breakfast,
+to surprise the girls--"
+
+"I'll dress him for you," Jane Cotton's Sam said eagerly, "and bring
+him over in the morning in plenty o' time."
+
+"Thank you," Loraine said heartily. "Now you'll have to let me do
+something for you. 'Turn about is fair play.' Couldn't I--" She
+hesitated, looking out over the still reddened water rather than at the
+boy's face. "Couldn't I help you in some way with your studies? That's
+my business, you know. It would really be doing me a kindness, for I may
+get all out of practice unless I teach somebody something!" Had Loraine,
+too, forgotten the Compact on the screen door?
+
+The boy fidgeted, then burst out angrily: "I s'pose they've all been
+telling you I failed up in my exams? They have, haven't they? You
+_knew_ it, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes," Loraine answered quietly. "But I've heard a good many worse
+things in my life. I've heard of boys that smoked and drank and--and
+_stole_. What does missing a few examinations amount to beside
+things like those?" But the boy did not seem to have been listening to
+anything except his own angry thoughts. All his sun-browned young face
+was flooded with red; he had run his fingers through his hair till it
+stood up fiercely.
+
+"They needn't trouble themselves 'bout me, nor you needn't, nor anybody
+needn't!" he declaimed loudly. "Anybody'd think they were saints
+themselves!"
+
+"And _I_ was a saint and everybody was saints!" laughed Loraine
+softly. But Jane Cotton's Sam did not laugh. He went striding away into
+the woods, his head flung up high. Loraine and the little dead fish were
+left behind. Oddly the girl was not thinking of the boy's rudeness in
+return for her kind offer of help, but of the flash of spirit in his
+eyes. It augured well for him, she was thinking, for spirit was spirit,
+although "gone wrong." In the right place, it should spur him on to a
+second attempt to get into college. What if she were to persist in her
+offer--were to work with him, urge him to work with her?
+
+But he had chosen to spurn her advances. She shook her head sadly. On
+his own head be it. She turned her attention to the little dead fish.
+
+"You poor dear, you look so dead and forlorn--what am I going to do with
+you? Someway you've got to go home with me and be fried." She took him
+up gingerly, but dropped him again--he was so slippery and damp! Wrap
+him in her handkerchief? But she had no pocket and she could never,
+never carry him in her sleeve which she had adopted as a pocket. So then
+she must leave him, must she? Poor little useless sacrifice!
+
+Back at the picnic spot the girls were waiting for her. They went home
+in the late, sweet twilight.
+
+A letter was tucked under the screen door where some friendly neighbor
+had left it. "Miss Thomasia O. Brown," Billy read aloud, and waved the
+letter in triumph, for the secret was out. The 'T' in T.O. stood for
+Thomasia!
+
+"Well?" bristled the Talented One, "it had to stand for something,
+didn't it? It's awful, I know, but _I'm_ not to blame--I didn't
+name myself, did I? I wish people could," she added with a sigh.
+
+"Is it for a _Thomas?_" questioned Laura Ann curiously.
+
+Thomasia nodded: "There was always a Thomas in the family until they got
+to me. They did the best they could to make me one." She was opening the
+letter with careful precision. "Why, of course, it's from Mrs. Camp!"
+she cried delightedly.
+
+"My dear, I hope you are well and your friends have come, and Jane
+Cotton's Sam has not forgotten to paint the pump. I arrived here safely
+after a very long journey--my dear, I never dreamed the world was so
+big! This part of it is well enough, but give me Placid Pond! Now I am
+going to tell you something, and you may laugh all you're a mind to--I
+sha'n't hear! What I'm going to tell is, _Amelia came_, too. After
+I'd got good and settled down on the cars I looked up and knew she was
+sitting right opposite, on the seat I'd turned over. She seemed
+_there_--and you may laugh, my dear. I laughed, I was so pleased to
+have Amelia along. John doesn't know she came--Amelia never makes a mite
+of trouble! But everywhere I go she goes, my dear. I shouldn't tell you
+if I didn't feel you'd understand. If he hasn't painted it yet, the blue
+paint is on a shelf in the woodhouse, and you can paint it. I'm afraid
+Jane Cotton's Sam won't ever amount to much. Poor Jane!"
