Sunny Slopes Part 17

And once in a while, not very often, David would say, smiling, "Who knows, Carol, but you two may some day do the things we two had hoped to do?"

A few weeks later Aunt Grace came out from Mount Mark, and in her usual soft, gentle way drifted into the life of the chasers in the sanatorium. She told of the home, of William's work and tireless zeal, of Lark and Jim, of Fairy and Babbie, of Prudence and Jerry. She talked most of all of Connie.

"That Connie! She is a whole family all by herself. She is entirely different from the rest of you. She is unique. She doesn't really live at all, she just looks on. She watches life with the cool critical eyes of a philosopher and a stoic and an epicure all rolled into one. She comes, she sees, she draws conclusions. William and I hold our breath. She may set the world on fire with her talent, or she may become a demure little old maid crocheting jabots and feeding kittens. No one can foretell Connie."

And Carol, in a beautiful, heavenly relief at having this blessed outlet for her pent-up feelings, reclined in a big rocker on the porch, and smiled at Aunt Grace, and glowed at David, and declared the sunny slopes were so brilliant they dazzled her eyes.

There came a day when she packed a suitcase, and petted David a little and gave him very strict instructions as to how he was to conduct himself in her absence, and went away over to the other building, and settled down in a pleasant up-stairs room with Aunt Grace in charge.

For several days she lounged there quietly content, gazing for hours out upon the marvelous mesa land, answering with a cheery wave the gay greetings shouted up to her from chasers loitering beneath her windows.

But one morning, she watched with weary throbbing eyes as Aunt Grace and a nurse and a chamber maid carefully wrapped up a tiny pink flannel roll for a visit to Room Number Six in the McCormick Building.

"Tell him I am just fine, and it is a lucky thing that he likes girls better than boys, and we think she is going to look like me. And be particularly sure to tell him she is very, very pretty, the doctor and the nurse both say she is,--David might overlook it if his attention were not especially called to it."

Three weeks later, the suit-case was packed once more, and Carol was moved back across the grounds to Number Six and David, where already little Julia was in full control.

"Aren't you glad she is pretty, David?" demanded Carol promptly. "I was so relieved. Most of them are so red and frowsy, you know. I've seen lots of new ones in my day, but this is my first experience with a pretty one."

The doctor and the nurse had the temerity to laugh at that, even with Julia, pink and dimply, right before them. "Oh, that old, old story,"

said the doctor. "I'm looking for a woman who can cla.s.s her baby with the others. I intend to use my fortune erecting a monument to her if I find her,--but the fortune is safe. Every woman's baby is the only pretty one she ever saw in her life."

Carol and David were a little indignant at first, but finally they decided to make allowances for the doctor,--he was old, and of course he must be tired of babies, he had ushered in so many. They would try and apply their Christian charity to him, though it was a great strain on their religion.

But what should be done with Julia? David was so ill, Carol so weak, the baby so tender. Was it safe to keep her there? But could they let that little rosebud go?

"Why, I will just take her home with me," said Aunt Grace gently. "And we'll keep her until you are ready. Oh, it won't be a bit of trouble.

We want her."

That settled it. The baby was to go.

"For once in my life I have made a sacrifice," said Carol grimly. "I think I must be improving. I have allowed myself to be hurt, and crushed, and torn to shreds, for the good of some one else. I certainly must be improving."

Later she thought, "She will know all her aunties before she knows me.

She will love them better. When I go home, she will not know me, and will cry for Aunt Grace. She will be afraid of me. Really, some things are very hard." But to David she said that of course the doctors were right, and she and David were so old and sensible that it would be quite easy to do as they were bid. And they were so used to having just themselves that things would go on as they always had.

But more nights than one she cried herself to sleep, craving the touch of the little rosebud baby learning of motherhood from some one else.

CHAPTER XIV

NEPTUNE'S SECOND DAUGHTER

"Chicago, Illinois.

"Dearest Carol and David--

"Carol, dear, an awful thing has happened. Do you remember the millionaire's son who discovered me up the cherry tree years ago when I was an infant? He comes to see me now and then. He is very nice and attentive, and all of my friends have selected the color schemes for their boudoirs in my forthcoming palatial home. One night he telephoned and said his mother was in town with him, and they should like to come right up if I did not mind. I did not know he was in town, I hardly knew he had a mother, and I was in the act of shampooing my hair. Phyllis was making candy, and Gladys was reading aloud to us both. Imagine the mother of a millionaire's son coming right up, and I in a shampoo.

"'Oh,' I wailed, 'I haven't anything to wear, and I am not used to millionaires' sons' mothers, and I won't know what to say to her.'

"'Leave it to us, Connie!' cried my friends valiantly.

"Gladys whirled the magazine under the bed, and Phyllis turned out the electricity under the chafing-dish and put the candy in the window to finish at a later date.

"Did I tell you about our housekeeping venture? Gladys is a private secretary to something down-town and gets an enormous salary, thirty a week. Phyllis is an artist and has a studio somewhere, and we are great friends. So we took a cunning little apartment for three months, and we all live together and cook our meals in the baby kitchenette when we feel domestic, and dine out like princesses when we feel lordly. We have the kitchenette, and a bathroom with two kinds of showers, and a bedroom apiece, though mine is really a closet, and two sitting-rooms, so two of us can have beaus the same night. If we feel the need of an extra sitting-room--that is, three beaus a night--we draw cuts to see who has to resort to the park, or a movie, or the ice-cream parlor, or the kitchenette. Our time is up next week and we shall return modestly to our boarding-houses. It is great fun, but it is expensive, and we are so busy.

