Cloudy Jewel Part 11

The gentle-faced minister came and spoke to them, and welcomed them to the church, although Allison told him quite curtly that they were only pa.s.sing through the town; but Julia Cloud trod the neat brown ingrain carpet of the aisle as if it were golden pavement.

"Of all the stupid places!" said Allison as they got into the car.

"What do they have prayer meetings for, anyway? Did you manage to keep awake, Cloudy?"

And suddenly like a pall there fell upon Julia Cloud's bright soul the realization that these children did not, would not, feel as she did about such things. They had probably never been taught to love the house of G.o.d, and how was she ever to make them see? Perhaps it had been prosy and dull to one who did not hear the Lord's voice behind the Bible words. Perhaps the old minister had been long and tiresome, and the children were weary with the journey and sleepy; she ought not to have let them stop now; and she began to say how sorry she was.

But, when they saw from her words that she had really enjoyed that dull little meeting, they were silent.

"Well, Cloudy, I'll hand it to you," said Allison at last. "If you could stand that meeting and enjoy it, you're some Christian! But I'm glad for one that we went if you liked it; and I guess, if you can go a football game now and then, I ought to be able to stand a prayer meeting. So now here goes for seeing the town. It's only nine o'clock, and I believe that's the college up there on the hill where all those lights are. Shall we drive up there?"

The car slipped through the pleasant evening streets, turning a corner, slowing up at a crossing to take a view of the town, and keeping all the time in view the cl.u.s.ters of lights on the hill, which Allison conceived to be the college. Suddenly Leslie leaned forward, and cried:

"O Allison, stop! Stop! There it is, just there on the right. And it's for sale, too! Oh, let's get right out and get the name of the agent, so we won't lose it again."

Allison stopped the car suddenly, and turned to look. There in the full blaze of an electric arc-light, nestled among shrubbery and tall trees, with a smooth terrace in front, was a beautiful little cottage of white stone, with a pink roof, and windows everywhere.

"Why, that's not the college, Les; what's the matter with you?" said Allison, putting his hand on the starter again. "Better wake up. Don't you know a college when you don't see one?"

"College nothing!" said his sister. "That's our house. That's our _home_, Allison. The very house I've dreamed of. It looks a little like the houses in California, and it is the very thing. Now, there's no use; you've got to get out and get that agent's name, or I'll jump out myself, and get lost, and walk the rest of the way!"

"It is lovely!" said Julia Cloud, leaning over to look. "But it looks expensive, and you wouldn't want to _buy_ a house, you know, dear; for you might not stay."

"Oh, yes, we would if we liked it. And, besides, houses can be sold again when you get done with them, though I'd never want to sell that!

It's a perfect little duck. Allison, will you get out or shall I?"

"Oh, I'm game," said Allison, getting out and jumping the hedge into the pretty yard.

He took out his pencil, and wrote down the address in his note-book, stepped up the terrace and glanced about, then went close to the street sign, and found out what corner it was near.

"It is a pippin, sure thing," he said as he sprang into the car again; "but, Leslie, for the love of Mike, don't find any more houses to-night! I'm hungry as a bear. That prayer meeting was one too many for me; I'm going to make for the nearest restaurant; and then, if you want to go house-hunting after that, all right; but I'm going to find the eats first."

They asked a group of boys where the restaurant was, and one pointed to an open door from which light was streaming forth.

"There's the pie-shop," they said, and the party descended hungry and happy with the delicious uncertainty of having found a dream of a house in the dark, and wondering what it would turn out to be in the daytime. They inquired the way to the inn, and decided to stop further investigations until morning.

CHAPTER X

They were all very weary, and slept well that night; but, strange to say, Allison, who was the sleepy-head, awoke first, and was out looking the town over before the others had thought of awaking. He came back to breakfast eager and impatient.

"We don't need to go any farther," he declared. "It's a peach of a place. There's a creek that reaches up in the woods for miles; and they have canoes and skating and a swimming-hole; and there are tennis-courts everywhere; and it's only eleven miles from the city. I say we just camp here, and not bother about going on to the other place. I'm satisfied. If that house is big enough, it's just the thing."

"But have you been to the college?"

"No, but I asked about it. They have intercollegiate games and frats, and I guess it's all right. It has a peach of a campus, too, and a Carnegie library with chimes----"

"Well, but, dear, you aren't going to college just for those things."

"Oh, the college'll be all right. Guardy wouldn't have suggested it if it wasn't. But we'll go up there this morning and look around."

"Now, children, don't get your heart set on it before you know all about it. You know that house may be quite impossible."

"Now, Cloudy!" put in Leslie. "You know Allison told you you were a good sport. You mustn't begin by preaching before you find out. If it isn't all right, why, of course we don't want it; so let's have the fun of thinking it is till we prove it isn't--or it is."

