The Camerons of Highboro Part 18

A low, flat rock invited her and she sat down. It was queer how different everything seemed up here. What looked large from below had dwindled amazingly. It took, she decided, a pretty big thing to look big on a hilltop.

She drew Aunt Margaret's letter out of her pocket and read it. It was very nice, but somehow had no tug to it. Phrases from a similar letter of Aunt Jessica's returned to the girl's mind. How stupid she had been not to appreciate that letter!--stupid and incredibly silly.

But hadn't she felt something else in her pocket just now? Conscience p.r.i.c.ked when she saw Elizabeth Royce's handwriting. The seal had not been broken, though the letter had come yesterday. She remembered now.

They were putting up corn and she had tucked it into her pocket for later reading and then had forgotten it completely. Luckily, Bess need never know that. But what would Bess have said to see her friend Elliott, corn to the right of her, corn to the left of her, cobs piled high in the summer kitchen?

Bess's staccato sentences furnished a sufficiently emphatic clue. "You poor, abused dear! Whenever are you coming home? If I had an aeroplane I'd fly up and carry you off. You must be nearly _crazy_! Those letters you wrote were the most TRAGIC things! I shouldn't have been a bit surprised any time to hear you were sick. _Are_ you sick? Perhaps that's why you don't write or come home. Wire me _the minute you get this_. Oh, Elliott darling, when I think of you marooned in that awful place--"

There was more of it. As Elliott read, she did a strange thing. She began to laugh. But even while she laughed she blushed, too. _Had_ she sounded as desperate as all that? How far away such tragedies seemed now! Suppose she should write, "Dear Bess, I like it up here and I am going to stay my year out." Bess would think her crazy; so would all the girls, and Aunt Margaret, too.

And then suddenly an arresting idea came into her head. What difference would it make if they did think her crazy? Elliott Cameron had never had such an idea before; all her life she had in a perfectly nice way thought a great deal about what people thought of her. This idea was so strange it set her gasping. "But how they would _talk_ about me!" she said. And then her brain clicked back, exactly like another person speaking, "What if they did? That wouldn't really make you crazy, would it?" "Why, no, I suppose it wouldn't," she thought.

"And most likely they'd be all talked out by the time I got back, too.

But even if they weren't, any one would be crazy to think it was crazy to want to stay up here at Uncle Bob's and Aunt Jessica's. Even Stannard has stayed weeks longer than he needed to!"

When she thought of that she opened her eyes wide for a minute. "Oho!"

she said to herself; "I guess Stan did get a rise out of me! You were easy game that time, Elliott Cameron."

She sat on her mossy stone a long time. There wasn't anything in the world, was there, to stand in the way of her staying her year out, the year she had been invited for, except her own silly pride? What a little goose she had been! She sat and smiled at the mountains and felt very happy and fresh and clean-minded, as though her brain had finished a kind of house-cleaning and were now put to rights again, airy and sweet and ready for use.

The postman's wagon flashed by on the road below. She could see the faded gray of the man's coat. He had been to the house and was townward bound now. How late he was! Nothing to hurry down for. There would be a letter, perhaps, but not one from Father. His had come yesterday. She rose after a while and drifted down through the still September warmth, as quiet and lazy and contented as a leaf.

Priscilla's small excited face met her at the door.

"Sidney's sick; we just got the letter. Mother's going to camp to-morrow."

"Sidney sick! Who wrote? What's the matter?"

"He did. He's not much sick, but he doesn't feel just right. He's in the hospital. I guess he can't be much sick, if he wrote, himself.

Mother wasn't to come, he said, but she's going."

"Of course." Nervous fear clutched Elliott's throat, like an icy hand.

Oh, poor Aunt Jessica! Poor Laura!

"Where are they?" she asked.

"In Mumsie's room," said Priscilla. "We're all helping."

Elliott mounted the stairs. She had to force her feet along, for they wished, more than anything else, to run away. What should she say? She tried to think of words. As it turned out, she didn't have to say anything.

Laura was the only person in Aunt Jessica's room when they reached it.

She sat in a low chair by a window, mending a gray blouse.

"Elliott's come to help, too," announced Priscilla.

"That's good," said Laura. "You can put a fresh collar and cuffs in this gray waist of Mother's, Elliott--I'll have it done in a minute--while I go set the crab-apple jelly to drip. And perhaps you can mend this little tear in her skirt. Then I'll press the suit.

There isn't anything very tremendous to do."

It was all so matter-of-fact and quiet and natural that Elliott didn't know what to make of it. She managed to gasp, "I hope Sidney isn't very sick."

"He thinks not," said Laura, "but of course Mother wants to see for herself. She is telephoning Mrs. Blair now about the Ladies' Aid. They were to have met here this week. Mother thinks perhaps she can arrange an exchange of dates, though I tell her if Sid's as he says he is, they might just as well come."

Elliott, who had been all ready to put her arms around Laura's neck and kiss and comfort her, felt the least little bit taken aback. It seemed that no comfort was needed. But it was a relief, too. Laura _couldn't_ sit there, so cool and calm and natural-looking, sewing and talking about crab-apple juice and Ladies' Aid, if there were anything radically wrong.

Then Aunt Jessica came into the room and said that Mrs. Blair would like the Ladies' Aid, herself, that week; she had been wishing she could have them; and didn't Elliott feel the need of something to eat to supplement her scanty dinner?

That put to rout the girl's last fears. She smiled quite naturally and said without any stricture in her throat: "Honestly, I'm not hungry.

And I am going to put a clean collar in your blouse."

"What should I do without my girls!" smiled Mother Jess.

It was after supper that the telegram came, but even then there was no panic. These Camerons didn't do any of the things Elliott had once or twice seen people do in her Aunt Margaret's household. No one ran around futilely, doing nothing; no one had hysterics; no one even cried.

Mother Jess's face went very white when Father Bob came back from the telephone and said, "Sidney isn't so well."

"Have they sent for us?"

He nodded. "You'd better take the sleeper. The eighty-thirty from Upton will make it."

"Can you--?"

"Not with things the way they are here."

Then they all scattered, to do the things that had to be done. Elliott was helping Laura pack the suit-case when she had her idea. It really was a wonderful idea for a girl who had never in her life put herself out for any one else. Like a flash the first part of it came to her, without thought of a sequel; and the words were out of her mouth almost before she was aware she had thought them.

"You ought to go, Laura!" she cried. "Sidney is your twin."

"I'd like to go." Something in the guarded tone, something deep and intense and controlled, struck Elliott to consternation. If Laura felt that way about it!

"Why don't you, Laura? Can't you possibly?"

The other shook her head. "Mother is the one to go. If we both went, who would keep house here?"

For a fraction of a second Elliott hesitated. "_I_ would."

The words once spoken, fairly swept her out of herself. All her little prudences and selfishnesses and self-distrusts went overboard together. Her cheeks flamed. She dropped the brush and comb she was packing and dashed out of the room.

A group of people stood in the kitchen. Without stopping to think, Elliott ran up to them.

"Can't Laura go?" she cried eagerly. "It will be so much more comfortable to be two than one. And she is Sidney's twin. I don't know a great deal, but people will help me, and I got dinner this noon. Oh, she must go! Don't you see that she must go?"

Father Bob looked at the girl for a minute in silence. Then he spoke: "Well, I guess you're right. I will look after the chickens."

"I'll mix their feed," said Gertrude; "I know just how Laura does it--and I'll do the dishes."

"I'll get breakfasts," said Bruce.

"I'll make the b.u.t.ter," said Tom. "I've watched Mother times enough.

And helped her, too."