Honey-Sweet Part 15

Before the early dinner at the 'Home,' Miss Farlow a.s.sembled the girls and gave them a Christmas talk. Christmas, she reminded them, is the time for generous thoughts, for kindly memories, for opening our eyes to the needs of others and opening our hands to aid those needs. There is no one so poor, so lonely, that he cannot find some one more needy that he may help.

"Kind friends have remembered you this holiday season," she said. "Each of you has received gifts. Now I hope you want to pa.s.s the kindness on.

There is a negro orphanage in town, and I happen to know that its funds are so limited that after providing needfuls, food, fuel, and clothing, there is nothing left this year for Christmas cheer. Aren't you willing to share your good things with those poor children? Won't each of you bring some of your old toys to the sitting-room at four o'clock and help fill a Christmas box to send the little orphans?"

The children responded eagerly, Anne among the first. They hurried to their rooms and rummaged busily through their boxes and drawers, collecting old dolls, ragged picture-books, and broken toys.

Anne opened her drawer and then shut it quickly and sat down dolefully on the bed-side, swinging her feet.

"What are you going to give, Anne?" asked one of the other girls.

"Dunno," was the brief answer.

A mighty struggle was going on in her heart. She had no old picture-books, games, nor toys. She had nothing to give--unless--except--there were the gifts she had received at 'Roseland' this morning--the s.h.i.+ning dominoes, the dainty handkerchief, the ribbon-tied candy box, the book with fascinating pictures and pages that looked so interesting. It was so long since she had had any pretty, useless things that it put a lump in her throat merely to think of giving them up. But she had promised and she must give something to those poor little black orphans. Which of her treasures should it be? When she tried to decide on any one, that one seemed the dearest and most desirable of all. At last in despair she gathered all her gifts--dominoes, handkerchief, book, candy--in her ap.r.o.n, ran with them to the sitting-room and dumped them on the table before Miss Farlow, with "Here! for the old orphans."

Miss Farlow opened her mouth but before words could come Anne was gone.

She crouched down with Honey-Sweet between her bed and the wall and sobbed as if her heart would break.

"I wouldn't mind so much," she explained to Honey-Sweet, "I wouldn't mind so much if I could have taken out one teeny piece of chocolate with the darling little silver tongs. I haven't had a box of candy for months and months. And, oh! Honey-Sweet, I read just three chapters in that beautiful book, and now I'll never, never know what became of that dear little boy."

At teatime Anne, red-eyed and unsmiling, met Miss Farlow on the stairs.

"Ah! Anne Lewis," said the lady, looking over her spectacles. "You are a generous child. I only asked and expected some old toys. It was generous of you to bring your pretty new gifts. But I hardly feel that you ought to give away the Christmas presents your friends selected for you to enjoy. I think you'd better take them back." Anne's face shone like the sun coming from behind a cloud. "Instead, you can give--oh! some old thing--give that rag doll to put in the box for the little orphans." The sun went under a dark cloud.

"Oh!" Anne faltered. Then she hurried on: "Can't no old orphans have Honey-Sweet. You keep the dominoes and the book and the handkerchief and the candy. And they may have my gold beads, too. But not Honey-Sweet.

I'd rather have her than Christmas. There--there's a lonesome spot she just fits in."

"You'd rather give away your pretty new things than that old rag doll?"

Miss Farlow was amazed.

"A million times!" cried Anne, hugging her baby fondly.

"What a queer child you are, Anne Lewis!" said Miss Farlow. "Well, well!

keep your doll, of course, if you wish."

Anne gave her an impulsive kiss. "Thank you, Miss Farlow! You are so good," she said.

The holidays over, the routine of daily life was resumed. The days and weeks and months pa.s.sed, busy with work and study. Anne welcomed the mild spring days which came at last and allowed out-of-door games.

During the autumn, the boxwood playhouse had been a place of delight to her and Dunlop and Arthur. Now, after a spring cleaning patterned after Mrs. Marshall's, she and Honey-Sweet again took up quarters there.

One Sat.u.r.day afternoon, however, Dunlop came strutting out in an Indian suit which his mamma had just bought him and announced that he was "heap big chief" and was going to have the boxwood for his wigwam.

Anne objected. She had found the treehouse and it was hers; the others were to play there all they pleased; but she would go straight home unless the boxwood was to remain, as it had always been, her "private property," as she proudly said.

For answer, Dunlop fitted an arrow on his bow and rushed in, yelling, "You squaw! This is my papa's place. You get out of my wigwam. Get out, I say."

Without a word, Anne gathered up Honey-Sweet and marched off, with her chin in the air. For a whole long week she did not come to 'Roseland.'

