In Apple-Blossom Time Part 5

"No, no, I'm not, Ben," put in Miss Mehitable hastily. "I couldn't leave Charlotte alone for Sunday dinner; but"--she looked at Mrs. Barry--"I do want to see Ben about something and he promised me a little time this afternoon."

"Mehit got into trouble yesterday," Ben explained to his mother.

"Somebody tried to rob her of her notions and she beaned him with her umbrella. She's scared to death and she wants to consult the law." The speaker delivered a blow on his chest.

"I know you hate to spare him the little time he's home, Mrs. Barry,"

said Miss Upton apologetically; "but I'll keep him only a short time and--and I couldn't hardly sleep last night, though it ain't any o' my business, _really_."

"It's a good business if you're in it, I know that," said Mrs. Barry kindly, "and I'll lend you Ben with pleasure if he can do you any good!"

"Then when will you be over, Ben?" asked Miss Mehitable anxiously. "I'd like to know just when to expect you."

"You don't tr-r-ust me, that's what's the matter," he returned. "Will you promise to muzzle Merry Sunshine?"

"I--I think perhaps Charlotte will go out to walk," returned Miss Upton, somewhat troubled herself to know how to insure privacy in her restricted domain. "She does, sometimes, Sundays."

"How does it affect the Keefe springtime to have her walk out in it?"

inquired Ben solicitously.

"I'll tell you, Ben," said his mother, sympathetic with the anxiety in Miss Mehitable's face, "bring Miss Upton over to see our apple-blossoms, and you can have your talk at our house."

Relief overspread Miss Upton's round countenance.

"Certainly. I'll call for you at three," said Ben, "Blackstone under my arm. If Merry Sunshine attacks me it will be a trusty weapon. Hop into the car, Mehit, and we'll run you home."

Mrs. Barry laughed. "The sermon doesn't seem to have done him any good this morning, Miss Upton. We shall be glad to take you home."

CHAPTER IV

The Good Fairy

So again Mrs. Whipp saw her friend and employer descend from the Barry car.

She didn't open the door for her this time, but sat, rocking, in the shop with Pearl in her lap, and sniffed at her as she entered.

"You and your fine friends," she scoffed. "Pretty soon you won't demean yourself to use the trolley at all."

"If you had only been willing to come to church, Charlotte, they'd have brought you home, too," said Miss Mehitable, hoping she was telling the truth.

"'The Sabbath was made for man,'" snapped Mrs. Whipp, "not man for the Sabbath, to go and hear that man talk through his nose!"

"Now, Charlotte, I refused to go home to dinner with them just so's you and I could have our meal together; so don't you make me sorry."

Mrs. Whipp had started up at once alertly on her friend's entrance, spilling Pearl, and was already removing Miss Mehitable's jacket and hat with deft fingers and receiving the silk gloves she pulled off.

"H'm, I don't believe they'll eat any better things than we're goin' to have. How can I go to church and have us a good hot dinner?"

"Sunday dinner should be cold mainly," returned Miss Upton calmly. "Mine always was till you came. Of course you're such a splendid cook, Charlotte, it's kind of a temptation to you to spoil me and feed me up, yet you know I ought not to eat much."

"Oh, pshaw," returned Mrs. Whipp. "More folks die from the lack o' good things than from eatin' 'em."

"You'll have to look out," said Miss Mehitable warningly, following her friend's lead to the sunny living-room where the table was spread. "It's a sayin' that good cooks are always cross. The better you cook the more you must watch to have your temper as sweet as your sauces."

"Ho! Vinegar's just as important as oil," retorted the other. "You're so smooth to everybody it's a good thing I came to live with you and keep you from bein' imposed upon."

Miss Mehitable laughed. "You think together we make a pretty good salad, do you?" she returned.

When dinner was on the table and they were both seated, Miss Upton spoke again:

"I wonder how you're goin' to like it to the port?" she said.

"Awful rheumatic, I sh'd think 'twould be," returned Mrs. Whipp.

"Pretty soon we'll have to be goin'," said Miss Upton. "I usually lock everything up here tight as a drum for three months. I was talkin' to a man in town yesterday that thought it was a joke that folks in Keefe just went a few miles to their seash.o.r.e cottages. He was from Chicago where you have to go a thousand miles to get anywhere. I told him I couldn't see anything funny about it. Keefe was a village and Keefeport was a resort; but he kept on laughin' and said it was like lockin' the door of one home and goin' across the street to another, then back again in the fall. I told him I was full as satisfied as I would be to have to make my way through Indians and buffaloes to get anywhere as you have to in those wild Western cities. He claimed that it was perfectly civilized around Chicago now; but of course he'd say that."

"H'm," returned Mrs. Whipp, non-committally.

"Now I was thinkin', Charlotte, that there ain't a reason in the world why you should go to the port if you don't want to. You can stay right here and look after the house. I shall move the shop goods just as I always do to my little port place."

"You don't get along there alone, do you?" asked Charlotte hastily.

"No; one o' the schoolgirls is always glad to live with me in vacation and work for her board. I had Nellie McIntyre last summer."

"Oh, of course, if you'd rather have Nellie."

"I wouldn't," said Miss Upton calmly; "but she don't have rheumatism nor mind the dampness. She thinks it's a great chance to be to the sh.o.r.e and swim every day, and she's happy as a bird from mornin' till night. If she ain't to go this year, I must let the child know, for I expect she's lottin' on it."

The silence that followed this was broken only by the purring of Pearl who had established herself upon a broad beam of sunshine which lay across the ingrain carpet. Miss Mehitable was recklessly extravagant of carpets in Mrs. Whipp's opinion. She would not allow the shutting-out of the sunlight.

Miss Upton drank her tea busily now to conceal her desire to smile. Some of Ben Barry's comments upon her companion returned to her irresistibly; for she easily followed Charlotte's present mental processes.

Mrs. Whipp was in a most uncomfortable corner and her friend had driven her into it with such bland kindness that it made the situation doubly difficult. There was nothing Charlotte could resent in being offered a summer of ease in the Keefe cottage; but to be confronted with the alternatives of renouncing all right to complain of fog and storm, or else to part from Miss Mehitable and allow her to run her own life and notions for the whole summer, was a dilemma which drove her also to drinking a great deal of tea, and leaving the floor to Pearl for some minutes.

Miss Upton did not help her out, but, regaining control of her risibles, continued to eat and drink placidly, allowing her companion to cerebrate.

Well she knew that now was the time to defend herself from a summer of grumbling as continuous as the swish of waves on the sh.o.r.e; and well she knew also her companion's verbally unexpressed but intense devotion to herself which made any prospect of their separation a panic. So she waited and Pearl purred.

One Mr. Lugubrious Blue flits through the drawings of a certain famous cartoonist. Mr. Blue's mission is to take the joy out of life and Charlotte Whipp was his blood kin. The tip of her long nose was as chilly as his and her gloom was similarly chronic. Miss Upton was determined that she would not be the first to break in upon Pearl's solo.

Finally Charlotte spoke:

"Do the Barrys have a house to the port?"

"Yes, a real cottage. The rest of us have shelters, but you can't call 'em houses."

Mrs. Whipp looked up apprehensively. "Do you mean they let in the rain?"