Chapter XI: An Outing and an Invitation

The next week came that never-to-be-forgotten outing which gave the Northmore girls their first glimpse of Boston, and their first acquaintance with the sea. Till the morning they started there was no talk of anything else. Stella, who knew better than her cousins what occasion might demand of dress in a stylish watering-place, bent all her artistic skill to the revising of garments, and even Kate and Esther, whose wardrobes were mostly new, found some chance for retouchings, some need of new laces and ribbons.

For the first time since their coming, their grandfather really felt himself a little neglected. Occasionally, as he passed through the room where the three girls sat busy with sewing and the eager discussion of styles and colors, he murmured solemnly, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity;” and he not only prayed feelingly at family devotions that the young of his household might learn to adorn themselves with “the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit,” but he selected once for his morning reading a chapter in which warnings were pronounced against those who set their hearts on “changeable suits of apparel, and mantles, and wimples, and crisping-pins.” However, he was as anxious as any one that his granddaughters should enjoy themselves, and his good-will toward this particular excursion was sufficiently indicated by the trifle which he quietly added to the pin-money of each when they started off.

It does not concern our story, and would take too long to tell all the sights and happenings of the days that followed. Never did two more interested or more appreciative girls than Kate and Esther Northmore walk about the streets of Boston, or take in the meanings and memories which it held in its keeping, and in its dear vicinity.

At Cambridge, as they walked about the grounds of Harvard, whom should they meet but Mr. Philip Hadley? A remarkable coincidence it seemed at the time, though Kate remembered later that Stella had set out with tolerable distinctness the time when they expected to be there, with other details of the Boston visit, that night at the farm.

After that, he had part in all their excursions, and a charming addition he made to the party. Stella was a good chaperon, but he was even better, for he had the _entree_ of a dozen places which they could not have entered without him, and whether it was acquaintance, or a liberal use of money, never were more gracious attentions bestowed on a party of sight-seers. He was really a delightful companion; a good talker, a good listener, and so perfectly at leisure that he was ready to act on the slightest hint of anything that interested the others.

It was a suggestion of Stella’s, and a lucky one, as she congratulated herself, which led to the most unexpected incident of the whole visit. They had been talking, she and Mr. Hadley, of Copleys, as they walked through the Boston art gallery, and he had mentioned suddenly that there was one in his own home; after which came the quick invitation to make a visit that afternoon to the house on Beacon Street.

The others accepted with no special emotion, but Stella was radiant, and, Bostonian as she called herself, it was she who felt most curiosity when they stood, a few hours later, before the door which bore the name of Hadley, in the long row of brown stone fronts. The house was closed for the summer, and Mr. Hadley had made no attempt to open any rooms except the library, but _this_! It occupied all one side of the long hall on the second floor; a room filled with books and pictures and marbles. “A perfect place,” as Stella declared, clasping her hands in a transport of artistic satisfaction.

There were books on books. Indeed, the Northmore girls, accustomed as they were to a fair library at home, had not realized that so many books were ever gathered in one room, outside of public places; and there were pictures beside pictures. There was a Corot at which the heir of the house had not even hinted; and the Copley hung beside a celebrated Millais. Whether the young man most enjoyed the keen appreciation of Stella, or the frank, delighted wonder of the others, is a question. He did the honors of the place with the easy indifference of one to the manner born, and it seemed a mere matter of course, when he called the attention of his guests to one choice possession after another, to rare old copies of books and deluxe editions.

Stella’s delight seemed to mount with every moment, but Esther grew so quiet at last that the others rallied her on her soberness. She flushed when Stella declared that she looked almost melancholy, and said, with a glance at the shelves, that one should not be expected to be merry in such company.

But, truth to tell, her thoughts had company just then that no other knew. There had come back to her, oddly perhaps, the memory of a day when Morton Elwell showed her the shelf of books in his little room. It was not a handsome shelf—he had made it himself; and the books he had bought, one after another, with savings which meant wearing the old hat and the patch on the boots. How proud he was of those books! There was no easy indifference in his manner as he stood before them with his shining face, and his hand had almost trembled as he passed it caressingly over their plain cloth bindings.

