The Cromptons Part 15

"Oh, I wish you would take it off!" she gasped, feeling unequal to leaning forward again, and closing her eyes wearily.

She meant Mrs. Biggs, but Jack forestalled that good woman, and in an instant had the slipper off and the boot on, doing both so gently that she was not hurt at all.

"Thanks!" Eloise said, drawing her well foot under the spotted calico, and wishing the young men would go.

How long they would have staid is uncertain if there had not come a second knock at the kitchen door. This time it was really Mr. Bills, and Mrs. Biggs went out to meet him, while Eloise felt every nerve quiver with dread. She must see him and tell him how impossible it would be for her to commence her duties on Monday. Perhaps he would dismiss her altogether, and take another in her place, and then--"What shall I do?"

she thought, and, scarcely knowing what she said, she cried, "Oh, I can't bear it!" while the tears rolled down her cheeks, and Howard and Jack gathered close to her,--the laugh all gone from Howard's eyes, and a great pity shining in Jack's.

"Excuse me," she continued, "I don't mean to be childish, but everything is so dreadful! I don't mind the pain so much; but to be here away from home, and to lose the school, as I may, and--and,--I want a handkerchief to wipe my face,--and this is ruined."

She said this last as she took from her satchel the handkerchief which had been so white and clean when she left home, and which now was wet and stained from a bottle of shoe blacking which had come uncorked and saturated everything. She had borne a great deal, and, as is often the case, a small matter upset her entirely. The spoiled handkerchief was the straw too many, and her tears came faster as she held it in one hand, and with the other tried to wipe them away.

"Take mine, please; I've not used it," Jack said, offering her one of fine linen, and as daintily perfumed as a woman's.

She took it unhesitatingly. She was in a frame of mind to take anything, and smiled her thanks through her tears.

"I know I must seem very weak to you to be crying like a baby; but you don't know how I dread meeting Mr. Bills, or how much is depending upon my having this school, or what it would be to me to lose it, if he can't wait. Do you think he will?"

She looked at Jack, who knew nothing whatever of the matter, or of Mr.

Bills, but who answered promptly, "Of course he will wait; he must wait.

We shall see to that. Don't cry. I'm awfully sorry for you; we both are."

He was standing close to her, and involuntarily laid his hand on her hair, smoothing it a little as he would have smoothed his sister's. She seemed so young and looked so small, wrapped up in Mrs. Biggs's gown, that he thought of her for a moment as a child to be soothed and comforted. She did not repel the touch of his hand, but cried the harder and wiped her face with his handkerchief until it was wet with her tears.

"Mr. Bills wants to know if he can come in now," came as an interruption to the scene, which was getting rather affecting.

"In just a minute," Jack said. Then to Eloise, "Brace up! We'll attend to Mr. Bills if he proves formidable."

She braced up as he bade her, and gave his handkerchief back to him.

"I shan't need it again. I am not going to be foolish any longer, and I thank you so much," she said, with a look which made Jack's pulse beat rapidly.

"We'd better go now and give Mr. Bills a chance," he said to Howard, who had been comparatively silent and let him do the talking and suggesting.

Howard could not define his feeling with regard to Eloise. Her beauty impressed him greatly, and he was very sorry for her, but he could not rid himself of the conviction which had a second time taken possession of him that in some way she was to influence his life or cross his path.

He bade her good-by, and told her to keep up good courage, and felt a little piqued that she withdrew her hand more quickly from him than she did from Jack, who left her rather reluctantly. They found Mr. Bills outside talking to Mrs. Biggs, who was volubly narrating the particulars of the accident, so far as she knew them, and referring constantly to her own sprained ankle of twenty years ago, and the impossibility of Miss Smith's being able to walk for some time.

With his usual impetuousness Jack took the initiative, and said to Mr.

Bills: "Your school can certainly wait; it must wait. A week or two can make no difference. At the end of that time, if she cannot walk, she can be taken to and from the school-house every day. To lose the school will go hard with her, and she's so young."