+
+Thomasia read the letter aloud, and at this point Loraine interposed
+warmly: "Jane Cotton's Sam is abused! It's a shame everybody groans over
+him--_I_ like him. If there isn't a lot of good in him, then I don't
+know how to read human nature, that's all."
+
+The next morning very early someone knocked at the kitchen door. It was
+Laura Ann's turn to make the fire, and she answered the knock. Jane
+Cotton's Sam stood on the steps outside. He had a mysterious little
+package in his hand. He looked up eagerly, but it was evident from the
+disappointed look on his face that Laura Ann was the wrong girl. And he
+did not know the right one's name!
+
+"Good-morning!" nodded Laura Ann, sublimely unconscious of the
+soot-patch over her nose.
+
+"Good-morning. I'd like to see--I've brought something for the one that
+teaches school."
+
+"Loraine? But she isn't up yet--"
+
+"Yes, I am up, too," called a voice overhead, "but I won't be long! I'll
+be _down_."
+
+It was a little fish, dressed and ready to fry, that was in the tiny
+bundle. The boy extended it blushingly. Then his eyes lifted to
+Loraine's in frank petition for pardon.
+
+"I was mighty rude," he said. "I went back to the pond to say so, but
+you were gone. I beg your pardon."
+
+She liked the tone of his voice and his good red blushes. "That's all
+right," she nodded reassuringly. But he did not go away. There was
+something else.
+
+"If--you know what you said? If you'd offer _again_--"
+
+Loraine glanced over her shoulder. Laura Ann was rattling stove-lids at
+the other end of the kitchen. "I offer _now_," Loraine said in a
+low voice.
+
+"Then I accept." The boy's voice was eager. "I'll study like everything!
+I thought about it in the night--I thought I'd like to surprise my
+mother. If I could get into college next year--" His eyes shone. "Oh I
+say, I'd do 'most anything for that!"
+
+The little plan was hurriedly made, in low tones, there on Emmeline
+Camp's little doorsteps. The boy was to take his books to the pond where
+Loraine had caught her fish. He was to study there alone for a time
+every day, and in the afternoon she was to stroll that way and go over
+the work with him and set him right in all the wrong places.
+
+"It was in Latin and mathematics I failed up," Jane Cotton's Sam
+explained.
+
+"It's Latin and mathematics we'll tackle!" softly laughed Loraine.
+"You wait--you see--you _grind!_"
+
+He strode away, whistling, and the tune was full of courage and
+determination. Loraine smiled as she listened. She stood a moment, then
+opened the screen door and went in. The "Compact" swung and tilted with
+the jolt of her energetic movements. She adjusted it with a queer little
+smile.
+
+For summer days on summer days the covert, earnest lessons went on
+beside the bit of sunny water. Teacher and pupil pored intently over the
+problems and difficult passages, and steadily the pupil's courage grew.
+The old sullen look had vanished--Jane Cotton's Sam put on manliness and
+a splendid swing to his shoulders. In her heart Loraine exulted. What if
+she were disobeying the Compact--death to the Wicked Compact!
+
+Laura Ann suspected, but for reasons of her own kept her own counsel.
+She had begun to suspect, when Jane Cotton's Sam brought the little
+fish. At that time the "reasons of her own" had begun to influence her
+and she had omitted to mention to Billy and T.O. that the boy had stood
+on the doorsteps in earnest conversation with Loraine. Mentioning it to
+Billy might not, indeed, have mattered, since Billy was already an
+"outsider." But Loraine might not want T.O. to know, anyway.
+
+It was significant that Laura Ann, in going in and out, now chose to
+ignore the gayly-illuminated placard that swung on the door--that she
+herself had adorned and hung there. But she did not go in and out as
+much now; for whole mornings she slipped away to a little attic room
+upstairs and busied herself alone.
+
+It was getting grievously near the time to go back to the great city
+again. Emmeline Camp was coming back then.
+
+All but T.O. mourned audibly the rapidly lessening days, but T.O. made
+no useless laments. One day she surprised them.
+
+"Girls, I _want_ to go back!" she announced. "I shall be ready when
+it's time--now anybody can say what anybody pleases. Scoff at me--do.
+I expect it! But I'm getting homesick to see a street-car and a--a
+policeman! It's lovely and peaceful here, but I've had my fill of it
+now--I want to go home and bump into crowds and hear big, stirry noises.