The servant in charge of the house presently answered Mr. Hadley’s ring by bringing up a tray with the daintiest of lunches, and he himself set steaming the samovar which stood in a cosey corner. He could preside over pretty china almost as gracefully as Stella herself, when it came to that. Altogether it was a delectable hour which they spent in that library, and the girls all said so in their various fashions when they parted with Mr. Hadley. Esther, perhaps, said it with more feeling than either of the others. She felt as if she had been part of something she had dreamed of all her life, and yet—it was almost provoking, too—that old, insistent memory had half spoiled the dream.

From Boston to Nahant was the move next on their programme. The place was in its glory then, one of the prettiest of the seaside resorts; and for a week they did everything that anybody does at the shore.

Oh, the delight of it all! The pleasure of sitting on the level sands and watching the tides creep in and out; the transports and trepidations of the first dip into the great salt bath, and the unimagined joy of flying over the bright blue water under sails stretched by a glorious breeze! If anything _could_ have made Kate waver in her conviction that her native state was best favored of all in the length and breadth of the land, it would have been, at moments, the thought of its distance from the sea; and it was a long, devouring look, almost a tearful look, that she sent back at the blue expanse when the hour came to leave it.

The outing had been a complete success, from beginning to end. They were too tired to talk of it, as they rode on the train back to Esterly. To look musingly out of the windows was all that any of them cared to do. But words came fast again as they rode back to the farm with their grandfather, who was waiting for them, of course, at the depot; and faster still when, with Tom and Aunt Elsie as listeners, they were all seated at the family supper.

“We’ve had more fun than we expected, positively more,” Kate exclaimed, “and I shall never take a bit of stock again in that idea that thinking about things beforehand is better than actually having them. It must have been started by somebody who was too old to enjoy things.”

And her grandfather, after grunting a little over the last clause, and calling attention to the fact that _he_, at least, had never seen the time when he could say of any rational enjoyments, “I have no pleasure in them,” was inclined to agree with the sentiment.

“Things don’t turn out just as you expect them to, of course,” he remarked reflectively. “I never knew it to happen that a body didn’t miss _something_ of what he’d counted on, but then, on the other hand, something’s sure to turn up that you warn’t looking for, and you must set one over against the other. There are worse things than old age to keep folks from enjoying themselves,” he added acutely, “and one of them is being so taken up with yourself that you feel abused if your own plans don’t work out to a T. For my part, I shouldn’t wonder if there was more pleasure to be got out of surprises, anyhow.”

The allusion to unexpected things of course suggested the meeting with Mr. Hadley, and then followed a full account of all his subsequent attentions. The old gentleman was delighted, and wished he could have been with them when they made that visit to the house on Beacon Street, a wish which it is doubtful whether the girls fully shared. They did not demur to it, however, nor yet to his evident impression that the young man’s gratitude for the light which had been thrown on the history of his forefathers had led him to extend these pleasant courtesies to his, Ruel Saxon’s, descendants.

Tom was the first to suggest the doubt. “Say, did the nabob talk all the time about his ancestors?” he demanded of Kate, as they sat on the wood-pile after supper, a perch to which she declared she was glad to come back after her fortnight’s absence.

“Of course he didn’t,” she replied. “I don’t think he spoke of them once, except when he showed us some of their portraits in the library.”

“I thought so,” said Tom, kicking a birch stick down from the pile, and sending it with accurate aim against the instrument which he called a “saw-horse” and she called a “saw-buck.” Then, looking her in the eyes, he asked coolly, “Which of ’em is it, Stelle or Esther?”

“Both of ’em, I reckon,” said Kate, with equal coolness.

“It’ll be one of them in particular if it keeps on like this,” said Tom, “and I’ll bet a shilling it’ll be Esther.”

For once she did not take up the wager. It had been thrown down between them so often during the summer that nothing had prevented their both becoming bankrupt except the standing quarrel as to the amount involved, Tom maintaining steadily that it was sixteen and two-third cents, one sixth of a dollar, and she insisting with equal obstinacy that it was twelve and a half. This time she let it pass.

“Tom, you’re a goose,” she said severely; and then she added: “I suppose you don’t think it’s possible that he’s at all impressed with _me_. I’d like to have you know that we had a great deal of conversation. Why”—she threw a shade of weariness into her voice—“I had to go over most of the ground that I’ve been going over with you ever since I came. We had _r_ up, of course. I really could not help speaking of it. One would think there was something actually profane about that poor little letter, the way the Bostonians avoid using it. And when I’d fairly made out my case, and he couldn’t deny it, he had to pretend, just as you do, that we Westerners make too much of it, when we don’t at all; and as if _that_ was any answer!”

