Honey-Sweet Part 5

"Oh, no. He didn't beg. I am not frightened," Anne answered quickly.

"I'm going home now."

"If so be folks worrit you on the streets, a'lays holler for a cop,"

said the guardian of the peace. "We'll take care of you. That's what we're here for. And I've chillen of me own and a'lays look out partic'lar for the little ones."

"Thank you, thank you! Good-by."

Anne's disturbed looks would have excited comment, had her friends not been occupied with troubles of their own. The doctor in his visit that afternoon had urged Miss Drayton to go to Paris as soon as possible and put Mrs. Patterson under charge of the physician whom he had before recommended.

"If any one can help her, he is the man," said Dr. Foster.

"'If!' Is it so serious?" faltered Miss Drayton.

The doctor hesitated. Then he said: "We must hope for the best. Your sister may get on nicely."

"Is her throat worse?" asked Miss Drayton.

"I--er-r--I prefer to have you consult Dr. La Farge," replied the doctor.

It was resolved, then, to go to Paris at once. While Miss Drayton was packing, the American mail came in, and brought a letter from New York police headquarters. The officer, whose interest in the case had led him to push his inquiries as far as possible, wrote at length. In the investigation of the Stuyvesant Trust Company, accused of violating the Anti-Trust Law, certain business papers had been secured which proved that Mr. Carey Mayo had taken trust funds, speculated in cotton futures, lost heavily during a panic, and covered his misuse of the company's funds by falsifying his accounts. Evidently it had been a mere speculation not a deliberate theft. Mr. Mayo had been refunding larger or smaller sums month by month for a year. Had it not been for this investigation of the company's affairs, he might and probably would have replaced the whole amount and his guilt would never have been known.

When the investigation began, he made hasty plans to escape to Europe with his niece. Being informed that he was about to be arrested, he left the child on the steamer, as we know, and escaped--to Canada, the police thought.

A number of his acquaintances in the city had been interviewed. They had known Mr. Mayo for years, but only in the way of business and knew nothing of his family; one or two had heard him mention a sister and a niece.

The servants in his Cathedral Parkway apartment had been found and questioned. The cook had been with Mr. Mayo two years. He was "an easy-going gentleman, good pay, and no interferer." The year before, she said, he had gone to Virginia, summoned by a telegram announcing his sister's death, and had brought back his orphan niece, Anne Lewis. The cook had never seen nor heard of any other member of his family.

The police officer suggested that the child should be put in an inst.i.tution for the care of dest.i.tute children. He gave information as to the steps necessary in such a case and professed his willingness to give any further help desired.

Miss Drayton and Mrs. Patterson read and reread the letter.

"Well?" asked Miss Drayton.

"We'll not send her to an asylum, you know," said Mrs. Patterson, decidedly. "Unless her own people claim her, we will keep her. Anne shall be my little daughter."

So it was settled, and the family party went on to Paris. The great physician made a careful examination of Mrs. Patterson. He, too, was unwilling to express an opinion about her condition. He would prefer, he said, to have madame under treatment awhile at his private hospital, a quiet place in the suburbs.

It was promptly decided to accept Dr. La Farge's suggestion. Mrs.

Patterson's health being the object of their journey, there was no reason why they should winter in Nantes if in Paris she could secure more helpful treatment. It was resolved, therefore, to send Pat and Anne to boarding-schools while Mrs. Patterson and Miss Drayton put themselves under the doctor's orders.

"Oh! Aren't we going to Nantes?" asked Anne, when Miss Drayton informed her of the changed plans.

"No, Anne. I've just told you, we are all going to stay in or near Paris."

"Not going there at all? ever?" the child persisted.

"I don't know; probably not." Miss Drayton was worried and this made her tone crisp and impatient.

"O--oh!" wailed Anne, her self-control giving way before the sudden disappointment. "I want to go. I want to go to Nantes."

Miss Drayton was amazed. What ailed the child? Why this pa.s.sionate desire to go to Nantes, a city of which, as she owned, she had never even heard until she was told that it was their destination?

"Anne, Anne! For pity's sake!" said Miss Drayton. "Why are you so anxious to go to Nantes?"

But Anne only rocked back and forth, sobbing, "I want to go to Nantes! I want to go to Nantes!"

She had been counting the days till, according to her uncle's permission, she might tell her friends about seeing him. She felt sure they would explain the puzzling change in his appearance, and tell when she would see him again. Now, after all, they were not going to Nantes, and she must keep her secret alone, forever and forever. It was too dreadful!

CHAPTER VIII

Pat was sent to a boarding-school near Paris, and it was decided that Anne should attend St. Cecilia's School, a select inst.i.tution where American girls continued their studies in English and had lessons in French and music. Mrs. Patterson herself went to enter Anne as a pupil.

St. Cecilia's School faced a little park on a quiet street. It was a red-brick building, with balconies set in recesses between white stuccoed pillars. Everything about the place was formal and dignified.

