Chapter VII: My noble and well warranted cousin

—_Measure for Measure_, v, 1.

When a telegram arrived announcing that Lieutenant Adams accepted his cousin’s invitation, Miss Esther was greatly pleased, and at once began a pleasant flurry of preparation for his reception. A letter following the next day told how exceedingly welcome her invitation had been, and how it was necessary for him to leave Fort Monroe on sick leave for a time. “Your letter,” he wrote, “could not have reached me at a time when the prospect of a few weeks in the country was more attractive. In working out on the ramparts where we have been taking down the old guns, I slipped, and broke my leg. I had planned to go into the mountains of Virginia. I have changed my plans. I am coming to you. All I want is rest in a quiet place where my foolish leg can get well. I have already telegraphed, and I may reach Whitfield on the same day with this letter, for I am going north to-night. I can get about on crutches fairly well. Thank you again for the inspiration which led you to ask me to come.”

Miss Esther was pleased rather than otherwise at her cousin’s misfortune, for she was a born nurse and dearly loved to fuss over an invalid, and, moreover, she could keep him longer and use him to better advantage in the accomplishment of her fell project.

Miss Esther knew, however, that a broken leg did not necessarily affect a man’s appetite, so she enjoyed stocking her larder with the lavishness which always characterized her hospitality. It was in the midst of these preparations that a letter arrived from Nashua.

NASHUA, N. H., June 24.

MISS ESTHER ADAMS,

DEAR MADAM,—Mr. Briggs received your letter yesterday, and
wishes me to thank you for your kind words. He especially
appreciates your commendation of his philanthropic efforts, and
wishes all success to your young friend in her pursuit of art.

He regrets his inability to accept your kind invitation to call
on you at Whitfield, and assures you that he received your
proposition quite in the spirit in which it was written.

Mr. Briggs and myself have just returned from our wedding trip,
and unite in sending you hearty good wishes for the future
success of your own philanthropic plans. I am, my dear Miss
Adams,

Very sincerely yours,
EMMELINE FISHER BRIGGS,
(MRS. HIRAM BRIGGS.)

“Just returned from their wedding journey!” exclaimed Miss Esther. “I should have written Mr. Briggs at least two months ago. Well,” she went on, cheerfully, “I must get somebody else for Lillian. And it’s just as well, too, for ‘Lillian Briggs’ wasn’t a very pretty name; but I did want her to sail in August. I shall have to hurry. Let me see what I can do—”

“Hullo, Aunt Esther,” called Jack from the driveway, “I’ve got Mr. Brewster to come to see the ship.”

Miss Esther rose to greet the big blond man who accompanied Jack, and shook his hand cordially.

“I am assured,” began Mr. Brewster, “by my young friend, Mr. Remington, that any friend of his is welcome at the Adams house.”

“Not only that,” said Miss Esther, graciously, “but I have reason to think that your family and mine are connected, and that I may welcome you as a sort of relative. You are a Winthrop?”

“My mother was a Winthrop,” said Mr. Brewster, “of the Gideon Winthrop branch.”

“And my mother,” said Miss Esther, “was a Winthrop of the Wingate Winthrops. But of course, a few generations back they were identical, and I claim you as a relative.”

“I am very glad to be claimed,” responded Mr. Brewster, with a touch of foreign-mannered courtesy which Miss Esther afterward discovered was characteristic of the man.

“Providential,” thought Miss Esther. “Here is Mr. Briggs’s substitute ready-made to my hand.”

“Then, Aunt Esther,” interrupted Jack, “that makes Mr. Brewster my uncle, don’t it? And now can he go see our ship?”

Miss Esther acquiesced, and Mr. Brewster and Jack went at once to the large room on the second floor which had been given over to the young ship-builder.

Then Nora brought the tea-table, and Miss Esther supervised the arrangement of her beloved cups and saucers, and when the two enthusiasts returned from the inspection of the ship, they found the hostess surrounded by three chattering girls.

“Hullo, Jean!” cried Jack, “come on up and see my ship.”

“Is the rudder working properly yet?” the young lady inquired, but before he could answer, Miss Esther presented Mr. Brewster to Helen, Lillian, and Jean.

“I’m so glad to meet you, Mr. Brewster,” exclaimed Jean. “I’ve been longing to meet you all day—ever since I saw you at the post-office this morning with Dr. Bushnell; but I didn’t know you knew Miss Adams.”

“I didn’t until half an hour ago, but she, too, has been kind enough to say that she was glad to meet me; though she didn’t say she had been longing for it all day.”

“But she didn’t see you at the post-office,” said Jean.

“No,” said Miss Esther, “but if I had I shouldn’t have waited for an introduction until now, for he is one of our own Winthrops.”

“I bet that’s Cousin Putnam coming now,” exclaimed Jack, watching a carriage turning in at the gate.

“Who’s Cousin Putnam?” asked Jean, as Miss Esther hurried down the steps.