Jack was quite eloquent, and Mr. Bills looked at him curiously, wondering who this smart young fellow was, pleading for the new school-teacher. He knew Howard, who, after Jack was through, said he hoped Mr. Bills would wait; it would be a pity to disappoint the girl when she had come so far.

"Perhaps a week or two will make no difference," Mr. Bills said, "though the young ones are getting pretty wild, and their mothers anxious to have them out of the way, but I guess we'll manage it somehow."

He knew he should manage it when he saw Eloise. She could not tell him of the need there was of money in her grandmother's home, or the still greater need if she took the trip to California which she feared she must take. She only looked her anxiety, and Mr. Bills, whose heart Mrs.

Biggs said was "big as a barn," warmed toward her, while mentally he began to doubt her ability to "fill the bill," as he put it, she looked so young and so small.

"I'll let her off easy, if I have to," he thought, and he said, "Folks'll want school to begin as advertised. You can't go, but there's Ruby Ann Patrick. She'll be glad to supply. She's kep' the school five years runnin'. She wanted it when we hired you. She's out of a job, and will be glad to take it till you can walk. I'll see her to-day. You look young to manage unruly boys, and there's a pile of 'em in Deestrick No.

5 want lickin' half the time. Ruby Ann can lick 'em. She's five feet nine. You ain't more'n five."

Eloise did not tell him how tall she was. In fact, she didn't know. She must look very diminutive in Mr. Bills's eyes, she thought, and hastened to say, "I taught boys and young men older than I am in the normal at Mayville, and never had any trouble. I had only to speak to or look at them."

"I b'lieve you, I b'lieve you," Mr. Bills said. "I should mind you myself every time if you looked at me, but boys ain't alike. There's Tom Walker, ringleader in every kind of mischief, the wust feller you ever see. Ruby Ann had one tussle with him, and came off Number One. He'd most likely raise Cain with a schoolmarm who couldn't walk and went on crutches."

"Oh-h!" Eloise said despairingly. "I shall not have to do that!"

"Mebby not; mebby not. Sprained ankles mostly does, though. I had to when I sprained mine. I used to hobble to the well and pump cold water on it; that's tiptop for a sprain. Well, I must go now and see Ruby Ann.

Good-day. Keep a stiff upper lip, and you'll pull through. Widder Biggs is a fust rate nurse, and woman, too. Little too much tongue, mebby.

Hung in the middle and plays both ways. Knows everybody's history and age from the Flood down. She'll get at yours from A to izzard.

Good-day!"

He was gone, and Eloise was alone with her pain and homesickness and discouragement. Turn which way she would, there was not much brightness in her sky, except when she thought of Jack Harcourt, whose hand on her hair she could feel just as he had felt her wet hand on his neck hours after the spot was dried, ft seemed perfectly natural and proper that he should care for her, just as it did that the lady at the Crompton House should send her a hat. It was lying on a chair near her with the slippers, and she took it up and examined it again very carefully, admiring the fineness of the leghorn, the beauty of the lilac wreath, and the texture of the ribbons.

"I shall never wear it," she thought. "It is too handsome for me; but I shall always keep it, and be glad for the thoughtfulness which prompted the lady to send it."

Then she wondered if she would ever see the lady and thank her in person, or go to the Crompton House; and if her trunk would ever come from the station, so that she could divest herself of the detestable cotton gown and put on something more becoming, which would show him she was not quite so much a guy as she looked in Mrs. Biggs's wardrobe. The him was Jack, not Howard. He was not in the running. She cared as little for him as she imagined he cared for her. And here she did him injustice. She interested him greatly, though not in the way she interested Jack, whom he chaffed on their way home, telling him he ought to offer his services as nurse.

"I wonder you did not wipe her eyes as well as give her your handkerchief," he said. "I dare say you will never have it laundered, lest her tears should be washed out of it."

"Never!" Jack replied, and, taking the handkerchief from his pocket and folding it carefully, he put it back again, saying, "No, sir; I shall keep it intact. No laundryman's hands will ever touch it."

