The Camerons of Highboro Part 19

"I'll see to Prince and the kitty," chimed in Priscilla, "and do, oh, lots of things!"

"I'll be responsible for the milk," said Henry.

"I'll keep house," said Elliott, "if you leave me anything to do."

"And I'll help you," said Harriet Gordon.

It was really settled in that minute, though Father Bob and Mother Jess talked it over again by themselves.

"Are you sure, dear, you want to do this?" Mother Jess asked Elliott.

"Perfectly sure," the girl answered. She felt excited and confident, as though she could do anything.

"It won't be easy."

"I know that. But please let me try."

"And there are the Gordons," said Mother Jess, half to herself.

"Yes," echoed Elliott, "there are the Gordons."

When the little car ran up to the door to take the two over to Upton and Mother Jess and Laura were saying good-by, Laura strained Elliott tight. "I'll love you forever for this," she whispered.

Then they were off and with them seemed to have gone something indispensable to the well-being of the people who lived in the white house at the end of the road. Elliott, watching the car vanish around a turn in the road, hugged Laura's words tight to her heart. It was the only way to keep her knees from wabbling at the thought of what was before her.

CHAPTER X

WHAT'S IN A DRESS?

Of course Elliott never could have done it without the Gordons.

Elliott and Harriet made the crab-apple juice into jelly, Mrs. Gordon sent in bread and cookies, and both mother and daughter stood behind the girl with their skill and experience, ready to be called on at a moment's notice.

"Just send for us any time you get into trouble or want help about something," said Mrs. Gordon over the telephone. "One of us will come right up. Most likely it will be Harriet. I'm so c.u.mbersome, I can't get about as I'd like to. Large bodies move slowly, you know."

Other people besides the Gordons sent in things to eat. Elliott thought she had never known such a stream of generosity as set toward the white house at the end of the road--intelligent generosity, too.

There seemed a definite plan and some consultation behind it. Mr.

Blair brought a roast of beef already cooked, from Mrs. Blair, and hoped for both of them that there would soon be good news of the boy.

The Blisses sent in pies enough for two days and asked Elliott to let them know when she was ready for more. People she knew and people she didn't know brought rolls and cookies and doughnuts and gelatines and even roast chickens, and asked, with real anxiety in their voices, for the latest news from Camp Devens.

They didn't bring their offerings all at once; they brought them continuously and steadily and with truly remarkable appropriateness.

Just when Elliott was thinking that she must begin to cook, something was sure to rattle up to the door in a wagon, or roll up in an automobile, or travel on foot in a basket. It was the extreme timeliness of the gifts that proved the guiding intelligence behind them.

"They couldn't all happen so," was Henry's conclusion. "Now, could they? Gee! and I've thought some of those folks were pokes!"

"So have I," said Elliott, feeling very much ashamed of her hasty judgments.

"You never know till you get into trouble how good people are," was Father Bob's verdict.

Gertrude fingered a doughnut ruefully. "I want it, but I'm almost ashamed to eat it. I've thought such horrid things of that old Mrs.

Gadsby that made 'em."

"They're good," said Tom. "Mrs. Gadsby knows how to make doughnuts, if she _has_ got a tongue in her head! Say, but I'd as soon have thought old Allen would send us doughnuts as the Gadsby."

"Mr. Allen brought us a tongue this morning," Elliott remarked; "said his housekeeper boiled it; hoped it wasn't too tough to eat. You couldn't 'git nothin' good, these days!'"

"_Enoch_ Allen?" demanded Henry; "the old fellow that lives at the foot of the hill? Go tell that to the marines!"

"I don't know where he lives," said Elliott, "but he certainly said his name was Enoch Allen."

Bruce chuckled. "Mother Jess's chickens have come home to roost, all right."

"What did she ever do for Enoch Allen?" asked Tom.

"Oh, don't you remember," cried Gertrude, "the time his old dog died?

Mother found the dog one day, dying in the woods. I was along and she sent me to call Mr. Allen, while she stayed with the dog. I was just a little girl and kind of scared, but Mother said Mr. Allen wasn't anybody to be afraid of; he was just a lonely old man. I heard him tell her it wasn't every woman would have stayed with his dog. It was dead when he got there."

