The S. W. F. Club Part 9

"Not before--and only once then," Pauline stipulated, and Patience possessed her soul in at least a faint semblance of patience until they turned into the avenue of maples. Then she suddenly tightened her hold on the reins, bounced excitedly up and down, crying sharply--"Hi yi!"

f.a.n.n.y instantly p.r.i.c.ked up her ears, and, what was more to the purpose, actually started into what might almost have been called a trot.

"There! you see!" Patience said proudly, as they turned into the yard.

Hilary came down the porch steps. "I heard Impatience urging her Rosinante on," she laughed. "Why didn't you let her drive all the way, Paul? I've been watching for you since dinner."

"We've been pretty nearly since dinner getting here, it seems to me,"

Patience declared. "We had to wait for Paul to write a letter first to--"

"Are you alone?" Pauline broke in hurriedly, asking the first question that came into her mind.

Hilary smiled ruefully. "Not exactly. Mr. Boyd's asleep in the sitting-room, and Mrs. Boyd's taking a nap up-stairs in her own room."

"You poor child!" Pauline said. "Jump out, Patience!"

"_Have_ you brought me something to read? I've finished both the books I brought with me, and gone through a lot of magazines--queer old things, that Mrs. Boyd took years and years ago."

"Then you've done very wrong," Pauline told her severely, leading f.a.n.n.y over to a shady spot at one side of the yard and tying her to the fence--a quite unnecessary act, as nothing would have induced f.a.n.n.y to take her departure unsolicited.

"Guess!" Pauline came back, carrying a small paper-covered parcel.

"Father sent it to you. He was over at Vergennes yesterday."

"Oh!" Hilary cried, taking it eagerly and sitting down on the steps.

"It's a book, of course." Even more than her sisters, she had inherited her father's love of books, and a new book was an event at the parsonage. "Oh," she cried again, taking off the paper and disclosing the pretty tartan cover within, "O Paul! It's 'Penelope's Progress.' Don't you remember those bits we read in those odd magazines Josie lent us? And how we wanted to read it all?"

Pauline nodded. "I reckon mother told father about it; I saw her following him out to the gig yesterday morning."

They went around to the little porch leading from Hilary's room, always a pleasant spot in the afternoons.

"Why," Patience exclaimed, "it's like an out-door parlor, isn't it?"

There was a big braided mat on the floor of the porch, its colors rather faded by time and use, but looking none the worse for that, a couple of rockers, a low stool, and a small table, covered with a bit of bright cretonne. On it stood a blue and white pitcher filled with field flowers, beside it lay one or two magazines. Just outside, extending from one of the porch posts to the limb of an old cherry tree, hung Hilary's hammock, gay with cushions.

"Shirley did it yesterday afternoon," Hilary explained. "She was over here a good while. Mrs. Boyd let us have the things and the chintz for the cushions, Shirley made them, and we filled them with hay."

Pauline, sitting on the edge of the low porch, looked about her with appreciative eyes. "How pleasant and cozy it is, and after all, it only took a little time and trouble."

Hilary laid her new book on the table. "How soon do you suppose we can go over to the manor, Paul? I imagine the Dayres have fixed it up mighty pretty. Mr. Dayre was over here, last night. He and Shirley are ever so--chummy. He's Shirley Putnam Dayre, and she's Shirley Putnam Dayre, Junior. So he calls her 'Junior' and she calls him 'Senior.' They're just like brother and sister. He's an artist, they've been everywhere together. And, Paul, they think Winton is delightful. Mr. Dayre says the village street, with its great overhanging trees, and old-fashioned houses, is a picture in itself, particularly up at our end, with the church, all ivy-covered. He means to paint the church sometime this summer."

"It would make a pretty picture," Pauline said thoughtfully. "Hilary, I wonder--"

"So do I," Hilary said. "Still, after all, one would like to see different places--"

"And love only one," Pauline added; she turned to her sister. "You are better, aren't you--already?"

"I surely am. Shirley's promised to take me out on the lake soon.

She's going to be friends with us, Paul--really friends. She says we must call her 'Shirley,' that she doesn't like 'Miss Dayre,' she hears it so seldom."

"I think it's nice--being called 'Miss,'" Patience remarked, from where she had curled herself up in the hammock. "I suppose she doesn't want it, because she can have it--I'd love to be called 'Miss Shaw.'"

"Hilary," Pauline said, "would you mind very much, if you couldn't go away this summer?"

"It wouldn't do much good if I did, would it?"

"The not minding would--to mother and the rest of us--"

"And if you knew what--" Patience began excitedly.

"Don't you want to go find Captain, Impatience?" Pauline asked hastily, and Patience, feeling that she had made a false move, went with most unusual meekness.

"Know what?" Hilary asked.

"I--shouldn't wonder, if the child had some sort of scheme on hand,"

Pauline said, she hoped she wasn't--prevaricating; after all, Patience probably did have some scheme in her head--she usually had.

"I haven't thought much about going away the last day or so," Hilary said. "I suppose it's the feeling better, and, then, the getting to know Shirley."

"I'm glad of that." Pauline sat silent for some moments; she was watching a fat b.u.mble bee buzzing in and out among the flowers in the garden. It was always still, over here at the farm, but to-day, it seemed a different sort of stillness, as if bees and birds and flowers knew that it was Sunday afternoon.

"Paul," Hilary asked suddenly, "what are you smiling to yourself about?"

"Was I smiling? I didn't know it. I guess because it is so nice and peaceful here and because--Hilary, let's start a club--the 'S. W. F.

Club.'"

"The what?"

"The 'S. W. F. Club.' No, I shan't tell you what the letters stand for! You've got to think it out for yourself."

"A real club, Paul?"

"Indeed, yes."

"Who's to belong?"

"Oh, lots of folks. Josie and Tom, and you and I--and I think, maybe, mother and father."

"Father! To belong to a club!"

"It was he who put the idea into my head."

Hilary came to sit beside her sister on the step. "Paul, I've a feeling that there is something--up! And it isn't the barometer!"

"Where did you get it?"

"From you."

Pauline sprang up. "Feelings are very unreliable things to go by, but I've one just now--that if we don't hunt Impatience up pretty quick--there will be something doing."