“Oh,” explained Jack, ecstatically, “he’s Aunt Esther’s cousin and he’s a lieutenant in the army with a uniform and a sword and he knows all about war and navies and ships and he was in Cuba with General Kent and he was in Manila after Dewey was there, and he saw Dewey once, ’cause he wrote Aunt Esther so, and he’s had fights with natives and things and he’s going to tell me all about the ships, ’cause Aunt Esther said she’d make him, and he fell on a fort where he lives down South somewheres and he bust his leg and he’s come here to get well—and everything.” Jack paused for want of further breath as the carriage drove up, when he flew down the steps exclaiming, “Hello, Cousin Putnam! Why didn’t you wear your uniform?”

Seeing Lieutenant Adams’s crutches, Mr. Brewster followed Jack and offered his assistance.

Notwithstanding Lieutenant Adams’s ability to manage his crutches, he was glad of Brewster’s support. Miss Esther had scarcely more than spoken to her cousin when she was surprised by seeing another carriage closely following the first.

“More company!” cried Jack. “Who is it, Aunt Esther?”

As the second carriage stopped, two young men jumped out, exclaiming, “Here we are. Mother sent us. She said you wanted us. You’re our Cousin Esther, aren’t you?”

“Goodness! are you Emily’s boys? and what are the two of you doing here?”

“Why you sent for us, didn’t you? Mother telegraphed us to stop here on our way home. Didn’t you get our telegram saying we’d be here to-day?”

“No, I didn’t; but I’m just as glad to see you. Come right in. Which of you is Kenneth?”

“I am. I am Kenneth Adams Westcott, and he is Mark Adams Westcott. He’s a little older than I am, but I’m a whole lot nicer than he is.”

“You look like the Adamses,” said Miss Esther, as she led the way up the steps and straight to the group around the tea-table.

When Brewster reached the veranda with Lieutenant Adams, he suddenly realized that the responsibility of the hospitality of the house of Adams devolved upon him. He presented the newcomer to the young ladies and Jean promptly shared the honors with Mr. Brewster. She appropriated the bronzed invalid, and impressing Brewster into her service, she ordered from him successive relays of tea and muffins with which to regale her newly acquired subject, when she saw Miss Esther approaching with what seemed like two new worlds to conquer.

Miss Esther introduced the Westcott boys to Lillian and Helen, and then bringing them over to Jean, begged her to make tea for them.

This effervescent young woman was in her element. With four newly made and evidently admiring acquaintances, she fairly bubbled with excitement, and wondered how Helen and Lillian could take it all so calmly.

“It’s a funny thing,” said Miss Esther, looking proudly at the four young men, “to think that for years not a single one of my cousins has visited me, and now they come not single spies, but in battalions.”

“I think battalions are very nice things,” said Jean.

“So do I,” replied Miss Esther; “I only wish all my cousins were here.”

“There are something like two hundred of them, I believe,” said Lieutenant Adams.

“Well, I don’t care; I would put up tents on the lawn.”

“Won’t you have to put up tents for us as it is?” inquired Kenneth Westcott. “You seem to have had an unexpected avalanche of relatives to-day.”

“Oh, no, indeed,” replied Miss Esther. “The Adams house has plenty of room, and, too, Mr. Brewster is not staying here. He’s a guest of Dr. Bushnell.”

“Is this a surprise party to you as well as to us, Miss Esther?” asked Helen.

“_I_ was expected,” said Lieutenant Adams; “these other scions of the house of Adams are base interlopers, but Cousin Esther wrote me that she specially wanted me to come, and I wrote her that I was coming to-day.”

“And mother telegraphed us that Cousin Esther specially wanted us to come,” said Mark, “and we telegraphed that we were coming to-day.”

“Here comes the telegram now,” said Lillian, as the boy from the telegraph-office rode slowly up the driveway on a bicycle.

“Hello, Mercury!” said Jean, as he dismounted from his wheel.

“Ah, gwan!” said the boy, gallantly, as he remounted and rode away.

Miss Esther read the message. “I learn from this,” she said, “that my two Westcott cousins are coming to-day to make me a visit.”

“Then we’re not interlopers any more?” asked Kenneth.

“Not at all. You are honored and expected guests, and I hope you will stay all summer.”

“I hope so, too,” said Jean.

When Brewster and the three girls went away, Lieutenant Adams said, “Do you often have such tea-parties as this, Cousin Esther?”

“Nearly every afternoon,” replied Miss Adams.

“Then we’ll all stay all summer,” exclaimed the Lieutenant.

“I want you to, anyway, Putnam; and at least one of you other boys,” said Miss Esther.

“Why can’t my little brother stay, too?” asked Mark.

“Oh, let’s all stay,” said the Lieutenant, “and I have a friend who’s awfully anxious to come to Whitfield for the summer with me, and he’s an all-round good fellow, too; besides, he has barrels of money, and he can sing and paint and everything.”

“Send for him,” said Miss Esther, in a sudden enthusiastic burst of hospitality.