Instead of the Thorn

"Yes, yes, you did," agreed Linda warmly. "What then?"

"Oh, then it was lobster traps, and I helped him with them, and I got Father to buy lobsters off him, and buy his clams, too, and I think Lambert was always sort of sorry for me even when I was scolding him. He knew I had a lot to do for a young one."

"Yes," said Linda, with eagerness, "and he resolved to make it up to you, I know."

"He did make it up to me. He was the best brother in the world," answered Miss Barry simply.

The girl's lips trembled again against the violets, and the two watched the flying landscape in silence.

CHAPTER XIII

HOME-COMING

Often during the remainder of the journey Linda questioned her aunt about her own and her father's childhood. Hitherto she had avoided as far as possible all mention or knowledge of his antecedents and the struggles which preceded his success. Again she felt the relief consequent upon opening a mental door until now painstakingly kept closed. Instead of the thorn again came up the fir-tree, as her thoughts, led by Miss Barry, roved about the hard but wholesome past, and she acquainted herself with the good stock which had produced her lost treasure.

"Don't grieve. Speed him on," had been Mrs. Porter's tender and strong admonition. Linda tried to remember it every time that submerging wave of realized loss went sweeping suffocatingly over her head.

Miss Barry, rousing from practical thoughts of her home and housekeeping, or waking from a nap, usually saw her niece poring over letters, and occasionally it was Bertram King's that she held in her hands.

Once when this was the case Miss Belinda held out a metal box. "Try some of this ginger," she said. "Coals to Newcastle! Did you ever? Isn't Mr. King the impudent one?"

Linda leaned politely toward the confection, then drew back again.

"Don't waste it on me, Aunt Belinda. I don't seem to care for sweets."

"Well, I hope Mrs. Porter will. I can't eat all these things alone," replied Miss Barry, casting a glance toward the varied boxes.

At the same time she let that eagle glance come back to her niece.

"I hope you're going to remember," she said impressively, "that that fine man to whom we owe so much is related to Mrs. Porter."

"What?" asked the girl absent-mindedly. "Oh," suddenly gathering her aunt's meaning. "Yes, certainly."

Miss Barry sniffed. "Linda," she said, "I don't know but I'd ought to go and dig up your grandmother's slipper!"

The girl smiled, and the older woman shook her head. "She is a handsome thing," she thought.

Mrs. Porter thought so too when she met them in Portland. In spite of the change wrought in her pupil's appearance during the last month she reflected how beauty at twenty-one will be beauty still.

"There's no place like home!" exclaimed Miss Barry, as she accepted Mrs. Porter's embrace. "I'm aching for one look at the ocean."

"Isn't she saucy to our grand lake?" asked Mrs. Porter, putting her hand through Linda's arm, and leading the way to the motor waiting outside.

"What does this mean?" asked Miss Barry. "The train's good enough for us."

"No, it's such a beautiful afternoon. It will rest you both to motor home," said Mrs. Porter. She supported Linda's arm, noting the feebleness of the girl's movements.

The two black-clothed women entered the car, the porter put in their suit-cases, Mrs. Porter jumped in, and they started. As yet Linda had scarcely spoken. It was curious to her to see her teacher thus, off duty, wearing an outing hat and corduroy. She, who had always been surrounded with a wall of delicate formality which no pupil save herself had ever had the audacity to break down, now smiling, tanned and rosy, girlish in her soft white hat, seemed another identity. Linda regarded her teacher gravely, while the latter responded cheerfully to Miss Barry's questions. The sun shone, the breeze was crisp.

As they emerged into the suburbs and countryside, all the joyousness of June smote upon the travelers' tired senses.

Linda turned her wistful eyes away when Mrs. Porter met them, a reassuring strength in her regard.

"Jerry was so disappointed when I told him he needn't come to the station for us," she said. "All your neighbors are excited over your home-coming."

"H'm," sniffed Miss Barry in a one-sided smile. "Luella accommodatin' any boarders?"

"Yes, a mother and daughter from New York."

"H'm. Their bones beginning to show yet?"

Mrs. Porter laughed. "If it is as you say, why shouldn't Miss Luella advertise a reducing establishment? I'm sure it would pay."

The speaker's cheer covered a pang. Linda's slenderness and pallor spoke eloquently, and made her forget the girl's probable injustice to Bertram King.

