the old-fashioned methods of the law office in which win was reading law, combined with the complete lack of such cases as required haste in proceeding with them, made it nearly always possible for win to arrange his hours, even wholly to be absent at his pleasure. a vineclad law office, the vineclad law office to be more exact, since the hammersley & dallas firm was supreme in its profession there, would have horrified lawyers in a large city, yet the knowledge of the law which win was gaining in it would be thorough and practical, a fine basis for whatever he should choose to build upon it when he was older. there was no difficulty, therefore, in win’s taking three days in which to go to new york, buy his sister-in-law’s car, and select from the applicants who might apply for the position of its chauffeur, in answer to her advertisement, the one whom his judgment decided was the most hopeful.
166 “if one of the girls could go——” win checked himself, but there would not be much use in blowing out a match after it had been applied to oil.
jane and florimel sprang to their feet, and mary looked up eagerly.
“but i couldn’t possibly go,” mary said, instantly aware of her responsibility as the head of the house, and denying her thought’s suggestion.
“why not jane, then?” win hinted, beginning to think that what he had not meant to say was worth saying, after all.
“well, i’d like to know why not florimel?” demanded that young person.
“seniority, my dear, seniority.” win shook his head sadly. “no getting away from the fact that you are younger. besides, jane has red hair.”
jane laughed. “it does seem as though that ought to win me a consolation prize! do you suppose i could go, really?”
“don’t pretend, janie! you love your hair, but then we all do!” said mary. “might she go, win? where would you stay?”
“in the park, in the aquarium, in the station house, or, at a pinch, in a hotel,” replied win, still unsmiling. “i don’t see why jane mightn’t167 go. i’m timid about going alone—you have to go under rivers and over houses in new york too much to be unprotected.”
“oh, win, i think you’re lovely!” jane cried rapturously.
“so do i, jane; i’m glad we agree so. we ought to have a great trip, having the same tastes,” assented win.
“it sounds decided!” jane exclaimed. “is it? do you think it is, mary? i wouldn’t need more than one little gown to wear in the evening and some extra shirt waists; just a small suitcase.”
“if we got the car, plus the driver, we might—we should come home in it,” observed win.
jane gave a little scream of joy, but florimel’s desire broke bounds. “and there’d be plenty of room for me, plenty!” she cried, choking and tripping over her words. “it would be a great deal more—more proper for jane and me to be walking around the hotel together. who’d be with her when you were seeing cars and men? and jane needs some one sensible! look at the day she went off to see that miss aldine! didn’t i go with her, and wasn’t it better? jane and i would have one room, and i’d just as lief eat half of what i could eat; it wouldn’t be much more168 expensive. i’ll use my own money. why couldn’t i go, too? jane’s only two years older than i am. and i’m fully as able to enjoy a trip, and really a great deal more sensible.”
“but altogether too modest, florimel; it’s a pity you don’t see your own good points,” said win mournfully. “it isn’t economy i’m aiming at, child. i couldn’t seem to see myself kidnapping the garden baby. if you want to come along, and your mother and mary and anne can spare you both at once, come along. i’d be glad to take you both, and mary, and the twin of each of you—if you were twins.”
“mary, for goodness’ sake, say quick you won’t mind for just three days!” florimel implored mary, on her knees before her, arms around mary’s waist in an instant.
“i won’t mind for just three days,” repeated mary obediently. “but——”
“stop right there!” screamed florimel, springing up and catching jane in a mad whirl. “oh, jane, oh, jane, how do you feel? we’re going to new york for an automobile!” florimel sang as she and jane danced a sort of gallop around the room.
“i want to dance and shriek and purr! we’re going to buy a car and chauffeur,” jane continued169 the doggerel, on a still higher key, as they started off again.
mrs. garden came running downstairs and anne hurried in from the dining-room.
“what is it? you quite frightened me!” gasped mrs. garden, leaning against the casement of the door, her hand at her side, as she saw that the girls were at least not sorrowful.
“i knew it was only jane or florimel gone stark mad; it’s both of them,” said anne, with the annoyance relief always seems to call forth. florimel and jane released each other and caught their mother into their embrace.
“win’s going to let us go with him to get the car,” announced florimel. “mary says it’s all right——” florimel stopped, hesitated, fell back, and looked at her mother doubtfully. “you don’t care if we go, do you?” she said slowly. “somehow we never think of asking you things like that. we shall after we get you looking to us like our mother. you don’t care? if we go, i mean?”
