The S. W. F. Club Part 2

"Certainly, dear."

"Then why don't they 'dwell together in unity'?"

"Patience!" Mrs. Shaw stared down at the sharp inquisitive little face.

"Why don't they?" Patience persisted. If persistency be a virtue, Patience was to be highly commended.

"My dear, who has said that they do not?"

Patience shrugged; as if things had always to be said. "But, mummy--"

"Go to sleep now, dear." Mrs. Shaw bent to kiss her good-night.

"All the same," Patience confided to the darkness, "I know they don't."

She gave a little s.h.i.+ver of delight--something very mysterious was afoot evidently.

Out on the landing, Mrs. Shaw found Pauline waiting for her. "Come into your room, mother, please, I've started up the fire; I want to tell you something."

"I thought as much," her mother answered. She sat down in the big armchair and Pauline drew up before the fire. "I've been expecting it all the evening."

Pauline dropped down on the floor, her head against her mother's knee.

"This family is dreadfully keen-sighted. Mother dear, please don't be angry--" and Pauline made confession.

When she had finished, Mrs. Shaw sat for some moments, as her husband had done, her eyes on the fire. "You told him that we could not manage it, Pauline?" she said at last. "My dear, how could you!"

"But, mother dear, I was--desperate; something has to be done for--Hilary, and I had to do it!"

"Do you suppose your father and I do not realize that quite as well as you do, Pauline?"

"You and I have talked it over and over, and father never says--anything."

"Not to you, perhaps; but he is giving the matter very careful consideration, and later he hopes--"

"Mother dear, that is so indefinite!" Pauline broke in. "And I can't see--Father is Uncle Paul's only brother! If I were rich, and Hilary were not and needed things, I would want her to let me know."

"It is possible, that under certain conditions, Hilary would not wish you to know." Mrs. Shaw hesitated, then she said slowly, "You know, Pauline, that your uncle is much older than your father; so much older, that he seemed to stand--when your father was a boy--more in the light of a father to him, than an older brother. He was much opposed to your father's going into the ministry, he wanted him to go into business with him. He is a strong-willed man, and does not easily relinquish any plan of his own making. It went hard with him, when your father refused to yield; later, when your father received the call to this parish, your uncle quite as strongly opposed his accepting it--burying himself alive in a little out-of-the-way hole, he called it. It came to the point, finally, on your uncle's insisting on his making it a choice between himself and Winton. He refused to ever come near the place and the two or three letters your father wrote at first remained unanswered. The breach between them has been one of the hardest trials your father has had to bear."

"Oh," Pauline cried miserably, "what a horrid interfering thing father must think me! Rus.h.i.+ng in where I had no right to! I wish I'd known--I just thought--you see, father speaks of Uncle Paul now and then--that maybe they'd only--grown apart--and that if Uncle Paul knew!

But perhaps my letter will get lost. It would serve me right; and yet, if it does, I'm afraid I can't help feeling somewhat disappointed--on Hilary's account."

Her mother smiled. "We can only wait and see. I would rather you said nothing of what I have been telling you to either Hilary or Patience, Pauline."

"I won't, Mother Shaw. It seems I have a lot of secrets from Hilary.

And I won't write any more such letters without consulting you or father, you can depend on that."

Mr. Paul Shaw's answer did not come within the allotted week. It was the longest week Pauline had ever known; and when the second went by and still no word from her uncle, the waiting and uncertainty became very hard to bear, all the harder, that her usual confidant, Hilary, must not be allowed to suspect anything.

The weather had turned suddenly warm, and Hilary's listlessness had increased proportionately, which probably accounted for the dying out of what little interest she had felt at first in Patience's "mysterious letter."

Patience, herself, was doing her best to play fair; fortunately, she was in school the greater part of the day, else the strain upon her powers of self-control might have proved too heavy.

"Mother," Pauline said one evening, lingering in her mother's room, after Hilary had gone to bed, "I don't believe Uncle Paul means answering at all. I wish I'd never asked him to do anything."

"So do I, Pauline. Still it is rather early yet for you to give up hope. It's hard waiting, I know, dear, but that is something we all have to learn to do, sooner or later."

"I don't think 'no news is good news,'" Pauline said; then she brightened. "Oh, Mother Shaw! Suppose the letter is on the way now, and that Hilary is to have a sea voyage! You'd have to go, too."

"Pauline, Pauline, not so fast! Listen, dear, we might send Hilary out to The Maples for a week or two. Mrs. Boyd would be delighted to have her; and it wouldn't be too far away, in case we should be getting her ready for that--sea voyage."

"I don't believe she'd care to go; it's quieter than here at home."

"But it would be a change. I believe I'll suggest it to her in the morning."

But when Mrs. Shaw did suggest it the next morning, Hilary was quite of Pauline's opinion. "I shouldn't like it a bit, mother! It would be worse than home--duller, I mean; and Mrs. Boyd would fuss over me so,"

she said impatiently.

"You used to like going there, Hilary."

"Mother, you can't want me to go."

"I think it might do you good, Hilary. I should like you to try it."

"Please, mother, I don't see the use of bothering with little half-way things."

"I do, Hilary, when they are the only ones within reach."

The girl moved restlessly, settling her hammock cus.h.i.+ons; then she lay looking out over the sunny garden with discontented eyes.

It was a large old-fas.h.i.+oned garden, separated on the further side by a low hedge from the old ivy-covered church. On the back steps of the church, s.e.xtoness Jane was shaking out her duster. She was old and gray and insignificant looking; her duties as s.e.xton, in which she had succeeded her father, were her great delight. The will with which she sang and worked now seemed to have in it something of reproach for the girl stretched out idly in the hammock. Nothing more than half-way things, and not too many of those, had ever come s.e.xtoness Jane's way.

Yet she was singing now over her work.

Hilary moved impatiently, turning her back on the garden and the bent old figure moving about in the church beyond; but, somehow, she couldn't turn her back on what that bent old figure had suddenly come to stand for.

Fifteen minutes later, she sat up, pus.h.i.+ng herself slowly back and forth. "I wish Jane had chosen any other morning to clean the church in, Mother Shaw!" she protested with spirit.

Her mother looked up from her mending. "Why, dear? It is her regular day."

"Couldn't she do it, I wonder, on an irregular day! Anyhow, if she had, I shouldn't have to go to The Maples this afternoon. Must I take a trunk, mother?"

"Hilary! But what has Jane to do with your going?"

"Pretty nearly everything, I reckon. Must I, mother?"

"No, indeed, dear; and you are not to go at all, unless you can do it willingly."

"Oh, I'm fairly resigned; don't press me too hard, Mother Shaw. I think I'll go tell Paul now."

"Well," Pauline said, "I'm glad you've decided to go, Hilary. I--that is, maybe it won't be for very long."