Honey-Sweet Part 9

"Whose are these things, Anne?" asked Miss Drayton, more sternly.

"Mine, mine, mine!" cried Anne. "Indeed, I'll tell you all about them when we get to Nantes."

"Anne! What do you mean? Nantes! What has Nantes to do with it? You are making my sister ill. See how pale she is!--Emily, dear Emily, don't look so troubled. If only I had taken the matter up with you alone, Mademoiselle Duroc!"

"I wish I could tell. I do wish I could," moaned Anne.

Entreaty and command were in vain.

"We shall have to let the matter rest for the present," said Miss Drayton, at last. "It has overtaxed my sister's strength."

"Never mind me," protested Mrs. Patterson. "I am troubled only for the child's sake. Oh, there must be some reasonable, right explanation of it all!"

"I hope so," said Miss Drayton, hopelessly.

Mademoiselle Duroc had taken no part in the conversation with Anne. Now she spoke: "Permit me to suggest that I prefer not to retain charge of a pupil that has the secrets and mysteries. Will madame be so good--"

"No, no, Mademoiselle Duroc!" interrupted Miss Drayton. "You will--you must--do us the favor to keep the child for the present, until my sister is stronger--until we are able to make other arrangements."

There was a pause. Then Mademoiselle said inquiringly, "These jewels, you will take charge of them?"

"No, oh, no!" said Miss Drayton, hastily. "Something may turn up--there may be some claimant--but she insists they are hers.--Oh, dear! oh, dear!--We will come back, Mademoiselle, when my sister is better and we will discuss the matter again."

But week after week pa.s.sed without bringing the promised visit. Instead, Anne received kind but brief and worried notes from Miss Drayton, enclosing the weekly pocket money. Now and then, there was a picture post-card from Mrs. Patterson, with a loving message to Anne or two or three lines to Honey-Sweet. The invalid was not improving. In fact, she was growing worse. So the days wore on till February.

One crisp frosty morning found Mrs. Patterson lying on a couch beside her window. In the foreground was a park-like expanse with trees showing their graceful branching in exquisite tracery against the clear blue sky. Beyond lay Paris, its red and gray roofs showing among the bare trees, with domes, spires, and gilded crosses cresting the irregular line.

"The view here is beautiful, is it not?" said Miss Drayton.

Mrs. Patterson did not move her eyes from the horizon line. "I was thinking of home," she said. "How beautiful it is there these February mornings! Our n.o.ble rows of elms and oaks and maples! Up the avenue, the domes of the Capitol and the Library are shining against the gray or gold or rosy sky. And there is the monument pointing heavenward. Oh, the broad streets, the merry, busy throngs of our own people! I should like to see it all again. Sarah, let us go home. I want--to be there--my last days."

Miss Drayton's eyes filled with tears, but she kept her voice steady: "It shall be as you wish, sister. We will go home," she said.

Leaving Pat and Anne at school, they made the home-going voyage, and Mrs. Patterson spent her last weeks in her beloved homeland.

CHAPTER XII

After her sister's death, Miss Drayton went with a cousin for a quiet summer in the Adirondacks. Before leaving, she had meant to talk to her brother-in-law about Anne, to tell him of her sister's wish to keep the child, and to say that she herself would take charge of the little orphan. But she was so tired! Life seemed very empty and yet she shrank from any new responsibility. So day after day pa.s.sed, and she went away without saying a word about Anne. After all, it would be time enough, she thought, when the children were brought back to America.

In his great new loneliness, Mr. Patterson's heart turned more than ever to his son; and he put aside business engagements and went, by the swiftest boat and the fastest train, to join Pat in Paris and bring him home.

Father and son met with a formal but hearty handshake.

"Howdy, dad."

"h.e.l.lo, son. How's your health?"

The French man-servant, looking on at this greeting, shrugged his shoulders. "My son and I would have given the kiss and the embrace," he commented to himself. "But they--how very American!"

'Very American' they both were. Mr. Patterson was a slim, alert business man, with a firm chin cleft in the middle, mouth hidden by a tawny, drooping mustache, deep-set gray eyes under a broad brow from which the brown hair was rapidly receding at the temples. Pat had his father's cleft chin, straight nose, and square forehead; but his mouth curved like his mother's and like hers were the hazel eyes and curly dark hair.

