frances appeared early on the following morning, and found sad faces to greet her where she usually found cheer.
"well, what have you to propose to me, francie, a secretaryship to the president, or to write the best-selling book of the year?" asked rob, trying to speak brightly.
"the book is the nearer guess," said frances. "i tried to think of what you could do best, and it was a puzzle. you are such a jack-of-all-trades——"
"and we know what he amounts to," interrupted rob. "you might as well finish the proverb."
"no such thing," declared frances. "but you didn't seem to have any marked vocation, till suddenly it flashed upon me that you had done one thing wonderfully ever since you could[150] talk, and i knew i'd hit it. do you know what it is?"
rob shook her head. "i had a talent for getting into scrapes, and you used to pull me out, but i never supposed the talent had market value. if you've discovered it has, you've pulled me out of another scrape with flying colors," she said.
"you could tell stories," said frances.
"france, i was always truthful," said rob, reproachfully.
"now, don't be silly; you know what i mean," retorted frances. "don't you remember how you used to amuse all the rest of us children telling stories by the yard? and do you realize how children love to be with you? you have a regular fringe of small fry at your heels whenever you appear abroad."
"well, i admit the pied piper qualities, and i remember telling stories, but i fail to see what you're getting at, ma'am," said rob, dubiously.
"you're to tell your stories for money!" cried frances, triumphantly. "you're to have a class of all the nice girls and boys in fayre—and some will come from thruston—and you are to entertain them by telling them stories for an hour and a half twice a week. you won't charge much—maybe only five dollars for twenty recitals, but[151] that, if you had twenty children, would be a hundred dollars in ten weeks, and it would be just fun—no trouble at all to you to do it."
"you have thought out details, frances," said mrs. grey. "you make me feel as though it were not only possible, but an accomplished fact."
"it is possible, mrs. grey," said frances. "mamma knows a lady in town who did it there, and it was a great success. she thinks rob is sure of being even more successful, because she is so young the children will enjoy more being with her."
"and what kind of stories am i to tell, frances? any kind that keeps them quiet? fayre is not like new york, where there are lots of people with wealth, but no place nor time to amuse their children. people here won't care about having their children entertained," said rob, sensibly.
"oh, i forgot that part," said frances, eagerly. "no, of course, it couldn't be any kind of story. you are to tell them a set of grecian mythology stories, for instance; then a round table set, then a crusading set, then, maybe a shakespeare set, and stories of rome, greece, egypt—goodness! there's no end to[152] the series you can get up! now wait!" she added, as rob started to speak. "you know when we were little you read all these things, and loved them; we thought them dry, and nothing would have induced us to read them for ourselves. but when you told us about them we were like so many young robins, when the big bird chops up food too solid for them—we were all agape for more, and you had the faculty of making us see the beauty, and not missing a point. it was enthusiasm and magnetism, mamma says. well, you have those gifts just as much now."
"i'll try to believe in my talents," said rob, meekly.
"you'd better. mamma told me to lay the plan before you all, and, if you approve, to say she will guarantee rob a class of not less than twenty to begin with, and she will find the children for her. will you try it, rob?" asked frances, eagerly.
"how good your mother is; how kind you both are!" exclaimed mrs. grey.
"oh, france always was clear, unadulterated splendidness," said rob, getting up to hug the one girl friend she had ever really loved. "how can i help but try it, when it is all done for me?[153] of course, i'll be only too glad to try it, francie, and i'll do my best."
"i couldn't possibly fail to approve, approve gladly and gratefully," said mrs. grey.
"i think it's a beautiful plan—an inspiration, frances," said wythie. "and i know rob can do it like no one else; she does such things with her face and voice that she always makes one see what she sees." and oswyth smiled proudly on rob.
"i should hate to fail, after your mother had done so much to launch me," said rob.
"'screw your courage to the sticking-point and we'll not fail,'" said frances, who could hardly have been less like lady macbeth.
