The S. W. F. Club Part 26

"You cut to bed, youngster," Pauline commanded. "You're losing all your beauty sleep; and really, you know--"

Patience went to stand before the mirror.

"Maybe I ain't--pretty--yet; but I'm going to be--some day. Mr. Dayre says he likes red hair, I asked him. He says for me not to worry; I'll have them all sitting up and taking notice yet."

At which Pauline bore promptly down upon her, escorting her in person to the door of her own room. "And you'd better get to bed pretty quickly, too, Hilary," she advised, coming back. "You've had enough excitement for one day."

Mr. Paul Shaw stayed a week; it was a busy week for the parsonage folk and for some other people besides. Before it was over, the story-book uncle had come to know his nieces and Winton fairly thoroughly; while they, on their side, had grown very well acquainted with the tall, rather silent man, who had a fashion of suggesting the most delightful things to do in the most matter-of-fact manner.

There were one or two trips decidedly outside that ten-mile limit, including an all day sail up the lake, stopping for the night at a hotel on the New York sh.o.r.e and returning by the next day's boat. There was a visit to Vergennes, which took in a round of the shops, a concert, and another night away from home.

"Was there ever such a week!" Hilary sighed blissfully one morning, as she and her uncle waited on the porch for Bedelia and the trap. Hilary was to drive him over to The Maples for dinner.

"Or such a summer altogether," Pauline added, from just inside the study window.

"Then Winton has possibilities?" Mr. Shaw asked.

"I should think it has; we ought to be eternally grateful to you for making us find them out," Pauline declared.

Mr. Shaw smiled, more as if to himself. "I daresay they're not all exhausted yet."

"Perhaps," Hilary said slowly, "some places are like some people, the longer and better you know them, the more you keep finding out in them to like."

"Father says," Pauline suggested, "that one finds, as a rule, what one is looking for."

"Here we are," her uncle exclaimed, as Patience appeared, driving Bedelia. "Do you know," he said, as he and Hilary turned out into the wide village street, "I haven't seen the schoolhouse yet?"

"We can go around that way. It isn't much of a building," Hilary answered.

"I suppose it serves its purpose."

"It is said to be a very good school for the size of the place." Hilary turned Bedelia up the little by-road, leading to the old weather-beaten schoolhouse, standing back from the road in an open s.p.a.ce of bare ground.

"You and Pauline are through here?" her uncle asked.

"Paul is. I would've been this June, if I hadn't broken down last winter."

"You will be able to go on this fall?"

"Yes, indeed. Dr. Brice said so the other day. He says, if all his patients got on so well, by not following his advice, he'd have to shut up shop, but that, fortunately for him, they haven't all got a wise uncle down in New York, to offer counter-advice."

"Each in his turn," Mr. Shaw remarked, adding, "and Pauline considers herself through school?"

"I--I suppose so. I know she would like to go on--but we've no higher school here and--She read last winter, quite a little, with father. Pauline's ever so clever."

"Supposing you both had an opportunity--for it must be both, or neither, I judge--and the powers that be consented--how about going away to school this winter?"

Hilary dropped the reins. "Oh!" she cried, "you mean--"

"I have a trick of meaning what I say," her uncle said, smiling at her.

"I wish I could say--what I want to--and can't find words for--" Hilary said.

"We haven't consulted the higher authorities yet, you know."

"And--Oh, I don't see how mother could get on without us, even if--"

"Mothers have a knack at getting along without a good many things--when it means helping their young folks on a bit,"

Mr. Shaw remarked. "I'll have a talk with her and your father to-night."

That evening, pacing up and down the front veranda with his brother, Mr. Shaw said, with his customary abruptness, "You seem to have fitted in here, Phil,--perhaps, you were in the right of it, after all. I take it you haven't had such a hard time, in some ways."

The minister did not answer immediately.

Looking back nearly twenty years, he told himself, that he did not regret that early choice of his. He had fitted into the life here; he and his people had grown together. It had not always been smooth sailing and more than once, especially the past year or so, his narrow means had pressed him sorely, but on the whole, he had found his lines cast in a pleasant place, and was not disposed to rebel against his heritage.

"Yes," he said, at last, "I have fitted in; too easily, perhaps. I never was ambitious, you know."

"Except in the acc.u.mulating of books," his brother suggested.

The minister smiled. "I have not been able to give unlimited rein even to that mild ambition. Fortunately, the rarer the opportunity, the greater the pleasure it brings with it--and the old books never lose their charm."

Mr. Paul Shaw flicked the ashes from his cigar. "And the girls--you expect them to fit in, too?"

"It is their home." A note the elder brother knew of old sounded in the younger man's voice.

"Don't mount your high horse just yet, Phil," he said. "I'm not going to rub you up the wrong way--at least, I don't mean to; but you were always an uncommonly hard chap to handle--in some matters. I grant you, it is their home and not a had sort of home for a girl to grow up in." Mr. Shaw stood for a moment at the head of the steps, looking off down the peaceful, shadowy street. It had been a pleasant week; he had enjoyed it wonderfully. He meant to have many more such.

But to live here always! Already the city was calling to him; he was homesick for its rush and bustle, the sense of life and movement.

"You and I stand as far apart to-day, in some matters, Phil, as we did twenty--thirty years ago," he said presently, "and that eldest daughter of yours--I'm a fair hand at reading character or I shouldn't be where I am to-day, if I were not--is more like me than you."

"So I have come to think--lately."

"That second girl takes after you; she would never have written that letter to me last May."

"No, Hilary would not have at the time--"

"Oh, I can guess how you felt about it at the time. But, look here, Phil, you've got over that--surely? After all, I like to think now that Pauline only hurried on the inevitable." Mr. Paul Shaw laid his hand on the minister's shoulder. "Nearly twenty years is a pretty big piece out of a lifetime. I see now how much I have been losing all these years."

"It has been a long time, Paul; and, perhaps, I have been to blame in not trying more persistently to heal the breach between us. I a.s.sure you that I have regretted it daily."

"You always did have a lot more pride in your make-up than a man of your profession has any right to allow himself, Phil. But if you like, I'm prepared to point out to you right now how you can make it up to me.

Here comes Lady Shaw and we won't waste time getting to business."

That night, as Pauline and Hilary were in their own room, busily discussing, for by no means the first time that day, what Uncle Paul had said to Hilary that morning, and just how he had looked, when he said it, and was it at all possible that father would consent, and so on, _ad libitum_, their mother tapped at the door.

Pauline ran to open it. "Good news, or not?" she demanded. "Yes, or no, Mother Shaw?"

"That is how you take it," Mrs. Shaw answered. She was glad, very glad, that this unforeseen opportunity should be given her daughters; and yet--it meant the first break in the home circle, the first leaving home for them.