THE SECRET OF THE CLAN THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO DALLAS • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd, TORONTO We drank it solemnly, from mugs and broken cups." THE SECRET OF THE CLAN BY ALICE BROWN ILLUSTRATED BY SARAH K. SMITH THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1918 AH rights reserved Copyright, 1912, Bv THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 191a. Reprinted October, 19x3 ; August, 1913; June, August, 1914; February, 1917. Kortoooto IBrrss J. S. Cushing Co. — Berwick and Marcia was always willing to eat it for her, when the absent-mindedness of the grown-ups made it possible, while Kay sat piously with Marcia's empty saucer before her. Grandma folded the letter, laid it beside her plate, and began her toast. She had a little pink spot in each cheek. fc I declare/' she said, " I am so relieved and so pleased. Children, have you been listening ? You're going to have a governess, dear Amy Fullerton." " Yes," said Uncle Terry, " and you can't lead Amy by the nose. She won't let you. Amy's got an arm like a steel spring." Marcia had finished the oatmeal, and now she sat straight, and as tall as she could manage. " Her muscle won't make any difference," said she. "They can't touch us. Grandma wouldn't let 'em." " Oh, my dear, she won't want to touch you," said Grandmother, " except in kindness. Amy is a very beautiful person." "Touch them? She'll biff 'em," said Uncle Terry. " If they behave like hoodlums, she'll have to maul 'em like hoodlums. I've no doubt The Midnight Hunt 67 she'll tie 'em each up to a stake and hide 'em well. I must have some stakes set out and buy a cargo of rawhides." Even I knew better than to stare here, and in a minute we had left the table and were bunched on the front steps, in the crisp morning air, decid- ing what to do. Ruth was always a little afraid somebody was going to be hurt, and now, I saw in a minute, she was preparing a pleasant way for Amy Fullerton. Ruth, although none of the chil- dren were any kin to Grandma, was often said, in her soft kindliness, to be a little like her. Now she dog's-nosed Marcia's hand, and said, in her good little voice:- — "/ think she'll be nice." " Amy Fullerton ? " said Marcia. " Maybe. She can play tennis. But we'd better not say much about it till we've looked her over. If we say we think she'll be nice, Grandma'll write and tell her so, and then she'll think she knows where to find us." " Besides," said Kay, who always had to have things proved, "she may be grand while she's playing tennis and horrid when she isn't." " Maybe she'll fall in love with Uncle Terry," 68 The Secret of the Clan said Ruth, who was always trying to get hold of what she called "books with love in them". "Maybe he'll fall in love with her." Marcia and Kay both turned on her with faces deeply shocked. "Why, Ruth Blake!" said Marcia. "I never heard you say such an awful thing in my life." Ruth's face was crimson. She looked as if she were going to cry. " But people do fall in love," she said. " It's in the books. Other people see they're in love and then they say to them, c Now you can get married.' The minister says so and he marries them. Uncle Terry reads the books, too. He had one the other day, and when he laid it down to light his pipe, I took it up, and that was the first thing I saw. c " I love you," said the man.' 'Twas what it said." " That's all right," said Marcia. " Only Uncle Terry couldn't say it to anybody, because he's married now." "Oh, my!" said I. "Where's his wife?" "Why, she's dead," said Marcia. "But he can't marry anybody else." " Oh, yes, he can," said I, " if he wants to." The Midnight Hunt 69 I could hardly talk fast enough, I was so eager to set them right. "I know, for down horn* there was a man, and his wife died, and pretty soon he went and married again. And all the neighbors called on her. Aunt Tabitha did, and she said she was real sweet and nobody could have been more pleased than Jennie, if she knew. Jennie was his wife that died." I remembered, too, that Aunt Tabitha had said : "The Grandmother is a Step-Grandmother, but I fancy the cousins don't even know it, she's so exactly like a real one." I made up my mind they didn't know it, and I didn't dare tell them ; but I smiled a little, thinking how surprised they'd be if they knew such a beautiful thing as the Grand- mother was a " step ". I thought they might talk differently if they did. " Then he must have been a wicked man," said Ruth, who could always change her views for more romantic ones. " Because in one of the books Mary had on the pantry shelf, it said, c In life or in death, my darling, you are mine.' I think that's lovely." "Well, I don't," said Marcia. "I think it's sickening. Let's go over to the State House and play Senate. I'll take the Chair." 70 The Secret of the Clan So we slipped the loose rail in the fence of the State House yard, and crossed the green to the gravel path. Grandma had told us it was better not to go in that way, because we made a little track across the grass, and usually we tried to mind. But to-day, with the talk of coming governesses in the air, we felt more lawless. Besides, Grandma never actually forbade us to do things, unless they were so naughty that there were no two ways about it. I heard Uncle Terry talking it over with her once. " I never in my life heard you say to those kids, 1 Do this/ or c Do that/ " he told her. " Well," said Grandma, " if I should, and they didn't do it, they'd be disobeying me, and that would be bad for them." " If they disobey you, give them a clout over the head," said Uncle Terry, and she just looked at him and said : — " O Terry ! " And he laughed, and told her she was a sweet thing, and he'd buy her a bunch of blue ribbon. " But I'll tell you one thing," said Marcia, when we went up the broad granite steps, " Amy Fuller- ton is all very well, but I don't take much stock in The Midnight Hunt 71 the one that's coming first. Languages and danc- ing!" " I don't care about her myself/' said Kay, " Well, we'll see what we can do with her." Now Ruth dog's-nosed me through my mitten. " I'd like," said she, " to dance all the time." The State House was a wonderful spot to play in. When I got used to being there, I felt, as the others did, that it was probably built for that, among other less important purposes. As long as I stayed with the cousins, we were there certainly two or three days out of every week. Nobody seemed to see us. As soon as we got inside we moved about, perhaps awed by its bigness, as softly as cautious mice. The Senate Chamber was particularly attrac- tive. The rows of chairs were perfect for playing school, and from the Speaker's place Marcia, the most dramatic one among us, treated an invisible Senate to " Lochinvar " and " Helvellyn". While she did that, we played at something else. We didn't care particularly about speeches we didn't make ourselves. This day I was the stranger, and they proudly took me everywhere : to the " Cabi- net", where there were stuffed birds and minerals, and even gold and fresh-water pearls found not so 7 a The Secret of the Clan far away. The three had hunted very hard for both these last, Ruth told me, but had never found a "speck". I was much impressed by frames of little photographs, all of soldiers who had gone to the Civil War. These, I understood, were heroes, and when I saw the flags, I choked and sniffed. Then we went up to the Zone. This was the big dome, so hot in summer that Marcia had named it the Torrid Zone, and on up the ladders to the open platform at the very top, where stood the giant statue of the State herself, a grain sheaf on her arm. She was like a tower to us, so far below her pedes- tal ; we couldn't really see how fine she was, but we did look over and beyond the town to the wonder- ful blue hills ringing the valley round, and, in the distance, one lone mountain. To me this was a very exciting time. I had never been on heights, and all the bigness I knew was the sea. I was rather glad to go down past the bronze Indian and the hunter on the first floor and out to the pillared porch, where stood the state's great hero. The statue of the Indian had a new interest for Kay and Marcia since we had become a Tribe. They said we ought to salute him somehow ; but for a few min- utes we couldn't think of a way. It didn't seem The Midnight Hunt 73 appropriate to touch our forelocks, and finally it was voted, at Kay's suggestion, that whenever we came in, we should stand before him and say, " Ugh ! " This we did now, grunting it in concert, and then we raced out into the bright fall sunshine. I was still awed by the stately building. " Why," said I, " it almost makes me afraid ! " At this Kay and Marcia laughed, and Kay said : — " Stop and look in this. See if this makes you afraid." It was a most wonderful thing to children's eyes : an enormous door-knob that looked like glass with silver blown into it. It was like a wonderful mirror. It reflected and made everything tiny, like the trees and houses and streets of Fairyland. I was " all carried away ", as we used to say at Sedgmoor, to see our dots of figures and the figures in the street. The cousins could hardly drag me away from it, and then only by remind- ing me that I might come to see it any time, and we'd bring flags to wave and make the little people gayer still. So we ran away, planning the game of flags, and walked down the River Road, " scuff- ing " in yellow leaves. 74 The Secret of the Clan Already the town was charming to me. Every step I took was, I felt, toward some new happi- ness. I suppose the upland air excited me, fresh from the level of the sea, and I had never imagined such a blaze of color as there was in the maple trees. I had never known anything just like the soft enchantment of the hour when the mists rolled off the near-by hills and they stood out, all purple- black and soft, and the world smelled of apples and pears and ripened leaves. That day was one I think I should have remembered always, we were so happy. We just roamed about, and talked a little, and came in for dinner, and then again went roaming. And after supper it grew suddenly cool, as it does in the upland country, and Kay said : — " Come, let's ask Grandma if we can keep the fire in the dining room and do puzzles on the table." So we did, and though I was too sleepy from the air to fit puzzles together, I could look on. Just as we were sitting down, Ruth came in ; she wore her hat and coat. " I'm going down to see if Flutino's got home," she said, and Kay and Marcia nodded, and went on with their puzzling. The Midnight Hunt 75 " Who's Flutino ? " I asked, out of my sleepiness. " He's a boy. He lives down the River Road," said Kay. "Just he and his mother. They've been away for him to have some piano lessons, and Mary thought she saw the hack go by. He's in our Clan." So they went puzzling on ; but at eight o'clock one was as sleepy as another, and we went in and kissed Grandmother " Good night." It was a ceremony I liked. All day I used to look for- ward to it. "Where's Ruth?" said she. " Down to Flutino's," said Marcia, and just then Mary came in and asked the Grandmother if she would please come out into the kitchen and see Mrs. Berry. Little Ida Berry had a cold, and Mrs. Berry wanted camphor oil. And the rest of us went off to bed. I thought I had not been asleep at all when I felt the light on my eyelids, and awoke. There was Marcia with her petticoat on, though her hair was still in its tail and her arms were bare. She had lighted the gas and now dropped the match on the floor, and I thought sleepily how naughty that was ; and then I saw she looked quite different j6 The Secret of the Clan from the Marcia I had begun to know. Her eyes were staring and very dark. When she spoke, her lips chattered as if she might be cold. " Get up," she said. " Ruth's lost." I put my feet out of bed. I was stiff and numb with sleep. Even then my brain hadn't come awake, and I didn't see why Marcia was so scared. " What are you doing ? " she said to me, when I went to the washstand and began to lift the pitcher. The tone sounded as if she were furious with me. " Wash my face," said I. "Wash your face," said she, "when Ruth's lost? You get into your clothes. Here, take your shirt." She threw it at me, and I slipped off my nightie and put it on. Then she picked up the rest of my clothes, one after another, and pelted me with them, and I was soon dressed, in a rough sort of way. But I had come awake at last, and had caught her fear. If I spoke, I thought my teeth might chatter, too. " What does she say ? " I asked. "Who?" " Grandma." "She doesn't know it. We can't let her know ♦ .• : ••• " < Get up,' " she said, " < Ruth's lost. The Midnight Hunt 77 it. We've got to find her ourselves. Besides* Grandma's gone over to see Ida." " Where's Uncle Terry ? " "Abed, I s'pose. Come, you're ready, aren't you ? " " Where's Kay ? " I asked, and now Marcia had my hand, and had pulled me to the bedroom door. " She's gone. I stopped to wake you." I began to understand. Not only was Ruth lost, but we were going to find her, and suddenly the sight of Marcia's bare arms awoke some common sense in me. " Marcia Blake," I said, and I felt as old as the Grandmother when I said it, " you can't go out without your waist on, this cold night." " Oh," said Marcia, " I forgot. I'll get on my dress, and you tiptoe downstairs and put on your coat and hat." There was a tiny point of light in the globe of the hall lamp, but the big rooms looked queer and lonesome to me. I put my hand on the banister and crept slowly down, and when I was halfway, the tall clock at the head of the stairs began to strike. I forgot that well-ordered clocks strike twenty-four times in the course of as many hours. These clear 78 The Secret of the Clan notes seemed all meant for me : reproof, alarm, threats even, they carried. And I stopped still and counted them, and there were twelve. Then I did feel a little choked in the throat: for I had thought it the edge of the evening, and here it was midnight, when all sorts of odd things happen, if they happen at all. But while I stood there like a mouse scared in the midst of cheese, Marcia appeared at the head of the stairs. She bestrode the rail and came noiselessly whizzing down. She had chosen the method of firemen when they hear the alarm, and I was ashamed of my fear and crept down after. She had all our things out of the closet, and mine she thrust at me. I put them on in a despairing haste. I really was a coward, and now that the clock had told me the dreadful hour, I was pretty sure of never getting back into the house again. Marcia softly drew the bolt and opened the big door. Kay, I found out afterward, had descended from the top of the veranda by a trellis, a way she had. Marcia closed the door behind us, and I whispered : — " I don't think we ought to leave it unfastened, do you ? " She didn't even answer me. She took my hand, The Midnight Hunt 79 and pulled me along, and we crossed the wet grass that led back to the Plantation, and began to thread our way among the trees. The air was cold, though a little damp, but the sky was clear. I took one look overhead and found the Dipper. It was a comfort to see it, because it was the same old Dipper we had been used to at Sedgmoor, Aunt Tabitha and I; but I never remembered to have seen it tipped like that. I fancied it must be be- cause it was midnight and everything was different. But the air on my face .was pleasant to me, and Marcia was dragging me at a good pace, and suddenly I found I was not afraid. Marcia knew her way perfectly among the trees. She never lost the little path once, and I felt as if we were prob- ably going on forever dodging trees that seemed to jump at us, and with the Dipper over our heads. Suddenly we stopped as still as a rabbit scared. We heard a whistle. " Bob White ! Bob White ! " just those two notes. " Why," said I, "there's a quail. I never heard one so late in the fall." "It's Kay," said Marcia. "Or else it's Ruth. That's our signal. We must find out where it is." 80 The Secret of the Clan But the quail seemed to be directly ahead of us in the way we were