Linda had made but one visit before to the Cape. That was ten years ago, when her aunt's cottage was first built. It had been a flying trip with her father and mother, and she had slight recollection of the place. Her mother had cared more for mountains than sea, and Linda had visited them on both sides of the ocean. It was now to a practically new place that the motor was carrying her.

She straightened herself with interest when the settlement came in sight, and her large gaze sought for the little house that had been her father's gift of love to his sister.

Mrs. Porter saw her eagerness. "Just about three minutes away now," she said.

"Is that it? The brown one?" asked the girl as they neared the rocky point.

"Yes, the Gull's Nest," replied Mrs. Porter. "I don't know what Miss Barry calls it, but how could it have any other name?"

"Lambert was always telling me to name it and he'd give me some writing paper, stamped."

"And why didn't you?"

"I did." Miss Barry tossed her head a little toward the welcoming waves.

"What is it?" asked Mrs. Porter eagerly.

"Oh, no matter," returned Miss Belinda.

"You haven't told? Do you mean you haven't told?" Mrs. Porter's eyes twinkled at the proof of New England reticence.

"What's in a name, anyway?" returned Miss Belinda evasively.

Her niece regarded the flush on her aunt's thin cheek wistfully, and wondered what bit of sentiment she was concealing.

The wonder heightened the interest with which she entered the cottage. The little house was unexpectedly roomy within. Lambert Barry had given his sister carte blanche as to coziness, provided she would have room enough for him and his when they could arrange to come; but the nearness to the great diapason of the waves had repelled his wife, and after he lost her the engrossed business man could make only flying visits to the scenes of his childhood. There were the rooms, however, and Linda was soon led to hers.

"It's the one I always called your father's room, Linda," said Miss Barry, as she ushered her in.

Mrs. Porter, after brief explanation of her preparations, had remained below stairs to leave them alone.

Linda looked from the windows on the limitless ocean, dotted with distant sails; on the fleecy islands of cloud in a sky as blue, as limitless.

She turned back to her companion. A look of satisfaction had overspread her aunt's wan face.

"You've been very good to me, Aunt Belinda," she said deliberately. "I've known it all the time, but I shall appreciate it more and more."

"Well, well, that's all right, child," returned the other hastily. "I think there's everything here to make you comfortable. The bathroom's here, between your room and mine; and if there's anything you want that you don't see, just let me know."

She went out and left Linda standing there, her wide gaze fixed on the open sea and ships. Islands were but distant scenes from the Cape. Here the granite cliffs rose high and higher. She could get glimpses along the shore of their hollows, which soon would shelter luxuriant deep-pink wild roses, but now waved with snowy daisies, flirting with the foam which ever sought to reach them.

An hour afterward she went downstairs, and found Mrs. Porter sitting with a book in the glassed-in end of the veranda.

"See? I've been saving this hammock for you," said Mrs. Porter, looking up.

Linda stood still and smiled, looking with fascinated eyes at the sea.

Mrs. Porter remained quiet, watching the girl's face grow grave.

"It's very wonderful after the city, isn't it?" she asked at last.

"Yes. The noise on the avenue was constant, then the banging and confusion of trains. This is like being born into a new world. I was wondering just now if Father felt that same great contrast and peace when he waked up."

"I'm sure he did," replied Mrs. Porter. She said no more to urge her friend to lie down, but dropped her book and took up some sewing that lay on the table beside her.

Pretty soon Linda came over to the hammock and seated herself on its edge, and at that moment Miss Barry appeared with an armful of neglected bon-bon boxes.

"This is day before yesterday's candy," she announced, "but most of them haven't been opened at all, and any that you don't want will find a market in the neighborhood." The speaker raised her eyebrows significantly.

Mrs. Porter smiled. "Poor little Blanche Aurora, for instance. She's been a good little helper."

"You don't mean to say she hasn't broken dishes."

"Well, not so very many, really. She's been very much excited over your home-coming."

When Jerry came with the trunks, his sea-blue eyes regarded Linda with respectful interest, while he shook hands with her aunt.

"Ye look some faded, Belinda," he remarked.

"I'll pick up," was the reply. "This is my niece, Cap'n Holt."

Linda brought her absent-minded gaze back with a start, realizing that the "expressman" was being introduced to her.