The lower floor was occupied by parlors, offices, cla.s.s-rooms, and dining-rooms. Through wide-open doors at the end of the hall, Mrs.

Patterson and Anne had a pleasant view of the long piazza at the back of the house. It opened on a gra.s.s-plot edged with flowerbeds. The neat gravel paths ended in short flights of steps, under rose-covered archways, that led down a terrace to the playground.

While they waited in a handsome, formal parlor for Mademoiselle Duroc, Mrs. Patterson chatted pleasantly to Anne about the swings and arbors and pear-trees on the playground. But Anne sat silent, with a lump in her throat, and clutched her friend's hand tighter and tighter, while she watched for the princ.i.p.al's entrance as she would have watched for an ogre in whose den she had been trapped. At last--it was really in a very few minutes--Mademoiselle Duroc entered the room. While she talked with Mrs. Patterson, Anne regarded her with awe.

Like her surroundings, Mademoiselle was formal and handsome. She was of middle height, but she carried herself with such stately grace that she impressed Anne as being very tall. Her glossy hair, of which no one ever saw a strand out of place, was arranged in elaborate waves and coils supported by a tall sh.e.l.l comb. She wore a very long, very stiff black silk gown trimmed with beads and lace, and she had a purple silk shawl around her shoulders. When she moved, her skirts rustled in a stately fashion and sent forth a stately odor of sandalwood.

"I shall have to do whatever she tells me," Anne knew at once. "If she tells me to walk in the fire, I shall have to go."

That was the impression Mademoiselle Duroc always made on people. She was a born general, and if she had been a man and had lived a century earlier, she would have been one of the great Napoleon's marshals and led a freezing, starving little band to impossible victories;--so Miss Morris said. Miss Morris, a stout, middle-aged, New England lady, was Mademoiselle's a.s.sistant. She had a kind heart, but the girls thought her cross because she was always making a worried effort to secure the order and attention which came of themselves as soon as Mademoiselle entered the study-hall. When Miss Morris scolded--which was often, as Anne was to learn--her face grew very red and her voice very rough, and she flapped her arms in a peculiar way. Anne did not like to be scolded but she liked to watch Miss Morris when she was angry; it was strange and interesting to see a person look so much like a turkey-c.o.c.k.

Anne usually watched people very closely with her bright, soft, hazel eyes. Now, however, she was too frightened and miserable to raise her eyes above Mademoiselle's satin slippers, even to look at Miss Morris who came in to take charge of the new pupil.

"This is my borrowed daughter, for the winter at least," Mrs. Patterson explained, with her arm around the shy, excited child. "You will find her studious and you will find her obedient. I shall expect you to give her back to me next summer a very learned young lady."

Anne clung to Mrs. Patterson's hand like a drowning man to a raft.

"Don't leave me," she whispered imploringly. "Please take me back with you. Oh, please!"

"Dearie, I wish I could," her friend answered with a caress. "But I can't. My little girl must stay here now--and study--and be good."

Anne watched the carriage start off, feeling that it must, must, must turn and come back to get her. But it rolled out of sight under the archway of trees. Then Miss Morris took her by the hand and led her into a small office. She read a long list of things that Anne must do and a still longer list of things that she must not do. She called on Anne to read in two or three little books, and questioned her about arithmetic and history and geography.

Finally she escorted the new pupil to the dormitory. It was a large, spotless apartment which Anne was to share with five other American girls, some older, some younger, than herself. Each girl had her own little white bed, her own little white dressing-table and washstand, her own little white box with chintz-cushioned top, in which to keep her private belongings. Miss Morris called Louise, one of the maids, to unpack Anne's trunk. As the articles were put in her box and drawers and on her shelves and hooks in the dormitory closet, Miss Morris said: "Now remember where your shoes are, and keep them there."

"Do not forget to put your ap.r.o.ns always in that corner of the third shelf."

"The left-hand drawer of the dressing-table is for your handkerchiefs, and the right-hand drawer is for your hair-ribbons."

Anne sat by, with Honey-Sweet clasped in her arms, and meekly answered, "Yes, Miss Morris," or "No, Miss Morris," as the occasion demanded.

It was luncheon-time when the unpacking was finished and in the dining-room Anne met her five room-mates. Fat, freckle-faced, stupid Amelia Harvey and clever, idle Madge Allison were cousins in charge of Madge's older sister who was studying art. Annette and Bebe Girard were pretty, dark-eyed chatterboxes whose father was consul at Havre. Fair, chubby, even-tempered Elsie Hart was the daughter of a clergyman who was travelling in the Holy Land.

Anne, who had never in her life had to do a certain thing at a certain time, did not find it easy to adjust her habits to the routine of school life. Her morning toilette was especially troublesome. She tumbled out of bed a little behind time at Louise's summons and during each operation of the dressing period she fell a little farther behind. In vain Louise reproved and hurried her.