going, and suddenly we came on a figure standing in the path. «■ Oh ! " I cried. I couldn't help it. But Marcia left me, and pounced upon it, and then I saw it was Kay. " No signs ? " said Marcia. " No," said Kay. Her voice was so strange that, if it had not been dark, I thought I should see that Kay was crying. " Been to the Playhouse ? " Marcia asked. " Yes, and whistled all round." "Well," said Marcia, thoughtfully, "she wouldn't answer, you see, not if she heard you." " No," said Kay, forlornly. Then I had what I thought was a very bright idea. " Why," I said, - Q jarahK5ffliltL ; He stopped short, and she stopped and dropped her little blue handbag. . . ." The Fairy Queen 173 very cf mad ". People were either red or white when they were "mad ", and Uncle Terry was white, We were picking up the boxes and the coins. And when we had got them nicely packed into the bag, and Marcia stood there holding it, Uncle Terry began walking down the path. The hack- man had the trunks off and was shaking his head at them, as if they could help being so big, and now the front door opened again and Grandma called: — u Terry, come here." He stopped, but he didn't turn. Then she called again : — " Terry, please come here." He didn't answer ; but he said gruffly to the man : — u HI give you a hand," and together they lifted* the first heavy trunk and carried it into the house and upstairs to the poppy chamber, and came out for the second one, and carried that up, too. Then the hackman came out alone, and mounted his box, and drove away, and we stood there on the walk and stared at the bag as if it had come from fairy- land ; and Marcia was the only one to pluck up sense even to ask a question. " Who d'you s'pose she is ? " 174 The Secret of the Clan It was of no use even to try to answer, and she knew that. So she put another question. " What made him say, ' Is this a trick • ? " " Why, I know," said Ruth, eagerly. She was always in a delighted hurry with the answers she was sure none of us knew. They had all come out of her story-books. " She dropped her bag. He thought 'twas to make him pick it up for her." " What for ? " said Marcia. " What's the use of having it picked up when, if you'd held on to it, you'd have it, anyway ? " " Why," said Ruth, " because he's a gentleman, and maybe he might fall in love with her. She's a stranger, and she don't know he couldn't because his heart is buried in that grave." " What grave ? " Marcia asked. She was so on fire with curiosity about the lovely stranger that I believe she felt if there was anything to be got out of Ruth, she'd have it this time. " Why," said Ruth again, " his wife's. Don't you see, he might think she dropped the bag to make him stoop to pick it up — don't you see, she'd like to find him at her feet? And he's so stern and so — so unbending, he asked her right off, c Is this a trick ? ' " The Fairy Queen 175 " Ruth/' said Marcia, " if you ever talk that way before anybody but us, you'll be shut up and fed on bread and water." Ruth's pretty lips trembled. * cc I don't care/' she said. "It's so, anyway. And if you don't want me to tell you things, you needn't ask me." Again the front door opened. " Children," came Grandma's voice, " I want you." We never obeyed so fast before. And when we had got to the sitting room, Grandma was back there, and she and Uncle Terry and the lady stood as if they had been set at the corners of a triangle with equal sides, and Grandma looked flushed and excited but extremely pleased, I thought, and Uncle Terry was whiter and more frowning, if that could be. The stranger had her long gloves off, and kept slapping one white hand with them. And the rings on the white hand that moved flashed in colors of fire, red and blue. Whatever Uncle Terry had said to her, it had not offended her, for she was smiling still, and all the dimples were dim- pling round her lovely mouth. She was speaking as we went in, and her voice, like her laugh, was music. 176 The Secret of the Clan "After all, I'm only going to stay till Amy Fullerton comes. It isn't so very long/' " Children/' said Grandma, " this is Miss Maisie Delorme, the lady Miss Fullerton has sent to fill her place till she can come." We couldn't speak. This a governess, this grown-up fairy, this princess out of story-books ! I found myself looking down at my hands, and then hiding them behind my back. I had spilled some ink, that morning, when I was trying to tattoo Ruth's old sailor doll, and hadn't been able to get the stain from under my nails. Such nails wouldn't do in the presence of a fairy governess. We stood still, we four, as still as mice called up and intro- duced to a fairy that surely couldn't scratch or pounce, but still might be a cat. " Who has my bag ? " the lovely voice inquired. It seemed always to have a laugh in it. " Marcia ? Kay, you're as tall as Marcia, aren't you ? Ruth, I bet you're the one that would swap a kiss." Ruth was upon her that instant, in a little rush, and with a pang of jealousy I saw her taken into the blue arms, and hugged, and kissed first on one cheek and then on the other. The stranger let her go and gave a nod in my direction. The Fairy Queen 177 " You're Laura/' she said. " Aunt Tabitha was on my steamer going over." So that accounted for it. Aunt Tabitha had talked about us, and shown our pictures. " I think you'd better go upstairs now, dear," said Grandma, " and take off your things. This has been rather an exciting morning for all of us. You must get well rested. And, Terry, don't you go away. I want to speak to you." Maisie Delorme laughed, as if now she were quite at home and very much pleased with every- thing. " I'm not tired," she said. " I'm never tired. But come, dear Lady Grandma, show me my room. I want to talk to you." They went off upstairs, their arms about each other's waists, and into the poppy chamber and closed the door. We could hear the murmur of their voices. Uncle Terry stood where he had been standing, and he looked, Marcia said after- ward, like a thunder cloud, " pot black ". " Uncle Terry," said Ruth, « isn't she — " But she got no farther. Uncle Terry turned upon us and winked his eyes open as if he wanted to see better, and then ran up the stairs in big N 178 The Secret of the Clan leaps, I should think three at a time, and on into the third story, and we heard the banging of his door. We had no time to wonder over him. We were used to Uncle Terry, and whatever we didn't understand about him could easily wait. We had to brush our hair and see that we were fresh enough to sit down to dinner with the fairy guest. Usually we had to be coaxed or spurred to these niceties of the toilet ; but to-day there was no question. We felt like rough, uncurried ponies in the presence of such elegance. Grandma's elegance wasn't the same. She was an old lady with plenty of time to be exquisite, and besides we were used to her. This was a butterfly, just out of its cell. At dinner I can't tell you how prim we were. The only thing to ease us up was Ruth's hair. She had wet it and curled it in a little row of curls round the back of her head, and it hadn't dried, and the curls looked like shavings. Every time we glanced at her we were near giggling, and Grandma looked two or three times, in a puzzled way, as if she couldn't imagine what made Ruth so queer. But we knew. She was trying to live up to the Fairy Queen. For by this time this was what we called her, sometimes the Fairy Queen, The Fairy Queen 179 sometimes Titania. Marcia thought of it while she was putting new lacings in her boots, and it didn't occur to any of us how funny it was to set a Fairy Queen in the midst of an Indian Tribe. Uncle Terry was not at the table. He had been obliged to go "up street", Grandma said, and she was so grave about it that we thought she didn't consider it very polite. She and the Fairy talked about ocean voyages and Amy Fullerton, and a great many things that grown-ups do talk about, but that never seemed very interesting to us. Titania had just got home from Europe. She had gone over, she said, on the ship with Aunt Tabitha, but had learned things, on the ship, which decided her to turn about and come back. " Tabitha said — " she began once, and then stopped short, and bit her lip, and looked annoyed, and as if she had said what she hadn't intended. Grandma broke in quickly : — " Marcia, dear, will you pass me the salt ? " But Grandma had salt of her own. So we knew something had been nearly mentioned that was not to be talked about before us. You soon learn the signs of that. Some families are rude and, if you are really little, spell things out. Some talk in 180 The Secret of the Clan French. But Grandma was a lady, and she only slid the talk round another way, or interrupted if she had to. "Amy Fullerton is such a sweet, noble girl," she said then. " Sweet ! " said Titania. " Oh, what a lot she knows ! But you never'd suspect it. Amy's not a prig." " If all college girls could be like her, I should be inclined to think my four here would go to college," said Grandma. I thought it lovely of her to count me in. We didn't say anything, but we knew perfectly well what we were going to do, and we didn't need any college to teach it to us. Ruth was going to be a milliner and have a little shop like one "up street", with a bell that tinkled when you opened the door, and ribbons and lace and straw all over the chairs. Marcia was going on the stage. Kay was going to raise tobacco. She had been to Connecticut once and come home perfectly fascinated by the way they planted it and the neatness of the drills. And I was going to travel about with Aunt Tabitha, when she went on her concert tours, and be a com- fort to her. It was quite understood between The Fairy Queen 181 Aunt Tabitha and me, and had been for a long time. When we got up from the table, Titania looked at us suddenly as if she had 'talked to Grandma about grandmother things, and now it was our turn. She smiled delightfully, and put an arm about Kay's shoulders, as we left the room. We got as near her as we could. There were lovely things that hung on little chains from her belt and clinked as she walked, and there was a faint scent about her clothes. It wasn't a perfume. None of us would have liked that, except Kay, who kept a cologne bottle on her bureau and would sometimes uncork it and smell and smell in ecstasy. But this was the faintest breath, such as you might get from a flower-bed in June. " Anybody want to do an errand ? " she asked. "Yes!" we cried. We all wanted to do it. There was going to be hot competition. "Anybody want to take a stranger that doesn't know her way about for a little walk ? a very little walk, not far away, but where she can speak to a tree?" " The Plantation ! " cried Marcia. We had our things on in about two minutes, and 1 82 The Secret of the Clan Marcia had run upstairs and brought Titania's blue jacket, and Titania had slipped her arms in, and put on her hat and pinned it with a wonderful pin. The pin looked like an enormous pearl, and that night Ruth wondered if it could be real. "' Course/' said Kay, stoutly, and Marcia added : — "She wouldn't wear anything else." " Grandma, why don't you come ? " Kay asked. We never did invite her, because we knew she preferred her gentle deeds indoors ; but this seemed a very special walk, and we couldn't bear to leave her out. But she smiled, in a funny little way, at Titania instead of us, and Titania smiled at her. I think now they had arranged it, perhaps, for Titania to take us off alone, and get acquainted. We were enormously excited and very proud. We led her through the gate and into the Plantation, and though she said little, we knew perfectly well that she was pleased. You can always tell whether people like outdoors or not. If they really like it, they don't talk much and they behave in a particular way. I can't explain what the way is ; but if you like it yourself, you can tell quick enough. It was a warm, sweet day, and it smelled of leaves, and slender sun arrows came down through the • • • « I happened to glance atTitania ... and her blue eyes were full of tears." The Fairy Queen 183 branches, and we heard the crows. And sud- denly I happened to glance at Titania, and she was looking my way, and her blue eyes were full of tears. " Oh," she said, " I never saw such a place." Yet she had seen all the beautiful places abroad. "Nor such a house — nor such a Grandma. You must let me stay a long time." " We don't want you to go," said Marcia. "We'd rather have you than Amy Fullerton." Then Titania laughed, and two tears hung for an instant on the fringes of her eyes, and she seemed to shake off her worry, whatever it was, and make herself gay. " Dear me ! " she cried, " what's that ? Are there houses in here ? " " Only one," said Marcia, proudly. " It's our house." We led Titania up to the Playhouse, which, of course, was really the Wigwam, only that couldn't be mentioned, even to her. And Kay, with great importance, took the key from under the stone, and threw open the door. Titania entered first. No, not at once. What did she do but stand there on the sill and say — 184 The Secret of the Clan " But my stars ! Do you know what you've got here?" " No/' said Kay. She looked about, all over the Wigwam, with a frown, to see if somebody had brought in something we didn't know. " What is there ? " "Why," said Titania, "this is the very nicest place I ever saw in my whole born days to play Red Riding Hood in." CHAPTER XI TURKEY RED WE went into the Wigwam, and Kay had a fire going in no time. What pride and pleasure we took in showing our visitor about ! She saw everything almost before we had time to find it for her, and somehow she made us feel as if we had been very clever indeed to bring about such a nice Playhouse with such wonderful furnishings. After we had walked all round the room, the little chains from her belt clinking in fairy music, we drew up chairs before the fire, and she was placed in the biggest, and stretched out her silk-stockinged feet to the blaze. Marcia had one of her hands, and was holding it like a little animal that mustn't be hurt, and Ruth had the other and was looking at its rings. For a few minutes, Titania seemed to sink into a dream and forget about us all. Her face lost its merry look. She was thinking, I knew, about things very far from playhouses and adoring chil- 185 1 86 The Secret of the Clan dren. We, too, kept quiet, and the fire made that soft weaving sound it does when you have given it exactly the kind of stick it likes. Perhaps the silence brought her back from where she was. She looked down at us, first at one face, then at another, and her own crinkled all up in its merry fashion. " O girls ! " she said. We liked that. We were tired of being called "children". We hadn't known it before; but " girls " sounded exactly right, as if we were as old as she and she was as young as we. " Who started the Playhouse ? " she asked Kay. " Grandma," said Kay. Then she told the story of the schoolhouse, as she had told it to me. " All her own idea," inquired Titania, " or had you asked her to ? " " Oh, we didn't ask her to," said Marcia. " She thought of it. We didn't know what she bought it for till she gave us the key." " And were all these darling chairs in here then?" Titania asked. "And that table? and the pictures ? and the desk ? " " Oh, yes," said Marcia. " Gramma had it all fixed up." Turkey Red 187 "And when she gave you the key, I suppose she stood by to see you open the door and come in and find all the lovely things ? " " No," said Kay, " I don't remember it that way. I guess she told us to come over here and look under the stone and find the key, and open the door and see what we saw." "Yes," said Ruth, "that was the way." " Yes," said Titania, " that's the way she'd do it. She's a regular fairy grandmother. She'd want you to have it the fairiest way." Marcia glanced up sharply. Here was some- thing about fairies. Could she ask her question ? Could she ask whether Titania really believed there were any, or didn't we trust her enough yet? " Now, girls," said Titania, " I've got to tell you something." She looked very businesslike and serious. "Can we tell?" Ruth asked. " I