Julia Cloud looked into the laughing, happy eyes, and yielded with a smile.

"Of course," she said, "that's reasonable. I'm agreed to that. But there's one thing: you know we're bound to go on to the other college, because Mr. Luddington expects us; and we can come back here again if we like this better."

"Oh, we can wire him to come here," said Leslie. "Now, let's go! First to that house, please, because I'm so afraid somebody will buy it before we get the option on it. I've heard that houses are very scarce in the East just now, and people are snapping them up. I read that on the back of that old man's paper at the next table to ours this morning."

All three of them having the hearts of children, they went at once to hunt up the agent before ever they got even a glimpse of the halls of learning standing brave and fair on the hillside in the morning sunshine. "Because there are plenty more colleges," said Leslie; "but there is only one home for us, and I believe we've found it, if it looks half as pretty in the daylight as it did at night."

It took only a few minutes to find the agent and get the key of the house, and presently they were standing on the terrace gazing with delight at the house.

It was indeed a lovely little dwelling. It was built of stone, and then painted white, but the roof and gables were tiled with great pink tiles, giving an odd little foreign look to it, something like Anne Hathaway's cottage in general contour, Leslie declared.

The top of the terrace was pink-tiled, too, and all the porches were paved with tiles. The house itself seemed filled with windows all around. Allison unlocked the door, and they exclaimed with pleasure as he threw it wide open and they stepped in. The sunshine was flooding the great living-room from every direction, it seemed. To begin with, the room was very large, and gave the effect of being a sun-parlor because of its white panelled walls and its many windows. Straight across from the front door on the opposite side of the room opened a small hallway or pa.s.sage with stairs leading up to a platform where more windows shed a beautiful light down the stairs on walls papered with strange tropical birds in delicate old-fashioned tracery.

To the right through a wide white arch from the living-room was a charming white dining-room with little, high, leaded-paned windows over the spot for the sideboard and long windows in front.

To the left was an enormous stone fireplace with high mantel-shelf of stone and the chimney above. The fire-opening was wide enough for an old Yule log, and on either side of it were double gla.s.s doors opening into a long porch room, which also had a fireplace on the opposite side of the chimney, and was completely shut in by long cas.e.m.e.nt windows.

Up-stairs there were four large bedrooms and a little hall room that could be used for a sewing-room or den, or an extra bedroom, besides a neat little maid's room in a notch on the half-way landing, and two bathrooms, white-tiled and delightful, tucked away in between things.

Then Leslie opened a gla.s.s door in the very prettiest room of all, which she and Allison immediately decided must belong to their aunt, and exclaimed in delight; for here nestled between the gables, with a tiled wall all about it, was a delightful housetop or uncovered porch, so situated among the trees that it was entirely shut in from the world.

It was perfect! They stood and looked at one another in delight, and for the time the college was forgotten. Then Allison dashed away, and came back eagerly almost immediately.

"There's a garage!" he said, "just behind the kitchen, a regular robin's nest of a one, white with pink tiles just like the house, and a pebbled drive. Say, it must be some fool of a guy that would sell this. Isn't it just a crackerjack?"

"My dear," put in Julia Cloud, "it can't help being very expensive----"

"Now, Cloudy, remember!" said Leslie, holding up her finger in mock rebuke. "Just wait and see! And, anyhow, you don't know Guardy Lud. If he could see us located in a peach of a home like this, he'd go back to his growley old dear of a wife with happy tears rolling down his nice old cheeks. Allison, you go talk to that agent, and you give him a hundred dollars if you've got it left--here, I guess I've got some, too--just to bind the bargain till Guardy gets here. And say, you go see if you can't get Guardy on the 'phone. I don't want to go a step farther. Couldn't you be happy here, Cloudy, with that fireplace, and that prayer meeting to go to? I wouldn't mind going with you sometimes when I didn't have to study."

Julia Cloud stooped, and kissed the eager face, and whispered, "Very happy, darling!"

And then they went to the agent again and the telephone.

"Guardy Lud" proved himself quite equal to the occasion by agreeing to come on at once and approve their choice, and promised to be there before evening.

"I knew he would," said Leslie happily, as they seated themselves in the car again for the pleasant run to the college.

They found the dean in his office, and Allison was taken with him at once.

"He isn't much like that musty little guy in the other college. He looked like a wet hen!" growled Allison in a low tone to his sister and aunt, while the dean was out in the hall talking to a student. "I like him, don't you?" and Julia Cloud sat wondering what the boy's standards could be that he could judge so suddenly and enthusiastically. Yet she had to admit herself that she liked this man, tall and grave with a pleasant twinkle hidden away in his wine-brown eyes and around the corners of his firm mouth. She felt satisfied that here was a man who would be both wise and just.

They made the rounds of the college buildings and campus with growing enthusiasm, and then drove back to the inn to lunch with hearty appet.i.tes.