+It's different with you girls--you weren't born in the city; you didn't
+play with street-cars and policemen and get sung to sleep by the noises!
+I was tired--tired--and now I'm rested. I've had a perfectly beautiful
+time, but I shall be ready to go back. Honestly, girls, it would break
+my heart not to!"
+
+It was so much like T.O., Billy said, to keep all her feelings to
+herself and then suddenly spring them on people like that, and take
+people's breath away. Billy did not keep things to herself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jane Cotton came up the kitchen path one day when all but Loraine were
+sitting on the doorsteps--Loraine had strolled nonchalantly down the
+street as her afternoon habit was.
+
+"Well, I've found out!" announced Jane Cotton. She was beaming; her
+sallow face was oddly cleared and lighted--her lips trembled with
+eagerness to deliver her news. "I've _found out_! Where's the rest
+o' you?" She counted them over. "It's the rest o' you I want--well, you
+tell her I've found out. Tell her I hardly slept a wink last night,
+I was so happy! Tell her I _bless_ her, and I know the Lord will.
+They didn't want me to know yet but I couldn't help finding out. And
+they won't mind when they know how happy it's made me--oh, I ain't
+afraid but he'll pass this time! I know he will--I know it! You tell her
+she's saved my boy." And without further delay the slender figure turned
+and walked jubilantly down the path. It was as if she marched to the
+melody of the joy in her heart.
+
+They looked at each other silently, then at the Wicked Compact behind
+them. There did not seem any explanation needed.
+
+"Another one dropped," murmured T.O. sighingly. But Laura Ann said
+nothing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+Laura Ann stole quietly away and went upstairs to the little attic room.
+Close by the window was a rough little easel arrangement with a picture
+on it. Laura Ann stood regarding it thoughtfully. "I wonder"--she smiled
+at the whimsy of the thought--"I wonder if it looks like Amelia," she
+murmured.
+
+It was not a wonderful picture. No committee would have hung it on a
+"line." There were rather glaring errors in it of draughtsmanship and
+coloring. But the face of the girl in it was appealingly sweet--brown
+hair, blue eyes, little round chin. Laura Ann had not dared to put in
+the dimples.
+
+"Dimples need a master," she said, "besides, they only show when you
+smile, and I don't believe Amelia smiles very often!"
+
+She sat down and took up a brush. The picture was nearly done, but she
+found touches to be added here and there. There might be a stray
+lock--there, like that. And a little bit more shade under the chin, and
+the wistful droop of the mouth relieved, oh, a very little bit! Amelia
+looked so serious.
+
+"Poor little thing! Well, it's a serious matter to be a dream-child,
+with not an ounce of good red blood in your veins."
+
+Laura Ann meant to slip back after they had started for the station, on
+the last day, and hang the picture in the little sunny dining-room. She
+did not want the girls to know there was a picture. But still--a new
+thought had begun to obtrude itself unwelcomely. Was painting Amelia's
+portrait a breach, too, of the Compact? She had undertaken it as a
+little "offering" to Mrs. Camp, to show her own individual gratitude for
+her own share of the dear little green cottage all these beautiful
+weeks--T.O. had said Mrs. Camp had longed for a picture. But the fact
+that it had taken many patient hours of work "unto others," was not to
+be overlooked. If it had broken the rules of the Wicked Compact, and she
+went back to the B-Hive without letting the girls know of it--oh, hum!
+of course that would be another "wicked compact"! She would have to let
+them know--and she didn't want to let them know--oh, dear!
+
+Suddenly Laura Ann dropped her paints and gave herself up to laughter.
+She had remembered that only T.O.--Thomasia O.--would be left now in the
+B-Hive! For all the rest had broken the Compact. Thomasia O., living all
+alone in the dear, shabby little rooms, presented a funny picture, for
+of them all she was least fitted to live alone. Even Billy could do
+better.
+
+"The rest of us will live together," laughed Laura Ann. "There's nothing
+to prevent that, if we live outside the old B-Hive. We'll start a new
+B-Hive! Poor Thomasia O.!"
+
+They would miss T.O. very much indeed--well, they could invite her in to
+tea and keep her all night! In spite of the wicked old Compact, they
+would keep together. "And we'll never," vowed Laura Ann for them all,
+"sign any more nefarious bonds!"