hope you won't ; but you needn't promise not to. Sometimes you get into trouble by promis- ing not to tell." I don't know whether we looked guilty, but we certainly felt so. Titania went on with such inno- 1 88 The Secret of the Clan cence that we saw she hadn't had our late troubles in her mind. " Now you know I've come here to take Amy Fullerton's place till December." Yes, we knew it. " So I'm the governess." c< Yes," we chorused, in high delight. Certainly we had never set eyes on a governess such as this. " Well ! " said Titania. " Well ! " She wrinkled up her brows till it looked as if they thought she was going to cry ; but her mouth smiled, as if it knew she was ready to laugh. " You see, girls, I don't know one thing — that is, the sort Amy Fullerton knows." We didn't care, we assured her. That was the very kind of governess we should have picked out for ourselves, if we'd been allowed to look. " I don't know arithmetic, or grammar or history, or how to write a business letter, or how to make out a bill," said Titania. Now it sounded as if she were really in despair. We thought it the best joke in the world. " Does Gramma know it ? " Kay inquired, and Titania looked surprised. * Oh, yes," she said. " Of course Gramma Turkey Red 189 knows it. I couldn't keep anything from her, not while I'm staying in her house, you know. It wouldn't be polite." This was a new view of it. I resolved to think it over when I had time. " Grandma has been told, and still she's willing I should stay. But I do know just two or three things. I know French and Italian and German." We felt a slight disappointment. We had hoped she was quite destitute of all knowledge, as she had said in the beginning. That would have left her free to sit here by the fire and tell us things. People who knew anything whatever had, we had observed, a tendency to thrust facts on other people, and at least to take books and withdraw into corners when they might play instead. Titania was quick as lightning at reading what was in your mind, even when you hardly knew it was there yourself. " And," she began, in a tone that seemed to say she had something very nice indeed to bring out now, " I can dance." The cousins had, up to this time, I knew, thought of dancing as only a dull reason for spend- ing an afternoon in the village hall, taking lessons, when they would rather have been out of doors or 190 The Secret of the Clan in Flutino's barn. Ruth did, indeed, like dancing; but Kay and Marcia so drowned out her little voice by their groans and waitings that perhaps they thought she, too, went unwillingly. At dancing school they didn't see themselves in a light they liked. Flutino, for example, was the most splendid chum in the world when they were all let loose together; but Flutino marching up and asking for the "pleasure of the next dance" was another person. Sometimes they scowled at him, even though they knew he was as miserable as they. Sometimes they tried to make him laugh. No, dancing was a foolish business got up by older people for mysterious reasons of their own. " See ! M said Titania. She rose, stepped outside the circle, and waited until we turned to face her. Then she began to sing, in a high, clear voice, something fast and beautiful ; and with every note of the measures her little foot came down in time. We were wild with delight We didn't know what to do, it pleased us so. Not one of us thought to clap. We just sat there in our low chairs hitched halfway round and stared at her, open-mouthed ; and when she had finished, she stood a minute, smiling, and evidently reading our rapt and eager Turkey Red 191 faces. Pete was the one to break the spell. Marcia had been holding him by the collar, be- cause he was the kind of dog who, when anybody stirs out of a walk, wants to be on the spot. I believe he had been straining at his collar, but I had forgotten all about him. With the end of the dance, Marcia must have loosed her hold, for he dashed forward and began jumping over the table, back and forth, five or six times, big flying leaps. We all screamed with the pleasure of it, and Titania got down on the floor and " wuzzled " him in a way that made us see she knew exactly how to treat a dog ; and then we came back to the fire, and Pete " flumped " down at her feet, and wrinkled his eye- brows at Marcia, as much as to say, " Do excuse me for paying particular attention to this new play- mate, but she's really quite the thing." Titania was looking at us. " If I could have a dancing class ? " she sug- gested modestly, and Marcia cried : — " You wouldn't, would you ? " "Yes, I would," said Titania. "In half a minute, too, as soon as Ruth has loosened her belt a little." We knew Ruth wore her belt too tight, because 192 The Secret of the Clan she was inclined to plumpness and she wanted to be what she called a " silp ". But it seemed nothing less than witchcraft that a new playmate should guess so soon. "You can't have anything tight when you're dancing," said Titania. " Got to breathe right, or it's no good." Ruth instantly let out her belt, and then, in her excitement, forgot it was a question of waists and not of fingers, and said, breathlessly : — " I'll take my ring off, too." Titania seemed to understand exactly why you said anything you might happen to say. She laughed. " All right," said she. " Sometimes you have to. When I'm dancing — really dancing — I take off my heavy rings. So," she went on, " I thought if you'd be willing to- talk French and German and Italian for a while, and dance — you'll love the dancing — maybe I could cram on the arithmetic and history and that kind of thing, and you'd let me stay till Amy Fullerton comes." She looked at us in such eagerness, such delight- fulness of a great many sorts all mixed together, that we found no way of telling her how perfectly Turkey Red 193 beautiful we thought it, and how, if she didn't stay, we never should have a happy moment again. " But we don't know a thing about French really/' said Marcia. " I mean, speaking. We can read a little, fables, you know, and say, 'De la tige detachee\ " That didn't seem to move her. " Oh," said she, carelessly, " you can speak in no time. It's easy as fun. Come, now, let's begin the dancing." We got up, full of a mad ambition, and Pete, to his great sorrow, was put outside the door, where he stood and shivered and breathed long breaths into the crack, which was his way of saying, cc Let me in." So perfectly did Titania dance, with such a wonderful ease, that I believe we expected to dance like her, even at this beginning. It seemed, as she had said of the French, as easy as fun. But these were exercises and steps and even breathing, and we couldn't do them half well. We had to do them what she called "absolutely right". I don't know how long we worked, but it was long enough to leave us breathless, and then she told us that wouldn't happen when we'd learned to breathe. Marcia was always for doing the whole of a thing 194 The Secret of the Clan in one job, and when we had gone back to the fire she was still practising steps behind us, until Titania told her she had done enough. Ruth, again with her ring on, was snuggled close to Titania's knee, and now she looked up and put a question. " What did you mean about Red Riding Hood ? " Marcia had let in Pete, and he came splaying and hurling at us, and bidding us remark how clever he had been to get in at all. " This house," said Titania. " It's exactly right for the Grandmother's cottage. And there's the Wood outside, and the Wolf in it. We could play Red Riding Hood quick as a wink." " Could we ? " asked Marcia. The very mention of playing " in a play " was enough to set her off. "When?" " Why," said Titania, cc we could begin to make the costumes this very afternoon." She had, we learned, one of our own habits to perfection. As soon as she found something she particularly wanted to do, she had to dash at it that minute, no matter what she was doing at the time. So she got up and pinned on her hat, and we threw on our things, and Marcia put the fender before the Turkey Red 195 fire, and we went, almost running, back through the Plantation, and in at the front door to the sitting room where Grandma sat with a book in her lap, and that particular expression she had when she hadn't been asleep but "just lost " herself. " Dear Grandmother Lady," said Titania, " have you some turkey red you could give us, or will you let us go to the shop and buy it ? " Grandma was quite awake, now there was some- thing to be done. " Oh, yes," said she. " I bought a lot that win- ter I meant to have sandbags on the windows, and then I never made the bags. It's up in the piece closet, I think." We had never had the slightest interest in the piece closet. It was a big one lined by plump bags filled with different colored cloth, and with more perishable stuffs, such as velvet and lace, in the drawers of a little bureau facing the door. Our chief connection with the piece closet was seeing Tender-and-True disappearing there, if anybody needed to be patched or lengthened or braided or hooked, and coming out with exactly the right bag to do the deed. Turkey red for Red Riding Hood was another thing. We stood at the door while 196 The Secret of the Clan Grandma, as if by magic, put her hand on the proper bag, and then she brought it out, and began to open it there on the table in the hall. " We'll find it, Grandmother Lady," Titania said. " We mustn't trouble you." So Marcia pulled the things out, and Kay pounced suddenly, just as we all saw at the bottom a flare of red. There it was, the turkey red, a gen- erous roll. " Put the other things back," said Titania. "Then we must hang up the bag. And, Lady Grandma, where shall we go to sew ? " The sewing room, Grandma thought, because the big cutting table was there. And maybe we'd want to use the machine. "I'm ashamed," said Titania. "I don't know how. Do you, girls ? " No, we didn't know how, either, and for the first time in our lives we were ashamed of it. But that was because Titania was ashamed. Everything she felt or said or did seemed the best thing to feel and say and do. " I can stitch for you," said Grandma. Her head was quite high, and her eyes were brighter than ever. Perhaps we had got into the habit of Turkey Red 197 thinking grandmas preferred to walk gently about and sleep a little and read a book ; but perhaps they really, like us, were fond of a little fun. So we all went off to the sewing room, and found it in the beautiful order Tender-and-True always left it in. Titania pulled some newspapers out of the basket by the hearth, ready for a fire, and Grandma opened a drawer and took out the scissors, and they cut a pattern in no time and pinned it on Ruth, and set the rest of us to threading needles. Ruth was to be Red Rid- ing Hood. There was but one voice about it. She was the smallest and the most exactly right. I think Marcia and Kay were each secretly longing to be the Wolf. As for me, I hoped I could stand by and see the play go on. " We can just baste the cape together," said Titania. " Only it must be strong. Kay, you take the hood and sew it up this way — " and then it came out all of a sudden that neither of the three knew how to sew at all. I did, for Aunt Tabitha had taught me. I had had to sew patchwork, as was the custom in Sedg- moor, " over 'n over ". But when I saw the Grandmother's face, I took no pride in my accom- plishment. ig8 The Secret of the Clan " Oh," she said, " I never have done a bit of my duty, not a bit. I ought to have taught them, and I haven't, they hated it so. And they never seemed to have any time." Titania went into peals of laughter over this. She appeared to think it was the nicest and the fun- niest thing ever said. "You are a perfect glory, Lady Grandma/' she said. "What was the use of their learning to sew till they had something to sew? But now we have, and if we don't do it right, you just tell us." The Grandmother opened drawers, and brought out boxes, thin wooden boxes with a beautiful grain to the wood, a little like molasses candy when it is pulled. And from these she took thimbles and spools, and we were fitted out with a thimble each. Kay refused hers. She said she could push the needle through a great deal better with a wad of pa- per; but Titania told her she might just as well try to drink without a glass as sew without a thimble. " When you sew, you must sew like a lady," she said, " or the stitches won't hold together. Didn't you ever hear that ? " No, we never had heard it ; but we had begun to understand that most of the things she said were ** Over this riot of basting and what Titania called f gobbling', Grandma reigned with eager pleasure.' ' Turkey Red 199 beautiful nonsense, and that suited us. We had al- ways thought far too much sense was talked. Over this riot of basting and what Titania called " gob- bling", Grandma reigned with an eager pleasure, and it seemed almost no time before we had a red cape and hood roughly tacked together and ready for the play. " Now," said Titania, when we had tied it on for the last time, with a strip of turkey red under Ruth's chin, " now we must learn our parts ; we can rehearse this evening." " Why," said Marcia, "is it a real play?" I hadn't seen Marcia so excited. Real plays, she thought, were the most wonderful things in the en- tire world. When travelling companies came to the village hall, Uncle Terry always took her to see them act, and once, after a particularly thrilling performance of " Uncle Tom's Cabin ", she had sent Little Eva a bead bracelet. " Of course it's a real play," said Titania. " We've got to write it first. So I think we'd better sit down now and talk it over." We went down to the sitting room, and there was Uncle Terry with his newspaper. He got up when we went into the room, and waited until we were 200 The Secret of the Clan seated in a circle round the fire. He didn't look at us, and I thought he seemed very queer, his eyes were so black and his face was so pale. He laid down his paper and took a step or two toward the door, and Grandma called him. "Terry," said she. Then he stopped, and Grandma said, quite softly : " Terry, I wish you would sit down and help us a little. Miss Delorme is teaching the children how to act a play and — Terry, please be a good boy." I am not sure that anybody heard this last, any- body but Uncle Terry and me. It was a quick little breathless cry to him, and Uncle Terry in- stantly stepped back, set a chair for her and took one himself just outside our circle. He picked up his newspaper again, and left it lying on his knee. " Command me," he said to Grandma, very seri- ously, and in a tone I never had heard him use. Titania didn't seem to notice him at all. She began talking to us. " Now the first thing we have to do is to select a manager to stage the play — " "That's you," said Marcia. " Well, that's I, if you say so, this time. Then Turkey Red 201 we'll cast the play. Ruth is to be Red Riding Hood, I understand, and this is my idea of the entire cast. Laura can be the Mother here at the house, to start Riding Hood out with her pat of butter and her loaf of bread. Now, of course, the woods Riding Hood had to go through were real woods, — deep woods, dangerous woods, — or there couldn't have been wolves in them." Ruth drew a long breath. She saw herself on a thrilling adventure with her butter and her bread. "And I've no doubt whatever," said Titania, " that lots of things happened to her in the woods that didn't get put down in the story. So I should say she'd have to meet with a bear at the very least, and Marcia can play the Bear. And she'd meet with the Wolf, and that can be Kay. I wish we could have a Forester for Red Riding Hood's father." " We could ! " cried Marcia and Kay. " There's Flutino." " Of course ! " said Titania, " the very thing." So we saw Grandma or Aunt Tabitha or somebody must have told her about Flutino, too. " And you, Grandmother Lady," said Titania, "must be the Good Fairy in the Wood." 202 The Secret of the Clan " No, dear, no," said Grandma. " I love to hear you plan it, but Til just look on." Still, she was pleased. We saw that, and we all begged and teased her to be