The Lilac Lady Part 19

Astonished at this flash of gunpowder, the lame girl cried contritely, "Oh, don't go away, Peace! I didn't mean to be cross to you. This has been _such_ a hard week, dear, I hardly know what I am doing half the time."

"Is the pain so bad?" whispered Peace tenderly, dropping on her knees before the sufferer, having already forgotten her own grievance in her longing to ease and comfort the poor, aching back.

"It is better now," answered the girl, smiling wanly at the sympathetic face bending over her. "The heat always makes it worse, but I do believe it is growing cooler now. Feel the breeze? What have you brought me? A picnic lunch!"

"Yes--my strawberry pie--"

"Did Mrs. Strong know?"

"She made the pie all for my very own self to do just what I please with. Don't you like strawberry pie?" Peace paused in her task of unpacking the basket to look up questioningly at the face among the pillows.

"Oh, yes, dear, I am very fond of it, and it is sweet of you to share yours with me. I shall put my half away for tea."

"Oh, you mustn't do that," protested the ardent little picnicker, pa.s.sing her a plate of generously thick, ragged looking sandwiches, spread with great chunks of b.u.t.ter fresh from the ice-box, and filled with delicate slices of pink ham. "I want you to eat it with me. This is a 'specially good pie, and Elspeth can 'most beat Faith when it comes to dough. Mrs. Deacon Hopper sent us the ham--a whole one, all boiled and baked with sugar and cloves. It's simply _fine_! The lilacs I took the deacon did the work all right. He was so tickled that he got over being grumpy, and calls Saint John a promising preacher now. Please taste the sandwiches. I know you'll like them even if I didn't get the bread cut real even and nice. Then after we get through eating, I'll plant the pansies."

"Pansies!" She stared past the brown head bobbing over the hamper, to the box of nodding blossoms in the gra.s.s. "What made you bring me pansies?"

"'Cause you ain't got any, and no garden looks quite finished without some of those flowers in it. Don't you think so?"

"I _de-spise_ pansies!"

Peace eyed her in horrified amazement an instant, then swept the rejected blossoms out of sight beneath the basket cover, saying tartly, "You needn't be ugly about it! I can take them home again. I s'posed of course you liked them. I didn't know the garden was empty of them 'cause you _wouldn't_ have them. _I_ think they are the prettiest flower growing, next to lilacs and roses."

"Those mocking little faces?"

"Those darling, giggly smiles!"

"What?"

"Didn't you ever see a giggling pansy?"

"No, I can't say I ever did." A faint trace of amus.e.m.e.nt stole around the corners of the white lips.

"Well, here's one. Oh, I forgot! You _de-spise_ them!" She had half lifted a gorgeous yellow blossom from the hidden box, but at second thought dropped it back in the loose earth.

"Let me see it!" The Lilac Lady extended one blue-veined hand with the imperious gesture which Peace had learned to know and obey. Silently she thrust the moist plant into the outstretched fingers, and gravely watched while the keen blue eyes studied the golden petals which, as Peace had declared, seemed fairly teeming with sunshine and laughter.

"It does--look rather--cheerful," she conceded at length.

"That is just what I thought. I named it Hope."

"Hope! The name is appropriate."

"Yes, it is very 'propriate. Hope is always so sunshiny and smily--"

"Oh, you named it for your sister."

"Who did you think it was named for?"

"I didn't understand. Is it a habit of yours to name all your flowers?"

"N-o, not all. But we gener'ly name our pansies, Allee and me. See, this beautiful white one with just a tiny speck of yellow in the middle I called my Lilac Lady."

"Why?" A queer little choke came in her throat at these unexpected words, and she turned her eyes away that Peace might not see the tears which dimmed her sight.

"You looked so sweet and like a _nangel_ the first time I saw you, and this pansy has a reg'lar angel face."

"Don't I look sweet and like an angel any more?"

"Some days--whenever you want to. But lots of times I guess you don't care how you look," was the reply, as the busy fingers sorted out the different colored blossoms from the box, all unconscious of the stinging arrow she had just shot into the heart of her friend. "This blue one's Allee. Blue means truth, grandma says, and Allee is true blue. Red in our flag stands for valor. Cherry ain't very brave, but I named this for her anyway, in hopes she'd ask why and I could tell her. Then maybe when she found out that folks thought she was a 'fraid cat, she'd get over it. Don't you think she would?"

"Perhaps--if you were her teacher," the older girl answered absently.