+
+She hung the picture of Amelia on the wall when they were all away, and
+then went away herself. She stayed away until nearly dark. Thomasia O.
+went to meet her.
+
+"I knew it all the time," she said quietly, without preface of any kind.
+"It's a perfect likeness."
+
+"You knew it?" said Laura Ann.
+
+"Yes, I was prowling 'round one day, to see what attics were like, and
+I found Amelia. Only her hair and her eyes, then, but I knew her. I'm
+so glad poor Mrs. Camp will have that picture to help her bear her
+troubles!"
+
+[Illustration: THE PICTURE WAS NEARLY DONE.]
+
+"Poor"--"troubles." This was all enigma to Laura Ann. But she wisely
+waited to be enlightened. She had divined the moment she saw T.O. that
+the girl was unusually disturbed. This was true.
+
+"I've had two letters--the first one came three weeks ago from her
+brother. I didn't want to spoil your good time, telling sad things,
+so I kept it to myself--Laura Ann, that woman _mothered_ me!"
+
+Laura Ann stood still. "Do you mean Mrs. Camp? Is she--dead?" But the
+other did not seem to hear. She ran on in a low, troubled voice.
+
+"She bathed my ankle, and said 'My dear,' and waited on me, when she'd
+never set eyes on me in her life before. How did she know but that I was
+an--an _impostor_? And she let us have her dear little house to live
+in--"
+
+"Yes, yes--oh, yes, she let _me_ live in it!" Laura Ann interposed.
+"You ought to have told us she was dead."
+
+"She isn't dead. She's fallen downstairs and broken her hip. The doctor
+says it's so bad she won't ever walk again without crutches, her brother
+wrote. He said he wanted her to stay and live with him, but she wouldn't
+listen to it. She wanted to come home as soon as she possibly could. So
+she's coming--he's coming with her, to 'start' her."
+
+T.O. fingered a letter in her hand in a nervous, undecided way, as if
+she were half inclined to read it to the other girl. It was not Emmeline
+Camp's brother's letter. It had come ten days ago, and she herself knew
+it by heart. How many, many times she had read it! She had cried over
+the wistful cry in it, and over Amelia's death--for the letter said that
+Amelia was dead.
+
+"My dear," it said, "I've lost Amelia--you'd think she would have stood
+by her mother in her trouble, wouldn't you? But she hasn't been near me
+since. It seems queer--perhaps after people break their hips they can't
+'feel' anything else but their hips! Perhaps it breaks their
+imaginations. Anyway, Amelia's dead, my dear. Sometimes I think mebbe
+I'd ought to be, too--a lone little woman like me, without a chick or a
+child. Old women with children can afford to tumble downstairs, but not
+my kind of old women. John is real good. He wants me to stay here, but I
+can't--I can't, I can't, my dear! I've got to be where I can limp out to
+the old pump and the gate and the orchard, on my crutches--I've got to
+see the old hills I was born in, and Old '61 marching past the house,
+and the old neighbors--I've got to die at _home_, my dear. So John
+can't keep me. I wish I was going to find you there. I keep thinking how
+beautiful it would be. You'd be out to the gate waiting, the way
+people's daughters wait for them. And mebbe you'd have the kettle all
+hot and we'd have a cup of tea together just as if I was the mother and
+you was--Amelia! All the way home I should be thinking about your being
+there. It's queer, isn't it, you went limping in that gate first, and
+now it's me? A good many things are queer, and some are kind of
+desolate. I've decided, my dear, that daughters have to be the kind that
+are born, to stay by a body in trouble. They have to be made of flesh
+and blood, my dear--and Amelia wasn't!
+
+"I've written this a little to a time, laying on my back. Mebbe you
+won't ever read it. Mebbe I won't ever see you again, but you will
+remember, my dear, that I've loved you ever since I took off your
+stocking and saw your poor, sprained ankle. If the Lord would perform
+a miracle for me, I'd ask for it to be the bringing of Amelia to life
+and finding her you."
+
+T.O. did not show the letter to Laura Ann. She put it in her pocket
+again, and they walked home slowly, talking of Mrs. Camp's sad accident.