the Fairy, and at last she said she would. And Uncle Terry had been left out. I was sorry for that, but I remembered that he was a grown-up gentleman, and such things might seem quite silly to him. Still, there was the night when he had talked to us about the Alives. And just then the postman came and brought three letters. One was for Grandma and two were for us, and Grandma's letter and one of ours were addressed in the same hand, an upright, powerful hand. I had gone to the door and taken them from the postman, and I gave ours to Marcia. " Crandma ! " said she, when she saw the writing that was like the one to Grandma, and we felt a little dashed. We had forgotten Crandma. Titania had gone to the piano and was beginning a little dancing song, very softly, and Uncle Terry had thrown down his paper and was staring at her back. His mouth was shut tight, and he was scowling; yet he didn't look angry. He looked queer in some way I couldn't understand, and as if somehow he wasn't having a pleasant time. Marcia Turkey Red 203 got up, and softly dog's-nosed us, one after the other, and we slipped quietly upstairs with our letters. We went into my room and sat on the bed, and opened Crandma's letter. It was ad- dressed to " Marcia, Katherine, and Ruth Blake, and Laura Whiteley". She had not thought us old enough to be called cc Miss ". This was the letter. Marcia read it aloud. " c My dear Grandchildren: I shall not be able to send for you quite yet, because your Grand- father apparently objects to having you in the house. He does not give that as a reason, but I have told him the entire story of your being out all night, etc., etc., and he is naturally disinclined to under- take the responsibility of regulating your conduct. However, I have assured him that I am equal to it, though it is not a duty I crave. In the meantime, if you tell the entire story of your misdemeanor to your Step-Grandmother, I can assure you that every one will feel very differently toward you. Your affectionate Grandmother, " c Susan Livingston/ " " Oh ! " said Marcia, in a blank kind of way, and we three said " oh ", after her. It seemed all there was to say. Kay took up the other letter from 204 The Secret of the Clan Marcia's lap. It was addressed in a fine neat hand with plenty of " misses " : " The Misses Marcia, Kay, and Ruth Blake, and Miss Laura Whiteley." It was a big envelope, and there was a business stamp up in the corner. " Why," said Kay, " it's Just Grandpa." She tore it open, and began to read very fast : for the neat little hand was easy. " c Dear Ladies: Yours of the 17th rec'd and contents noted. Would say that I have done all in human power to secure a reprieve, but shall probably not be able to bring about the commuta- tion of your sentence. Unless you turn state's evidence, some of you, or all of you confess to your That-Grandma (whom it is plain you have treated like the very Old Nick) your This-Grandma, who is writing to you at her desk at the moment, will be on your track, and quite right, too. I have written to your Uncle Terry for his account of the case, and I agree with him that you are Lawless Imps, and I wouldn't have you here for a million dollars, unless I had cages or lobster pots to put you in. (I mention the lobster pots to remind Laura of home.) ' " " What are lobster pots ? " Kay stopped to ask Turkey Red 205 me, and I was so pleased, even at the mention of them, that I could only giggle and not explain ; so Kay mildly said " Goonie ! " and went on. " c I shall not be able to defer your sentence much longer, and if you do come here to stay, I can assure you you'll live on bread and water and be basti- nadoed every night/ " That word we had great trouble with, and Ruth promised, if we'd " finish the letter quick ", to go and look it up. " c So no more at present from your furious Just Grandpa. " c P.S. I should be as pleased as Punch to have you here, but don't you know you're in clover where you are ? Don't you know your That- Grandma is a perfect angel to you, and we're all Ogres over here ? You're Idiots, that's what you are. You've got Idiotica.' " We were very thoughtful when we'd finished. " He doesn't understand, that's all," said Marcia. " If we could just see him and talk with him a minute, he would, but you can't do anything in letters. And I don't see then how we could tell him what we can't tell unless we told — and we can't tell." CHAPTER XII RED RIDING HOOD FOR the next few days we did nothing but think and plan Red Riding Hood, and Titania told us we could get along a little in our lessons if we talked about it in French. Of course we thought that was impossible, but she explained she only meant little remarks like, " Pass the scissors, s y il vous plait ", or " How can we fasten in the Wolfs teeth ? " And it was surprisingly easy ; for she was ready to tell us exactly how every- thing was said, and we were quick to imitate. It didn't seem like studying at all : only something we were doing to please her and make her feel she was really taking Amy Fullerton's place. That, we felt, was tremendously necessary : for if she thought she was of no use, and went away, we should be the most desolate Tribe on the trail. It was one of the first days of our working on the costumes that Flutino came whistling up the walk, and, finding nobody downstairs, kept on to 206 Red Riding Hood 207 the sewing room ; and there, the minute he saw Titania, he made her his dancing school bow, and at the same minute we all cried : — " Here's Flutino. Hullo, Flutino ! " The strange part of it was that the dancing school bow that had seemed so silly in the village hall appeared quite the right thing to greet Titania, and she answered it prettily, and told Flutino he had been cast for the Forester. He was delighted, and sat down at once to talk over his part, and offered eager suggestions about the way to make the Wolf open his mouth. We were having a dreadful time with that head. At first, we made it out of paste- board, cut in queer shapes, and stuck together, with big holes for eyes ; but Titania said it looked like a pig's snout, and we'd better keep it till Christmas, and use it for the boar's head to bring in at the banquet when we had waits and wassail. This cheered us all greatly, in spite of Crandma's letter, for it looked as if Titania meant to be with us until Christmas, anyway. Uncle Terry stood looking on, one day, in the hall, when we brought the Wolf's head down to show it to Grandma. He was very solemn and even very stern these days, " black as pot ", Marcia 208 The Secret of the Clan said, and this time his face didn't change at all ; but when he had gone back into the sitting room I saw him smiling to himself, in a queer way, and he got out a newspaper, and unfolded it, and sat down behind it, and seemed to be reading very hard. But I knew from a picture I had seen in it the day before that it was last week's paper. Grandma, too, was discouraged about the Wolf's head though she laughed a little, as we all did. You couldn't help it, it was so funny. " I'll tell you, dear," she said to Titania, "what I think you'd better do. There are some old wire bonnets up attic. Couldn't we make a shape out of those, and perhaps cover it with the fitch fur you saw ? Or, even if that's too clumsy, try that old brown velvet ? " So we changed our plan entirely, and went to work with the wire and fur. And when that head was done, it was so funny that we got down on the floor and rolled and screamed, we four of the Tribe, and Titania and Grandmother cried, they laughed so hard. Uncle Terry saw it, too, and he got his hat and went out of doors as fast as he could go. He seemed to be determined, those days, not to laugh at anything, and not to speak either, if he Red Riding Hood 209 could help it. I thought he was behaving dread- fully, and yet I was sorry for him. It seemed as if he wasn't well. But the night before the play, something happened. The expressman came with a big box addressed to us, our four names with "The Misses" before them. Marcia got a ham- mer and flew at the box while it stood in the hall, and had the cover off in no time ; and then, while we all crowded round, she pulled out wad after wad of soft tissue paper and uncovered — what do you think? The most frightful and magnificent wolf's head you ever saw, with red tongue and grinning teeth and staring eyes. It was big enough, too, to slip on over our heads ; and when Marcia saw that, she clapped it on Kay's head and we all screamed, with wonder and delight. All but Ruth : I think her scream was terror, — for the wolf that was part Kay really did look very awful indeed, and I began to think, now Riding Hood had seen him, she wouldn't have courage to go through the Wood at all. Titania was as pleased as we. Her eyes shone, and while we were dancing round Kay, to get a view of it from every side, Titania slipped into the sitting room where Uncle Terry was fold- ing the rattling paper he always seemed to have 2IO The Secret of the Clan by him nowadays, and said to him, in such a nice way : — * You did that. Thank you." But he didn't have to answer, even if he meant to : for as soon as she had said it, she was back with us, showing Kay how to work the string and make the jaws move while the Wolf talked. The next day was bright and rather warm, and we had an early dinner, so that the play could begin at two. Titania said we'd better have it as soon as that, because, if we liked it, we might do it over several times before dark. There was one difficulty. We were all in the play, and yet we all wanted to see it. So it was decided that, after each one had finished her part, she should be allowed to go along with the next actor and listen. Only she must, on no account, speak a word. We called that being Invisible. So this was what happened. At two o'clock precisely, I came down the front stairs dressed in one of Grandma's gowns, with a big white fichu crossed at the neck. My hair was powdered white, and on it I wore a big cap made of a large blue handkerchief. I had horn spectacles with no glass in them, and I made a very nice Mother indeed. Perhaps I was a little too old for Mother Red Riding Hood 211 Riding Hood, but I liked it that way. Grandma and Mary and all the actors were in the sitting room, crowded near the door, to see the beginning of the play. I opened my cottage door — for the big house was a cottage to-day — and began to sweep the dust over the sill. " Riding Hood ! " I called, in a voice as high and weak and old ladyfied as I could make it. " Riding Hood, come here." Then Ruth appeared from the dining room. She looked a very little girl indeed, much smaller than she did every day : for she wore her hair loose, and a pinafore came to her neck. Crandma's new aprons were finding early use. " Riding Hood," said I, " your dear Grandmother is sick. I want you to take her this little basket, and ask very particularly how she is." " Yes, Mother," said Riding Hood, making me a little courtesy. " Is it eggs in the basket, and must I be sure not to fall down ? " " It is not eggs," said I. " It is a pat of butter and a loaf of bread. But even if it isn't eggs, you must be as careful as if it were." "Yes, Mother," said Riding Hood. u Go by the high road," said I. " Do not look 212 The Secret of the Clan into the Wood, for if you do, you may see something you want, and that will tempt you to step over the wall." " No, Mother," said Riding Hood. " Do not look into the Wood. Do not step one step into the Wood. Now get your cape and hood, and I will tie them on." So Riding Hood took down her red cape from a nail near the cottage door, and I put it on for her, and drew the hood up over her head, and gave her the little basket, and she set forth, down the cottage steps, into the River Road : for that was the high- way. And I threw a cape over my shoulders, and took my dress up, and started after to see what she would do next ; but the others, who came into the play later, went the other way through the Planta- tion. Riding Hood walked dutifully along the high- way, looking neither to the right nor to the left, until she came to the space between two houses, where you could glance through a three-barred fence to the trees of the Plantation. There she stopped, and looked once and looked again, and soon her little feet began to carry her away from the high road toward the fence ; and when she reached it, she Red .Riding Hood 213 "scooched" down and ducked under. There she was in the Wood, the " Dark and Dreadful Wood ". I " scooched " after her, and stood there behind her in my cloak, Invisible. We were playingso hard that the Plantation didn't look at all as if I had ever seen it before. I was almost afraid, it was such a Dark and Dreadful Wood. Riding Hood walked a little way, and then she stopped. She had reached what she had seen from the road. It had tempted her into the for- bidden Wood.' It was a glittering crown made of silver leaves and beads that were like pearls, and it was hanging on a baby maple tree. Riding Hood put up her little hand and took it off the tree. She touched it tremblingly, because she knew she had no business in the Wood, and she was afraid. She hid the silver crown under her red cloak, and went timidly on. Suddenly she stopped. She listened. A loud voice was singing to the sound of an axe. I knew it was Flutino's voice, and yet it didn't sound like it at all. It sounded like the voice of a tall man in high boots, and a soft hat with a feather in it, such as you see in fairy books. When Riding Hood heard the voice, she stopped and called, " Father ! Father ! " for she knew who it was. But the voice went on singing, and it seemed to be not 214 The Secret of the Clan quite so near. The Forester had not heard. But something else had. There was a trampling and a crackling in the underbrush, and Riding Hood stood there trembling with fear. Well she might! For out came a figure all fur from head to foot and with a furry snout. This, I had expected to be Marcia in Uncle Terry's fur coat and cap, and a mask Flu- tino had painted ; but now I saw it in the Dreadful Wood, it looked quite different to me, and I knew it was a bear. It dropped to all fours, and came padding along to Riding Hood over the rustling leaves, and Riding Hood was so terrified she couldn't run. She stood still and shivered. "Ho! ho!" said the Bear, "who's this in my Wood, eating up my honey and drinking the water out of my spring ? " " Please, sir," said Riding Hood, " I am going to Grandma's, to carry her a pat of butter and a loaf of bread." The Bear rose on his hind legs and put a paw on her arm. I had thought this was Uncle Terry's fur glove, but I declare it looked to me now like a big, big paw. "You've got honey in that basket," said the Bear. Red Riding Hood 215 " No, sir, no," said Riding Hood. " It's only a pat of butter and a loaf of bread." " We'll see," said the Bear. " We'll see. Come with me, and when we're in my den, all snug and warm, and my little bear children and my middle- sized bear children are opening the basket and pulling off your red hood and snatching out your long hair, Ml M we 11 see. Riding Hood looked ready to drop to the ground. The Bear put out his furry elbow. " Take my arm," said he. " I'll carry the basket, and we'll go home to my den-O !" Riding Hood stretched out her little hand tim- idly ; but suddenly the Bear turned his head and listened. " Now, what's she doing round here ? " he growled, and I looked in the same direction, and saw the most lovely figure, all in white and silver, coming through the trees. I had thought it was going to be Grandma in Titania's white fur coat and a white veil spangled with silver falling from her white hair ; but instead it looked to me like a fairy creature made out of moonlight and ice and gems. "Who's got my crown?" it sang. "Who's got my silver crown ? " 216 The Secret of the Clan Riding Hood took the crown from under her cape. " I'm very sorry, ma'am/' said she. H I'm afraid I took it. Here it is. I found it on a tree." Meantime the Bear had dropped on all fours, and was beginning to shamble away ; but the Fairy pointed her wand at him, and he stopped just as he was, one paw lifted ready to put