He put out his rough hand kindly, and she saw by his expression that he was acknowledging her bereavement. She put her hand in his in silence.

"Cap'n Holt knew your father, Linda," said Mrs. Porter.

The girl's eyes met his. "Did you work for my father?" she asked.

"Dunno 'bout that," was the good-humored response. "I was the oldest, and I guess mebbe he worked fer me some."

Cap'n Holt's lips twitched as if a humorous continuation of his declaration was imminent, but Linda's grave looks and her black gown restrained him. A faint color mounted to the girl's cheeks. She must remember hereafter!

"He was well liked around here, your father was," finished Jerry Holt warmly.

"Thank you," said Linda, and Jerry dropped her smooth young hand awkwardly.

"Sometime you must tell me about when he was a little boy," she continued, still gazing at him.

Jerry Holt winked hard as he drove his team away from those appealing eyes. "She takes it hard," he said to himself, "she takes it hard."

Luella Benslow had seen him drive by with the trunks, and she was working in her garden as he returned. Luella had not succeeded in entirely breaking down the reserve of that pleasant-faced Mrs. Porter, who had been keeping house for Belinda. The socially experienced musician had known how to awe her. Luella was by no means certain that Belinda Barry's loss had dulled her speech, so she restrained the curiosity which urged her to create an immediate errand at the Barry cottage.

Jerry must pass her house on his return, so she set herself to work at piling some wood, her father not being amenable to the performing of such an arduous task.

Her regimentals for such labor consisted of a deep shaker bonnet provided with a flowing collar, in which her complexion was shielded. She also wore a complication of capes, and a terraced arrangement of aprons, one above the other, the whole giving the strong, sportive sea wind an assorted lot of banners, which it tossed in all directions.

As Jerry's wagon approached, Luella was too deafened by the wind and her shaker to hear the wheels on the soft earth. She was at the roadside, gathering the smaller wood which had fallen by the way, and the back view of her stooping figure presented an appearance which Jerry's steed, mentally consulting a long experience, could not remember to have seen paralleled. Deciding that it would be on the safe side to approach no nearer, Molly planted her forefeet, and all Jerry's adjurations failed to persuade her to move. Her eloquent ears went forward and back.

At last there came borne to Luella a stentorian yell.

"Git up! Git up, I tell ye, Luella."

She slowly lifted her head, turned, and brushing her hair out of her eyes beheld Molly with feet planted and ears laid back. Jerry was standing up in his wagon, gesticulating with his whip.

"Git up, I tell ye! The hoss won't go by ye!" he yelled.

Luella arose with alacrity, but slowly, her arms full of kindling. This she dropped incontinently, and Molly shied as the fluttering figure ran forward.

"I want to speak to you, Jerry. Don't go till you tell me about 'em!" she said breathlessly. "Do excuse my looks," she added with a simper.

"I can overlook 'em if Molly can," replied Jerry.

Both Molly and Luella seemed to be indulging in a return to the skittishness of youth.

Jerry had twice taken Luella home from singing school in days gone by, and he had been ticketed as one of her beaux ever since! A might-have-been with whom she consistently played the game.

She pushed her shaker back. "Have you seen the orphan?" she added, again brushing stray locks of hair out of her curious eyes.

"Yes."

"What's she like? Awful proud, I s'pose."

"Mebbe. She favors Lambert. He went some on looks, you remember."

"How should I remember?" returned Luella with a coy smile, which showed dentally the evenness of piano keys. "I was so much younger than you and Mr. Barry."

"I wish Luella's teeth wouldn't kind o' drop," reflected Jerry Holt. "It makes me dizzy."

He snapped his whip gently, while Molly, reassured, rested in the first position.

"I think I'd ought to call real soon," said Luella. "Don't you?"

"Well, 'f I was you I'd let 'em ketch their breath," remarked Jerry impersonally.

"The Mrs. Lindsay and her daughter stayin' with me, they're related to a young man in Chicago that's a dear friend o' the Barrys," went on Luella eagerly. "I think 't would make the orphan feel more to home to know she had a mewchal friend in the neighborhood. Don't you?"

"Couldn't say," drawled Jerry.

"Sh!" hissed Luella, lowering her voice portentously. "The ladies are about sure their relation had all his money in Lambert Barry's bank. Sh! They think from all they've heard he was a scoundrel. You can't talk about folks that's dead, though, can you?"

