The Second Violin Part 5

"It's all my fault, Celia's knee," he said, going straight to the point, as was his way. His voice shook a little, but he went steadily on. "She sent me down cellar after pickles, and I sat on the top of the stairs finis.h.i.+ng up a banana before I went. I've been down there to look, and--and the banana skin was there--all mashed. It was what did it."

He choked, and turned away to the window.

"You left a banana skin on those stairs?" Lanse half-shouted.

"Yes."

"Right there, at the top--when Delia almost broke her neck more than once going down those stairs only last winter, just because they're so steep and narrow?"

Just nodded.

"And you fell on a banana skin once yourself, and wanted to thrash the fellow who left it!"

Just's chin sank lower and lower.

Lanse eyed him a moment, struggling with a desire to seize the boy and punish him tremendously. But as his quick wrath cooled a trifle in his effort to control himself and act wisely, something about Just's brave acknowledgment, where silence would have covered the whole thing, appealed to him. The thought of the way the absent father and mother had met every confession of his own that he could remember in a life of prank-playing softened the words which came next to his lips.

"Well, it's pretty bad," he said, in a deep voice of regret. "I don't wonder it breaks you up. Such a little thing to do so much mischief--and so easy to have avoided it all. I reckon you'll take care of your banana skins after this. But I like the way you own up, Just, and so will Celia. That's something. You haven't been a sneak in addition to being thoughtless. It would have been hard to forgive you if I had found it out while you kept still. It's pretty hard as it is," he could not help adding, as his imagination pictured Celia spending her winter as a cripple.

Just said not a word, but the outline of his profile against the fading light at the window was so suggestive of boyish despair that the elder brother walked over to him and laid a hand on his shoulder.

"It gives you a chance to make it up to her in every way you can," he said. "There are a lot of things you can do for her, and I shall expect you to try to square the account a little."

"I will! Oh, I will!" cried poor Just, who had longed for his mother in this crisis, and had found facing the elder brother, whom he both admired and feared, harder than anything he had ever had to do. "I'll do anything in the world for her, if she'll only forgive me."

"She'll forgive you, for she's made that way. It's forgiving yourself that can't be done."

"I never shall."

"Don't. If I thought you would, I'd thrash you on the spot," said Lanse, grimly, sure that a wholesome remorse was to be encouraged. Then he relented sufficiently to say in a tone considerably less severe:

"Go and wash up, and begin your good resolutions by getting down and seeing to the kitchen fire. It's undoubtedly burnt itself out by this time. There's probably no dinner for anybody, but we can't mind little things like that to-night."

He went to Celia's room at last, feeling many cares upon him, a sensation which an empty, stomach did not tend to relieve. He found his sister able to give him a very pale-faced but courageous smile, and to receive his earnest sympathy with a faint:

"Never mind, dear. Don't worry. It might have been worse."

"That seems to be everybody's motto, so I'll accept it. We'll take courage, and you shall have us all on our knees, since yours are laid up for repairs."

"You haven't had your dinner, Lanse," murmured Celia. She was suffering severely, but she could not relax anything of her anxiety for the family welfare.

"Oh, I forgot there was such a thing as dinner in the world!" cried Charlotte, and was hurrying to the door when Celia called her back.

"_Please_ wash that smudge off your face," she whispered, and covered her eyes.

CHAPTER IV

Coming down-stairs from Celia's room, Dr. Andrew Churchill made his way through what had now become somewhat familiar ground to the little kitchen. As he looked in at the door he beheld a slim figure in a big Turkey-red ap.r.o.n, bending over a chicken which lay, in a state of semi-dissection, upon the table. As he watched for a moment without speaking, Charlotte herself spoke, without turning round.

"You horrid thing!" she said, tragically, to the chicken. "I hate you--all slippery and b.l.o.o.d.y. Ugh! Why won't your old windpipe come out?

How anybody can eat you who has got you ready I don't know!"

"May I bother you for a pitcher of hot water?" asked an even voice from the doorway.

Charlotte turned with a start. Her cheeks, already flushed, took on a still ruddier hue.

"Yes, if you'll please help yourself," she answered, curtly, turning back to her work. "I am--engaged."

"I see. A congenial task?"

"Very!" Charlotte's tone was expressive.

"Did I gather that the fowl's windpipe was the special cause of your distress?" asked the even voice again.

Charlotte faced round once more.

"Doctor Churchill," she said, "I never cleaned a chicken in my life. I don't know what I'm doing at all, only that I've been doing it for almost an hour, and it isn't done. I presume it's because I take so much time was.h.i.+ng my hands."

She smiled in spite of herself as the doctor's hearty laugh filled the little kitchen.

"I think I can appreciate your feelings," he remarked.

He walked over to the table. "Get a good hold on the offending windpipe, shut your eyes and pull."

"I'm afraid of doing something wrong."

"You won't. The trachea of the domestic fowl was especially designed for the purpose, only the necessary attachment for getting a firm grip on it was accidentally omitted."

"It certainly was." Charlotte tugged away energetically for a moment, and drew out the windpipe successfully. The doctor regarded the bird with a quizzical expression.

"I should advise you to cut up the chicken and make a frica.s.see of it,"

he observed.

"I want to roast it. I've got the stuffing all ready." She indicated a bowlful of macerated bread-crumbs mixed with milk and b.u.t.ter, and liberally seasoned with pepper.

"I see. But I'm a little, just a little, afraid you may have trouble in getting the stuffing to stay in while the chicken is roasting. You see--" He paused.

"I suppose I've cut it open too much."

"Rather--unless you're a very good amateur surgeon. And even then--"

"I'm no surgeon--I'm no cook--I never shall be! I--don't want to be!"

Charlotte burst out, suddenly, beginning to cut up the chicken with vigorous slashes, mostly in the wrong places.