+At the supper table it was voted that they all write a joint letter of
+sympathy to her, and express, at the same time, their united and
+separate thanks for her kindness to them in lending them her home.
+
+Loraine wrote the letter, Laura Ann copied it, they all signed it. Into
+cold pen-and-ink words they tried to diffuse warmth and gratitude and
+sympathy, but the result was not very satisfying, as such results rarely
+are. Still, it was all they could do. Billy and Laura Ann went off to
+mail it.
+
+"Do you begin to feel lonesome?" laughed Loraine softly, as she and T.O.
+sat on the steps in the dark. "Thinking of being left all alone in the
+Hive, I mean? The rest of us begin to feel lonesome, thinking of being
+left out! We had a grist of good times all together, didn't we? Remember
+the little 'treats' when you always brought home olives, and Billy sage
+cheese? Laura Ann used to change about--sometimes eclairs, sometimes
+sauerkraut! Always sardines for me. Oh, _do_ you remember the treat
+with a capital 'T,' when we had ice cream and angel cake? And Billy
+wanted to divide the hole so as not to waste anything--there, I don't
+believe you've heard a word I said!"
+
+She had not, for she was not there. Loraine put out her hand in the
+darkness, but could not find her. She had slipped away unceremoniously.
+
+She was down in the road, walking fast and hard. The battle was on
+again.
+
+"I thought I had it all decided--I _did_ have! Why do I have to
+decide it over again?" she was saying stormily to herself. "I said I'd
+do it, and I'm going to do it--what am I down here fighting in the dark
+for?" But still she fought on.
+
+It was so still about her, and with all her girl's heart she longed for
+noise again--car-bells and rattling wheels and din of men's voices.
+There were such wide spaces all about, and she longed for narrow
+spaces--for rows on rows of houses and people coming and going. It was
+the city-blood in her asserting itself. She had had her breath of space
+and freedom and green, growing things, and exulted in it while it
+lasted. Now she pined for her native streets. But all the sympathy and
+gratitude in her went out to the little old woman who was coming home to
+a lonely home--whose one dream-child was dead.
+
+No one had ever really needed her before--to be needed appealed to her
+strongly. And in the short time between her own coming to Placid Pond
+and the coming of the other girls, a bond of real affection had been
+established between Mrs. Camp and herself.
+
+But hadn't she been over all this before? Long ago she had decided what
+to do. Now, suddenly, she wheeled in the dark road and went hurrying in
+the other direction. She would go back to Loraine on the doorstep, and
+laugh and talk. She had decided "for good."
+
+The stars came trooping out, and she lifted her face to them with a new
+sense of peace. They were such friendly, twinkling little stars.
+
+T.O. was humming a lilty little tune when she came up the path in the
+starlight and joined Loraine again on the doorstep.
+
+The other two girls were coming slowly back from the little country post
+office, both to hurry and have the pleasant walk over. Billy had been
+saying nice things about the portrait of Amelia they had found hanging
+on the wall.
+
+"It's a dear!" she said heartily. "I wish I could make a picture like
+that."
+
+"You've made one a thousand times better!" cried Laura Ann. "I saw it
+this afternoon."
+
+"_Me_--make a picture?" Billy's voice was incredulous. "I couldn't
+draw my breath straight!"
+
+"It was a beautiful one. I stood still and looked at it. Your background
+was fine, dear--woods banked against a late afternoon sky, with bits of
+red light straggling through the branches, a little box of a house in
+the foreground, with patches of new shingles on the 'cover'; a crooked
+little front path, a funny little well, a little rosebush all a flame of
+color--"
+
+"Mercy!" Billy's little triangle of a face put on alarm. Was Laura Ann
+losing her mind?
+
+"But that--all that--was only the setting. The heart of the picture,
+dear, was an old man marching up and down the path--did I say it was a
+moving picture? He was whistling a tune in a wheezy way, and keeping
+step to it grandly. Once he seemed to lose a few notes; then he went
+into a little box of a house, and I heard an organ--"
+
+"Oh!" breathed Billy, assured of the other's sanity, "you mean Old '61
+practicing! That's the way he does--he's learning to march through
+Georgia without the organ, but he misses a step or two sometimes.
+_That_ was the picture, was it?"
+
+"It was a beautiful one," Laura Ann said softly. "You needn't tell me
+you can't paint, Billy! That's the kind of pictures we shall find
+hanging in the Great Picture Gallery."
