The strange house or, A moment's mistake
Randall disdained to be pleased by the pleasant tone, and passed his
pen over to Gertrude with an abrupt, "I want a new nib."
"Oh, you don't!" exclaimed Mollie. "I gave you one this morning! You've
spoilt it drawing with it since breakfast!"
Gertrude took the pen in her hand to examine it, and found that once
more, her fingers had grown sticky!
CHAPTER XIII.
THE OVERTURNED BASKET.
GERTRUDE got through the morning's school better than she had feared,
and when twelve o'clock struck they were all quite surprised.
"We go for a walk now," said Mollie.
So the four set out together, Mollie taking the lead, showing Gertrude
the beauties of Hampstead Heath, and describing the long walks they
sometimes took on Saturdays to Highgate, Finchley, and other places
round.
They were coming home, and had almost reached their own door, when,
turning the corner of the road, Mollie gave a start, and exclaimed in a
low tone, "There is Mr. Eccentric!"
While at the same moment the man who was in front of them, recognizing
the young people, and wishing apparently to get out of their way as
quickly as possible, stepped aside to let them pass, and in doing so
stumbled over the kerbstone, and slipped down on his knee.
He quickly picked himself up, but his basket had sped many yards in
front of him, and the old-fashioned lids opening, the contents were
scattered on the path.
Daisy hastened to replace the fallen things, while Gertrude turned her
attention to the man, who was brushing the dust from his knees, and
answering her curtly that he was not in the least hurt. When he turned
round to look after his basket, Daisy was trying to gather up some rice
which had fallen out of a paper, while Mollie was holding in her hand
some lilac print, a reel of white cotton, and a little pair of child's
shoes which had evidently been freshly mended.
The man took the things and stuffed them into the basket in silence,
though his face had turned very pale.
"I fear you are hurt," said Gertrude again.
But he would have no more to say about it, and limping a little, he
pushed on to his own gate and left the four to turn in at theirs.
"'We've' had an adventure!" said Mollie. "Far greater than Conway's.
How I do long to tell the boys! Miss Ashlyn, what could he want with
those things if he lives alone?"
"I do not know," said Gertrude thoughtfully.
She went up-stairs to her own room, but all the way she was haunted by
an impression of having seen that little pair of child's slippers on
some little pair of feet! How could that be possible? Were there not
hundreds of little slippers in the world?
Mrs. Shaddock was very interested with their news at dinner, and the
meal passed much more comfortably than the previous ones, Gertrude
feeling less forlorn as they began to have things in common to talk
over.
When she went back to the schoolroom, on the mantel-piece was a letter
from her mother.
She sprang towards it, then sat down by the window with it in her hand,
and began covering the envelope with kisses.
"Oh, how could I go away from you? How could I?" she murmured over and
over again.
Then she ran up to her room, tore the letter open, and devoured the
precious contents.
They were words written from a full mother's heart, words of advice,
and cheer, and encouragement. Rising from their perusal, Gertrude felt
strengthened to go on her way.
"You must expect difficulties, my dear—" (the letter ran). "These
things are allowed to happen in our lives, but our God is equal to
it all. There is such a storehouse in the Lord Jesus, that whatever
happens, there is grace enough for it. Go to Him in everything, and you
will find 'everything' just a ladder reaching to heaven."
"Even Randall," she said to herself, as she put the letter in her
pocket and prepared for school.
When she reached the schoolroom again, Mollie was practising, Daisy was
buried in the perusal of a book, but no Randall was there.
She was looking round and wondering how she should find him, when
Mollie volunteered—
"He isn't coming; he has worried mother till she has taken him out with
her."
So the school went on without him, and just as they were putting up
their books at five o'clock, they heard a great commotion in the hall,
and Randall's voice saying loudly—
"Well, cry-baby, have you 'blubbed' to-day?"
"There are the boys!" exclaimed Mollie. "Now for our news! Come along,
Daisy, let us go down to the dining-room to see them!"
They ran off, leaving Gertrude alone.
She turned to her letter once more, reading the dear lines over and
over, till she knew them by heart.
Then she bent her head on her hands and thought of her mother's advice.
"Grace enough for 'all' that happens."
CHAPTER XIV.
"X. Y. Z."
"HAVE you been to call for letters to-day?" asked a woman, looking up
from her work with anxious eyes.
"No, I haven't," shortly answered the man addressed. "I can't always be
callin' there, ye know. It looks so queer."
"Not at all," answered the woman decidedly. "People must have letters,
and you buy your tobacco there. That's nonsense!"
"Not nonsense at all," answered the man. "I'm pretty near sick of it.
Here's a pretty go I've had this morning. I slipped down, and the
things you sent me for flew out of the basket—shoes and all—and the
folks next door helped to pick them up."
The woman glanced at him in dismay, but after a moment, her own anxiety
overcame even that, and she said slowly—
"James, I can't 'think' how it is there wasn't a letter the other day;
I do wish you had called there this morning."
"It's rubbish you're being so fidgety," said the man. "He's all right.
I tell you what it is, this is driving us into our graves. I'm near
sick of it."