“The way you do,” observed Tom, sympathetically, “when I show you that you folks mix up the wills and shalls so there’s no telling which from t’other, and you get back at me by declaring that we say ‘hadn’t ought’ and a few things of that sort.”

And then they fell to it again in the old fashion, Kate protesting the absolute incapacity of the average mind for grasping the fine distinctions between those two auxiliaries, which, thank Heaven, have still not wholly lost their special uses on our Eastern coast, and finally, after various thrusts at local usage, ending with the charge that New Englanders more than dwellers in the West are guilty of dropping from their speech the final _g_, a point on which the impartial listener might possibly have thought that she had a little the best of it.

And while the good-natured dispute went on, another and more important conversation was being held in the house on the old county road, where Esther sat with Aunt Katharine in the growing twilight. She had slipped away from her grandfather’s as soon as supper was over to make the call. There had been so many of these calls since her three days’ visit there that no one was surprised at them any more or offered to accompany her. It was recognized by all that there was something of genuine intimacy between these two, an intimacy at which every one smiled except Kate, whose dislike of her lonely old relative seemed to increase with her sister’s fondness.

Aunt Katharine had heard the click of the gate as the girl came up, and for once she had hobbled down the walk to greet a guest. There was almost a hungry look in her eyes as they searched the bright young face, and her brother had not inquired more eagerly than she for the particulars of the trip. And Esther went over it all, with a cheery pleasure that warmed her listener’s heart, talking as she might have talked to her mother of the things she had seen and felt, gayly, without reserve, and sure always of the interest of the other.

It was a rare hour to Aunt Katharine. Not in years had any fresh young life brought its happiness so willingly to her, and her heart responded with a glow and fulness like the sudden out-leaping of a brook in the spring.

At the last Esther had said, a little wistfully, that she was glad these days had come so late in this summer visit. It was almost ended now, but its climax of pleasure had been reached, and the memory of it would be a joy forever.

“Do you have to go back, both of you, the first of September?” Aunt Katharine asked suddenly. “Why couldn’t _you_ stay a while longer? They don’t need you at home for anything special, do they?”

The idea took definite shape as she caught the outlines of it, and her keen eyes kindled. “You like things here better ’n Kate does, and you’re older. S’pose you should stay at the farm and see what a New England fall is like—you can’t know your mother’s country without knowing that—and then spend the winter in Boston with Stella. She’d like it, and she’d let you into a lot of things you want to know about. I never cared much for pictures and music and such, but you do; and you or’ to have a taste of ’em while you’re young.”

She paused, and Esther said with a gasp: “Oh, that would be glorious, glorious! But the expense of it, Aunt Katharine! Father couldn’t possibly afford to let me do it, and I couldn’t pay my own way, you know, as Stella does.”

“I wasn’t counting on your father’s bearing the expense, nor you either,” said Miss Saxon, dryly. “I guess I could afford to do that much for you, and a few other things too, if you took a notion to ’em.” And then a tenderer note crept into her voice as she added, “I missed most of the things I wanted when I was a girl, and I’d like to make sure of it that _you_ fared better.”

There was no talking for a minute or two after that. The delights that seemed to open before Esther through the avenues of this plan almost took her breath away, and the generosity that proposed it made her eyes dim with tears. It was Aunt Katharine, not she, who could discuss it coolly, and to the old woman the thought seemed to grow every moment dearer. There were friends of hers in Boston—not Stella’s friends, she added, with a peculiar smile—people who would be good to Esther for her sake. Perhaps Esther would come to feel toward them as she herself did, and then she looked at the girl for a moment as if taking her measure with reference to something larger than she knew.

The dew was falling and the whippoorwills were calling across the hills through the twilight that had deepened almost into night when Esther rose at last to go home. She had never kissed Aunt Katharine before, but the old woman drew her face down to hers and held it for an instant as she bade her good night. Then she said almost brusquely:—

“You’d better hurry home now. They’ll think I’ve lost my wits entirely to be keeping you so long. And you’ve got that letter to write to your mother. Tell her everything, and be sure it goes in the morning.”

And Esther, with feet almost as light as the wings of the night birds, hurried across the fields to tell the surprising news to the two circles—the household at home, and the one at her grandfather’s.