"i am going to cut that grass—try to cut it, i mean—before i'm an hour older," said roberta grey, drawing on an old pair of her father's dog-skin gloves with a do-or-die-in-the-attempt air that was at once inspiring and convincing. "this whole place looks like an illustrated edition of 'how plants grow'—grey. we've got to cut the grass or put up a sign: to find the house walk northward through the prairie. signed, sylvester grey. will you help, wythie and prue?"
oswyth, the eldest daughter, a year the senior of sixteen-year-old roberta, looked up with her pleasant smile. "help walk northward through the prairie, help find the house, or help cut the grass, rob?" she asked.
"help cut the grass, and the rest won't be necessary," laughed rob. "come on! i've borrowed aunt azraella's lawn-mower, though i[4] truly believe i might as well have borrowed the cheese-scoop—that grass is too old and tough to bow down to a mere lawn-mower."
prue, being but fourteen, jumped up with alacrity to accept rob's invitation, but oswyth laid down her sewing and arose with a reluctant sigh—she was not fond of violent exercise, and the afternoon sun was still warm.
the three girls stood a few moments on the low door-step, letting the breeze pleasantly flutter their gingham dresses and lift their ribbons, before setting to their difficult task. the same breeze blew the tall grass which roberta longed to lay low in undulating ripples like those in the blue and pink fabrics, which drifted into the picture like cornflowers and poppies. the feathery sprays of the millet and red-top, the wands of the timothy were so pretty as they bowed and swayed that, although they were so lawless and rank, it seemed almost a pity to cut them. oswyth thought so, but roberta felt no misgivings—except of her own strength.
the little grey house stood well back from the street under splendid trees, set in the midst of a place so wholly disproportioned to its size that it looked in the present unkempt condition of the grounds not unlike a little island of grey rock,[5] entirely surrounded by turbulent and billowy green water.
everybody called it "the little grey house," and the name was doubly appropriate, since it did not matter whether one capitalized and emphasized the adjective, and spoke of it as "the little grey house," or left to the adjective its natural function, and spoke of the tiny home as "the little grey house." for, as to color, it could not well have been greyer. it had once—not recently—been painted grey, but wind and weather had stripped it of its artificial greyness while tinting its clapboards into soft, indelible tints even more conformable to its title.
and, for the rest, sylvester grey lived there, as had his forebears for three generations preceding him—all greys from the beginning. people said that it was "a good thing that sylvester grey had had a home left him, for he never could have earned one."
it was true that mr. grey had never been able to make much money, nor to keep what little he did make. "he was as good a man as ever lived," people said again, "but he had no faculty." and to lack "faculty" was, indeed, to lack much.
it puzzled and—of course—worried the com[6]munity in which they lived to know "how the greys got on." mrs. grey could have enlightened it had she chosen, but she did not choose. she hardly realized, however, how much of the explanation lay in her own personality, her mere existence. for she—great-hearted, large-souled woman—had "faculty" enough for two; which was fortunate, as she had to contrive for five.
there was a little income—very slender—of her own, and for the rest she "managed." she had been a winslow, of mayflower descent, and aunt azraella winslow, mrs. grey's brother's widow—herself a brown—said, with mingled approval and commiseration, that "when one of us, of the old stock, sets a hand to the plough the corn grows."
sylvester grey was a dreamer, handsome, frail, sensitive, and clever. sometimes his teeming brain brought practical results to his family, but these crystallizations of genius were rarer than was comfortable.
mr. grey was perfecting a machine for making bricquettes. there was not a very clear notion in his town—fayre—what this meant, but it was understood vaguely to be a machine which transformed the coal-dust and waste of the mines into solid little bricks for fuel. aunt azraella[7] said "it was exactly like sylvester to moon over coal-dust while mary needed kindling-wood."
oswyth, the oldest girl, whom he had named out of his delight in old saxon sounds, loved her father tenderly, without understanding him; prue, petted, pretty little prue, young for her years, loved him a trifle impatiently, but roberta, daring, ambitious, active roberta, loved the dreaming father passionately, and understood that he could not feel the present pinch when visions of a greater good lured him on, understood further that no personal pinch appealed to him very strongly when science led him into her fairyland, and he felt himself her servant. and roberta alone, of all who loved him, understood the invention to which he was giving his days and many nights, and she believed enthusiastically that some time the bricquette machine would make the family fortune and her father's glory. yet sometimes her high courage failed, and when the makeshifts and deprivations to which the greys were condemned bore most heavily upon her she could not help acknowledging—though only to herself—that the happy time was sadly long in coming.