He turned towards the little fire with his pipe, and the woman gathered
up some lilac print which she had been cutting out, and left the room.
"A living death," she said to herself, "and all for the want of a bit
of courage at the right time!"
Slowly she mounted to the top of the house, and taking a key from her
pocket, unlocked a door, letting herself in and locking it from the
inside again.
There was a little fire burning in the grate, protected by a cheap
nursery guard, and an unlighted candle was on the table beside a
work-basket.
On the floor were bricks and toys scattered hither and thither.
The woman glanced towards a small bed in the corner of the room, and
then lighted her candle and sat down by the fire with her work.
But ever and anon she buried her face in her hands, and pressed her
forehead with her fingers, as if to keep back thought.
"He said he would write without fail, every week, and it is three days
over the time now!"
She turned again restlessly to the light, and put her needle into the
print. Then with a sudden movement she folded that together and went
to a drawer, taking from it a worn pair of knickerbockers, which she
spread on the table, fitting on a patch carefully, and bending over
it with a certain look on her face that would have made an observer's
heart bleed—if he had had a tender heart.
"I 'can't' bear it," she whispered at last.
She put out her hand to extinguish the candle, when a low whistling was
heard on the stairs and a slow step came nearer and nearer.
She hastened to unlock the door, looking in the man's face and speaking
abruptly.
"You'll stay here a bit, James? I'm that uneasy that I can't bide here
at all. I must go to Oxford Street and see if there ain't a letter for
me."
"What, at this time o' night?" questioned the man. "It's ridiculous.
But do as you like; it don't matter either way, and you'll get a bit of
air."
He sat down by the fire and put his pipe in his mouth once more.
The woman went into an adjoining room to get her bonnet, and soon had
let herself noiselessly out of the front door, and was speeding towards
the high-road which led down from Hampstead to the more populated
districts of Camden Town.
It was not till she reached one of the main thoroughfares that she
aided her steps by entering a tram-car, and there her veiled face and
plain garments attracted no attention.
She alighted among the crowd when she reached Oxford Street, and
disappeared among them up one of the wide turnings.
By and by, she came to her destination, and on her inquiry, two letters
were handed over to her, and she turned away.
Both bore the Highgate postmark, but were in different handwriting. Yet
as the woman grasped them, she knew that her journey had not been in
vain.
She clasped her hand over the precious lines, addressed in a large
boyish hand to "X. Y. Z., Tobacconist, Dash Street." And without
apparently dreaming of opening them, she hurried out into the crowd
again, and was soon seated in a returning tram, speeding back whence
she came, and alighting where she had got in before.
At length, her weary walk over, she let herself into the house with a
latch-key, and passed quickly up the dark staircase.
In answer to her low whistle, the door up-stairs was noiselessly
unlocked, and she entered the room she had left nearly two hours ago.
"I've got it!" she exclaimed, sinking into the chair the man had left.
"Two?" he questioned.
And while with rather trembling fingers she broke the seal of her own,
he did the same by the second envelope.
Hers ran—
"Dear mother—I wish you'd come to see me; I ain't well, and the
master—"
That was all. The large lines only reached to the bottom of the page
and then stopped.
His ran—
"To X. Y. Z. Madam—Your boy has been taken suddenly ill, and I regret
to tell you that the doctor looks seriously upon his complaint. I
would have telegraphed, but your wish to keep your address from us has
precluded my doing so. Will you come at once? I am, etc., etc., Head
Master."
Both letters bore the date of two days before.
CHAPTER XV.
LITTLE LESTER.
THE young people were so full of the overturned basket and its
mysterious contents that Randall forgot to tease Hugh as much as usual.
And besides, Miss Ashlyn's quiet presence rather awed the little bully,
who was not quite sure how she would take it, if he let his sharp
tongue loose on his delicate brother.
Indeed, since the episode of the sticky pen, Randall could not forget
the sudden glance Gertrude had given towards his little hands, nor the
quiet and firm tone in which she had told him to go to nurse to have
them washed. Nor did he like Daisy's exclamation as he was leaving the
room—
"Why, Miss Ashlyn, how funny that your watch should have been sticky
too!"
So he decided to keep quiet for a time and make some plan of mischief
which should be more annoying and more difficult of discovery.
Hugh and Daisy soon made their way to the schoolroom, and settled
themselves cosily under Gertrude's wing, the little boy conning his
lessons with great industry, only occasionally asking for some help
in a gentle, entreating little tone, which Gertrude thought she quite
understood since their conversation that morning.
At last, the books were put away, and Daisy came over to Gertrude's
side and said softly, "Are we friends enough yet?"
Gertrude smiled. "What do you think?" she asked.
"I think we are," said Daisy. "When Hugh and I take to people, we
'take' to them, and we don't change a bit."
"I see; so you consider you have 'taken' to me?"
"You are laughing at us?"
"Only a very little. I am so glad, Daisy, if you have. Come, then, and
sit by the fire, and we will have a sort of story—
"About seven years ago my pretty sister Rose was married—"
"Was she like you?" interrupted Daisy with a little smile.