But even with competent advisers within call and all the aids that came in the shape of "Mother Jess's chickens," and with the best family in the world all eagerness to be helpful and to "carry on" during Laura and Mother Jess's absence, Elliott found that housekeeping wasn't half so simple as it looked.

Life still had its moments and she was in the midst of one of the worst of them now. If you have ever stood in a kitchen where little gray kittens of dust rollicked under the chairs and all the dinner kettles and pans were piled on the table, unsc.r.a.ped and unwashed, and you saw ahead of you more things that you had planned to do than you could possibly get through before supper, and one girl was crying in the attic and another was crying in the china-closet, and your own heart was in your boots, you know how Elliott Cameron felt at this minute. Everything had gone wrong, since the time she got up half an hour late in the morning; but the most wrong thing of all was the letter from Laura.

It had come just as they were finishing dinner, for the postman was late. Father Bob had cut it open, while every one looked eager and hopeful. Mother Jess had written the day before that the doctors thought Sidney was better; there had been a telegram to that effect, too. Father Bob read Laura's letter quite through before he opened his lips. It wasn't a long letter. Then he said: "The boy's not so well, to-day.--Bruce, we must finish the ensilage. Come out as soon as you're through, boys. Tom, I want you to get in the tomatoes before night. We're due for a freeze, unless signs fail." Not another word about Sidney. And he went right out of the room.

"What does she say?" whispered Gertrude, dropping her fork so that it rattled against her plate. Gertrude was always dropping things, but this time she didn't flush, as she usually did, at her own awkwardness.

Elliott picked up the letter Father Bob had left beside her plate. She dreaded to unfold the single sheet, but what else could she do, with all those pairs of anxious eyes fixed on her? She steadied her voice and read slowly and without a trace of expression:

"Sidney had a bad time in the night, but is resting more easily this morning. Mother never leaves him. Every one is so good to us here. His officers seem to think a lot of Sid. So do the men of his company, as far as we have seen them. I don't know what to write you, Father. The doctor says, 'While there's life there's hope, and that our coming is the only thing that has saved Sid so far. He says that he has seen the sickest of boys pull through with their mothers here. We will telegraph when there is any change. Love to all of you, dear ones, and tell Elliott I shall never forget what she has done for me.

"LAURA"

The room was very still for a minute. Elliott kept her eyes on the letter, to hide the tears that filled them. Sidney was going to die; she knew it.

Slowly, silently, one after another, they all got up from the table.

The boys filed out into the kitchen, washed their hands at the sink, and still without a word went about their work. Gertrude and Priscilla began mechanically to clear the table. A plate crashed to the floor from Gertrude's hands and shattered to fragments. She stared at the pieces stupidly, as though wondering how they had come there, took a step in the direction of the dust-pan, and, suddenly bursting into tears, turned and ran out of the room. Elliott could hear her feet pounding up-stairs, on, on, till they reached the attic. A door slammed and all was quiet.

Down in the kitchen Elliott and Priscilla faced each other. Great round drops were running down Priscilla's cheeks, but she looked up at Elliott trustfully. And then Elliott failed her. She knew herself that she was failing. But it seemed as though she just couldn't keep from crying. "Oh, dear!" she sighed. "Oh, dear, isn't everything just _awful_!" Then she did cry.

And over Priscilla's sober little face--Elliott wasn't so blinded by her tears that she failed to see it--came the queerest expression of stupefaction and woe and utter forlornness. It was after that that Elliott heard Priscilla sobbing in the china-closet.

Her first impulse was to go to the closet and pull the child out. Her second was to let her stay. "She may as well have her cry out,"

thought the girl, unhappily. "_I_ couldn't do anything to comfort her!"--which shows how very, very, very miserable Elliott was, herself.

The world was topsyturvy and would never get right again.

Instead of going for Priscilla she went for a dust-pan and brush and collected the fragments of broken china. Then she began to pile up the dishes, but, after a few futile movements, sat down in a chair and cried again. It didn't seem worth while to do anything else. So now there were three girls crying all at once in that house and every one of them in a different place. When at last Elliott did look in the closet Priscilla wasn't there.