but it was not one of these disheartening days[8] when she set out to cut the grass, and rob's heart was as gay within her as a sixteen-year-old heart should be, as she looked out on the field which she meant to make a field of victory.
her bright, dark eyes, which were always flashing with as many changing expressions as there were minutes in the day, danced with mischief; her rippling mouth and chin—rob's face was all ripples—looked as though the july breeze were playing with them as it played with the lush grass. with both hands she pushed back her dark hair—full of gleams of red and gold in the sunshine—as she ran down the steps and around the corner to fetch the borrowed lawn-mower, for rob's hair was forever breaking its orderly braided bounds and turning into rakish odds and ends of curls about her brow and ears. she came back triumphantly, pushing the lawn-mower around the corner, and it rattled on the old flagged walk as she tipped it up on its rear wheels and dodged the box bordering the paths.
"who's first?" she cried. "age and muscle, or beauty and babyhood?"
"b. and b.," said prue, unblushingly owning up to both facts as one well acquainted with the value of her big dark eyes and contrasting veil of golden hair, and one made thoroughly to realize[9] that she was the youngest. "give it to me, rob; i want the first cut."
"'give me the dagger!' here you are, then, lady macbeth. you'll find the first cut anything but tender—you speak as if it were turkey." and rob gave the mower-handle into prue's eager fingers.
prue ran lightly down the flagged walk with her prize. "i shall begin at the gate," she announced, "so if we don't quite finish it to-day people who go by can see we are beginning to get our grass cut."
oswyth laughed and groaned. "finish it to-day! cut the whole place!" she exclaimed.
oswyth, with her sweet, placid face, smooth, shining brown hair, calm blue eyes and quiet lips, was unlike either of the others. pretty she was in her demure way, and no one minded if her soft cheeks were a bit too plump, since their tint was really the "peaches and cream" of which we read. wythie was a most womanly and wholesome little woman, the sort of girl one sees at first glance must comfort the mother who possesses her.
prue, undismayed by wythie's dismay, turned the lawn-mower sharply to the right for her first bold plunge into the grass—and stopped. the[10] dry, stout stalks resisted her onslaught, and the little girl pushed, pulled back, pushed again, bending over the handle till her flying, golden hair fell forward into the yellowing grass, but the machine would not stir. prue dropped the handle, straightened her slender form, and, with one movement of both hands, disclosing a face already flushed and speckled by her efforts, threw back her hair and threw up the game.
"i can't budge it, rob!" she panted. "no one could."
"want to try, wythie, or shall i?" asked rob.
"want to? i don't quite see why anyone should want to," said oswyth, "but i suppose we each must, so here goes." and she heroically came forward to take her turn, laying her dimpled and well-cushioned little pink palms on the cross-bar of the handle somewhat gingerly.
she cut a glorious though short swath of four feet in length, happening on more tender grass, and having more strength than prue, but here she, too, met her waterloo, for the mower stood still, balking as effectually as all the donkeys in ireland.
"there's no use in your taking it, rob," wythie gasped, after turning hither and thither with no result. "if you cut a few feet it would[11] be the most that you could do, and what difference would it make out of so much?"
"you don't suppose i'll yield without striking a blow?" cried roberta, darting at the lawn-mower as if she were no further removed from samson than his great-granddaughter at most. "i have meant to cut this grass for ages—it shows that," she added, laughing. "besides, it always matters a lot to me to be beaten. 'men o' harlech, in the hollow!'"
rob began singing the splendid welsh battle-song as she in turn laid hold of the handle, as if she should not only succeed, but have breath to spare for a war-cry.
roberta was slender, taller that oswyth, but her young muscles were strong and well-poised, and to whatever task she essayed she brought an excess of nerve-power that rarely failed to bear her to victory on the very crest of the wave. she attacked the tough grass now with such enthusiasm that the balking lawn-mower yielded to her as most things did, and ran along quite meekly for a little while. but then it stopped, and when it did stop not cleopatra's galley, buried under centuries of nile mud, was more motionless than was aunt azraella's lawn-mower.
rob pushed and pulled as both her sisters had[12] pushed and pulled, losing her patience as she did so.