+
+They walked on for a little in silence, with only the piping chorus of
+the little night creatures in their ears. The sweet, cool damp was in
+their faces.
+
+"Here we are at Jane Cotton's Sam's," Billy whispered by and by, to
+break the spell. She could not have told why she whispered.
+
+"So we are. Billy, look, he's studying like a trooper! That boy is going
+to walk straight into college in September! Let's go straight home and
+hug Loraine--come on! Take hold of my hand, and we'll run."
+
+"Wait--wait! Look, there's another of your pictures, Laura Ann!" Billy's
+lips were close to the other's ear; Billy was pointing. Into the little
+lighted room where Jane Cotton's Sam sat poring over a book, had come
+another figure. As they looked, it stopped beside the boy and bent over
+him.
+
+"That's just the setting--all that," Laura Ann murmured. "The heart of
+the picture is her face, Billy!" For Jane Cotton's face was radiant.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The day at last came for their return to the city and to the work they
+were so much better able to do. The little, green-painted house was in
+spotless order to leave behind. As Mrs. Camp was to come the following
+day, they had filled the little pantry with food--not remarkably light
+cake or bread, not especially flaky piecrust, but everything flavored
+with sympathy and gratitude and good will.
+
+"Go on, all of you; I'll catch up," Billy said, as they stood on the
+steps with the door locked behind them. "When you get out of sight I'm
+going to kiss the house good-by!"
+
+"T.O. had better stay behind with you, to kiss the pump!" Loraine said.
+"Or we'll all stay--I guess we can all find something to kiss."
+
+"Did anybody think to take down the Wicked Compact?" demanded Laura Ann
+suddenly. "It would be awful to leave that behind."
+
+They were at the gate. T.O. stopped suddenly, pointing. What they saw
+was a tiny, tiny mound, rounded symmetrically. "There it lies--I buried
+it," T.O. said briefly, but added, "And let no one keep its grave
+green!" They looked at her a little curiously. Perhaps they were
+thinking that it might have been appropriate for her to take it home
+with her and hang it on the wall to keep her company in the lonely
+little B-Hive. But they only laughed and tramped on cheerfully to the
+station. They were a little late, and had to run the last of the way.
+The train was already in, and they scrambled aboard.
+
+"Well, here we are leaving Eldorado!" sighed breathlessly Loraine.
+
+"And all of us heart-broken but T.O.--girls, where's T.O.?"
+
+She was not there. The train was getting under way. In a flurry they
+huddled to the windows.
+
+"Good-by! Good-by!" shouted a gay voice from the platform. A little
+white envelope flew in at one of the open windows. T.O., quite calm
+and unexcited, stood out there waving to them.
+
+"What in the world!" ejaculated Laura Ann, then stopped. For she alone
+could see a little ray of light. "Read the letter," she said more
+quietly. "The letter will tell us."
+
+They all read it together, their heads bunched closely.
+
+"Dear girls, I'm going to stay. I never was needed before, but I guess
+I am now. And maybe you'll think it's funny, but I'm _wanted_! An
+imaginary daughter can't wait on a poor little cripple--it takes the
+flesh-and-blood kind. I found out she wanted me, and so I'm going to
+stay. It would have been lonesome, anyway, all alone in the Hive!
+I bequeath all my rights to you--"
+
+"As if she had any now, any more than the rest of us!" muttered Billy
+fiercely, her eyes full of tears.
+
+"Sometimes when you're going and coming, some o' you listen to the
+car-wires sing, for me, and the wheels rattle," the letter went on.
+"Bump into somebody sometime for me! Good-by. You're all of you dears.
+
+"Amelia."
+
+At the signature they choked a little, and looked away at the flying
+landscape without seeing it at all. Laura Ann saw another picture--a
+girl waiting at a little gate. Woods and dusty road and humble little
+homes for background, and an old stage rattling into view in the
+foreground. She saw it stop--in the picture--and a helpless little old
+figure be taken out. She saw the girl at the gate spring forward and
+hold out her hands. But the heart of the picture was the face of the
+little old woman on crutches. It was another picture for the Grand
+Gallery.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Four Girls and a Compact, by Annie Hamilton Donnell
+
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