"Well, some folks find it's the safest time."

"Well, what do you think, Jerry?" she asked, still low-voiced, pressing close to the wagon.

"I think I got to be goin'. Careful there, Luella. Don't let Molly step on ye."

"Well," she returned, retreating, "I've always believed I could write a play as good as anybody else for those here emotion pictures, and this'd be a splendid story, with Lambert Barry for the villain, and his beautiful daughter believin' in him; don't you think so? I'd make her beautiful, you know."

Jerry Holt's lips twitched as he gathered up the reins.

"Well, one thing sure, Nature's saved ye the trouble there, Luella. Git ap, Molly."

Luella looked after the wagon, her mouth open in her interest. Her friend's meaning slowly percolated. Then she hurried toward the house, removing aprons as she went, to inform her boarders of the arrival.

CHAPTER XIV

BLANCHE AURORA

When Linda waked next morning, she had been dreamless for nine hours; sunk so deep in slumber after weeks of restless, fitful naps that the return to earth was a slow, scarcely credible process. A soothing, rhythmic sweep of sound seemed saying, "Sleep on, Sleep on"; but a song sparrow perched on the corner of the sloping roof above her window was loudly declaring that it was ecstasy to waken. The rapturous burst, often repeated, won her slow attention. The sun shone through the rosy curtains and a breeze fanned her opening eyes. She turned her face into her pillow. Her first thought as ever of her father, she seemed to commune with him.

"I'm here in your room, dear. I dare think about you. The insults are going to cease, dearest, dearest!"

Her rested brain recalled those sentences in one of Mrs. Porter's letters, prophetic words of what the public verdict would be when truth began to appear. Then had come King's reassurance. She knew each phrase of both letters by heart.

Mrs. Porter had put Miss Barry's best photograph of her brother on the dresser in this room. Turning, Linda again opened her eyes and they rested upon it. For a moment she gazed, then rose with a sense of refreshment. How quiet the house was! She took her bath and dressed, still without hearing a human movement, and at last went downstairs to the empty living-room. The old-fashioned clock above the fireplace pointed to nine forty-five.

"I surely am a petted child!" thought Linda. She moved through the dining-room and was going to the kitchen when the swing door suddenly opened, nearly striking her, and a girl of thirteen years appeared. By dint of peeking around the corner of the house, Blanche Aurora had obtained a glimpse of the tall slender figure in black when aunt and niece arrived yesterday; and of the two, Linda was the more surprised at the sudden encounter now.

In any case, Blanche Aurora was not easily daunted. She had spent years in twitching smaller brothers and sisters into the path of duty. Perhaps the necessity of her being "careful about many things," notwithstanding her youth, had drawn Miss Belinda to her in sympathetic remembrance of her own childhood; but if that was the case, it had resulted in no tenderness given or received. Theirs was a relation of armed neutrality in which neither ever got much the better of the other.

Blanche Aurora's eyes were round, expressionless, and light blue. Each of the two pigtails of her red hair had a string braided in with it to discourage relaxation, and this cord was twisted around their ends with a determined hand, the whole so tightly reined that each braid turned up at the end like a fishhook.

A dozen times this morning she had pushed open the swing door under the impression that she heard the guest descend: the wonderful guest, who never had to touch foot to the ground, but rolled around in carriages and ate off gold plates. Blanche Aurora had vaguely expected something so overwhelming in the appearance of the millionaire's daughter that the apparition of Linda in a plain white gown, not glittering at any point, was somewhat disappointing. The flat-chested little maid viewed the tall girl's shining, waving hair and her large, grave eyes for a moment; then she spoke: —

"Pretty near hit you, didn't I?" she said airily.

"My aunt – " murmured Linda.

"They've gone to see the chickens, and I'm to give you your breakfast. There's your place."

Blanche Aurora's businesslike, no-time-to-spare finger pointed to the white table which bore a dish of fruit and a single goldbanded plate with its complement of silver and napkin.

Linda sat down meekly.

"I s'pose you'll want a finger-bowl," said Blanche Aurora.

"If – if it's convenient," replied Linda.

The other actually smiled. "Ho! We've got lots of 'em," she returned, and stalked to the sideboard, where she poured water into a bowl and placed it close by Linda's elbow.