Worst of all, on Sat.u.r.day she played all afternoon with the other girls on the 'Home' grounds, without once looking over the hedge.

Arthur threw himself into Martha's arms. "I want my Anne," he sobbed, "I want her to come back. 'Lop's a bad, bad boy to make my Anne go 'way."

Shortly before teatime, Anne left the other girls and without seeming to see any one beyond the hedge, sat down just out of earshot and began to tell Honey-Sweet a story. This was more than could be borne. Arthur wailed aloud.

Suddenly Dunlop broke his way through the hedge, stopped just in front of Anne, and screamed: "It's your old house. You come on."

Anne looked at him but did not move.

He stamped his foot. "Please!" he shouted fiercely.

"Good and all? Private property?" asked Anne.

Dunlop nodded.

Anne rose. "We better go through the gap," she said in an offhand way.

"Miss Emma'll try to have me whipped if we break down the hedge."

Dunlop trotted by her side in silence. As they crossed the hedge, he slipped his grimy hand in hers. "Mamma says we are going to the country next week," he announced; "and I told her you'd have to go, too."

Indeed, Dunlop flatly refused to go away without Anne. He would not yield to coaxing and he scorned threats. His wishes finally prevailed and it was decided that Anne should go with them to spend the week-end and return to town with Mr. Marshall.

The little party left 'Roseland' one warm afternoon in June, and sunset found them all dusty and tired. Dunlop, sitting by his mother, absorbed her attention. Martha was on the seat behind, with Arthur on her lap.

Anne, beside her, was looking out of the window with a puzzled air. The willow-bordered river, the meadows and rolling hills, had a familiar appearance; this fresh, woodsy, evening fragrance was an odor she had known before; surely she had heard the names of the stations called by the porter.

"Lewiston!" he shouted at last.

Anne started. It was her own home station. As in a dream, she saw in the twilight the familiar red road shambling over the hills, the dingy little station with men and boys loafing on the platform, the houses scattered here and there among trees and gardens. It all came back to her. This was the route she and her mother had often travelled. A little way off was the water-tank set in a clump of willows by the roadside.

'Lewis Hall' was on the hill just beyond. In the deepening twilight, she could not see the square house among the trees.

A great longing for home possessed her. She slipped past Martha dozing with Arthur asleep in her lap; hardly knowing what she did, she ran to the rear of the car. The train was about to stop at the tank. Anne put her hand on the door-k.n.o.b. It resisted. A lump came in her throat. Again she tried the k.n.o.b. This time it yielded to her pressure. She stepped on the platform and closed the door behind her. As the train jerked and stood still, she almost fell but she quickly recovered herself and scrambled down the steps.

She stood in a well-remembered thicket of willows. A few steps away was a footpath--how it all came back to her!--winding among the willows.

Clasping Honey-Sweet close, Anne walked a little way down the path. Then she turned and looked back. The train was puffing and panting, lights were gleaming from its windows. There sat Mrs. Marshall, coaxing Dunlop, and there was Arthur cuddled in Martha's lap.

As Anne looked, the train moved slowly away, gathering speed as it went.

Its lights gleamed and faded in the darkness. It was gone. She gazed after it, with a queer tightness about her throat. Then she walked steadily down the footpath, across the meadow, through a gate, and along the hillside. On top of that tree-clad hill was her old home. From one well-remembered room, flickered lights that seemed to beckon and summon the homesick child.

CHAPTER XIX

Meanwhile, Anne was the innocent cause of trouble between Pat and his father. Mr. Patterson came back in the early summer to spend a few weeks with his son at the old home in Georgetown before midsummer heat drove them to mountains or seash.o.r.e.

The mansion was a roomy, old-fas.h.i.+oned house which his grandfather Patterson had built when Georgetown was a fas.h.i.+onable suburb of the capital. As Was.h.i.+ngton grew, fas.h.i.+on favored other sections, and the stately homes of Georgetown were stranded among small shops and dingy tenements. Some old residents, the Pattersons among the number, clung to their homes.

Mr. Patterson had been little at home since his wife's death. Every nook and corner of the house, her pictures on the walls, her books on the shelves, her easy-chair beside the window, called her to mind. How lonely and sad he was! His son was little comfort to him in his loneliness. Except on their ocean voyage, Pat and his father had not been together for three years and they had grown apart. Pat was no longer just a merry little chap, ready for a romp with his father. He was a tall, overgrown lad, absorbed in the sports and work of his school-world, at a loss what to say to the silent, reserved business man who made such an effort to talk to him.

One day, as they sat together at a rather silent dinner, a sudden thought made Pat drop his salad fork and look up at his father. "When is Anne coming, father?" he asked. "Where's her school? and when is it out?"