Just David Part 27

"And then?" prompted Jill.

"Well, then,--there wasn't much worth telling," rejoined Mr. Jack gloomily. "Two more years pa.s.sed, and the Princess grew to be twenty-one. She came into full control of her property then, and after a while she came back to the old stone house with the towers and turned it into a fairyland of beauty. She spent money like water. All manner of artists, from the man who painted her ceilings to the man who planted her seeds, came and bowed to her will. From the four corners of the earth she brought her treasures and lavished them through the house and grounds. Then, every summer, she came herself, and lived among them, a very Princess indeed."

"And the boy?--what became of the boy?" demanded David. "Didn't he see her--ever?"

Mr. Jack shook his head.

"Not often, David; and when he did, it did not make him any--happier.

You see, the boy had become the Pauper; you must n't forget that."

"But he wasn't a Pauper when you left him last."

"Wasn't he? Well, then, I'll tell you about that. You see, the boy, even though he did go away, soon found out that in his heart the Princess was still the girl, just the same. He loved her, and he wanted her to be his wife; so for a little--for a very little--he was wild enough to think that he might work and study and do great things in the world until he was even a Prince himself, and then he could marry the Princess."

"Well, couldn't he?"

"No. To begin with, he lost his health. Then, away back in the little house on the hill something happened--a something that left a very precious charge for him to keep; and he had to go back and keep it, and to try to see if he couldn't find that lost health, as well. And that is all."

"All! You don't mean that that is the end!" exclaimed Jill.

"That's the end."

"But that isn't a mite of a nice end," complained David. "They always get married and live happy ever after--in stories."

"Do they?" Mr. Jack smiled a little sadly. "Perhaps they do, David,--in stories."

"Well, can't they in this one?"

"I don't see how."

"Why can't he go to her and ask her to marry him?"

Mr. Jack drew himself up proudly.

"The Pauper and the Princess? Never! Paupers don't go to Princesses, David, and say, 'I love you.'"

David frowned.

"Why not? I don't see why--if they want to do it. Seems as if somehow it might be fixed."

"It can't be," returned Mr. Jack, his gaze on the towers that crowned the opposite hill; "not so long as always before the Pauper's eyes there are those gray walls behind which he pictures the Princess in the midst of her golden luxury."

To neither David nor Jill did the change to the present tense seem strange. The story was much too real to them for that.

"Well, anyhow, I think it ought to be fixed," declared David, as he rose to his feet.

"So do I--but we can't fix it," laughed Jill. "And I'm hungry. Let's see what there is to eat!"

CHAPTER XVIII

DAVID TO THE RESCUE

It was a beautiful moonlight night, but for once David was not thinking of the moon. All the way to the Holly farmhouse he was thinking of Mr.

Jack's story, "The Princess and the Pauper." It held him strangely. He felt that he never could forget it. For some reason that he could not have explained, it made him sad, too, and his step was very quiet as he went up the walk toward the kitchen door.

It was after eight o'clock. David had taken supper with Mr. Jack and Jill, and not for some hours had he been at the farmhouse. In the doorway now he stopped short; then instinctively he stepped back into the shadow. In the kitchen a kerosene light was burning. It showed Mrs.

Holly crying at the table, and Mr. Holly, white-faced and stern-lipped, staring at nothing. Then Mrs. Holly raised her face, drawn and tear-stained, and asked a trembling question.

"Simeon, have you thought? We might go--to John--for--help."

David was frightened then, so angry was the look that came into Simeon Holly's face.

"Ellen, we'll have no more of this," said the man harshly. "Understand, I'd rather lose the whole thing and--and starve, than go to--John."

David fled then. Up the back stairs he crept to his room and left his violin. A moment later he stole down again and sought Perry Larson whom he had seen smoking in the barn doorway.

"Perry, what is it?" he asked in a trembling voice. "What has happened--in there?" He pointed toward the house.

The man puffed for a moment in silence before he took his pipe from his mouth.

"Well, sonny, I s'pose I may as well tell ye. You'll have ter know it sometime, seein' as 't won't be no secret long. They've had a stroke o'

bad luck--Mr. an' Mis' Holly has."

"What is it?"

The man hitched in his seat.

"By sugar, boy, I s'pose if I tell ye, there ain't no sartinty that you'll sense it at all. I reckon it ain't in your cla.s.s."

"But what is it?"

"Well, it's money--and one might as well talk moonshine to you as money, I s'pose; but here goes it. It's a thousand dollars, boy, that they owed. Here, like this," he explained, rummaging his pockets until he had found a silver dollar to lay on his open palm. "Now, jest imagine a thousand of them; that's heaps an' heaps--more 'n I ever see in my life."

"Like the stars?" guessed David.

The man nodded.

"Ex-ACTLY! Well, they owed this--Mr. an' Mis' Holly did--and they had agreed ter pay it next Sat'day. And they was all right, too. They had it plum saved in the bank, an' was goin' ter draw it Thursday, ter make sure. An' they was feelin' mighty pert over it, too, when ter-day along comes the news that somethin's broke kersmash in that bank, an' they've shet it up. An' nary a cent can the Hollys git now--an' maybe never.

Anyhow, not 'fore it's too late for this job."

"But won't he wait?--that man they owe it to? I should think he'd have to, if they didn't have it to pay."

"Not much he will, when it's old Streeter that's got the mortgage on a good fat farm like this!"

David drew his brows together perplexedly.