down. " You shouldn't touch crowns when you see them hanging out to dry," said the Fairy. " How would you like it if somebody came and stole your wash- ing off the line, and you'd no clean aprons ? Should you like it ? Tell me now." " No, ma'am," said Riding Hood. She began to make courtesies and made them faster and faster until the Fairy touched her with the wand and told her to stop. " You've no business in the Dreadful Wood, any- way," said the Fairy. " You're likely to meet all sorts of people. Here's the Bear, and if you don't look out, you'll come on the Wolf. Bear ! " "Yes, Good Fairy," said the Bear, grumpily but very humbly. " Please, Good Fairy." " Go home to your den-O." " Yes, Good Fairy, if you please, Good Fairy," and the Bear shuffled off. Red Riding Hood 217 " Now/' said the Good Fairy to Riding Hood, "I know where you were going when you were so naughty as to leave the high road and enter the Dreadful Wood. The Wind told me. He said you'd probably be naughty and leave the road." "Yes, ma'am," said Riding Hood. She began to make courtesies again. " I'm going to Grandma's, to carry her a pat of butter and a loaf of bread." "Well," said the Fairy, "then go, and see that you go straight, right between those two trees and between the next two trees and the next and the next. And at the end of the trees you will find your Grandmother's door. Now run along, for I must put my crown on, and it makes me nervous to be watched." "Yes, ma'am," said Riding Hood. She could not run, for she was still too weak from fear ; but she went as fast as she could, and the Fairy put on her crown and went away to the left, singing a little song. It sounded like a song Grandma used to sing sometimes over her work, when we had been good all day ; yet it was not Grandma and her song. It was a Fairy and a fairy song. Now I knew what was coming ; but when Riding Hood had gone ten steps farther, and the a 1 8 The Secret of the Clan Wolf jumped out from behind a tree, his eyes gleaming and his mouth wide, I gave a little scream with Riding Hood's. " What have you there, little girl ? " asked the Wolf. " A pat of butter, if you please, sir," she an- swered, " and a loaf of bread." " Where are you going, little girl ? " " I'm going to my Grandmother's, to ask her how she is." u What shall you do, little girl, when you get to the door ? " cc I shall knock," said Riding Hood. "And what will your Grandmother say, little girl ? " " She'll say, c Who is there ? ' " " And what shall you say then, little girl ? " « I shall say c Red Riding Hood.' " " And what will she say then, little girl ? " "She'll say, c Pull at the bobbin. The latch will fly up.' " " Good day, little girl, " said the Wolf. " If you ever see your friend, the Good Fairy, again, you can tell her Mr. Bear saw me, a minute ago, and told me I was likely to meet you. She'd better Red Riding Hood 219 not have been so strict with Mr. Bear. Good day." Away he went, on all fours, and when he had got into the shade of the maples, he rose to his feet and ran as hard as he could pelt, and I after him, leav- ing Riding Hood alone in the Dreadful Wood. For I knew where the next scene was to be. I made a little circuit, and came out at the side of the Wigwam which was now Riding Hood's Grand- mother's cottage, and I took up my skirts still higher, and climbed in through the window, and be- gan to slip a night-gown over my dress and tie a big ruffled night-cap over my hair. And then I hid myself under the bed. But in the bed was lying a long bolster with the clothes drawn up to its chin, and a night-cap on like mine. And no sooner was I under the bed than I heard a knock. " Who's there ? " I called. " Red Riding Hood, " came a gruff voice that tried to make itself smooth and small. " I have brought you a pat of butter and a loaf of bread." " Pull at the bobbin," I called. " The latch will fly up." The door opened. There was a stealthy step. 220 The Secret of the Clan Safe under the bed as I was, I shivered. I knew it was the Wolf with the terrible jaws. "Is that you, dear Riding Hood?" I asked, and so hard was I playing that I could believe it was the bolster that spoke. " Come where I can see you, dear." But suddenly there rose a most dreadful sound of growling and banging and worrying and gulping, and I knew the bolster-grandmother was killed and eaten up, and the bolster came sliding down on me at the back of the bed, but without its night-cap : for that the Wolf had on. Another knock at the door. "Who's there?" called the Wolf, in a grand- mother voice as nearly as he could make it. " It's I, Grandmamma, Red Riding Hood," answered Riding Hood's own voice. " I have come to bring you a pat of butter and a loaf of bread." "Pull at the bobbin," called the Wolf. "The latch will fly up." So in came Riding Hood, and the Wolf groaned and said: — " O my child, I'm very ill indeed ! Sit down by me where I can touch your fine new cape." Red Riding Hood 221 So Riding Hood sat down; but she began to tremble. "O Grandma/' said she, "what queer eyes you've got!" "The better to see you, my dear," said the Wolf. Now Riding Hood trembled more and more, and this was what she said and what the Wolf said to her. "Grandmamma, what great arms you've got!" "The better to hug you, my dear." "Grandmamma, what a long nose you've got! " " The better to smell you, my dear." " Grandmamma, what long ears you've got ! " "The better to hear you, my dear." " Grandmamma, what great teeth you've got ! " " The better to eat you up ! " And just as the Wolf said that, he threw both great arms round Riding Hood and drew her up to his dreadful jaws, and she screamed, and the door burst open, and in dashed the Forester, who might have looked like Flutino except that he had a long beard. And he whipped out a knife made of tin, and went at the Wolf, and flourished the knife, and jabbed and prodded, and the Wolf rolled out of bed, and, once down on the floor, he 222 The Secret of the Clan rolled quite under the bed, too. And we heard a singing voice, and this was the Good Fairy with her wand, singing : — "Three and three, and two times two! Grandmother Riding Hood, where are you ? * * But, of course, I made no answer ; for had not the Wolf eaten me ? Then the voice came again, to more waving of the wand : — " Six times six, and eight times eight! Grandmother Riding Hood, rise in state." And somehow I crawled up under the cover of the bed, and everybody pretended not to see me ; and I sat up in bed in my ruffled night-cap and said : — " Dear me ! what a dreadful dream. I thought my little Granddaughter and the Wolf came in together, and they were both very rude to me." And Riding Hood ran forward and threw her arms round me, and the Good Fairy said : — " I must go now, and try the Bear for conspiracy with the Wolf; but first, because it's almost dark, we'll have a Moon Beam in to dance for us." Now this was something we didn't know about. The most lovely figure, all silver gauze and floating draperies.' ' Red Riding Hood 223 We actors thought the play ended with the Grand- mother's return to life. So we looked about to see what we should see. And in at the door and from behind the big screen Titania had placed near it, came the most lovely figure, all silver gauze and floating draperies, with a circlet of silver round its head. And it rose on the toes of its white slippered feet, and began to dance, and to scatter the petals of white flowers, all the time singing in a high beautiful voice. The flower petals were pieces of tissue paper, but they looked exactly like petals to us, or even like floating snow, and cer- tainly we had never in all our lives seen anything so beautiful as the dancing form. And once, the only time I could take my eyes away from it, I looked at the window, because I heard a little sound there ; and I saw Uncle Terry's face at the pane. But as my eyes met his, he shook his head a little, and I knew I mustn't speak or look. The Moon Beam danced in big circles nearer and nearer the door, until suddenly she disappeared behind the big screen, and the Good Fairy went in there, too, and we heard her say : — " Yes, dear, you put on the arctics. Put them right straight on. And here's your cloak." 224 The Secret of the Clan Then we heard the door close softly, and we knew the Good Fairy and the Moon Beam had gone out into the Dreadful Wood. It seemed exactly that : not at all as if Titania and the Grand- mother had run home in a hurry, so Titania shouldn't take cold. We didn't want to follow them — not yet, at least. We wanted rather to imagine them flitting along through the Wood, Titania still dancing and the Good Fairy waving her wand and calling Mr. Bear to judgment, and light- ing all the Wood with her silver crown. " Oh ! " said Marcia, with a long breath. I looked at her. Her eyes were dark with happiness. " Oh ! " said Kay. " Don't you call this grand ? " We did. If there had been a grander word, we should have called it that. Flutino never forgot his manners. He stood there by the fireplace, his hat, with the pheasant feather, in his hand. " I think you all act just splendid," he said. " I guess when Marcia goes on the stage we'll all go. There were the Vokeses, you know. We'll take a name and be that." We looked at one another slyly, and smiled. Red Riding Hood 225 We knew what we should be. We should be the Tribe. Perhaps Flutino could come in. At least, if he ever guessed there was a Tribe, he could. We'd said that before. CHAPTER XIII FAIRY WALKS IT was perhaps the next day that we had our talk about Uncle Terry, and Ruth was " horrid " and the other three of us " got mad ". The Grandmother and Titania were in the Grandmother's room, looking over clothes. We had followed them there, and hung about for a few minutes while Titania said : — " Now I think I should make over this gray with a little silver embroidery, and perhaps some fringe. It would be sweet." Grandma seemed pleased, but she answered : — " O my dear, I don't know ! At my time of life ! " We saw they were quite taken up with fringes and things, and not likely to notice us, and Kay said : — "What let's do?" " Come downstairs," said Ruth. " Come just as quiet as ever you can, and I'll show you something." 226 Fairy Walks 227 It sounded like kittens, or birds, or things that mustn't be scared, and we tiptoed down. I happened to look at Ruth, and I could see she was either frightened or pleased, or thought she was naughty, her eyes were so bright and her cheeks so red. She led us into the library where we could see the back veranda. " There ! " said she. " Look." It was nothing but Uncle Terry walking back and forth. His hands were behind him, his head was bent, and he was staring straight down at the veranda floor. " There ! " said Ruth, as if she'd done some- thing remarkably clever. " Look at him ! " " Oh ! " said Kay, " it's only Uncle Terry." "Well," said Ruth, "don't you see what he's doing?" "Why, he's walking," said Kay, "and thinking, I s'pose. "Yes," said Ruth again, this time in high triumph, "but don't you know what he's thinking about ? " "No," said Kay, "do you?" And Marcia added : — "What is he?" 228 The Secret of the Clan " Why," said Ruth, " he's thinking about her." Ruth's eyes were all ablaze now. She seemed to find her discovery very interesting indeed. " His wife ? " Kay asked. "No, no," said Ruth, "about Titania. Don't you see? He's in love with Titania." We turned and looked at her, and Uncle Terry, quite ignorant that he had created such an excite- ment, kept on pacing. "In love with Titania?" Marcia gasped. "What do you mean? Why, he hardly speaks to her." " I know that," said Ruth, " but he looks at her every minute when she isn't looking." I didn't say anything, because Uncle Terry had shaken his head at me when I caught him watching her while she danced. " That's the way they do," said Ruth, " the stern, proud ones that had never thought to bow their haughty spirits, or place their fate in the hands of any woman. They just stay stern and cold, and you can read their feelings in their eyes." " Ruth," said Marcia, " you're a horrid little thing." "Horrid, yourself!" cried Kay. Fairy Walks 229 She had thought it as silly as Marcia did, but she couldn't see Ruth abused. " I'm not horrid at all," said Ruth. She was winking away the tears, and now her cheeks were redder. "That's the way it is. The books say so. If you're proud and haughty, and fall in love with anybody, you just go round stamping and grinding your teeth." Marcia seemed to find some reason in this. " Well, anyway," said she, " if he's going to do that, we'd better tell Titania all about it." Ruth was aghast. "Why, you can't!" said she. "He'll tell her himself. He'll tell her he never meant to place his fate in any woman's hands, but now he finds he is under her feet — his heart, I mean — and — " " O lambs' tails and cats' ears ! " said Marcia. This was one of her favorite expressions when she felt very strongly on a subject and couldn't find the answer to it. " Titania's got to be told. He can't act like that and not have her prepared so's to know what to do. Why, I think it's treat- ing her awfully, and if you think it's all so, Ruth, I should s'pose you'd be ashamed to let it go on. And you are a horrid thing." 230 The Secret of the Clan Just at that moment Titania appeared at the head of the stairs. She was singing, and she came down singing, and said to us, when she reached us, just what she had heard Kay say two or three minutes before : — " What let's do now ? " I think she saw from our faces that we'd been having trouble of some sort, and because Marcia looked the nearest to being angry, she put a hand on her shoulder, and said again : — " Marcia, what let's do ? " Perhaps Marcia couldn't have said it if she had waited a minute to think it over; but now she looked straight at Titania, half as if she were angry about something and half as if she were going to cry, and asked her : — " Did you know about Uncle Terry's wife ? " I never saw a face change so quickly as Titania's then. The pretty color left it, and the smile. She answered seriously : — " Come in here and tell me what you mean. What is it about Uncle Terry's wife ? " We went with her to the sitting room, and I believe we all felt we had begun on something we didn't know how to finish. We had gone Too Far. Fairy Walks 231 But Marcia, when it was a question of courage, never took back tracks. " Uncle Terry's married, that's all," she said. "His wife died." Titania looked at her for a full minute, gravely, and I could see that Marcia was most uncomfort- able. Titania looked at us each in turn, as if she must really understand what was in our minds. Then she spoke, in a low, sad tone. " Did she ? Poor wife ! I'm sorry for her." And she went out of the room and up the stairs again to her own chamber. We were left to gape at one another and wonder. " Well," said Kay, at last, " you've done it, haven't you ? " Marcia looked as if she knew she had, but she answered hotly : — " I don't see what I've done." We didn't either, but we had to blame some- body. Ruth was pluming herself a little on having been so clever. " Of course she had to turn away," said she. " Now she knows he is bound to Another and never can be hers." " Ruth," said Marcia, again, " you're a horrid little thing." 