"then, if i succeed, i might enlarge my field, have classes in neighboring towns, and by and by in hartford and new haven, and—why not?—new york," cried rob, airily. "then if the bricquette machine did turn out badly i could support the family."
"rob, rob, i thought you had no doubt of the invention!" cried her mother, such a sharp note of pain in her voice that it betrayed her own doubt, and her unconscious dependence on the young girl's opinion, ignorant though it was.
"neither have i, mardy, it's sure—don't be[154] afraid," said rob, hastily. "but when you want a thing so dreadfully, dreadfully much you can't help thinking what it would be not to get it. and i feel as the red queen must have felt when she was a little girl, and had to believe three impossible things before breakfast. i do believe, but i have to try—try with both hands, as her red majesty told alice to do—to keep my faith, though i know it's all right all the while. and the invention is so nearly completed, francie, that patergrey thinks that next week he can write to the people in new york whom he wants to have buy it. isn't that a comfort, after so long? it sounds so definite."
"indeed it does!" cried frances, heartily. mrs. grey hastily left the room, and wythie ran after her, guessing that she had gone to hide sudden tears.
rob looked after them soberly. "oh, france," she said, "you could not have come with your plan at a better time—we need cheering. they put the mortgage on the little grey house yesterday—they were doing it when we came home. and patergrey got so wrought up that he had another of those dreadful heart attacks last night."
"oh, rob; poor, dear, brave rob! i am so[155] sorry for you!" cried frances, with ready tears of sympathy and a convulsive hug.
rob shook herself free. "now, don't pity me!" she cried. "i have all i can do to keep steady if i am as hard as nails, and you see i must keep gay for the others. i know, france; we know each other, but don't love me now! no one could have done me the good you have in giving me the hope of being useful. i'll never forget how you came in this black morning and tried to 'push dem clouds away'—you have made a big rift. if ever i get rich and famous i'll give you your heart's desire, and if ever i can help you while i'm poor—which may be a while yet, you know—i'll walk over the ocean to do it. but don't you love me nor pity me to-day."
"all right. i don't love you any day; i despise you, and always did," said frances, with a last squeeze as she withdrew her arms. "now i must run home to tell mamma you are unanimous. she said if you liked the plan she would see all the parents she could this afternoon, and bid them send their little lambs for you to pipe to them."
"well, francie, patergrey does want me, so i suppose i ought to let you go," said rob. "tell your blessed mother i can never thank her,[156] but tell her how troubled you found us, and she will understand the good she has done."
rob hardly knew how it happened that at the end of two weeks she found herself established as a scheherazade, telling stories, not to an eastern tyrant, but to five-and-twenty lesser tyrants—not less tyrannical—with the east in their bright eyes.
mrs. silsby had bestirred herself so energetically that rob's childish audience was not only secured for her at once, but exceeded by five the twenty she had hoped to get. mr. grey said children were showered upon her as if she were a foundling asylum.
their ages ranged between eleven and six, the average being eight, and roberta wondered how she was ever going to interest them, restless as so many butterflies, and inclined to approach suspiciously an entertainment which they suspected of being improving, and very possibly additional lessons under a hypocritical disguise. but they were worth winning, for all of the audience was paid for in advance, and bewildered rob found a hundred and twenty-five dollars in her hands, which was all her own.
mrs. silsby managed the financial end of rob's enterprise, as she had its other details,[157] which was lucky, for rob would never have dared to offer course-tickets to her stories, with no rebates for absences. but mrs. silsby said five dollars was so absurdly little for twenty entertainments that nothing else was to be considered, and rob yielded, suggesting only that at the top of her little programmes were printed: "mrs. james silsby presents miss roberta grey," after the fashion of a great new york manager, and that at the bottom be added: "treasurer and press agent, mrs. j. h. silsby."
there was some difficulty about rob's title. every lad and lassie in her audience—all of whom she had known from their cradles—hailed her "hallo, rob," when they met in the highway, but as a scheherazade the case was different, and her scant dignity of sixteen needed re-enforcing.
mrs. dinsmore, the lawyer's wife, who was a great stickler for propriety, insisted that her two hopefuls should say "miss roberta," and advised rob to exact this title from the others. but dorothy dinsmore herself settled the question by refusing to consider it.