"no good, bobs," said prue, laconically and a trifle maliciously, for the family only nicknamed rob "bobs," after lord roberts, kipling's "bobs bahadur," in allusion to her indomitable pluck and generalship, and used the name in moments of triumph, of which this was scarcely one.
roberta pushed away her rebellious locks with the back of a slightly grimy hand.
"if i only had a scythe!" she murmured. "no machine can get through this jungle—i feared as much. i'd mow it if i had a scythe, though!"
"now, rob, you mustn't so much as think of one!" said wythie, decidedly. "you know mardy would be frantic if you were to swing one just once—you're so reckless! promise you won't get one."
"i solemnly pledge myself to abstain from all intoxicating and entirely inaccessible scythes," said rob, holding up both hands. "where in the world should i get one, wythie?"
"you always get anything you set your heart on," said wythie, somewhat loosely, yet speaking from her knowledge of her sister.
[13]
"do i? then it must be that i set my heart on very little," interjected rob.
"would mr. flinders cut it?" suggested prue.
"even an infant must realize how very sharey mr. flinders is in carrying on the place on shares, prudence, my child," said rob, gravely. "he may be honest in giving us our third of the vegetables for the use of the land, but i always suspect him of opening the lettuce-heads and rolling them up again to make sure ours haven't more leaves than his."
"oh, you know mr. flinders won't do one thing extra, prue," said oswyth, hastily, fearing prue might resent being called an infant.
"he could have the grass for his horse," said prue.
"'a merciful man regardeth the life of his beast,' prudy," said rob. "our grass is half daisy-stalks, half chicory, half dandelions, half some other things—pigweed, probably—and the other half may be grass."
both her sisters laughed. "you always were strong in fractions, rob," said oswyth.
"had to practise the most fractional fractions ever since i was born—why shouldn't i be? there come those new rutherford boys down the street," said rob, as three tall figures, arms[14] locked, marching abreast at a good pace, swung into sight at the head of the street. "they seemed nice when we met them the other day; i wish they'd say they'd cut our grass."
"i thought you scorned to admit boys' superiority in anything, rob," said wythie, slyly.
"i don't admit it; i only act on it—if i have to," said rob.
"why don't you wish we could afford to hire a man to keep the place decent, like other people, while you're wishing?" asked prue, rather bitterly.
"because i don't see the use of wishing for what you can never have," said rob, quickly.
"we can't be rich—not till patergrey gets the bricquette machine done—and since it's impossible, why, it's impossible. but it would be perfectly possible for those big creatures to swing scythes and get this grass mown in short order—it would be rather a lark for them. and if it ever does get cut, and i don't keep it short with aunt azraella's mower, then it will be because i've forgotten the art of wheedling that beloved lady into lending it."
"how did you get it this time?" asked oswyth.
"talked mayflower and pilgrim rock—it never fails," said rob. "she thinks now there[15] was a brewster in her family, and that probably through him she goes back to glory. and you know what mardy let slip one day about the parental brown and his remarkably good cobbling! poor aunt azraella! it must be painful to miss the dead in the way she does! miss having had ancestors to die. though i don't know why good honest cobbling isn't as good as lots of things they did in colonial days—better than the spelling, for instance. mercy, those boys are almost here! is my hair too crazy, and have i grass stains on my nose, wythie?"
"i don't think it's right to run down our posterity," said prue, pulling her ribbons and spreading her hair rapidly. "i'm very proud of my descent." and before oswyth could suggest that she did not mean posterity, three straw hats arose in the air, revealing three flushed, handsome, boyish faces, and three cheery voices called: "good-afternoon, miss oswyth, miss rob, miss prue."
and the oldest rutherford boy—he looked nearly eighteen—added: "are you farming?"
"we're harming—our tempers," cried rob. "also a borrowed lawn-mower."
"won't you come in and rest?" added oswyth. "you look warm."
[16]
"we've been up to the river swimming; it's pretty warm in the sun, walking fast. what's wrong with your tempers? maybe we'd better keep out." but as he spoke the eldest boy opened the low gate, and they all came in.
oswyth led the way to the house, and prue and the youngest rutherford were dispatched for chairs to set on the lawn, for the little grey house had been built before the day of piazzas. before the six young people were fairly settled a figure in white appeared in the doorway, smiling invitingly over a big tray laden with glasses, some plain cookies, and the beautiful old glass pitcher, of which the greys were so proud, full of lemonade and tinkling with ice.
"oh, that's mardy all over—always thinking of something for us!" cried oswyth, as she and rob sprang forward to relieve their mother of her burden.
