A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill
“No, only my illusions, Connie.”
“Where did you lose them?”
“In Singapore. All but one. I hung on to it clear around the world, only
to lose it on Christmas night when I got home. Don't you feel sorry for
me?”
“Not a bit,” said Connie saucily. “I couldn't feel sorry for anybody
as good looking as you are,--could you, Mr. Wicker? Where did Miss Lady
go?”
“She said she was going to lie down, that her head ached,” said Noah.
“I know what's the matter,” said Connie; “she tries to keep us from
seeing it, but she's all broken up over selling Thornwood.”
“Thornwood!” cried Donald; “she hasn't sold it?”
“No, but it's been put up for sale. She'd die at the stake for Father.
He doesn't even know about it.”
“But surely there is some other way.” Connie shrugged her shoulders. “I
am sure I don't know. Hattie's given up music and French, and we've put
Bertie in the public school, and I haven't had but one party dress this
winter. But a girl doesn't have to depend on clothes to have a good
time, does she, Mr. Wicker?”
That night Donald sat up late, turning things over in his mind. Once the
trial was over he must go away, where he could not see Miss Lady or hear
of her. He must plunge into some business that would absorb his time and
attention. But before he went he must make an investment and make it
at once. In order to do so, he would follow Basil Sequin's advice, and
offer his bank stock for sale in the morning.
CHAPTER XXI
There was anxiety in the drab house in College Street. The second day of
Donald Morley's trial had come and no decision had been reached.
Every ring of the telephone, every opening of the front door brought a
hurrying of feet through the hall, and an eager demand to know if there
was any news.
“I'll never get my lessons!” exclaimed Hattie petulantly, collecting her
scattered belongings after one of these rushes to the door. “I wish to
Heaven one of my fingers was a lead pencil!”
“Why don't you wish your tongue was one, Hat, then you wouldn't have to
sharpen it,” suggested Connie.
“I bet Miss Lady had my pencil,” went on Hattie, ignoring Connie's
comment. “She's never owned a pair of scissors, or a pencil, or a
shoe-buttoner since she's been here. And look at those letters on the
mantel! She'll never think about mailing them.”
“What are they doing with black borders?”
“She bought a job lot of paper the other day, all colors and sizes,
trying to be economical. She uses the mourning ones to pay the bills.”
“Yes, and I'll have to be putting little pink love letters in big blue
envelopes all winter. Say, Hat, do you suppose it would be all right if
I called up Mr. Wicker to ask him how the trial is going?”
“Of course not. We'll hear as soon as there is anything to hear. I wish
you'd hush talking and let me study.”
Connie heroically refrained from speech for five minutes, then she
announced:
“Do you know, I don't believe Miss Lady likes him!”
“Who? Mr. Wicker?”
“No, you silly,--Don.”
“When did you stop saying Cousin Don, pray?”
“Oh, ages ago. She's always so quiet when he comes, and she goes
up-stairs the first chance she gets. I think she's changed a lot since
she first came, don't you?”
“Well, I guess you'd change, too, if you had married a sick man with
three children, as poor as poverty, and a cook as cross as Myrtella.”
“But she has Myrtella eating out of her hand. Imagine my marrying a man
as old as Father!”
“If I had to marry, I'd rather marry Father than anybody else. But I've
never seen the man yet that I'd be willing to marry.”
“Oh, I have! I know ten right now that I'd marry in a minute.”
“Connie Queerington! Who are the others beside Gerald and Cousin Don?”
“Guess.”
“Noah Wicker?”
Connie laughed. “Mr. Wicker is not as bad as he was. He must have taken
chloroform and had his pompadour cut. Don says he is awfully clever.”
“Anybody could be clever who took a whole day to compose each speech.
I'll tell you what's the matter with Miss Lady; she is worrying herself
sick over Father. Did she tell you what Doctor Wyeth told her?”
“That Father would have to give up his classes, and get away some where?
But of course he can't do it.”
“But he can! Miss Lady has rented Thornwood from the man who bought it,
and we are all to go out there this spring.”
“Heavens! That means frogs and crickets and whippoorwills, and a
lonesome time for me.”
“But think of Father!” said Hattie with her most virtuous air. “If it's
perfectly quiet, perhaps he can finish his book.”
“No, he won't,” said Connie petulantly. “He may finish himself, but
he'll never finish that book; he keeps on thinking of more to say, just
like Mr. Melcher does when he prays. If it weren't for that stupid old
book he might get well. Was that the telephone?”
It proved to be the side-door bell, which was rung by an old woman
who had lost her husband and her front teeth, and was engaged in the
precarious occupation of selling shoe-strings. She was one of the
numerous proteges, who began to call on Miss Lady soon after breakfast,
and kept up their visits through the day, to the exasperation of
Myrtella Flathers, who spent her time devising means to rid the back
hall of these incumbrances.
In this instance strategy was not required, for she was bidden to send
the woman away. Such an unusual proceeding aroused her curiosity and
she returned to the dining-room to peep through the door at her young
mistress, who had been sitting motionless since breakfast with her
elbows on the table, and her hands locked under her chin. It was evident
that something was wrong, and Myrtella became so concerned that she at
last decided to take action. The panacea she applied to all ailments,
moral or physical, was a counter-irritant.