"i wouldn't say miss roberta for anything, mamma," she declared. "i might say roberta, but i'd rather say miss rob, if i must do any[158]thing silly, because you can just slide over that, and say ''s rob'—and it wouldn't make much difference."
"i would rather be called rob than srob," laughed rob. "oh, let them go, mrs. dinsmore! it's going to be as nice a time as i can make it for them, and i suspect it will be nicer if we don't try to make them forget i'm just a bigger child than they are."
the result was that at rob's first recital, though the children began decorously in their places, dubious as to what was to befall them, they soon discovered that it was not a prim teacher, but "just rob grey," the rob grey they had always known, who was telling them the most delightful story they had ever heard. it was a story as full of magical impossibilities as the fairy-tales that the girls loved, and as full of the clash of arms, and the fury of battle, and the prowess of knights as the boys could ask.
and behold, before she was half-way through, each of the twenty-five of her audience had left his seat, and the children were hanging, entranced and adoring, on the back, arms, and rounds of her chair, huddling at her feet and leaning on her knees, and she knew that she was succeeding beyond her fondest hopes.
[159]
her first series was the arthurian legends; rob had prepared the first story carefully and told it well, for she loved romance, chivalry, and the poetry of history as every imaginative girl does, and the inspiration of the fifty bright eyes, the eager lips, open as if to drink in her words, made her lose herself as completely as when a few years before, a little girl herself, she had told these stories to her playmates.
rob came home from her first recital—mrs. silsby had perfected her kindness by lending her big parlor for the tale-telling—in the highest feather.
"i'm a mediæval minstrel, a bard, a minne-singer," she declared. "and, best of all, i'm a success. i may become a monologist, at ever so much a night. why, the children hung on my words—and they hung on my back and arms and knees besides."
prue, who had a strong sense of dignified propriety, was scandalized. "you don't mean to say, rob," she exclaimed, "that you let those children swarm all over you? why, they ought to have kept their seats strictly."
"well, they didn't; they left them laxly." rob laughed outright at prue's horrified face.
"my dear spinster-sister prudence, children[160] can't half listen if they don't wriggle—they must fidget about, or they get deaf in their brains—not their ears. you used to swarm all over me when i told you stories."
"i was your sister," said prue, convincingly.
"yes, you were; i even fancy sometimes you haven't outgrown being my sister," said rob. "proper or not, the dear little crowd had a perfectly scrumptious time, and they wanted me to promise to tell them a story every day. you see, i'm already like a sort of serial, which doesn't come out often enough. but the best of it is, i am actually earning money and helping my family."
"you have always been the greatest help, rob dear," said mrs. grey. "you have been our tonic ever since you were old enough to feel sympathy, and that was long ago."
"if i'm a tonic, wythie must be cold cream, or something healing, and prue—what is prudy? violet extract to keep us dainty, i suspect," said rob.
if rob was glad and thankful for her success, frances was triumphantly glorying in it. she never had been an especially clever child, while rob had been a brilliant little creature, the pride of her teachers, who invariably brought her for[161]ward when the credit of the school was to be maintained—this was in their early childhood, and during the irregular periods when rob had been at school. now the humdrum girl had devised the scheme which was to make clever rob's fortune, as if the moth had unexpectedly furnished the wick to the candle, and frances was as proud as she was delighted in its results.
