jane came upon florimel, busy with chum on the lawn.
“i don’t think either of them likes it, but it’s good for them, teaches them patience and makes them accomplished,” florimel volunteered for jane’s benefit as she came up.
“them? who besides chum?” asked jane, looking around.
“oh, my! he must have run into the currant hedge!” cried florimel. “i meant lucky. i was teaching him to ride on chum’s back. he sticks on pretty well, but he hates it. sticks too well; his claws rather annoy chum.”
“i don’t know why they wouldn’t!” jane sympathized with chum. “i see lucky’s nose poking out under there, to see if it’s safe to come out. do let him alone, mel! you bothered chum’s life out, and now the cat has no peace. such a pretty cat as he’s turned out!”
“didn’t we know he would?” triumphed florimel. “those black stripes on his silver colour are so stylish! if i do torment them, chum and lucky like me better than any one; don’t you, chum pup?” florimel hugged chum breathless and the dog plainly was ecstatic over her condescension. “i’m teaching lucky to come when i whistle, like a dog, only not the same call i use for chum. watch!” florimel whistled two notes, repeated like a bird call, and lucky, whose added flesh and beauty proved his name suitable, came pleasantly to her, not with any of chum’s joy at being noticed, but with a slow, condescending courtesy. “he’s the prince and the pauper, all in one, like doctor jekyll and mr. hyde,” cried florimel, snatching lucky to her breast and eagerly scratching his chin to win a purr. “he was the pauper, and now he’s the prince, and you’d think he had been the president and his cabinet, and lived on the best the white house could give him all his life! he likes me lots, but he knows i’m just as lucky as he is to be allowed to save him. i don’t care! i like to be snubbed—by a cat! see this act.”
florimel set lucky on chum’s back, ordered chum to “get up!” and for a glorious six or201 seven feet of distance chum served lucky as his steed, to the disgust of both. then the cat growled and sprang off, this time galloping to the house with tail a-hoop, resolved not to be cajoled by a whistle again to do what he despised, and chum wagged her whole body apologetically, reminding florimel that, though she objected to circus performances, it was the cat who had broken bounds.
“mel, little madrina longs for a chauffeur,” said jane. “she says no matter how well you and i could drive, she’d never ride with either of us, and win can’t give up the law altogether. where shall we get a man?”
“i think we’re both learning beautifully, janie!” said florimel, in an injured tone. “i haven’t done a thing wrong since the day i went into the garage without putting down the brake—and the brake was spelled another way, by the wind-shield and the wall! you’ve got to do something like that to start with; they all do! you haven’t done anything yet, but you may; you drive better than i do, though. you don’t seem a bit red-haired when you drive, jane, honest! you’re just as quiet and clear-headed, you’re not afraid, and you’re not reckless—not smarty-cat! i think you drive plenty well202 enough for madrina to trust you, if you take a little longer training.”
“much obliged, mel, for your compliments,” said jane. “it’s nice of you to say all that, when you want to drive so badly. i think, myself, i’d be safe driving here in vineclad, but if madrina’s nervous, she’s nervous, and that’s all there is to be said about it. it seems to me madrina’s painfully quiet lately; i’m afraid she’s getting tired of it—tireder! it must take a while to realize one’s voice is gone, and the further you get into realizing it, the worse it is, of course. we thought—mary and i—that we ought to find a man to-day, but ‘that’s all the further we got,’ as abbie says.”
“let’s get out the car and drive all around for ten miles, on every side, blowing the horn, with a sign standing up on the back seat: ‘man wanted to run this!’” suggested florimel.
mary came running out of the house. “janie, florimel! abbie thinks, maybe, she knows a man!” she cried.
“i doubt it!” jane promptly commented. “abbie doesn’t look as though she would know one, ever; she looks as though she’d slaughter one if he were introduced to her.”
“she doesn’t know this one, personally,”203 mary admitted. “but she has just thought of somebody named joel bell who might answer. she is sure he doesn’t know how to drive, but she says he’s fine at general work, especially gardening, and madrina wants that, too. abbie thinks this joel is bright, and could learn to run the car. there’s one thing certain: he could wash it!”
“what happens?” asked jane, knowing mary and that she had a plan. “do we go out in the car hunting him? do you suppose he’s a boojum snark? if he is, there’s no use hunting him.”
“we are going this evening; madrina would like to go with us. win will take us, some of us—all of us, if we want to go, of course. i thought it would be nice to take abbie, as long as it’s her exploration. she doesn’t have much fun,” said mary.
“fine to take abbie, molly darling! but if she goes it’s a good thing it’s a seven passenger car. her sixth is equal to two fractions,” jane remarked.
“i would never imagine that madrina would take a man to train as a chauffeur! i’m already considerably trained, and she’s afraid with me. she ought to have a good driver, else why not trust to jane?”
“jane can’t repair punctures, change tires, nor pump them up. madrina feels safer with a man; i do, too, janie; if you don’t mind? there’s something in seeing a man’s hands on the wheel that gives you a sense of security. perhaps it’s only because men have held steering wheels so long! yet muscle does count.” mary looked her apology to jane.