“Mis' Squeerington!” she ventured finally. “I hope you ain't fergot
that it's Saturday mornin' an' you'd orter row the grocery man. He's
a cortion, that's what he is, a-sendin' us Mis' Ivy's ribs, an' Mis'
Logan's liver. It ain't a decent way to treat a old customer, an' he
orter be told so. There never was a grocery man that was born into the
world that didn't have to be rowed! They expect it, they look fer it,
an' when they don't get it they feel it.”
“I can't 'row' people, Myrtella; I don't know how,” said Miss Lady
listlessly.
“I'll learn you. You've picked up a lot more already than anybody would
'a' supposed you would when you first come. But one thing you ain't
learned. When a lady goes to smilin' over the telephone, an' tellin' the
butcher that she don't know one cut from another but she'll trust him to
send her a nice piece, you kin count on it she's goin' to git a gristle.
Compliments an' smiles may git some things, but it takes rowin' an'
back-talk to git a good beefsteak!”
“I think I'll send you to the grocery to-day, Myrtella,--it--it may
rain.”
“It ain't goin' to rain before noon,” Myrtella said authoritatively,
in a tone that indicated her intention of stopping it immediately if it
showed any intention of doing so. “It'll do you good to git out and walk
a spell.”
Miss Lady shook her head.
“Well, then you better let me send Bertie down here, he's makin' a awful
racket in the nursery an' his pa'll be after him soon.”
Bertie was induced to abandon a life of adventure on the footboard of
his bed, by the suggestion that Miss Lady had something to tell him in
the dining-room. He came tearing through the hall shouting, “Extras,” at
the top of his voice.
“Bertie, darling! Please don't,” cried Miss Lady roused from her apathy.
“Remember it's Saturday and Father's home.”
“I wish he wasn't,” said Bertie. “I hate a tiptoe house! When can I call
extras?”
“When we get up to Thornwood. You and I will play all over the hills,
and I'll teach you to be a real country boy.”
“And can Chick be there, too?”
“Yes, and perhaps by that time Chick will have been to the hospital and
can talk like other boys.”
Bertie was standing on the back of her chair by this time, apparently
trying to strangle her.
“And can we slide down the ice-house like you used to do? And will Uncle
Jimpson call up the doodle-bugs out of the ground like he did when you
was a little girl?”
“Listen!” cried Miss Lady suddenly starting up. “What is that?”
From the far end of the street came the sound, “Wuxtry! Here's your
Wuxtry! All about--”
“It's just the newsboy I was being like,” said Bertie. “What's the
matter? What makes you shake so, Miss Lady?”
Myrtella thrust her head in the door. “Here comes that there Mrs. Ivy
running 'cross the yard. She's good fer a hour.”
But Mrs. Ivy did not seem to be good for anything by the time Miss Lady
reached her. She was half reclining on a haircloth sofa in the front
hall with a bottle of smelling salts to her nose and a newspaper in her
hand.
“Oh, my _dear_!” she managed to gasp. “Such a frightful shock! So
utterly unexpected!”
“Do you mean Don?” Miss Lady's lips scarcely moved as she asked the
question.
“No, the bank! I was all alone in the house when I heard the boys
calling the extras--Ah! my poor weak heart!”
“Brandy?” suggested Miss Lady anxiously.
Mrs. Ivy raised feeble but protesting eyes: “Never! The Angel of Death
shall never find me with the odor of liquor on my lips. Could you send
for some nitroglycerin?”
By the time Mrs. Ivy was revived, Connie and Hattie had joined the group
in the hall, and the latter was reading aloud in awe-struck tones the
account of the People's Bank failure. The age and reputation of the
institution and the prominence of Basil Sequin as a local financier gave
the subject grave significance.
“And to think that I should be involved!” wailed Mrs. Ivy. “I've only
been treasurer of the W. A. Board for six weeks and this was my first
investment! They told me to use my judgment, and I did the best I could!
Only last Thursday I went to see Mr. Gilson the broker, you know, about
investing the money we're collecting for building the Parish House. He
said I had come at the right moment as he had just gotten hold of some
of the People's Bank stock, 'gilt edged,' he called it, and I remember
just what I said to him, I said, 'Mr. Gilson, I simply let Providence
lead me, and it led me to your door!' and I bought it!” sobbed Mrs. Ivy;
“forty shares!”
“I suppose Father's lost awfully,” said Hattie, sitting round eyed and
anxious on the steps.
“And all the Sequins, and Don,” added Connie.
“It says that all the stockholders and most of the depositors stand
to lose heavily,” said Miss Lady, scanning the paper; “I must tell the
Doctor at once.”
She sped up the steps and knocked breathlessly at his study door. It was
only at the second knock that she was bidden to enter.
The Doctor sat at his desk in a long, gray dressing-gown, with a rug
across his knees: around him were ranged several straight-backed chairs
on which were spread hundreds of pages of closely written manuscript. At
his elbow on a stand was an immense dictionary, from which he lifted a
pair of absorbed and preoccupied eyes.
“Doctor!” Miss Lady burst out impetuously, “the Bank has failed--the
paper says--”
“If you please!” the Doctor raised an imploring hand; “don't tell me
now. The news will keep and I am in a most critical stage of my summary.
Today's work is important, very important. Kindly close the door.”
Miss Lady stood in the hall without and stared at the drab-colored
wallpaper. A fierce anger rose in her, not against the Doctor, but
against that vampire work which was sucking all the vitality and
sympathy and understanding out of him. She was eager to bear his
burdens; she was willing to fight his battles; but it was hard to take
his side single-handed against herself. She wanted love, and affection
and sympathy, and she wanted a manly shoulder to weep on when the way