“of course not. and i’d rather you wouldn’t ask me things like that; it would be embarrassing to betray how little i knew about what was best for you,” said mrs. garden, half pettishly. “i should think it would be very pleasant for you170 to go—and an awful nuisance to win to take you.”
“why, madrina!” said jane reproachfully. “when we’re such good company and win has known us so long! the way we’ve worked for that boy and entertained him! he’s the nuisance. i’ve worked over him for years; i’m glad that he feels grateful enough to do a little for us!” jane waltzed over to win and took him by the ears and swung his head gently from side to side as she hummed and danced a slow waltz, in which he had no choice but to follow her, captured as he was.
the result of this sudden resolution on win’s part to escort his almost-contemporaneous nieces to new york was that they set out on the second day in high glee, accompanied to the station by mr. and mrs. moulton, mrs. garden, mary, and anne. mark also was of the party and insisted upon carrying their suitcase.
“i do hope everything will go right,” said mary, as the travellers’ escort walked slowly homeward through the vineclad streets, pleasantly shady in the july heat.
“oh, win can’t go wrong, with the car picked out at home! if he engages an unsatisfactory man, we aren’t obliged to keep him,” said mrs. garden. “how frightfully warm it is! we never have such intemperate heat at home in england.”
involuntarily mary’s troubled eyes met mr. and mrs. moulton’s, regarding her kindly.
“mary was anxious about the children, not the car, mrs. garden—lynette,” said mrs. moulton.
“mary is an anxious little hen in the garden patch,” laughed her mother.
“i’m sure i don’t know what could happen to two such great girls as jane and florimel.”
“of course nothing could happen to them, with win another clucking hen, as bad as i am!” cried mary, visibly glad to seize upon this reason for her youthful mother’s refusing to be anxious about the girls.
a telegram announcing the arrival of her trio in new york, giving the address which would connect them by the magic wire with home and vineclad, comforted inexperienced mary by anchoring her thoughts of them to a definite spot, out of the space which had swallowed them up.
the four girls—dorothy, nanette, gladys, and audrey—came to tea one day; mr. and mrs. moulton invited mrs. garden and mary to tea with them on another of the three days of mary’s loneliness. on the third chum got a bone crosswise down her throat and it took so long to save her from imminent death, the adventure was so exciting, that the whole day seemed filled and curtailed by it. consequently the time of the new york visit really did not seem long although it overlapped into the fourth day. a telephone message came from win announcing that they were staying overnight, some sixty miles from home, held up by a puncture and too tired to press on.
mary was up early the next morning, out in the garden to look after her pets and to make their dawn toilets by pulling weeds and clipping dead leaves, when a long graceful car, its size unobtrusive because of its good lines and true proportions, came up the side street, blew its horn at her several times, by way of salute, and stopped at the gate.
“thought you’d be here!” shouted win, as the engine stopped to allow him to speak. he sprang down from his place beside the chauffeur and opened the tonneau door to let out jane and florimel, who were pushing it madly but ineffectively. florimel carried a basket to which173 she clung so devotedly that mary was at once suspicious of it. in spite of it, she managed to hug mary as hard as jane did, and both embraced her as if it were she who had just returned, and from a journey of desperate danger.
“you old blessing!” cried jane. “i’ve felt like a pig, a perfect pig, every minute! the next time i go anywhere you can’t go, let me know! i’ve been furious to think of it; mel, too! you just said you couldn’t go, and we fell right in with it, and you could have gone as well as not! i’m a pig!”
“you won’t get another chance to come your unselfishness, mary garden,” florimel corroborated her sister. “but we had a perfectly scrumptious time. where’s chum, and how’s mother?”
“chum’s around somewhere; mother’s well. chum nearly choked to death,” replied mary, holding tight to win, because she could not get a chance to do more than look her welcome to him and pat the back of his hand, which had been mary’s way of petting win since she was a baby.
“no word for the new car, molly?” hinted win. “some car! it brought us home in great shape; i’ve almost mastered running it; it isn’t hard. i’m going to teach you three.”
“indeed you’re not; not me!” cried mary.174 “but it’s a beauty, win! it looks even better in the body than it does in the pictures!”