While the guest opened an orange, the light-blue eyes watched her white ringless hands. "She don't look a bit rich," thought Blanche Aurora, "but I'll bet she's stuck-up."

She withdrew against the wall, from whence Linda felt her unwinking, round stare.

"Are you my aunt's little maid?" asked the girl, after the silence began to be embarrassing.

"No," came the prompt reply, "I'm her help." All Blanche Aurora's remarks were made in a loud tone as if she were talking against the sound of the sea. "I come after I git the children to school."

"Children?"

"My brothers and sisters."

Linda glanced up at the short, slight form clad in a faded gingham dress that was outgrown.

"Don't you go to school yourself?"

"Ho! No! I got through last year; I'm thirteen."

A pause, during which the help reluctantly admired Linda's hands and her deft manner of manipulating spoon and orange. As the guest laid down the empty rind, her companion's voice rent the air.

"Oatmeal, wheatena, and all the cold cereals!" she vociferated.

Linda started. "I – I don't really care – "

"One's jest as easy as the other. They're all handy."

"I'll take the – oatmeal, please," replied Linda under the pressure of that strenuous reassurance.

During the brief absence of the small maid, the girl leaned back in her chair, and looked through the open windows fronting the sea.

Presently, Blanche Aurora's foot kicked open the swing door and she advanced with the cereal and noted that the guest shivered.

"Be ye cold?" she questioned sharply; "I can shet the winders."

"Yes, I wish you would. This is like eating on a boat."

"I hate bo'ts," vouchsafed the help, and crossing to the windows slammed them down, after which she resumed her position against the wall while Linda served herself with oatmeal.

"There's coffee and rolls and eggs," shouted Blanche Aurora after half a minute of dead silence during which the clock ticked.

Linda jumped again. The help was so very responsible and so clean and wiry that she smiled as she lifted her eyes.

"I've got an hourglass and you're to tell me when you want 'em put on."

"What?"

"The eggs; they're good and fresh. Luella Benslow's hens laid 'em."

"Are those the hens Aunt Belinda has gone to see?"

"Yes; Mis' Porter wanted to see the hens that have hot-water bags."

Linda kept on smiling.

"Dear me!" she said. "What is your name, please?"

"Blanche Aurora Martin," came the prompt report; "but you don't have to say the Martin. It's Blanche Aurora for short."

"I see; and I am Miss Barry."

"Yes, I know," was the prompt reply; "but I made up my mind to call you Miss Belinda 'cause if there was two Miss Barrys, I couldn't stand it."

"Really? Very well; but what did you mean about hens with hot-water bags?"

"Why, Luella puts 'em in every nest when it comes cold, and Mis' Porter, she laughed and laughed when she heard about it; Luella's some slack about lots o' things, but she's got real good ideas about helpin' the hens along and Mis' Porter wanted Miss Barry should take her over and see 'em." Blanche Aurora's sharp gaze noted the guest's languid appetite as evinced by the slight diminution of the oatmeal. "The eggs is real good," she continued, "and I've got an hourglass."

Linda lifted her somber eyes and showed the tips of her white teeth again.

"I hope you don't boil them an hour, Blanche Aurora?"

It wasn't very often that Miss Barry's maid was offered a joke, but the relaxing of her thin cheeks now showed that she could take one.

"No danger!" she returned smartly. But the suggestion of eggs, even those laid luxuriously in the proximity of a hot-water bag, could not tempt the pale guest this morning.

"Coffee and toast sound very good," she said. "No eggs this morning, I think."

"Hev it your own way," returned the help; "we cal'late to give you what you want," and at once she attacked the swing door. The little creature's sudden energy of motion after absolute repose was like her stentorian tones breaking dead silence.

When coffee and toast were set before the guest, Blanche Aurora again supported the wall and watched her charge with an unremitting stare.

"You don't need to wait," said Linda.

"I druther," returned Blanche Aurora with a finality which admitted of no argument.

The guest followed the line of least resistance.

"Is Mrs. – is the hen lady one of your neighbors?"

"Luella Benslow? Yes, she and her father. Her father's a wonderful man – Luella's father is."

"What does he do?"

"Well, he don't do nothin' much. He never did support his family nor anythin' like that; but he has such wonderful 'complishments. There ain't nobody can ketch a frog like Cy Benslow can."

Linda looked up and felt color coming into her cheeks in the novel desire to laugh.