At the Little Brown House Part 33

"Did you go to see him?" chorused the sisters.

"Surely. I thought there might be a _chance_ of his extending the time on the mortgage, but--he wouldn't listen to me."

"Then we must lose the farm?"

"We have a month more before the mortgage is due, but I don't know where the money to pay is coming from. I am afraid--the farm--must go." She gasped out the words in such misery and despair that Peace found herself crying with the older sister across the hall.

"What will become of us?" choked Hope after a long pause.

"I--I don't know," murmured Gail, "unless you go to live with the neighbors until I can find something to do so I can get you all together again. It seems the village people have already talked this over among themselves."

"Did Peace tell you after all?" demanded Faith.

"No, I didn't! I never said a word!" cried Peace in great indignation, and the startled sisters beheld a frowzy head thrust from behind the closet drapery, and a pair of angry eyes glaring at them. "I won't go to live with the Judge nor Mr. Hardman, either. Len and Cecile tease me dreadfully, Hector I _predominate_ with all my heart and I can't abide Mr. Hardman. He isn't square. He shouldn't have given old Skinflint the _mordige_. It b'longs to us. Oh, dear, I'll never pick raspberries again! That bull has made more fuss than any other person I know."

Gail caught the shivering, sobbing child in her arms, wrapped a shawl around her, and sought to soothe her grief by saying gently, "There, there, honey, don't cry like that! You are shaking with cold. How long have you been in the closet, and why were you hiding there?"

"I heard you come in and I _had_ to see what was the matter. Oh, do say I won't have to go to the Judge or Mr. Hardman! I hate them both--"

"Peace," reproved Gail, "you mustn't speak so. I am sorry you have overheard anything about the matter. Mr. Hartman had a perfect right to sell the mortgage to Mr. Skinner, and under the circ.u.mstances we can't blame him. He wouldn't have done it if he could have helped it."

"What I can't understand," interposed Faith, with a deep frown disfiguring her forehead, "is why he waited this long before telling us."

"I guess he didn't relish breaking such news to us anyway, but he has been hoping right along that Mr. Lowe would be able to pay him for the note. Then he could buy back the mortgage, or loan us the money so we could meet it, which amounts to the same thing. Of course, it is barely possible that he will yet get the money in time, but we can't count on it at all. He was so broken up over the matter that he actually cried while he was talking to me."

"I sh'd think he would!" stormed Peace, who could not yet understand how their neighbor had any excuse for selling the mortgage; neither did she understand just what sort of a thing a mortgage is, but that it had something to do with money and their farm was perfectly clear.

"Isn't there someone we know who could loan us the money?" asked Hope, the hopeful, unwilling to accept the dark situation as it was presented.

"I can't think of a soul. Most of father's close friends were ministers, and they wouldn't be able to help us. We have no relatives living. We haven't anybody--"

"We have each other," whispered Hope; and Gail's clasp on the little form in her lap tightened convulsively as she wondered vaguely how much longer they could say those words.

"We have Mr. Strong, too," reminded Peace. "Maybe he knows how the money could be paid."

"I had thought of asking his advice, but of course it was too stormy tonight. We must wait until day."

"If he can't help us, ask him if he won't take me," said Peace, in her most wheedlesome tones. "I would rather live with him than with anyone else in the world if we have to break up our house. I thought he would like to have me, too, but Mr. Jones said he wanted Allee."

"Mr. Jones doesn't know anything about it. Don't fret, dearie! There may be lots of ways out of our trouble without our having to separate. I _hope_ so. We have a month to think and plan; but if we must scatter for a time among our kind friends, I trust we will all go bravely and do our best to please."

"But I _can't_ go to the Judge's, Gail! He's a perfect fury, gets mad at nothing, and chaws his mustache and glares so ugly I always listen to see whether he's going to growl like Towzer."

"He has the finest house in town," said Faith consolingly, "and a piano and a horse and buggy. He is going to have an automobile next summer."