He was a st.u.r.dy, well-set-up young American, who played good football and excellent baseball and studied fairly well--not that he had any deep interest in books, for he meant to be a business man like his father, but his mother wished him to get good reports and a certain cla.s.s-standing was necessary to keep from being debarred sports.

Mr. Patterson was glad that Pat liked his school, glad that he did not like it so well as to regret going home. "After all, there is nothing like an American school for an American boy," he said.

"And baseball the way we play it at home is the thing," declared Pat.

They made plans for their voyage the next week, and then Mr. Patterson rose to go, saying he'd be in again, but couldn't tell just when, as he'd be pretty busy, examining some new motor machinery.

"Have you been to see little sister, father?" inquired Pat.

Mr. Patterson looked at his son without replying. How he had hoped there would be a little sister--that his home would ring with the music of young, happy voices! How sad and silent it was now! He pulled himself together as Pat impatiently repeated the question.

"Father, have you been to see little sister?--Anne Lewis, you know.

Mother said she was to be my little sister--and I must be good to her.

She's a number one little chap. Can throw a ball straight and can reel off dandy tales that she makes up herself. Don't you think she's cute-looking?"

"I haven't seen her, son," answered Mr. Patterson. "Fact is, I had really forgotten that child. I must see about her."

Anne, shy and silent always with strangers, entered the drawing-room slowly. She put her hand timidly into Mr. Patterson's, then sat down, very prim and uncomfortable, with her legs dangling from the edge of the chair and answered his questions in a shy undertone and the fewest possible words. Mr. Patterson was hardly less embarra.s.sed than she.

After he asked about her health and her studies, and how she liked school, and if she would be glad to go back to America, and told her that he had seen Pat and Pat had asked about her, there seemed really nothing else to say. It was a relief when Mademoiselle Duroc entered the room and asked if Anne might be excused to practise a marching song.

"I beg ten thousand pardons for the interruption," she said. "But monsieur understands, I am quite sure. The finals of school approach so rapidly and we would not have the pupils fail to do credit to the kind patrons."

"Of course, of course. That's all right," answered Mr. Patterson. "I wished to talk to you, anyway--about this child--" as Anne accepted the excuse and gladly departed. "Can you give me a few minutes now? Thank you.--I cannot say. I suppose the child has improved. I had not seen her before. She was alone on shipboard and my wife took charge of her.--Oh, no! there was no formal adoption. I shall take her back to America, of course. Her people may turn up or--or--I haven't decided what I'll do about her. I haven't really thought about it. Tell me what you can about the child, please."

Mademoiselle Duroc answered with careful details. Anne was clever, fairly studious, well-mannered, amiable, rather quick-tempered. The session marks had not been made out but they would show her standing good in most of her studies. Deportment excellent. "Her mark in that would be almost perfect were it not for the one affair. I refer to the jewel episode. One has informed monsieur of that?"

Mr. Patterson confessed his ignorance and Mademoiselle Duroc related the incident which we already know. No light had ever been thrown on the matter.

"Do you suppose she stole the things?" asked Mr. Patterson, bluntly.

Mademoiselle shrugged her shoulders and thrust the question from her with a sweeping gesture of both hands. "There has been nothing to prove--nothing to disprove. Absolutely. I look at that slim, small child sometimes and raise my hands to heaven in amaze."

Mr. Patterson rose. "Thank you. I have taken a great deal of your time.

You understand it was important for me to know about this child. My wife wished to adopt her. If she had lived--but without her I should hesitate under any circ.u.mstances; under these, I cannot undertake the responsibility. I will put the little girl in an orphanage in her native state. That is the best place for a child that needs oversight and--er--probably severe discipline. I have engaged pa.s.sage for the twelfth. I will send a cab for the child. You will have her ready?

Thank you. If you will mail me your bill to Hotel Amitie, it shall have prompt attention."

"Thank you, monsieur. If I am not to see you again, you will now take charge of the small packet, the jewels?"

"No, no, indeed." Mr. Patterson drew back.

"But madame directed me to keep them for the child if there arose no claimants," said Mademoiselle.