Other People's Business Part 21

"Well, Joel." Persis nodded affably, at the same time patting the baby which, frightened by the proximity of so many strange faces, was beginning to whimper. "As long as you're here, you might as well see about our trunks. Give Uncle Joel the checks, Algie. No, not that pocket. You put 'em in the right-hand one."

The crowd surged nearer and a piping voice made itself heard above the confusion. "Miss Dale, looks as if you was going to have lively times with all that company."

Persis cast a benignant gaze in the speaker's direction. She had never held curiosity in low esteem as do the more rigid moralists, acknowledging indeed, her full share of that characteristic. And moreover she was quite willing that her old friends and neighbors, the most of whom had congratulated her so heartily on her recent good fortune, should know of her latest acquisition.

"I guess we'll have a lively time all right, Mr. Jones, but these children ain't what you call company. I adopted the whole lot up to Boston, and every one of the five's a Dale, as hard and fast as the law can make 'em."

CHAPTER XV

A WOMAN AT LAST

Even if Joel's command of English had enabled him to express himself freely regarding his sister's latest acquisition, the opportunity was not immediately forthcoming. The demonstrations of five excited children, introduced into an environment entirely unfamiliar, proved absorbing to all the household. With the exception of the baby who clung shyly to Persis, refusing to leave her side, the new reinforcements to the Dale family at once organized exploring expeditions about the premises. Little feet clattered on the stairs and shrilly sweet voices announced discoveries from garret to cellar.

Joel, who had improved the first opportunity to withdraw to his own room, pushed the heaviest chair against the door in lieu of a key and sat in the chair. And though his k.n.o.b rattled a number of times, the investigations of the juvenile explorers ceased at his threshold.

When the summons of the supper-bell sounded through the house, Joel was uncertain whether to indicate his displeasure by remaining in his room or to present himself as usual, allowing Persis to see with her own eyes the condition to which her selfishness had reduced him. He decided on the latter course, not so much as a concession to his appet.i.te as because he feared that in Persis' present absorption, his absence would hardly be noticed. Wearing the expression becoming one stricken by the hand of a friend, he left his room and faced the invaders below.

The dining-room table had been extended to a length which carried his thoughts back to his childhood. The baby, a frail-looking child, between two and three, had not yet attained the dignity of a place at the table but sat in a high-chair at Persis' left and drummed with her spoon upon the adjustable shelf which served the double purpose of keeping her in place and supporting her bowl of bread and milk. The renaissance of the high-chair was responsible for a curious surge of emotion through Joel's consciousness. Persis herself had once occupied that chair and for a moment his sister's matronly figure at the head of the table was singularly suggestive of his mother. He dropped into his place with a hollow groan.

"Has he got a stomach ache?" inquired five-year-old Celia from the other end of the table. The echoing whisper was distinctly audible.

Betty, ten years old, pink, prim and pretty, blushed reproachfully at her new foster sister, while Mary, who was just bringing in the milk toast, was agitated by a tremor which imperiled the family supper.

"Sh!" Persis temporarily subdued the outbreaking of her new responsibilities by a lift of the eyebrows, and began to serve the milk toast with lavish hand. Joel waved away the plate Mary brought him.

"I can't eat that truck. Truth is I haven't got a mite of appet.i.te, but just to keep up my strength I'll take a soft-boiled egg. I've got to have something sustaining."

"Two eggs, Mary," said Persis to her hand-maid. "And give 'em just two minutes and a half." The order failed to attract the attention of Celia, absorbed at the moment in allaying the pangs of appet.i.te. It was not till the eggs were brought in and placed by Joel's plate that the irrepressible infant was roused to the realization of the enormity of the situation. She dropped her fork with a clatter.

"Oh, Aunt Persis, see what they've gone and done."

"What is it, child?"

"You said that little chickies came out of eggs." There was no further pretense of whispering on Celia's part. Her voice rose in a tragic wail. "And now he's going to eat up those eggs, and I wanted to save 'em to make chickies of. Oh, dear, dear!"

"'Tain't the right time of year for chickens, dearie," Persis explained soothingly. "We'll have plenty next spring." But Joel glanced at the objects which had called out Celia's protest with an air of extreme distaste.

"It's enough to take away a hearty man's appet.i.te," he complained. "I guess if my victuals are going to be grudged me, I'd better eat up-stairs."

"Don't gobble, Malcolm," said Persis, ignoring her brother's burst of ill temper and addressing the little lad on her right. "And tuck your napkin under your chin so you won't get anything on your blouse."

At this point the tactful Betty created a diversion by inquiring, "When shall we start going to school, Aunt Persis? Monday?"

"Looks to me as if to-morrow'd be the best day. It's my idea that if a thing's worth starting at all, you can't start too soon. Some folks save up their good resolutions for the first of the year, but it's a better way to begin right off as soon as you think of it. And then when the New Year comes, you're just that much ahead."