"Who is the black one?"

"Grandpa. Isn't it a whopper? He is real tall but not fat like the flower. He always wears black at the University--that's why I picked that one for him. This one is grandma and here is Gail. The striped one is Faith. She is good in streaks, but she can be awful cross sometimes, too,--like you. This tiny one is Glen, and the big, brown, spotted feller is Aunt Pen. It makes me think of old c.o.c.kletop, a mother hen we used to have in Parker, which 'dopted everything it could find wandering around loose. That's what Aunt Pen looks as if she'd like to do."

This was too much for the lame girl's risibles, and she laughed outright, long and loud, to Peace's secret delight, for when the Lilac Lady laughed it was a sure sign that she was feeling better.

When she had recovered her composure, she said gravely, "Speaking of Aunt Pen reminds me that she told me this morning the cook had made some chicken patties for my special benefit and was hurt to think I refused them. You might run up to the house and ask for them now to go with our picnic lunch. Minnie will give them to you--cold, please. Some lemonade would taste good, too. Aunt Pen knows how to make it to perfection."

Peace was gone almost before she had finished giving her directions, and as she watched the nimble feet skimming through the clover, she smiled tenderly, then sighed and looked sadly down at her own useless limbs which would never bear her weight again. How many years of existence must she endure in her crippled helplessness? Oh, the bitterness of it!

And yet as she gazed at the slippers which never wore out, and compared her lot with that of the dancing, curly-haired sprite, tumbling eagerly up the kitchen steps after the promised goodies, the old, weary look of utter despair did not quite come back into the deep blue eyes; but through the bitterness of her rebellion flashed a faint gleam of something akin to hope. She was thinking of Peace's latest sunshine quotation which had been laboriously entered in the little brown and gold volume and brought to her for her inspection:

"'To live in hope, to trust in right, To smile when shadows start, To walk through darkness as through light, With sunshine in the heart.'"

Below the little stanza, Peace had penned her own version of the words in her quaint language: "This means to smile no matter how bad the world goes round and to keep on smiling till the hurt is gone. It don't cost any more to smile than it does to be uggly, and it pays a heep site better."

What a dear little philosopher the child was! A sudden desire to meet the other sisters of that happy family sprang up within her heart. Why should she stay shut away from the world like a nun in her cloister?

What had she gained by it? Nothing but bitterness! And think of the joys she had missed!

An insistent rustling of the lilac bushes behind her caught her attention, and by carefully raising her head she could see the thick branches close to the ground bending and giving, as a small, dark object twisted and grunted and wriggled its way through the tiny opening it had managed to find in the hedge.

The girl's first impulse was to scream for help, but a second glance told her that it was not an animal pushing its way through the twigs, for animals do not wear blue gingham rompers. So she held her breath and waited, and at last she was rewarded by seeing a round, flushed, inquisitive baby face peeping through the leaves at her. She smiled and held out her hands, and with a gurgle of gladness, the little fellow gave a final struggle, scrambled to his feet and toddled unsteadily across the lawn to her chair, jabbering baby lingo, the only word of which she could understand was, "Peace."

"Are you Glen?" she demanded, smoothing the soft black hair so like his father's.

"G'en," he repeated, parrot fashion.

"Where is your mamma?"

"Mamma." He pointed in the direction he had come, and gurgled, "S'eep.

Papa s'eep. All gone."

The baby himself looked as if he had just awakened from a nap. One cheek was rosier than the other, his hair lay in damp rings all over his head, and his feet were bare and earth-stained from his scramble through the vegetable garden on the other side of the hedge.

A sudden gust of cool wind blew through the trees overhead, a rattling peal of thunder jarred the earth, a blinding flash of lightning startled both girl and baby, and before either knew what had happened, a torrent of rain dashed down upon them. The storm which had been brewing all that sultry day broke in its fury. Hicks came running from the stable to the rescue of his helpless young mistress, Aunt Pen flew out of the house like a distracted hen, and Peace rushed frantically to the garden to save the precious picnic lunch and the box of pansies which were to be planted under the gnarled old oak nearest the lame girl's window.

So it happened that baby Glen was borne away into the great house to wait until the deluge of rain and hail should cease. In the flurry of getting everything under shelter, no one thought of the mother at home, crazed with anxiety and fright; and the whole group was startled a few moments later to behold a bare-headed, wild-eyed woman, drenched to the skin, dash through the iron gates, up the walk, and straight into the house itself, without ever stopping to knock.