"Pretty far gone, that's a fact," Howard rejoined, and then continued: "I say, Jack, we'd better not talk of Miss Smith before the Colonel. It will only rouse him up, and make him swear at normal graduates in general, and this one in particular. You know I wrote you that he gave the lot and built the school-house, and for years was inspector of Crompton schools,--boss and all hands,--till a new generation came up and shelved him. He fought hard, but had to give in to young blood and modern ideas. He had no voice in hiring Miss Smith,--was not consulted.

His choice was a Ruby Ann Patrick, a perfect Amazon of an old maid; weighs two hundred, I believe, and rides a wheel. You ought to see her.

But then she is rooted and grounded, and uncle does not think Miss Smith is, though she was pretty well grounded last night when she sat on that sand heap with her foot twisted under her. I'm not a soft head like you, to fall in love with her at first sight; but I'm awfully sorry for her, and I don't wish to hear the Colonel swear about her."

Jack had never seen Howard more in earnest, and his mental comment was, "Cares more for her than I supposed. He'll bear watching. Poor little girl! How white she was at times, and how tired her eyes looked; and bright, too, as stars. I wonder if she really ought not to have a doctor."

He put this question to Howard, who replied: "No, that Biggs woman is a full team on sprained ankles. She'll get her up without a doctor, and I don't suppose the girl has much to spend on the craft."

"Yes, but what is a little money to you or me, if she really needs a doctor?" Jack said thoughtfully, while Howard laughed and answered, "Don't be an idiot, and lose your heart to a schoolma'am because she happened to have had her arm around your neck when we carried her in that chair. I can feel it yet, and sometimes put up my hand when half awake to see if it isn't there, but I am not going to make a fool of myself."

As they were near home Jack did not reply, but he could have told of times when half awake and wide awake he felt the arms and the hands and the hot breath of the girl clinging to him in the darkness and rain, and saw the eyes full of pain and dumb entreaty not to hurt her more than they could help, as they cut the soaked boot from the swollen foot. But he said nothing, and, when the house was reached, went at once to his own room, wondering what he could do to make her more comfortable.

Acting upon Howard's advice, Eloise was not mentioned, either at lunch or at dinner. Amy had evidently forgotten her, for she made no inquiry for her. Neither did the Colonel. She was, however, much in the minds of the young men, and each was wondering how he could best serve her.

Howard thought of a sea chair, in which his uncle had crossed the ocean.

He had found it covered with dust in the attic, and brought it to his room to lounge in. It would be far more comfortable for Eloise than that stiff, straight-backed, hair-cloth rocker in which she had to sit so upright. He would send it to her with Amy's compliments, if he could manage it without the knowledge of Jack, who he would rather should not know how much he was really interested in Eloise. Jack was also planning what he could do, and thought of a wheel chair, in which she could be taken to and from school. He might possibly find one in the village by the sh.o.r.e. He would inquire without consulting Howard, whose joking grated a little, as it presupposed the impossibility of his really caring for one so far removed from his station in life as Eloise seemed to be.

Could she have known how much she was in the minds of the young men at Crompton Place, she would not have felt quite as forlorn and disconsolate as she did during the long hours of the day, when she sat helpless and alone, except as Mrs. Biggs tried to entertain her with a flow of talk and gossip which did not interest her. A few of the neighbors called in the evening, and it seemed to Eloise that every one had had a sprained ankle or two, of which they talked continually, dwelling mostly upon the length of time it took before they were able to walk across the floor, to say nothing of the distance from Mrs. Biggs's to the school-house. That would be impossible for two or three weeks at least, and even then Miss Smith would have to go on crutches most likely, was their comforting a.s.surance.

"I've got some up garret that I used twenty years ago. Too long for her, but Tim can cut them off. They are just the thing. Lucky I kept them,"

Mrs. Biggs said, while Eloise listened with a feeling like death in her heart, and dreamed that night of hobbling to school on Mrs. Biggs's crutches, while Jack Harcourt helped and encouraged her, and Howard Crompton stood at a distance laughing at her.

CHAPTER VII

RUBY ANN PATRICK