"I'm going to study awful hard," declared Algie, with an air of putting this good counsel to immediate application.

"Well, I'm not," announced Malcolm with equal decision. And then as Betty emitted a protesting and shocked murmur, he explained: "Of course I'll study some, but I've got to save the most of my strength for playing football when I'm big."

Joel pushed back his chair and took his egg cup from the table.

"I guess I'll go to my room, Persis," he said in a hollow voice.

"Maybe up-stairs where it's quiet, I'll be able to eat a little. And to-morrow you'd better have Mary make me some beef tea. I've got to have something to keep up my strength." Slowly and solemnly he mounted the stairs, convinced by the increased animation of the voices in the room below that his departure had not cast an irreparable gloom over the cheerful spirits of the diners.

This time he did not feel it necessary to barricade the door. Indeed he left it a trifle ajar, and so was party to the cheerful confusion of getting the children to bed. The baby--Amaryllis was her impossible name, though she looked too fragile to sustain its weight--was to share Persis' quarters. The two older girls occupied the chamber adjoining.

The two boys had been a.s.signed to a snug little room on the other side of the hall.

"Close by me so I can hear every mite of their rowdy-dow," Joel thought with bitterness. But in spite of himself he listened. The children were calling to one another across the hall. Apparently their previous acquaintance had been slight, and in addition to the excitement of finding themselves in a new environment, they were experiencing the more intoxicating novelty of becoming acquainted all at once with a fair-sized contingent of brothers and sisters.

"'Most ready for bed, children?" Persis' voice sounded rich and deep, contrasting with the piping chatter. "Time you was asleep, for to-morrow's a school day. And you've got to say your prayers yet."

"I said mine on the train coming down," explained Malcolm with his quaint drawl. "Thought I might as well save the time as long as there wasn't anything else to do."

"I've got a new prayer to say," announced Celia, flashing into the hall, a diminutive apparition, white-clad, with twinkling pink feet.

"It's this way:

"'Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool?

Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full.'"

"I think I can teach you a nicer prayer than that," Persis said serenely, while the older children laughed with the vast superiority of their wider knowledge. Joel uttered an exclamation of horror.

"Children are natural blasphemers. Persis ought to take that little limb [Transcriber's note: lamb?] in hand. If she don't know the difference between Mother Goose and praying, she ought to be taught quick. Old Doctor Watts was in the right of it.

"'Lord, we are vile, conceived in sin, And born unholy and unclean.'"

The murmur of conversation in the adjoining rooms died away. Once or twice after quiet descended, a little voice spoke out like the chirp of a drowsy bird, brooded over by mother wings. Persis went softly down the stairs. Joel waited long enough to make his advent impressive and followed her.

She sat as he had seldom seen her, thrown back in the roomy recesses of the big easy chair, her hands lying loosely in her lap. Her att.i.tude suggested the relaxation following fatigue. Her eyes were half closed, her lips smiling. An indefinable rapture radiated from her. All her life Persis Dale had been a resolutely cheerful person. But that consistent, conscientious optimism was as unlike her present lightness of heart as the heat of a coal fire, carefully fed and tended, differs from the gracious warmth of June.

Singularly enough the sight of her satisfaction stirred her brother to instant indignation. Up to this moment a sense of grievance had been upper-most. Now he found himself shaken by hot anger. The instinct of the male to dominate, outlasting the strength which sustains and protects, spurred him on to have his way with her, to master this madness which threatened the peace of his life.

"Persis," he began in a loud angry voice, "what's the meaning of this piece of tom-foolishness?"

She opened her eyes and looked at him. After her two weeks' absence, their longest separation in twenty years, she saw him almost as a stranger would have done, a slight, undersized man with a bulging forehead which told of nature's generous endowments, and the weak chin, explaining his failure to measure up to the promise of his youth. His disheveled hair and burning eyes gave an unprepossessing touch to the picture. But the maternal feeling, always uppermost where her brother was concerned, had been intensified by the children's advent. Persis felt for the moment the indulgent disapproval of a mother toward an unreasonable child.

"Why, Joel!" Her voice, with its new depth and richness, caressed the name it uttered. "What's foolish about it?"

The gentleness of her answer misled him. He felt a sudden thrilling conviction of his ability to bring her to terms.

"What's foolish about it? What ain't foolish, you'd better say. Looks to me as if you'd taken leave of your senses. Filling up the house with pauper brats."

The blood went out of her face. The smile lingered, but it had become merely a muscular contraction, like the smile on dead lips. The soul had left it.

"Yes," she said steadily. "It's true they're poor. But it's not for you to fling that in their faces. A man who's lived on his sister's earnings for twenty years."