the rutherford boys hailed rob a story-teller with irreverent glee. contributions from one or another of battalion b poured in daily—sometimes from all three at once. maria edgeworth's moral tales—to supplement rob's, if "her grey matter gave out," basil's accompanying note stated; a bunch of rattan-rods, slates, primers, spectacles, and a cap for herself. even a false front came from bruce—most frankly false, with a muslin parting, and yellow in color, because, he explained, he "thought yellow would contrast prettily with her dark eyes, and her cap would hide its not matching her own brown locks." bartlemy illuminated a set of mottoes to adorn the walls of what the boys called "rob's auditorium." "little children must never tell stories," "listen to my tale of woe," "as tedious as a twice-told tale," "young robin grey came a-courtin' we," "truth is stranger[162] (here) than fiction," "plain tales for the bills," three for a side of the room. rob hung these brilliant productions, and piled up all her other tributes from battalion b in a small, unused room under the "lean-to" roof, where twice a week she retired to prepare her story for the next recital.
in spite of the boys' ridicule, in spite of aunt azraella's croaking, rob's experiment was proving more successful each week. but the pleasantest part of it all to rob was when her father appealed to her as a capitalist to aid in launching the invention.
"it is all done, rob, practically finished," said mr. grey, laying a trembling hand on the girl's shoulder one morning at the end of two hours' close work together.
"don't get excited, patergrey; you know it is forbidden you," cried rob, beginning to quiver in sympathy. "yes, it's done. sit down; you look pale—let me get you a tablet."
"rob, you've been my right hand—my extra pair of hands—all the way through," said her father, impatiently waving away the suggestion of a tablet. "you've had so much faith, dear son rob, and have understood so clearly that you have helped me in that way almost more than in[163] any other. now i am going to ask you to help me still further. have you any special use for the first hundred and twenty-five dollars from your story-telling?"
"so many special uses that i've no special use—no, patergrey," laughed rob. "there are so many things to be done with it that i can't see one for the crowd of them. it is all for mardy and wythie, though. they go without so slyly that i want every penny of this to buy things for them."
"you generous rob-of-mine!" exclaimed her father. "then would it disappoint you to lend me rather more than half of your wealth, to launch the bricquette machine? it requires a very small capital, but it needs that to start it on its journey into the world. i should rather like to have my girl's money—the very first that she ever earned—do this for the invention in which she has had such a share through its entire growth."
"like it, patergrey! i'd love it!" cried rob, her eyes dilating, her cheeks flushing. "i'll get the money now—i've hidden it in my twine-bag, real country fashion. how strange for my money to launch the machine! can it do it, really, patergrey?"
[164]
"it really can. i will take but fifty dollars now, rob, but i may need more. there must be photographs and plates made, some printing done. i would prefer your money to do this, if the idea pleases you."
for further answer rob kissed her father as he ceased speaking, and ran away to fetch the money, singing at the top of her voice.
that night were mailed to new york the first letters introducing to a larger world than had yet heard of it the bricquette machine upon which the hopes of the greys hung, and into which all the energy of sylvester grey's apparently unfruitful life had passed.
wythie, who was always ready for bed long before rob, sat in the rocking-chair, a shawl over her white gown, watching, with eyes of loving envy, rob's frantic brushing of her unruly hair.
"i think i shall be wickedly jealous of you," she said at last. "fancy your launching the invention! i wish i were able to help as you do."
"you, oswyth! you're not only an anglo-saxon saint, but a connecticut angel," cried rob, somewhat inarticulately, as she held between her teeth the elastic band with which she intended to fasten her braid. "without you we would all[165] go—kersmash!—in one day. you do everything."
"do you remember how, when we reckon our resources, we put down two columns, one certainties, the other possibilities? to think you are now one of the possibilities!" persisted wythie.
"and if i am, what then?" demanded rob. "i may be a possibility, but you are an extreme probability, oswyth, my dear. you are at once a column and a foundation. i'll never be half as useful as you are. put out the light, oswyth grey, and don't talk nonsense! not but that i'm thankful enough to be added to the column of possible sources of income!"