“if any woman could be a more reckless and generally good for nothing driver than some men!” exclaimed jane disgustedly.
“janie,” said mary, lowering her voice and glancing toward the house, “madrina is so blue! i came upon her crying her heart out a little while ago. she would not tell me what was wrong, but i heard her trying to sing before that, and her voice is quite, quite gone! it’s the first time she has done more than hum. she couldn’t sing at all!”
“no need of asking why she cried, then!” said jane, with a quiver in her own voice. “i thought she was sad lately and i wondered if lord kelmscourt had anything to do with it. of course she didn’t have to send him away, but his coming must have brought back her old life to her.”
“well,” said florimel, with an expression205 that might have suited a maiden in the roman colosseum, with the lion pit just opened before her, “if madrina wants the lordly chauffeur, not to drive for her but to travel with her all the rest of her life i, for one, am not going to make a fuss. i thought i couldn’t stand it to have her marry him and go away again, even if we did visit her; we’d not go to england for good and leave our garden. but i will stand it; i’ll write him, myself, to come back, if she’s sorry she made him go.”
“he’s coming to vineclad before he sails. madrina isn’t so silly! she wants to sing. can’t you see, florimel, how fearful it is to be what she was; and then to be nothing—oh, i don’t mean that! the dear, little, charming madrina! but nothing the world knows about; just the garden girls’ mother!” cried jane.
“we all see, janie,” said mary sadly. “i’ve been thinking. isn’t there something, some charity, for which we could raise money?”
jane and florimel stared at her. “vineclad is pretty comfortable, you know; not much chance here to work for charity,” said jane slowly. “why, in all this wide world, did you say that, mary? you’ve something in your brain; i know you!”
“you can’t know me very well, if you don’t think my brain is empty, janie,” laughed mary. “i was thinking that if we could get up an entertainment, for an object—you can’t seem to have entertainments just to entertain!—madrina might be interested. she could give some of her impersonations, in those costumes the girls were so crazy about, and she could train the girls—be deep in it, in all sorts of ways. i believe it would be good for her.”
jane and florimel were in raptures. “for all of us!” they cried together.
“oh, molly darling, what a good head you’d make for a sanitarium! you’d know just what to do for every single thing that ailed people!” added florimel.
“it can’t be hard to know what any one needs when your thoughts are almost inside her mind; you love her so much, and long so to make her happy,” said mary.
“glad you like my notion! the thing now is to find a worthy object.”
“a worthy object that won’t object unworthily?” suggested jane. “we’ll find one, my mary! if we have to burn down some one’s house and set the family down beside the road, with only one stocking apiece—and amputate207 the other legs!—we’ll find some one to whom we can give our proceeds!”
“if i drive the car maybe i could run over the head of a family,” said florimel hopefully. “i can’t steer very well yet.”
“you’d be more likely to wreck your car to save a chicken!” laughed mary. “the head of the family would have to be taken off and rolled right under the car for you to hurt it, soft-hearted little mel!”
“my heart might be all right, and my hand all wrong,” retorted florimel.
“we’ll ask mr. and mrs. moulton and win to find us something to give money to.”
that evening win brought around the great car and mrs. garden and mary persuaded florimel to join them in the tonneau, to let win carry on jane’s education in driving a little farther. jane sat with win in the front, and the middle seats were occupied by anne and abbie, anne’s tall and bony structure counterbalancing abbie’s unwieldiness.
“win, we are to drive ‘entirely northward,’ abbie said,” jane explained, her voice covered by the engine from the hearing of the others. “we go to the edge of vineclad, ’most to the next town; joel bell lives in the country.”
“all right, janie; catch hold of the wheel and change places with me. you’re to drive and find this bell. what a lot of bother it would save if he were the kind of bell that kept ringing, as long as abbie doesn’t know precisely where he lives,” said win, holding the wheel steady over jane’s head as he stood up to slip into the other seat.
the pleasures of the chase were added to the enjoyment of the lovely drive in that exquisite hour between sunset and summer starlight.
joel bell proved illusive—mary said perhaps he was a diving bell. at last they found some one who could tell them where to go, and they made the last stage of the journey carefully, for it was a neighbourhood perfectly capable of throwing tire-wrecking substances into the road. joel bell proved to be a melancholy person. his melancholy was justified when it developed that his wife had died some months ago, leaving him with three small bells to be taken care of and provided for. the trouble was that poor joel could not provide for them, if he took care of them, for earning money and staying at home were not compatible.
“i know a real smart girl, young, but old enough to take care of children like mine—the baby’s most two—if i could afford to hire her, but i can’t, so what’m i to do?” he demanded. “there ought to be some place in vineclad where you could dump little children while you worked, same’s i hear tell of elsewhere.”
“a baby dump, sometimes called a day nursery! there’s our object!” cried jane, stretching her slender neck backward to make mary hear.
“are there enough people here who would use such a place, mr. bell?” asked mary, leaning over the door of the car with her sympathetic eyes on joel bell’s melancholy face.
“’round here they is,” he said, looking at mary with the frankest admiration. “there’s a mill right near here; lots of folks work in it, men and women; they’d get on better if they had some such dumpin’ place to leave their babies. an’ a kind of a dispensation would be good, run along with it.”