232 The Secret of the Clan We turned about and left her, and then when we had got into the dining room, we felt that somehow we had all been rather meddlesome and unpleasant, and we didn't like one another's com- pany any more than we liked Ruth's. So I ran up to my room and began to read a fairy book we called " Little Black Book ", from its binding, and pretty soon I saw Marcia in the yard with Pete, teaching him to catch ball, and I knew that, for the present, at least, the bonds of the Tribe were broken. As I went down to dinner, I felt lonesome and sad ; but when Titania came in as gay as ever, and asked us whether we didn't want to get together after dinner and let her tell us a story in French, while we wrote it down, and then take a Fairy Walk, I was suddenly as happy as I had been miserable ; and so it was with the rest. Again we were a Tribe, " One Indivisible ", as Marcia used to spout from an old reader. After dinner we went into the sitting room as meekly as pupils that love to learn, and sat down, each with a block and pencil to " take dictation ". Only that wasn't what Titania called it, nor what we called it until long afterward when the prospect of lessons and study hours had ceased to frighten us. Fairy Walks 233 She had named it " writing down a story ". But just as we were about to begin, pencils poised, and eight eyes anxiously on Titania's lips, Marcia burst out, because she couldn't wait : — " Titania, what's Fairy Walks ? " " Why," said Titania, as pleasant as could be, not like a governess who had been interrupted, "I'll tell you in French, instead of a story, and you can write it down." You can imagine that we all wrote with the great- est care : for Fairy Walks sounded enchanting, and we couldn't wait to know exactly what they were. I won't try to tell how she explained them to us, but this was it (Marcia's French was the best of all, and so she was the one to read and translate for us at the end) : Titania thought it would be great fun to take Fairy Walks. She had never tried it, exactly as she meant to do with us, but she had always intended to, if she found four other girls that felt about it just as she did, and liked to play the same way. For instance, we might all be walking together through the woods, and come on a particu- larly nice piece of bark or a velvet-mossy stump, and this we should know was the throne of the Fairy Queen. And if we didn't exactly see the 234 The Secret of the Clan Fairy Queen sitting on it, that wouldn't be any rea- son she wasn't there, and we could beg her and pray her to turn us into fairies ; and then when she had, we'd dance round her in a fairy ring till we were tired and wanted to go home. Or some of us could act, and some could be the audience. The ones that were to act needn't tell what their play was to be, and the ones that were the audience would start out and walk through the Plantation till they came perhaps on the Sleeping Beauty. That would have to be in spring when it was warm enough to lie down in the woods. "Hurrah!" Marcia broke in. "Then you'll stay till spring ! " Or one of us that was playing the Princess could find the Frog Prince, and turn him into a real Prince, and the rest would look on. Or we could act out the whole story of Hansel and Gretel, or a dozen tales with good sisters and bad sisters in them, good fairies and bad. And this very afternoon, without any prepara- tion at all, we could act the story of the Three Bears. That was too much for us. How could we take dictation, if that very afternoon we were to act the Fairy Walks 235 Three Bears ? Titania saw it was too much to ask of mortal children. " Come on, then/' said she. " Get your hats and coats, and we'll go to your house and think it over." She always called the house in the woods " your house" when she was talking to us. She didn't know it was the Wigwam. So we went in a hurry, Marcia and Pete dashing on ahead, Marcia to build the fire, and Pete to hinder her ; and when it was warm enough, we sat down, and Titania asked us if we knew the story of the Three Bears. We didn't remember until she began to tell it, and then we found we knew it perfectly. They were the Three Bears who lived together in a wood, and the first was the Great Big Bear, who had a big bowl and spoon and a big bed, and the second was a Middle- Sized Bear and had a middle-sized bowl and spoon and a middle-sized bed, and the third was a Teeny- Weeny Bear and had a teeny-weeny bowl and spoon and a teeny-weeny bed. And little Silverlocks came to their house when they were gone out and, finding herself very hungry, tried to eat the por- ridge of the Great Big Bear and found it so hot that it burned her mouth. Then she tasted the porridge 2^6 The Secret of the Clan of the Middle-Sized Bear and found it was too cold. Then she came to the bowl of the Teeny-Weeny Bear and found the porridge just right. So she ate it all up. And then she tried sitting in their chairs, and wasn't satisfied until she had got the right chair, and lying in their beds, and wasn't satisfied until she got the right bed; and the Three Bears came home and found her fast asleep. And after they had discovered that somebody had meddled with their porridge and sat in their chairs, they looked round again, and the Great Big Bear roared out, in a great big voice : — " Somebody's been lying in my bed ! " And the Middle-Sized Bear roared out, in a middle-sized voice : — " Somebody's been lying in my bed ! " And the Teeny-Weeny Bear piped up, in a teeny-weeny voice : — " Somebody's been lying in my bed, and she's lying there now." And Silverlocks awoke, and what was done then, Titania didn't need to tell us : for we knew per- fectly well. Kay began to draw on her mittens. " I must go back to the house," she said, " and Fairy Walks 237 get the bowls and the spoons and the fur coats and things." " What for ? " said Titania. " Why," said Kay, " we shall need the fur coats for the bears." "We don't need them," said Titania. "We did when we were playing Red Riding Hood, because then we were doing it that way ; but it isn't always necessary. Now, can't you look at Marcia or Laura and think they're bears ? and then don't they look like bears ? " This was an astonishing thing to do ; but we tried it, and really it seemed to come out just that way. They were perfectly good bears, for all prac- tical purposes. " But," said Kay, " don't we want the bowls and spoons ? " Titania took up a chip from the hearth. "Here's a bowl," she said. "There's another there, by you, Ruth. You don't need any spoons. Hold your hand as if you had a spoon in it, and in a minute you'll think the spoon is there, and you'll begin to use it. See ? " She began to use her own spoon that wasn't there so deftly and eat the broth that wasn't there 238 The Secret of the Clan so greedily, and tip the piece of wood to get the last drop, that we were enchanted with the game, and we all got chips and began to eat soup with invisible spoons, and then threw away the chips and ate from no bowls at all. " Ruth must be Silverlocks," said Titania, " be- cause she's the littlest." " Then," said Marcia, " we bears have got to go outdoors and wait till she's been in and eaten up the porridge and tried the beds." "Wouldn't you rather be here and see her do it ? " Titania asked. Of course that was what we wanted, but we'd forgotten about being Invisible. " One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine ! " Titania counted. " Invisible ! " And we knew we were. So Ruth went out, and presently she came softly in again, and we sat still and watched her. She had a beautiful time doing it all, and she really did it very well. She tried the Great Big Bear's porridge, and the Middle- Sized Bear's, and tried the three chairs and the three beds. We hadn't remembered that there was really only one bed; but Ruth met and conquered that difficulty without a pause. She just Pretended Fairy Walks 239 the one bed was three beds, and tried it three times, and we Pretended it, too. And when it was the teeny-weeny bed, she sank down into it, and shut her eyes, and drew the coverlet to her chin ; and then the Three Bears got up and tiptoed out, and in a minute they came blustering in and began, in the gruffest voices they could find, to inquire who'd been meddling with their things. I didn't play that time. I really liked it better to look on. When it was all over, and Titania had ap- plauded and turned the bears into girls again, she said : — " Now let's sit down and talk it over, and see if we'd better have done it differently." We settled by the fire, and Marcia got out what we called the lapstone, because an old cobbler had given it to her when he could no longer see to work, and the hammer and the butternut bag ; and she cracked, and we ate and picked out meats for Titania. " I think," said Titania, " Silverlocks might talk a little to herself while she goes round finding the things. She might say, c I'm so hungry. Why, here's some porridge ! ' c I'm so sleepy. Why, .here's a bed!'" 240 The Secret of the Clan " Won't you write it down ? " asked Ruth. " I'll learn it all to-night/' " No," said Titania, " you don't need it written down. You can make it up as you go along. In this kind of a play that's the nicest way. More fun." " It's queer," said Marcia. " What's queer ? " Titania asked. Marcia didn't know exactly how to tell, and she flushed a little, as if it might not be the right thing to say. " Everybody else is always wanting us to study and keep rules." " Not Grandma," said Kay, stoutly, and I put in: — " Not Grandma ! " "No," said Marcia, "not really, but some. She never tried to make us, but we know all the same if we'd study she'd be awful pleased." " Awfully," said Ruth, remembering Crandma. That made us remember, too, and we felt a little dash of discouragement. We hadn't quite forgotten that we hadn't yet done what we'd been told, and might have to go to Crandma's any minute. " But you," said Marcia to Titania, " never think of anything but fun." Fairy Walks 247 " Don't I ? " asked Titania. At once she looked as sad as she had that morning, when Marcia told her about Uncle Terry's wife. " Bless the child ! " Ruth put a double nut meat on her knee, and Titania laughed, and they ate philopena, and then Marcia said : — " What let's act next ? " "You think up a story," said Titania. "I thought of this one. Write one, if you want to." " Uncle Terry writes plays," said Kay, her mouth full of nuts. " But nobody '11 take 'em." " Won't they ? " asked Titania. She looked quite merry. " Why won't they ? " " He says it's because he's a landlubber," said Marcia. " He told Grandma so. He says he hasn't learned the ropes. Titania, couldn't we act Shakespeare ? " I expected Titania, though she was always kind, to laugh at this, because I remembered how Aunt Tabitha went up from Sedgmoor to Boston to see plays of Shakespeare's ; and I knew from what she said that they must be very grand indeed. But Titania was always giving us surprises. " Oh, yes," she said, " perfectly well. We'll read one first, and you can see if you'd like to act it." 1 l^l The Secret of the Clan " Should we have scenery ? " I asked. I'd heard Aunt Tabitha talk about the scenery. " No/' said Titania, " you can play an Imagine- Play." This was the first time that name had been given to it, and after that, all the plays we did without scenery were called Imagine-Plays. " Want to come back to the house," Titania asked, " and find the book and read the play ? \ So off we scampered back. We were in even more of a hurry than ever since Titania had come, running from one pleasant thing to another. By the time she had found the book, and we had settled before the fire and Grandma had said : — " Such a treat, my dear ! such a treat to hear you read ! " and had drawn up her chair, too, the dusk was coming outside, and we were entranced with that particular happiness the dusk and a fire to- gether can bring. " The play," said Titania, " is called c The Merchant of Venice \" She spoke in an entirely new voice, round, clear, and full. " Til tell you a little about the play, and then I'll read the most important speeches." So she told and read, and we sat all of us, I Fairy Walks 243 think, with our arms about our knees, and listened. Pete came in and " flumped " and paid attention for a moment, but didn't find anything in it, and went to sleep. Mary came to call us to supper; but when she heard what we were doing, she stood still in the doorway and Grandma made her a sign and she went away again. Uncle Terry came into the hall and stopped a minute after he had shut the outer door. Then he put down his hat and coat on the table, and came and listened, standing just outside. Titania had reached the place where Portia tells Bassanio she will be his wife ; and this is what she read, in such a beautiful voice that I saw Grandma was crying, and I was not ashamed, and cried, too : — " 'You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand, Such as I am : tho* for myself alone, I would not be ambitious in my wish, To wish myself much better ; yet for you, I would be trebled twenty times myself, A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times More rich ; that, to stand high in your account, I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends, Exceed account : but the full sum of me Is sum of something, which, to term in gross, Is an unlesson'd girl, unschooPd, unpractis'd : 244 The Secret of the Clan Happy in this, she is not yet so old But she may learn ; more happy then in this, She is not bred so dull but she can learn; Happiest of all is, that her gentle spirit Commits itself to yours, to be directed, As from her lord, her governor, her king.' " Uncle Terry stood perfectly still, and suddenly he put his hand to his face, and then I heard him going up the stairs. He went so softly that per- haps the others didn't notice. At the end of that speech Titania stopped and looked at Grandma, and they smiled at each other and seemed as if they thought the same thing exactly. " Thank you, my dear," said Grandma. " Oh, what a treat it is ! Supper now. The rest to-morrow." We went to supper, perfectly happy, very much excited and yet serious. Somehow we felt as if we had come on a new thing that was more delightful than anything else. Only we couldn't bear to wait for the ending, and when we begged for it, Titania looked at Grandma, and Grandma nodded and said : — " If you're not tired, dear." And we went back to our circle and piled on Fairy Walks 245 wood, and Titania finished the play, in a merry fashion that sent our spirits up like smoke. Only Kay didn't think the bargain about the pound of flesh and " no drop of blood " was fair. " You can't cut flesh without making blood," she said. "They knew that in the beginning." Ruth was sorry for Shylock, and so was I. But Marcia was chiefly concerned in planning how to act the play. We could begin next day, Titania told us. We'd make out the cast and learn our parts. We went to bed very meekly when we were told. It seemed to us we had to, after being allowed to sit up " extra long ". But Kay lingered till the rest had said good night, and then she asked Titania : — " Was it fair, about the drop of blood ? Would the case have gone that way ? " " Maybe not," said Titania, with one of her understanding looks. " Only it's part Pretend." CHAPTER XIV THE SENTENCE WE could hardly wait for breakfast to be over, so that we could begin to learn the Merchant of Venice. Titania never tried to quiet our impatience. She seemed to think it splendid to want to do a thing and to want to do it instantly. So after breakfast we scurried over the house and looked in all the bookcases to see if we could find copies enough of the play, and we did, and each sat down with one opened to Portia's speech in the Trial Scene. Titania didn't want to give out the parts until she had heard how each one of us did that particular speech : for she said that was the great scene. Kay was looking at the list of characters in the book. " Why," said she, " there are lots of 'em. We can't play all those." " Oh, you can double up on some," said Titania. " Each of you can take two parts, maybe three. And what there are left over I'll read." 246 The Sentence 247 " Will it be just as well ? " Marcia asked, anxiously. She was always very particular to have a play "just so ", and now that I have seen a good many plays myself, I know why. A play ought to be perfectly done, or not done at all. " It's just as well, the way we're doing it," said Titania, " because we know how to Pretend. If there is something in the play that we can't get, we can pretend it's there, and we shall have just as much fun. Now I'll read Portia's speech, and you listen hard." She read it as she had the night before, but even more slowly, and so smoothly and so beautifully. And when she had done, Ruth read it after her, and so did I, and I suppose we sounded like very little girls trying to do something too hard for us. I felt I could do it better if I stood up as we did at Sedgmoor, when we spoke a piece, and made a little bow and put my hands behind my back. We