"I'd rather live with nice folks than with pianos and nautomobiles,"

Peace interrupted. "I don't know what he wants of another girl, unless it is for Len and Hector to tease."

"I thought you liked Len?"

"He used to be nice, but since he's began going to scollege, he's horrid. He saw me yesterday morning in Cherry's dress, 'cause I tore my last clean one; and he bugged his two eyes out like he was awfully s'prised, and said, 'Mah deah child, yoah dress is too long! I don't like the looks of it.'" She mimicked the college dude's affected airs so perfectly that the three sisters shouted with laughter, forgetting for the moment their heavy burden of care.

"What did you say?" asked Faith curiously, although in her heart she knew that Len must have met his match.

"I looped my fingers up in circles like make-b'lieve eye-gla.s.ses, and said, 'Mah deah man, yoah hat is too tall and yoah pants ah too wide. I don't like the looks of them, but I am too p'lite to say so.'"

Another shout of mirth made the rafters ring, and the trio laughed till they cried, much to Peace's surprise, for the scene she had just depicted had caused her much indignation, and she could see nothing funny about it. "If you don't be stiller you'll wake the children," she warned them in her most grandmotherly tones, and they sobered quickly, remembering the ghost of trouble hovering over the little house.

For a long time they sat there in silence, each one busy with her own disturbed thoughts, unaware that the fire in the stove had died out, or that the chimes had long since struck midnight.

Suddenly Gail lifted her eyes from the hole in the carpet, at which she had been staring unseeingly, glanced at the old clock on the wall, and exclaimed, "Girls, it's a quarter to one! Fly into bed, every one of you! School keeps tomorrow just the same. Try to lay aside this trouble at least for tonight and get a little sleep. In the morning I will speak to Mr. Strong about it--"

"And remember to speak to G.o.d about it, too," murmured drowsy Peace, stumbling upstairs in front of the weary mother-sister.

CHAPTER XX

AT THE BROKER'S OFFICE

"This is Sat.u.r.day morning, Gail, and Mrs. Grinnell says I can go to Martindale with her if you will let me," said Peace, a few days after their midnight conference. She might have added that she herself had asked for the invitation, but for reasons of her own she made no mention of this fact.

Gail looked up from the pan of yeast she was "setting," and hesitatingly began, "Well--"

"I've wiped the dishes and fed the hens and dusted the parlor--"

"But I haven't swept the parlor yet," Gail protested.

"I can't help that. I have dusted," Peace answered, firmly. "If I had waited until you got ready to sweep, Mrs. Grinnell would have been gone."

Gail giggled in spite of her efforts to check the smile on her lips, and then soberly said, "But what about the eggs?"

"I have delivered my bunch already."

"Why, Peace, those baskets weren't full! What will Mrs. Abbott think?"

"Oh, I fixed that all right. There wasn't time to do much hunting for our own eggs, so I borrowed the rest of Mrs. Hartman."

"Peace Greenfield! What shall I do with you?" cried the older sister in utter discouragement, dropping her hands from her pan of mixing in a gesture of despair which scattered a cloud of flour over herself and the impatient pleader.

"Let me go with Mrs. Grinnell," was the prompt reply. "I won't be in your way all day, then; and while I am gone, the hens will have laid enough eggs to pay back Mrs. Hartman. I borrowed only five. Twenty-eight hens ought to be able to lay that many before I get back. The eight biddies I bought with the rest of my melon money could do better than that, Gail. Please say I can go!"

Perhaps it was the sight of the wistful little face, perhaps it was visions of a quiet day in which to attend to housework that won the desired permission; but at any rate Gail consented reluctantly, and Peace danced away to find the kind neighbor and report the sister's decision.

"My, but I'm glad," she hummed to herself as she scrambled into her best dress and flew out of the door into the warm autumn sunshine. "I thought she wouldn't let me go, and then I couldn't get the money. Oh, I am so glad, so glad!"

"Where are you going?" demanded a grieved voice, as Allee came through the barn door and caught a glimpse of her sister's best skirts under the flying coat.