“a dispensation? from school? the children wouldn’t be old enough for that,” said win, feeling his way toward enlightenment.
“land, no! i don’t see what you mean,” said joel bell, mystified in his turn. “a dispensation where they’d get medicine free, an’ maybe a doctor’s overhaulin’.”
“oh, of course! why didn’t we think of that?” cried mary hastily, afraid win would heedlessly correct joel and tell him that he had meant to say dispensary.
“well, well!” mrs. garden cried impatiently, having no clue to why this need of the neighbourhood should interest her three girls as it did. “all this is quite wide of the mark! we came to offer you a position in my employ, my good man. i am told that you know enough of gardening to be useful to us, and, if possible, i want you to learn to drive this car. get the young girl you spoke of to look after your children, and you will find yourself much better off than you have been, i’ll warrant.”
“dear me, if madrina only wouldn’t call abbie ‘my good woman!’ and this man ‘my good man!’ i’m sure they hate it,” thought mary, aghast at this imperative manner of dealing with the difficult native american temperament.
“do i understand that you’re a-askin’ me to work for you, ma’am?” asked joel bell.
“you see, mr. bell,” win interposed, “it’s this way: mrs. garden is nervous about driving with her daughters alone; i am busy all day, and she wants a trusty man to learn the car and to look after our big old garden. maybe you know it? hollyhock house, on the opposite side of town, rather outside it? on picea street?”
joel bell’s face glowed with unexpected enthusiasm. “i should say i did know the old garden place!” he cried. “are you winchester garden, that they call win? never once suspected who ’twas! i know a considerable of gardenin’, but cars ain’t in my line. maybe they’d come to me, though. would you make it wuth my while to accept your offer, ma’am? i’d have to hire a girl for my off-spring.”
“if you can learn to drive and take care of the garden, both, i’ll give you—fourteen pounds, was it, win? seventy-five dollars a month, did you say, win? if you can’t drive, perhaps we’d keep you anyway, at about forty dollars or so,” said mrs. garden carelessly.
joel’s eyes shot a gleam of triumphant joy, which his pride instantly recalled. “i’ll think it over, ma’am,” he said nonchalantly, “an’ let you know in a day or two. to who do i feel indebted for recommendin’?”
“don’t know to whom you do feel indebted, joel,” laughed win, thinking it about time mr.212 bell came off his pedestal. “but it is abbie abbott, here, who told us of you.”
“indeed!” said joel, bowing as if he were acknowledging an introduction. “an’ t’ best o’ my knowledge an’ belief i never met the lady before now.”
“you didn’t! but my cousin lemuel abbott, the plumber, told me ’bout you,” snapped abbie, unbearably annoyed by her own embarrassment at this extreme gallantry.
“better close the deal now, joel; we shall not care about coming again to see you,” advised win, seeing that joel needed less than no time for consideration of the offer.
“well, i might try it, s’long’s you need a man,” joel said graciously. “i’ll be taken on as a gardener, till you learn me to shofer real good. i’m poor, but i’m straight; i wouldn’t take wages i hadn’t earnt.”
“right-o!” win approved him, as mrs. garden, entirely at sea as to how to deal with this unknown type of servant, murmured something about this being satisfactory.
“move on, janie!” said win, watching jane manipulate the starting button and the gas. “turn on your lights before we start; you’ll need them to drive.”
joel watched her also, with admiration that included reassurance. “seems as if i could do what a little red-headed girl could,” he said, in all sincerity, without intending to be impertinent.
when the car had brought them all home again, under jane’s handling, “without one bit of help from win this time!” she triumphantly reminded her family, the girls huddled together in the hall and in animated whispers discussed the suggestion they had received.
“it seems perfectly ridiculous to establish a day nursery in vineclad,” said mary, anxious to do so, but equally anxious not to make their charity absurd.
“but joel knows!” florimel said aloud, immediately clapping her hand over her lips. “he knows a great deal besides, but he must know that neighbourhood.”
“win told me coming home that hammersley & dallas had once had some law case to settle near there, real estate quarrel, and that there were hardly any americans over there. there are poor italians, and some hungarians working in that mill. fancy, in vineclad! we don’t know our own town across its width!” said jane. “we’ll get up an entertainment for a214 day nursery and a—‘a dispensation’ for the little youngsters over there. it’s all right, mary; it must be needed if that man says so. but i’ve often noticed that almost any object is all right, enough excuse, i mean, if people want to have an entertainment.”
“i’m sure we don’t want it ourselves!” sighed mary.
“no, indeed! no fussing for me! i’d rather stay outdoors; summer’s short enough!” jane confirmed her.
“well, i don’t know!” said florimel. “we’ve been outdoors all our lives, in the garden, summers. i’d like to do some perfectly gloriumphant stunt, if madrina could train me to, something that went with a zip!”
“that’s the way it would go if you did it, even if it was sitting fishing in a pond where there wasn’t one fish to bite!” declared mary, rumpling florimel’s black hair and laughing as she shook her lightly and kissed her hard.
