Mother Carey's Chickens Part 6

"So they all went into Beulah Castle and locked the door behind them, and there they lived in great happiness and comfort all the days of their lives, and there they died when it came their time, and they were all buried by the sh.o.r.es of the shining river of Beulah!"

"Oh! it is perfectly splendid!" cried Kathleen. "About the best one you ever told! But do change the end a bit, Nancy dear! It's dreadful for him to marry Kitty when he chose Nancibel first. I'd like him awfully, but I don't want to take him that way!"

"Well, how would this do?" and Nancy pondered a moment before going on: "'Right you are, my hearty!' cries Prince Gilbert de Carey, 'and as we do need a hand at the silver-polishing I will gladly give my sister in marriage.'

"'Hold!' cries the Queen Mother. 'All is not as it should be in this coil! How can you tell,' she says, turning to the knightly stranger, 'that memory will not awake one day, and you recall the adoration you felt when you first beheld the Lady Nancibel in a deep swoon?'

"The Young Knight's eyes took on a far-away look and he put his hand to his forehead.

"'It comes back to me now!' he sighed. 'I did love the Lady Nancibel pa.s.sionately, and I cannot think how it slipped my mind!'

"'I release you willingly!' exclaimed the Crown Princess Kitty haughtily, 'for a million suitors await my nod, and thou wert never really mine!'

"'But the other lady rejects me also!' responds the luckless youth, the tears flowing from his eagle eyes onto his crimson mantle.

"'Wilt delay the nuptials until I am eighteen and the castle is set in order?' asks the Lady Nancibel relentingly.

"'Since it must be, I do pledge thee my vow to wait,' says the Knight.

'And I do beg the fair one with the golden locks to consider the claims of my brother, not my equal perhaps, but still a gallant youth.'

"'I will enter him on my waiting list as number Three Hundred and Seventeen,' responds the Crown Princess Kitty, than whom no violet could be more shy. ''Tis all he can expect and more than I should promise.'

"So they all lived in the yellow castle in great happiness forever after, and were buried by the sh.o.r.es of the shining river of Beulah!--Does that suit you better?"

"Simply lovely!" cried Kitty, "and the bit about my modesty is too funny for words!--Oh, if some of it would only happen! But I am afraid Gilbert will not stir up any fairy stories and set them going."

"Some of it will happen!" exclaimed Peter. "I shall dig every single day till I find the gold-pots."

"You are a pot of gold yourself, filled full and running over!"

"Now, Nancy, run and write down your fairy tale while you remember it!"

said Mother Carey.

"It is as good an exercise as any other, and you still tell a story far better than you write it!"

Nancy did this sort of improvising every now and then, and had done it from earliest childhood; and sometimes, of late, Mother Carey looked at her eldest chicken and wondered if after all she had hatched in her a bird of brighter plumage or rarer song than the rest, or a young eagle whose strong wings would bear her to a higher flight!

IX

GILBERT'S EMBa.s.sY

The new station had just been built in Boston, and it seemed a great enterprise to Gilbert to be threading his way through the enormous s.p.a.ces, getting his information by his own wits and not asking questions like a stupid schoolboy. Like all children of naval officers, the Careys had travelled ever since their birth; still, this was Gilbert's first journey alone, and n.o.body was ever more conscious of the situation, nor more anxious to carry it off effectively.

He entered the car, opened his bag, took out his travelling cap and his copy of "Ben Hur," then threw the bag in a lordly way into the bra.s.s rack above the seat. He opened his book, but immediately became interested in a young couple just in front of him. They were carefully dressed, even to details of hats and gloves, and they had an unmistakable air of wedding journey about them that interested the curious boy.

Presently the conductor came in. Pausing in front of the groom he said, "Tickets, please"; then: "You're on the wrong train!" "Wrong train? Of course I'm not on the wrong train! You must be mistaken! The ticket agent told me to take this train."

"Can't help that, sir, this train don't go to Lawrence."

"It's very curious. I asked the brakeman, and two porters. Ain't this the 3.05?"

"This is the 3.05."

"Where does it go, then?"

"Goes to Lowell. Lowell the first stop."

"But I don't want to go to Lowell!"

"What's the matter with Lowell? It's a good place all right!"

"But I have an appointment in Lawrence at four o'clock."

"I'm dretful sorry, but you'll have to keep it in Lowell, I guess!--Tickets, please!" this to a pretty girl on the opposite side from Gilbert, a pink and white, unsophisticated maiden, very much interested in the woes of the bride and groom and entirely sympathetic with the groom's helpless wrath.

"On the wrong train, Miss!" said the conductor.

"On the wrong train?" She spoke in a tone of anguish, getting up and catching her valise frantically. "It _can't_ be the wrong train! Isn't it the White Mountain train?"

"Yes, Miss, but it don't go to North Conway; it goes to Fabyan's."

"But my father _put_ me on this train and everybody _said_ it was the White Mountain train!"

"So it is, Miss, but if you wanted to stop at North Conway you'd ought to have taken the 3.55, platform 8."

"Put me off, then, please, and let me wait for the 3.55."

"Can't do it, Miss; this is an express train; only stops at Lowell, where this gentleman is going!"

(Here the conductor gave a sportive wink at the bridegroom who had an appointment in Lawrence.)

The pretty girl burst into a flood of tears and turned her face despairingly to the window, while the bride talked to the groom excitedly about what they ought to have done and what they would have done had she been consulted.

Gilbert could hardly conceal his enjoyment of the situation, and indeed everybody within hearing--that is, anybody who chanced to be on the right train--looked at the bride and groom and the pretty girl, and t.i.ttered audibly.

"Why don't people make inquiries?" thought Gilbert superciliously.

"Perhaps they have never been anywhere before, but even that's no excuse."

He handed his ticket to the conductor with a broad smile, saying in an undertone, "What kind of pa.s.sengers are we carrying this afternoon?"

"The usual kind, I guess!--You're on the wrong train, sonny!"

Gilbert almost leaped into the air, and committed himself by making a motion to reach down his valise.

"I, on the wrong train?" he asked haughtily. "That _can't_ be so; the ticket agent told me the 3.05 was the only fast train to Greentown!"