"We have lovely times. The girls are--not like me. They are really society buds, and wear startling evening gowns and go places in taxis, and are quite the height of fashion. It is a wonder they put up with me at all. Still every establishment must have at least one Cinderella. But let me admit honestly and Methodistically that I do less Cinderelling than either of them. Gladys darns my stockings, and Phyllis makes my bed fully half the time.

"Anyhow, when Andrew Hedges, millionaire's son, telephoned that his mother was coming up, they fell upon me, and one rubbed and one fanned, and they both talked at once, and in the end I agreed to leave myself in their hands. They knew all about millionaires' sons' mothers, it seemed, and would fix me up just exactly O. K. right. Gladys and I are the same size, and she has an exquisite semi-evening gown of Nile green and honest-to-goodness lace which I have long admired humbly from my corner among the ashes. Just the thing. I should wear it, and make the millionaire's son's mother look like twenty cents.

"Wickedly and wilfully I agreed. So when the hair was dry enough to manage, they marched me into Gladys' room--the only one of the three capable of accommodating three of us--and turned the mirrors to the wall. I protested at that. I wanted to see my progress under their skilful fingers.

"'No,' said Phyllis sagely. 'It looks horrible while it is going on.

You must wait until you are finished, and then burst upon your own enraptured vision. You will enchant yourself.'

"Gladys seconded her and I a.s.sented weakly. I know I am not naturally weak, Carol, but the thought of a millionaire's son's mother affected me very strangely. It took all the starch out of my knees, and the spine out of my backbone.

"By this time I was established in Gladys' green slippers with rhinestone buckles, and Gladys was putting all of her own and Phyllis'

rings on my fingers, and Phyllis was using a crimping iron on my curls.

I was too curly already, but Phyllis said natural curliness was not the thing any more. Then Gladys began dabbing funny sticky stuff all over my fingers, and scratching my eyebrows, and powdering about twenty layers on my face and throat. After that, she rubbed my finger nails until I could almost see what they were doing to me. I never thought I had much hair, but when Phyllis got through with me I could hardly carry it. The ladies in Hawaii who carry bushel baskets on their heads will tell you how I felt. And whenever I moved it wabbled. But they both clapped their hands and said I looked like a dream, and of course I would have acquired another bushel had they advised it.

"I trusted them because they look so wonderful when they are finished,--just right,--never too much so.

"Our bell rang then, and Phyllis answered and said, 'Tell them Miss Starr will be in in a moment.'

"There is a general apartment maid, and when we wish to be very perfectly fine, we borrow her,--for a quarter.

"When I knew they had arrived, I leaped up, panic-stricken, and dived head first into that pile of Nile green silk and real lace. They rescued me tenderly, and pushed me in, and hooked me here, and b.u.t.toned me there, both panting and gasping, I madly hurrying them on, because I can't get over that silly old parsonage notion that it isn't good form to keep folks waiting.

"'There you are,' cried Gladys.

"'Fly,' shouted Phyllis.

"Out I dashed, recollected myself in the bathroom, and--yes, I did that foolish thing, Carol. Your vanity would have saved you such a blunder.

But I tore myself from their blood-stained hands, and went in to meet a millionaire's son's mother without looking myself over in the mirror.

"When I parted the curtains, Andy leaped to his feet with his usual quick eagerness, but he stopped abruptly and his lips as well as his eyes widened.

"'How do you do?' I said, moistening my lips which already felt too wet, only I didn't know what was the matter with them. I held out my hand, unwontedly white, and he took it flabbily, instead of briskly and warmly as he usually did.

"'Mother,' he said, 'I want you to meet Miss Starr.'

"She wasn't at all the kind of millionaire's son's mother we have read about. She had no lorgnette, and she did not look me over superciliously. But she had turned my way as though confident of being pleased, and her soft eyes clouded a little, though she smiled sweetly.

Her hair was silver white and curled over her forehead and around her ears. She had dimples, and she stuck her chin up like a girl when she laughed. She wore the softest, sweetest kind of a wistaria colored silk. I was charmed with her. It could not have been mutual.

"She held out her hand, smiling so gently, still with the cloud in her eyes, and we all sat down. She did not look me over, though she must have yearned to do so. But Andy looked me over thoroughly, questioningly, from the rhinestone pin at the top of the swaying hair, to the tips of my Nile green shoes. I tried to talk, but my hair wabbled so, and little invisible hair pins kept visibleing themselves and sliding into my lap and down my neck, and my lips felt so moist and sticky, and my skin didn't fit like skin, and--still I was determined to live up to my part, and I talked on and on, and--then, quite suddenly, I happened to glance into a mirror beside me. There was some one else in the room. Some one in a marvelous dress, with a white-washed throat, with lips too red, and cheeks too pink, and brows too black, some one with an unbelievable quant.i.ty of curls on top of her, and--I turned around to see whom it might be. n.o.body there. I looked back to the mirror. I was not dreaming,--of course there was some one in the room. No, the room was empty save we three. I turned suspiciously to Mrs. Hedges. She was still in her place, a smiling study in wistaria and silver gray. I looked at Andy, immaculate in black and white. Then--sickening realization.