The S. W. F. Club Part 22

"But Patience would never dare--"

"Wouldn't she!" Pauline exclaimed. "Jim brought Bedelia 'round about eleven and when I came out a few moments later, she was gone and so was Patience. Jim's out looking for them. We traced them as far as the Lake road."

"I'll go hunt, too," Tom offered. "Don't you worry, Paul; she'll turn up all right--couldn't down the Imp, if you tried."

"But she's never driven Bedelia alone; and Bedelia's not f.a.n.n.y."

However, half an hour later, Patience drove calmly into the yard, Towser on the seat beside her, and if there was something very like anxiety in her glance, there was distinct triumph in the way she carried her small, bare head.

"We've had a beautiful drive!" she announced, smiling pleasantly from her high seat, at the worried, indignant group on the porch. "I tell you, there isn't any need to 'hi-yi' this horse!"

"My sakes!" Miranda declared. "Did you ever hear the beat of that!"

"Get down, Patience!" Mrs. Shaw said, and Patience climbed obediently down. She bore the prompt banishment to her own room which followed, with seeming indifference. Certainly, it was not unexpected; but when Hilary brought her dinner up to her presently, she found her sitting on the floor, her head on the bed. It was only a few days now to s.h.i.+rley's turn and it was going to be such a nice turn. Patience felt that for once Patience Shaw had certainly acted most unwisely.

"Patty, how could you!" Hilary put the tray on the table and sitting down on the bed, took the tumbled head on her knee. "We've been so worried! You see, Bedelia isn't like f.a.n.n.y!"

"That's why I wanted to get a chance to drive her by myself for once!

She went beautifully! out on the Lake road I just let her loose!" For the moment, pride in her recent performance routed all contrition from Patience's voice--"I tell you, folks I pa.s.sed just stared!"

"Patience, how--"

"I wasn't scared the least bit; and, of course, Bedelia knew it. Uncle Jerry says they always know when you're scared, and if Mr. Allen is the most up in history of any man in Vermont, Uncle Jerry is the most in horses."

Hilary felt that the conversation was hardly proceeding upon the lines her mother would have approved of, especially under present circ.u.mstances. "That has nothing to do with it, you know, Patience,"

she said, striving to be properly severe.

"I think it has--everything. I think it's nice not being scared of things. You're sort of timid 'bout things, aren't you, Hilary?"

Hilary made a movement to rise.

"Oh, please," Patience begged. "It's going to be such a dreadful long afternoon--all alone."

"But I can't stay, mother would not want--"

"Just for a minute. I--I want to tell you something. I--coming back, I met Jane, and I gave her a lift home--and she did love it so--she says she's never ridden before behind a horse that really went as if it enjoyed it as much as she did. That was some good out of being bad, wasn't it? And--I told you--ever'n' ever so long ago, that I was mighty sure Jane'd just be tickled to death to belong to our club. I think you might ask her--I don't see why she shouldn't like Seeing Winton, same's we do--she doesn't ever have fun--and she'll be dead pretty soon. She's getting along, Jane is--it'd make me mad's anything to have to die 'fore I'd had any fun to speak of. Jane's really very good company--when you draw her out--she just needs drawing out--Jane does. Seems to me, she remembers every funeral and wedding and everything--that's ever taken place in Winton." Patience stopped, sheer out of breath, but there was an oddly serious look on her little eager face.

Hilary stroked back the tangled red curls. "Maybe you're right, Patty; maybe we have been selfish with our good times. I'll have to go now, dear. You--I may tell mother--that you are sorry--truly, Patty?"

Patience nodded. "But I reckon, it's a good deal on account of s.h.i.+rley's turn," she explained.

Hilary bit her lip.

"You don't suppose you could fix that up with mother? You're pretty good at fixing things up with mother, Hilary."

"Since how long?" Hilary laughed, but when she had closed the door, she opened it again to stick her head in. "I'll try, Patty, at any rate,"

she promised.