“looks better in the chassis, too!” laughed win. “we made no mistake in our selection. captured a chauffeur, too. come and speak to him. say, mary, he’s a wonder; english, seems an out-and-out gentleman; i don’t understand him,” win whispered, as mary went with him to the gate to greet this acquisition.
“willoughby, this is the eldest of the three young ladies, miss garden. mary, this is willoughby, wilfrid willoughby, who drives splendidly and is going to look after us this summer,” win introduced the new chauffeur.
willoughby bowed; then, as if he remembered, touched his cap with his forefinger in the groom’s salute. “hope i may be allowed to look after you, miss garden,” he said, in the unmistakable accent of an english university man. he wore a close black beard and his eyebrows were inky black; mary thought it gave him a queer effect. his eyes were the bluest blue.
“probably has irish blood,” thought mary, sorting out her impressions of him.
“take the car around—no; what am i thinking of? of course mrs. garden must see it. she’s not down yet, mary?” asked win.
“no, but i’m sure she’ll not be long. i’ll tell her you’ve come. i’m so glad you’re back, you three! i wonder what i should do if i had to be separated from you long? florimel, what is in that basket?” mary stopped and looked reproachfully at florimel, for the basket unmistakably wriggled in a most unnatural way.
“it was lost, mary!” cried florimel. “it rubbed up against us in the street. jane said we mustn’t let it rub, or its bones would prick right through, it is so thin. but it will be beautiful when it’s fed and petted a little while. it was so grateful! win went into a restaurant and bought one of those terrible thick saucers, like a scooped-out cobblestone, and some warm milk, and fed it right in a convenient to-let doorway, in the street. and it was so hungry it shook so it could hardly eat, and so grateful when it had taken it all up! we stood around it, of course, keeping off frights from it. jane said if we left it, we’d be worse than the cruel uncles of the babes in the wood, for there wasn’t the ghost of a chance for it, not even of robins covering it, if it died in the street! and we all said one more in vineclad, and this big place, would never be noticed, so we bought this basket and we took it back to the hotel and smuggled it in, and win bribed the chambermaid to help us, and she did, and it has ridden up here as contented as we were! even when willoughby let the car out, to show what it could do, it never minded a speck! so i knew you’d be glad we came along and saved one starving thing! if everybody saved just one, there wouldn’t be one left to suffer! isn’t that a hard thing to know, when they won’t do it?”
“you certainly expect your hearers to sort out sentences, mellie!” cried mary.
willoughby, apparently without consciousness that his position forbade such comment, said:
“my word, she’s a charming child! we’ve had a great time with miss florimel and her protégée in the basket, coming up!”
mary had an instant in which to wonder at this freedom in a well-trained english servant, as she said:
“i suppose it’s a cat, florimel? you haven’t said, you know.”
“silver-gray ground colour; broad black stripes!” cried florimel. “it will be a beauty. win pretended coming up he heard the wind rattle its bones through the basket, and that he thought some one was stoning the car, but you’ll see what a dream it will be! say you’re glad we saved it, mary!”
“i don’t have to say that, mel; you know anybody would be, especially our sort. take it in the house—or shall i?—and feed it and butter its paws—especially feed it. it ought to have a name,” said mary.
“it has—lucky,” announced florimel, rushing past mary to take her sufferer to anne, to see whom she could not wait another instant.
mrs. garden was dressed and almost ready to go down when mary called her.
“i heard the horn, and knew they had come, and jumped right up!” she cried. “do, pray, fasten my gown here at the shoulder, mary. am i properly put together? i’ll never learn to dress myself, and one must be gowned halfway right to be seen by one’s new manservant. does he look all one could ask, mary?”
“he looks queer. i don’t mean precisely that; he’s really nice, speaks like an educated man, but his face doesn’t quite belong to him,” said mary, groping for her own meaning.
“dear me, how extraordinary!” laughed her mother. “i sincerely hope he has not been dismissed from his last place for stealing a face! i’m ready, mary.”
mrs. garden, who never looked prettier nor more youthful than in the simple pink and white morning gown which she was wearing that morning, did not at first see the new chauffeur; her rapture over the car excluded all other objects. win drew her attention to the man after she had rhapsodized over the car.
“this is willoughby, the new man, lynette. willoughby, this is mrs. garden, who is actually your employer.”
willoughby touched his cap with a hand that shook noticeably, though this time he made no mistaken salute. mrs. garden looked him over languidly, then with a mystified, increasing attention.