had sat still in our chairs, to read it, as Titania had ; but when Marcia's turn came, she got up and stepped out of the circle and held her book as if she didn't need it very much, and looked at the mantel- piece, and I knew at once she was looking at the judge. Marcia had grown quite white ; her lips 248 The Secret of the Clan trembled and her eyes shone. She was Pretending with all her might. She began : — w • The quality of mercy is not strained,' M and she did it exactly as Titania had : only there was something different in her voice, something strong and full, as if she had thought about the part herself, and didn't need to imitate Titania exactly. She had thoughts of her own to put into it. Titania had been staring at the fire and listening, while Ruth and I had our trial ; but now she looked up straight at Marcia, and she smiled and nodded once or twice, and really seemed excited. " Brava ! " she said, at the end. " Brava ! Marcia, you're a great girl." Marcia sat down suddenly and winked her eyes two or three times, as if she'd got to get back to feeling the way she usually felt. I loved to play at acting, but I didn't see why she should take it so hard. I do now. Marcia thought it was the most beautiful thing to do in all the world. " Now, Kay," Titania said. Kay began in a rush, as if she wanted to get it over ; then her voice dragged and turned sulky, and she stopped. The Sentence 249 " Don't like it, do you, Kay ? " Titania asked and laughed. " Why, no," said Kay, " I don't/' She looked puzzled and unhappy. " 'Twouldn't have been that way. It's a nice speech, and if I didn't know what was coming, I s'pose I could do it. But when I know things are going to be all twisted round so the judge will give that mean verdict — " Titania lay back in her chair and laughed. " Kay," she said, " you've got the legal mind. You've got it so bad you can't even let yourself Pretend. What do you say to playing Shylock ? " Kay brightened up at once. " Could I ? " she asked. " And have a beard ? I'd like that first-rate." So Titania gave out the parts, and we talked, and cut the play, and she asked our advice on a great many points, and gravely took it when she could. And after we had worked three solid hours, Grandma came in, and said : — " Haven't you children been outdoors this morn- ing? Well, you'd better take a run before dinner time. Mary is beginning to baste the roast." " Yes'm," said Titania, as if she, too, were a child, " we'll have a run. When shall we be back ? " 250 The Secret of the Clan That was a happy morning. It had begun beau- tifully, too. I had had a long letter from Aunt Tabitha with messages for everybody, even to " Miss Delorme, if she is with you ". Aunt Tabitha and I had lived alone together so long — all my life, it was, and that seemed long to me — that she treated me almost like a grown-up, and wrote me truly grown-up letters. In this one she told me how her singing was getting on, and who had praised her, and that she had a new blue silk. Dressmaking was very cheap, and she had felt she needed it. Did I remember, she asked, Mr. Paul Meredith who had been studying the piano in Boston when she went up for singing? He had come down to Sedgmoor several times to call, and we had raisin cake and tea. I did remember him well. He always brought me chocolates and took off his hat to me, and I thought him splendid. He was in Germany now, Aunt Tabitha said, studying, and twice he had played in public, and there was no doubt about his doing all he meant to do and more. He had been to see her several times. I was glad of that. I thought she might not miss me quite so much if she could see some- body from home. But she did miss me. She said The Sentence 251 so at the end of the letter, and there was a blobby kiss. I gave the letter to Grandma, and she read it aloud for Titania to hear. " Oh, yes," said Titania, when they got to Paul Meredith, " he's a splendid fellow, splendid. That's perfectly all right." " I'm so glad," said Grandma. " Yes, Pm very glad. Here's your letter, dear." Now we were going out to walk, and I tucked my letter into my top pocket where I could hear it crackle. It made me almost feel Aunt Tabitha was near. The letters gave me a strange kind of pleasure. I was glad Aunt Tabitha was having such a lovely time, and I knew I was myself; but I had an ache in my throat, thinking of the house at Sedgmoor, shut up and cold, and perhaps longing for us a little bit, and not knowing just where we were. But we had told it, Aunt Tabitha and I. The very night before we shut it up, we went round and looked at all the things we loved, and I said : — " Do you s'pose it knows, Aunt Tab ?" " Oh, yes," said she, at once. " It's heard us talking about it, all this time. It won't forget, will you, darling house ? " 252 The Secret of the Clan We were hurrying out, I with my hand on my letter, and Ruth said : — " Titania, could this be a Fairy Walk ? " " I don't believe this could/' said Titania, as if something else might in a very few minutes. " We don't want to stop to think about it, you know. We want to run, and get most frightfully hungry, so we can eat up all Mary's roast." Ruth had Titania's hand, and when we got into the Plantation " scrooged about ", now a little before and now behind, so there might be room for them both, and she needn't drop the hand. " What can we do when we've used up the Fairy Walks ? " she asked. I often thought we asked Titania questions some- times just to keep her talking, we loved so to hear her voice. " Oh," said she, " there are stories enough to last till you are two hundred and ten. We, must hunt them out, that's all." " All fairy stories ? " asked Kay. "No," said Titania, "we could make walks out of other stories, stories that have really happened. We could have King Alfred and the Cakes, and Bruce and the Spider, and Diogenes and his Lan- The Sentence 253 tern. There are millions of stories, just millions. I don't know them all, only the commonest ones. I told you I didn't know history, like Amy Fuller- ton. " Amy Fullerton ! we had forgotten all about her. It had seemed as if this playtime were to go on forever and ever, with Titania always teaching us new games and playing as hard as we. She saw our trouble. " But we could look up the history stories, ,, she said, gayly. " We'd better get out the history books and peg away and see what we can find. There are Greek stories, too, and Roman. I've heard of those. We must look alive and see what they are." We could hardly wait to do it. We began to suspect that the more things we found out in what Ruth called " knowledge books ", the longer Titania would stay with us : for ir it was discovered she had taught us things, why should Amy Fullerton come at all ? " What could we call those walks ? " asked Ruth. " If it's Fairy Walks when we play fairy stories, what would it be when we played history stories?" Titania seemed to consider this quite gravely. And I believe she really did. History was a study. If she called them history walks, should we think 254 The Secret of the Clan we were studying and lose half the fun ? Suddenly she began to laugh. " I'll tell you what we could call them," said she. " Once I heard about a sign in the window of a country store : c Huckle-blue-cran-rasp and other berries.' We could have c Fairy-brick-board and other walks \ When we acted history stories/they'd be < Other Walks '." We thought that tremendously funny, and went home inventing all kinds of sentences, like a game. " Gold-fountain-pig and other pens," Marcia thought of, and Ruth said : — " TafFeta-sewing-corn and other silks." Titania said : — " Sky-marsh-great and other larks." I couldn't think of one, and while I was hammer- ing at my brain, Kay said, thoughtfully, as if she had been considering it a long time and it had to come out: — " But I don't see how they could put in huckle and cran together, because cranberries come later:" " O legal mind ! " said Titania. " Maybe they didn't. Maybe I put in the c cran'." And Kay was so cheered that she at once in- vented : — The Sentence 255 " Mahogany-turn-time and dinner table," and we saw where her thoughts were and began to scurry along. As we went, we played another game. Some- how, when we were with Titania we felt like play- ing all the time. This game was a foolish one, hardly a game at all ; but we always got silly over it and laughed in that particular way that Uncle Terry called " having the simples ". " Mr. and Mrs. T. Mony and Ann T. Mony," Kay called, as she went along tapping the trees with her stick. " Mr. and Mrs. Donna and Bella Donna," said I. Here I was at home, for it was a game Aunt Tabitha and I had often played by the fire on a cool night, and I could use up all the old combinations I had learned at Sedgmoor. " Mr. and Mrs. T. Dote and Ann T. Dote," said Titania, and Marcia called quite loudly because it was one that hadn't been thought of before : — " Mr. and Mrs. Jump-up and Johnny-jump-up ! " "Oh, come," said Kay, "that's no fair. Johnny- Jump-up's a real name." " Don't care if it is," said Marcia. " Mr. and Mrs. Delight, then, and the Ladies Delight." 256 The Secret of the Clan Marcia liked a free hand in her inventions, and as Kay always wanted to go by rule, they began to dis- cuss the silly game as if it were quite important. So by the time we got home, we were all glad to have done with it. We took our things off, and were trooping up stairs to wash our hands, when Marcia called to me, because I happened to be the last one: - — " O Laura, would you put Pete in the kitchen ? I've got to get the burrs out of his ears." So I took him out, much against his will, for he always wanted to be at Marcia's heels when he wasn't jumping over her, and I found Mary making gravy and mashing potato and buttering squash, in the midst of that time just before dinner when everything has to be done at once, and the cook looks so anxious and the kitchen smells so good. "All right," said Mary, when I told her about the burrs and asked her not to let Pete in again. " Wait a minute. Here's two letters that were too late for first delivery. Eph went up to get Mrs. Gray's, and he took them out of the box. One letter was for the Grandmother. I carried it to the sitting room where I'd seen her as we came in. The other letter was for "The Misses The Sentence 257 Marcia, Katherine, and Ruth Blake, and Miss Laura Whiteley ". I knew the hand. It was Just Grand- pa's. When I went into the sitting room, rather in a hurry because I wanted to find the Tribe and read our own letter as soon as possible, Grandma was standing in the middle of the floor, and Uncle Terry was facing her. It doesn't seem possible that the Grandmother ever looked angry ; but I thought she did then. Uncle Terry seemed excited, as if he'd been talking fast and as if now something troubled him terribly. And just as I went in, he was saying: — " It's an impossible situation. Impossible ! " " It's a situation you have made yourself," said Grandma. "If you are uncomfortable, you richly deserve it." Was this the Grandmother who always spoke so gently to us, and who, when we were at our naugh- tiest, always seemed sad and never stern ? " I shall get out," said Uncle Terry. " I shall go abroad." " If you do," said the Grandmother, "you will ruin your life, and I won't say whose besides. I shan't stand by you, Terry. You're wrong, and you know you're wrong ; but you're as obstinate as a mule." 258 The Secret of the Clan I put the letter into her hand ; but neither of them seemed even to see me. She was too busy scolding him, and he was too busy being scolded. I scampered up the stairs and into Kay-and-Marcia's room, and I must have looked queer, for Marcia said : — " What's the matter ? Grandma all right ? ' I gave her the letter, and that seemed to account for my hurry, at least, and the letter was so im- portant that Marcia bob-whited for Kay and Kay for Ruth, and we plumped down on the bed, and Marcia read it aloud quickly to get it over before the dinner bell. This was the letter. " c Esteemed Imps: Have had no reply from you in regard to the matter set forth in my com- munication of the 15th #//.'" " What does ult mean ? " Ruth inquired. " Oh, I don't know," said Marcia. " It's some- thing Just Grandpa puts in with the date. Maybe it's one of his jokes. We can't stop for that now. " c I understand from a letter just received from your That-Grandma, in reply to one of inquiry from your This-Grandma, that no settlement of the case of being out at night and refusing to tell where has been reached. Am deeply concerned at this. Beg The Sentence 259 leave to call your attention to the fact that the matter of your whereabouts on that particular night is not of especial importance. The subject in hand is that you have failed to give evidence in the case, which is contempt of court. You have refused to answer a question of your That-Grandma, who is a Regular Brick, all wool and a yard wide, which proves that you are not only Imps but Ingrates.' " "What's ingrates ? " Ruth asked, with her head over Marcia's shoulder, to see if a look at the page would help her. " Don't know," said Marcia. " Something awful. Can't stop to think. Look it out after dinner. c Therefore, after consultation with your This- Grandma, it has been determined that unless you give full and complete testimony to your That- Grandma concerning the night in question, you will be transported to this house, bag and baggage. And whereas I am delirious with joy over an occasional visit from Good Grandchildren, I find myself in a frightful temper when I contemplate undertaking the punishment of Unruly Imps. Moreover, my house is a very excellent house with commodious windows, and I do not think with any pleasure of putting gratings at said windows, to turn 260 The Secret of the Clan it into a penitentiary for the confinement of Unruly Imps. Shall be happy to hear from you by Tues- day next/ " " It isn't ult there," said Ruth. " c On that precise date, measures will be taken. Your very un-affectionate Just Grandpa/ " We sat for a moment in silence. The letter had made us sick at heart. Besides, we were hungry. " Oh," said Marcia, in a miserable tone, " we were having such a good time, and Titania and all. Why can't they let us alone ? " " Wonder what she wrote to Grandma," Kay pondered, gloomily. " Who ? " " Crandma. She wrote, you see. He says Grandma said we hadn't told, and that was when Crandma asked her. Wonder if Grandma knows we've got to go." " You don't suppose Titania'd go with us ? " asked Ruth, hopefully. " No," said Kay. " If we're at Crandma's, we've got to go to public school. Don't you know she said so ? " " It isn't so much Titania," said Marcia. We looked at her in amazement. We couldn't The Sentence 261 bear even the thought of leaving Titania, and how could she who, as Ruth said, " simply worshipped " her? Tears came into Marcia's eyes. She hated them, and winked them angrily away. " Of course it's Titania, too," she said. " We can't any of us get along without Titania. But we just can't live without Grandma. I've been think- ing about it all this time. I knew something was going to happen. I knew we shouldn't get off as easy as this. And if they send us over there, I don't see how we can live." " Then what'll we do ? " I piped up. " Couldn't we tell ? " For a minute I was light-heartedly sure that we could tell, and everybody be the better for it. But Marcia had turned square about and was looking at me. I felt very small indeed. "Tell?" she repeated, bitterly. "How can we when we promised not to ? Didn't it mean any- thing to promise ? Didn't it mean anything to drink the drink ? " "Yes," I said, humbly. " I s'pose it did." Then the dinner bell rang, and we went down ; but I felt like a very unworthy member of the Tribe. 