She went down-stairs rather thoughtful. Mrs. Shaw was busy in the study and Pauline had gone out on an errand. Hilary went up-stairs again, going to sit by one of the side windows in the "new room."

Over at the church, s.e.xtoness Jane was making ready for the regular weekly prayer meeting; never a service was held in the church that she did not set all in order. Through one of the open windows, Hilary caught sight of the bunch of flowers on the reading-desk. Jane had brought them with her from home. Presently, the old woman herself came to the window to shake her dust-cloth, standing there a moment, leaning a little out, her eyes turned to the parsonage. Pauline was coming up the path, s.h.i.+rley and Bell were with her. They were laughing and talking, the bright young voices making a pleasant break in the quiet of the garden. It seemed to Hilary, as if she could catch the wistful look in Jane's faded eyes, a look only half consciously so, as if the old woman reached out vaguely for something that her own youth had been without and that only lately she had come to feel the lack of.

A quick lump came into the girl's throat. Life had seemed so bright and full of untried possibilities only that very morning, up there on Meeting-House Hill, with the wind in one's face; and then had come that woman, following the doctor down from the path. Life was surely anything but bright for her this crisp August day--and now here was Jane. And presently--at the moment it seemed very near indeed to Hilary--she and Paul and all of them would be old and, perhaps, unhappy. And then it would be good to remember--that they had tried to share the fun and laughter of this summer of theirs with others.

Hilary thought of the piece of old tapestry hanging on the studio wall over at the manor--of the interwoven threads--the dark as necessary to the pattern as the bright. Perhaps they had need of s.e.xtoness Jane, of the interweaving of her life into theirs--of the interweaving of all the village lives going on about them--quite as much as those more sober lives needed the brightening touch of theirs.

"Hilary! O Hilary!" Pauline called.

"I'm coming," Hilary answered, and went slowly down to where the others were waiting on the porch.

"Has anything happened?" Pauline asked.

"I've been having a think--and I've come to the conclusion that we're a selfish, self-absorbed set."

"Mother Shaw!" Pauline went to the study window, "please come out here.

Hilary's calling us names, and that isn't polite."

Mrs. Shaw came. "I hope not very bad names," she said.

Hilary swung slowly back and forth in the hammock. "I didn't mean it that way--it's only--" She told what Patience had said about Jane's joining the club, and then, rather reluctantly, a little of what she had been thinking.

"I think Hilary's right," s.h.i.+rley declared. "Let's form a deputation and go right over and ask the poor old soul to join here and now."

"I would never've thought of it," Bell said. "But I don't suppose I've ever given Jane a thought, anyway."

"Patty's mighty cute--for all she's such a terror at times," Pauline admitted. "She knows a lot about the people here--and it's just because she's interested in them."

"Come on," s.h.i.+rley said, jumping up. "We're going to have another honorary member."

"I think it would be kind, girls," Mrs. Shaw said gravely. "Jane will feel herself immensely flattered, and I know of no one who upholds the honor of Winton more honestly or persistently."

"And please, Mrs. Shaw," s.h.i.+rley coaxed, "when we come back, mayn't Patience Shaw, H. M., come down and have tea with us?"

"I hardly think--"

"Please, Mother Shaw," Hilary broke in; "after all--she started this, you know. That sort of counterbalances the other, doesn't it?"

"Well, we'll see," her mother laughed.

Pauline ran to get one of the extra badges with which s.h.i.+rley had provided her, and then the four girls went across to the church.

s.e.xtoness Jane was just locking the back door--not the least important part of the afternoon's duties with her--as they came through the opening in the hedge. "Good afternoon," she said cheerily, "was you wanting to go inside?"

"No," Pauline answered, "we came over to invite you to join our club.

We thought, maybe, you'd like to?"

"My Land!" Jane stared from one to another of them. "And wear one of them blue-ribbon affairs?"

"Yes, indeed," s.h.i.+rley laughed. "See, here it is," and she pointed to the one in Pauline's hand.