“you remind me of some one,” she said. “could it be that you drove for any one i know? have you been in england?”
“yes, madam, i am english,” said willoughby. and again mrs. garden looked closely at him, a puzzled line contracting her smooth brow.
“it may be that you drove for one of my friends. i must have you tell me where you were employed there,” she said. “mary, shall we try the car? have you breakfasted, willoughby? then suppose you drive us—miss179 garden and me—about three miles? enough to try the car, then you shall have a second breakfast. will you come, jane? win?”
“no thank you, lynette; i must hurry down to the office,” said win.
“no, thank you, madrina; i want to see anne and abbie,” said jane.
so mary, who had run back to the house for coats and veils, got into the car with her mother, the chauffeur played with various buttons, and they rolled away. the car was a model, one of the glories of its first rank. it bore them along rapidly, steadily, purring softly, obedient to each suggestion, and mrs. garden was in raptures.
“have you driven long, willoughby? you drive perfectly, with caution, yet certainty,” mrs. garden said, as they slowed down after a little exhibition speeding on a deserted road.
“i’ve driven since cars were made worth driving,” he said, forgetting his respectful “madam,” and turning his head with a little toss of it; his blood was kindled by the swift flight of the car through the dewy morning. to mary’s utter amazement and alarm her mother cried out in surprise and leaning forward touched “willoughby” on the shoulder.
“i know you now!” she cried. “lord wilfrid kelmscourt, what are you doing driving my car, here in vineclad?”
“willoughby” stopped the engine and turned to face the tonneau. “i’m doing just that, driving your car, here in vineclad, in new york, in the united states of america, and i admit it is most amazing,” he said.
“why are you wearing those ridiculous whiskers?” mrs. garden cried, and mary sat dumfounded.
“i didn’t think you’d find me out, not at once,” “willoughby” said plaintively.
“how childish you are!” mrs. garden said, half laughing, yet evidently annoyed. “pray tell me how you found me, and why you came here in this silly fashion?”
“miss lynette devon—mrs. garden—didn’t you order me not to come where you were again?” asked this extraordinary masquerading chauffeur. “very well; i came to america, not knowing you were coming here, because it was hard on me to stay in england and not see you. i saw an item in a sunday paper in new york last week saying you were in vineclad, new york; known in private life as mrs. elias garden.”
“oh, audrey’s correspondence!” interrupted mrs. garden.
“really, i don’t know,” said “willoughby,” with his strongest oxford accent. “in another sheet i saw that you were advertising for a man to drive your car, that ‘mrs. elias garden, in vineclad,’ sought a man who would drive for her and take care of a garden. ‘my word, wilfrid, my boy,’ i said to myself, ‘there’s your chance to get into miss devon’s presence and be near her for a few days, at least, undiscovered!’ i applied for the position, your brother-in-law selected me out of several applicants—he’s a discerning young chap, that brother of yours!—and i had the pleasure of bringing up your new car, your two lovely children—and of seeing you! lynette, miss devon—oh, bother these names!—mrs. garden, won’t you forgive me and let me stay?”
“as my chauffeur? hardly, lord wilfrid! and certainly not as my guest. kindly drive us home and let me speed your departure, after you have breakfasted with us. if you were determined to disobey my distinct prohibition to see me again, whatever did you do it for so foolishly? why didn’t you call on me, like a sensible man?” asked mrs. garden, with reason.
“because i’m not sensible about you! because i thought this would prove to what length182 i was willing to go to get into your presence! because it was so unusual, so removed from the commonplace. doesn’t the romance appeal to you, lynette devon garden?” lord wilfrid pleaded.
“it certainly does not!” cried mrs. garden, breaking into laughter, in which mary struggled not to join.
without a word lord wilfrid reached forward and started the engine. he seemed to realize that from laughter there is no appeal. in unbroken silence, but with undiminished skill, he drove them home to the old garden house. mary began to feel that he was in earnest in his feeling for her mother and, tender-hearted ever, to pity him. she longed to hear the story of his woes. but, glancing at her mother’s pretty unruffled face, which looked young and contented under its shadowy veil, she felt that if admirers were coming to seek her out, titled admirers from across seas, her hands would be full indeed. how should she and jane, not to speak of florimel, take care of a girl-mother whom lords sought, when they were all too young to think of romance, except when it was presented to them within book covers, its aroma one with printers’ ink?