262 The Secret of the Clan Something had happened downstairs, too. Uncle Terry wasn't at the table, and Grandma looked worried and sad. Titania was very sweet to her, as if she were sorry for her ; and we were so quiet that Mary looked at us frowningly from time to time, as if we couldn't be quite well and she's got to run for hot water or peppermint. When we got up from the table, Grandma stood a minute by her chair. " Children," said she, cc will you come into the sitting room ? I've had a letter I want to read to you." In the hall Titania seemed to be about to go up- stairs, but Grandma said : — " Come in, my dear, if you don't mind. I'd like you to hear it, too." So Grandma sat down by the window and took a letter off the sill, and opened it. We four sat on stools, I believe. I have a remembrance that we looked very humble, and I suppose we were so low in our minds that we chose to be as near the floor as possible. " c Dear Amelia : ' " Grandmother began. Then she looked up from the sheet to say, " This is from your other Grandma. c Dear Amelia : I The Sentence 263 am both surprised and pained to hear that the chil- dren are still disobedient.' This," said Grandma, looking up again, " refers entirely to your refusing to tell me where you went. Since that time, as I wrote your other Grandma, never have I seen better children." As she said that, a tear ran down under her glasses on the cheek that was next to me ; and Marcia, feeling, I suppose, tears of her own coming, sniffed once, angrily. The Grandmother went on reading. " c I am sure, Amelia, you will understand it exactly as I mean it when I say that you have done everything possible for the children except to make them mind. This is not a fault of your character, but of your system. Alfred has con- vinced me of that. He says you have been entirely guided by the desire that they should be happy, and a confidence that they would be good. (The words are Alfred's.) I do not agree with you as to the wisdom of this course. I have therefore decided that, unless the children make a full con- fession of their fault and promise future amend- ment, they shall be sent to us. I shall then do my best to deal with them in such a man- ner that no future misdemeanor is likely to oc* 264 The Secret of the Clan cur. It is Alfred's suggestion that a date be set for their coming. Let us make it Tuesday next.' " That is really all," said the Grandmother, in a tired tone. " The rest is about aprons, school- books, and so forth." I don't know whether she looked at us. We were sitting in a gloomy silence, staring at our feet. None of us dared even glance at Titania. Now, we felt, she had found us out. No more " Fairy and Other Walks ", no more silly games running through the woods, no more Shakespeare plays. Grandma spoke again, and her voice was trembling. "I'm sure, children, you will see exactly how I feel about this. There is no question of my wanting you to go. I don't really quite know how I am going to live without you." Here Marcia shuffled her feet, as if she didn't want to hear the words distinctly, lest they make her cry. " I may not feel it very important that you should tell me where you went," said Grandma. " But I am not a wise woman. Your other Grandma has far more character than I, and she The Sentence 265 has brought up children of her own — excellent children. And your Uncle Terry and I think your Just Grandpa agrees with her that it is not so much that one question you have refused to answer as that you don't seem to understand that it is right to obey people older than you are. Well," said the Grandma, smiling a little sorrowfully, " this is a long speech. But the point of it is, I've got to ask you again where you went, and find out whether you don't think it's right and wise to tell me. You see, my little dears, I'm almost five times as old as Marcia, and more than five times older than Ruth. Don't you think maybe I've learned a few rules you'd like to go by in all those years ? " She looked so sweet, so darling, so like a girl pleading for something she wanted very much that I didn't see how anybody, especially the three who loved her so, could deny her. I would have told her in a minute if they'd given me a look ; but then I wasn't so heroic as they were, and there's no doubt I didn't have so splendid an idea of the honor of the Tribe. " Grandma ! " said Marcia, hoarsely. I felt Titania was turning quickly to look at her. Now I saw Titania's face. It was bright with a 266 The Secret of the Clan kind of listening look, as if she hoped nobody would speak too hastily. " Grandma ! " said Marcia again. Kay looked at Marcia and nodded, seeming to give Marcia the right to speak for us all. More miserable faces I had never seen, and I believe my own must have been all puckered up into knots of care. " We can't, Grandma," Marcia burst out, in that hoarse voice. " We just can't tell." "Well," said Grandma, gently, after a minute, perhaps to get her own voice steady, " I'm sorry, dear." " No," said Titania, " no ! " She was standing, and we all rose to our feet without knowing why, and looked at her. Titania was beautiful just then. She looked all alive, and as if in another minute she'd do something to save the day, though she might not know quite what. " Don't decide it now," she said to Marcia. " Go away by your- selves and think it over. You know that's proper, Kay. A person giving evidence must make up his mind carefully, to get the exact right and wrong. You see that, don't you, Kay ? You see it, don't you, Marcia? Laura sees it, I know. She sees how dreadful it would be to have the Grandmother The Sentence 267 ask for anything and not give it to her. Go away and think. Talk it over. Don't answer till to-morrow if you'd rather not. You'll wait, Lady Grandma, won't you ? You'd rather wait? " " Yes," said Grandma, sorrowfully, " I can wait." But she said it without hope, for she must have known what obstinate little creatures she had to deal with, and perhaps it seemed to her all the time as if we loved her less than she had thought. " Come," said Marcia to us, in a dull tone, "let's go over to the Wigwam." We trailed heavily out, and got our hats and coats, and took the wood path in a spirit very differ- ent from the one that had raced us through it that morning. " What you stopping for ? " Kay asked, when Marcia turned about halfway. " I'm going back for Pete," said Marcia. We understood perfectly. When she was so deep in trouble, she had to have Pete to help her bear it. We had to have him, too. While we waited for her, and kicked the leaves, Ruth said : — "Well, somebody's told something, anyway. Marcia said before them, ' Let's go over to the 268 The Secret of the Clan Wigwam'. We promised we wouldn't tell it was the Wigwam." " Oh," said Kay, " they wouldn't notice that." And then Marcia came along with Pete splaying and frisking over us as if to tell each separately how glad he was to be called in consultation. We went on to the Wigwam, but Pete was the only one to frisk and make the most of the bright day. CHAPTER XV RAIN-IN-THE-FACE WHEN we got to the Wigwam, Marcia went about in a wilted kind of way and made the fire, and then we drew up our chairs and sat, " all mumped up ", as Eph used to say about hens, when they felt sick and ruffled up their feathers. Pete threw himself down at Marcia's feet, drew his long breath and was off, chasing rab- bits in Dreamland perhaps : because it wasn't long before his hind legs began to twitch, and he gave little excited whines. " Well," said Kay, at last, " what are we going to do?" " Pick up our things," said Marcia, gloomily. " But it's no use carrying games and books. She won't let us use 'em." " She won't let me wear my ring," said Ruth. "Oh, dear!" Kay tried to think of a way to help her out. 269 270 The Secret of the Clan "You can tie it on a string, and wear it under your dress, round your neck," she said. " She'd see it then," said Ruth. I believe we all thought Crandma could see through a door or the wall of a house. " I've got that little chain Grandma gave me for my locket," said Marcia, absently. " You can hang it on that." But Ruth would not be comforted. " It's no use," she said. " She'd know it then." None of us saw any way out except to "tell", and that was not the way of honor. So we thought. I did see a little gleam of hope, and I wished they might spy it, too. It was Titania. If we could only tell Titania the whole story, she would help us. But how could we tell her rather than Grandma ? And just then came a knock at the door. Now nobody ever knocked at that door, unless it was an actor in a play, or one of us in a game. That was why the knock startled us a little ; and we sat there for a second and looked at one another. In a minute it came again, and then Marcia rose and went to the door. It was Titania. There she stood in her fur jacket, a red scarf on her head. Rain-in-the-Face 27 1 " O Titania ! M Marcia cried, and " O Titania ! " cried we all. We got up and ran to her, and took off her scarf, and brought her chair into the ring: for by this time Titania had a chair of her own. I don't know what we expected of her ; but somehow, now she had come, we thought everything would be made plain. Titania always looked lovely and charming and bright ; but to-day she seemed to be more of all those things than ever. She looked as if she might be on an adventure. " Girls," said she, at once, " I believe you're a Tribe of Indians, and that somehow that's con- nected with it." We didn't look at one another, for fear she would see she had guessed. She must be really a witch, I thought, to make a shot like that. " Connected with what ? " asked Kay, as indiffer- ently as she could manage. " Connected with your being out that night, and connected with your not telling. Now if I've guessed right, you ought to say so. It's no fair not to." We sat in stiff silence. We didn't mean to be obstinate or hateful, but really we didn't know what to do. 272 The Secret of the Clan " I'll go into the corner and hold my hands over my ears," said Titania, " and you can talk it over. Only don't be long. It's cold here, except near the fire." We let her do it, and the minute she was in the corner, her fingers in her ears, Ruth said hopefully, almost with glee, indeed : — " We said Flutino could come into the Tribe if he guessed." "Yes," said Marcia, doubtfully. She looked at Kay. "Well, Titania guessed. So she can come in," said Kay. " Only she needn't know. Grandma's Pocahontas, but she doesn't know she is." "Oh, that's a crawl-off," said Marcia. "You know it is. When we said Flutino could come in if he guessed, we meant really in, same as we are now ; and Titania's guessed, and she ought to come just that same way." Kay wanted her as much as we did ; but she never could decide a thing without looking the arguments over carefully, as a lady buys a yard of lace. " I s'pose we want her in," said she. "Want her!" Marcia repeated, and I said, more faintly, but with no less feeling, "Want her!" Rain-in-the-Face 273 Was there a minute when we didn't want Titania? Kay's face lighted up now, in sudden triumph. " And don't you see," she said, " if she's in the Tribe, we can tell her things, and she can advise us what to do ; but she can't tell outside any more than we can. Titania ! " When we had all called her name, Titania took her hands away from her ears and turned and said, "Now?" She came back to the fire, and Marcia asked, at once : — "What should you say if we invited you to join a Tribe of Indians ? " " I should say," Titania answered, promptly, "that I should be proud and happy. Is there any initiation fee ? " " No," said Kay. " But there's promises," said Ruth. " You have to promise you won't tell anything that's told you or anything we do." Titania drew her mouth down. " I don't like that," she said. " It gets you into awful scrapes." " Awfully," Ruth corrected her gently. When she tacked a y on she seemed to feel Crandma would know it and approve. But nobody 274 The Secret of the Clan noticed her. We were too excited. Here was Titania half in the Tribe and half out, and hesitat- ing because she didn't like one of its principal rules. " Who's your Chief? " said she. " We're all chiefs," said Marcia, proudly. " Oh," said Titania, shaking her head, " I don't think you can do it that way. In a real Tribe, there has to be one Big Chief, and you have to do what he says." "Then," said Marcia, "you come in, and you can be the Chief." " No," said Titania, " it ought to be a brave of years and great prowess, one who has been long on the trail and has taken many scalps." " Yes ! yes ! " said Kay, in hot excitement. " Yes ! Yes ! " said Marcia. Titania evidently knew how to treat a Tribe. " Now I," said she, " am but a young brave. There are many things that an older chief, sitting by the camp-fire, could tell me. I am untried as yet at the council or on the trail. I love bright wampum, but I have not earned it. Tell me, braves, is she who is known by Pale Faces as the Grandmother in this Tribe ? " Then she gave a perfectly splendid grunt of the Rain-in-the-Face 275 kind that is set down as " Ugh " in Indian stories. That won us completely. If ever there was a brave, she must be the one. We had had great trouble with " Ugh ". Kay and Marcia could grunt mag- nificently, but Ruth contended that, if the books spelled it as they did, it must be pronounced " Ugg ", and when she did it, we got into fits of laughter and called it " ugg " ourselves. But Ti- tania knew the proper style. " Why," said Marcia, " Grandma's in the Tribe, in a kind of a way, only she doesn't know it. She's Pocahontas, but 'course we never call her so. " Then," said Titania, firmly, " Pocahontas is by right of age and wisdom the Chief of this Tribe." Ka Y gigged. " Oh," said she, " Pocahontas is a woman. She's a squaw. You can't have a woman for a chief. You can't have a squaw." " Oh, yes, you can," said Titania. " You couldn't once, but you can now. Squaws are very different from what they used to be in the time of Deerfield and Schenectady." We too knew about the massacres of Deerfield 276 The Secret of the Clan and Schenectady, and her bringing them in so pat and showing she was up in redskins' little ways, so many years ago, had a great effect on us. We felt Titania knew what she was talking about. "Can they truly?" asked Kay. "Can squaws be chiefs ? " " They are chiefs in lots of Tribes," said Titania, " white Tribes and all kinds of Tribes. If I were you, I shouldn't lose a minute. I should make Pocahontas the Chief." It seemed to involve a great deal of explanation. " She doesn't even know she's an Indian," said Kay. " And if we told her she was the Chief, we should have to explain, and perhaps she wouldn't want to — and everything like that." "Don't tell her then," said Titania. "Only if she asks you sometime or wants to know. But just make her the Chief right off now, and treat her like a chief." " Then will you join the Tribe ? " asked Ruth. " I'll be proud and pleased," Titania said, and Kay asked her : — " What'll you have your name ? " " Rain-in-the-Face," said Titania, "because I should cry so hard if I had to go away from you." Rain-in-the-Face 277 Then there was a tumult of rejoicing in which Pete became prominent ; and when we had quieted, we got up and clasped hands in a ring and said, solemnly : — " We elect Pocahontas to be the Chief of this Tribe. ,, That might not have been the way chiefs were elected, but it seemed to answer every purpose. "Well," said Titania, when we had sat down again, " you're out of your troubles now, aren't you ? " We had forgotten our troubles for a minute, it was true, but we didn't see how we had escaped them. " Pocahontas is the Chief," said Titania. " When the Chief commands you to do anything, you've got to do it. So now you can tell her all about the night she asked you about, and that's the end of that." We looked at one another. We hadn't thought of that. To be sure we could tell ; but did we want to, when it came to the point ? Were things ever going to be so much fun again, if we told even Grandma everything ? "I don't know," said Kay, slowly. "I don't know as we want to tell." Then she thought it over for an instant, as we all 278 The Secret of the Clan did, and added what we, too, concluded, " But of course we've got to. She's the Chief now. We've elected her. We can't help ourselves." " Now I'll tell you what I think," said Titania, quickly. " Pocahontas wouldn't be Chief for any- thing if you didn't really want her, and she wouldn't even wish you to tell her things or mind her if you didn't do it willingly. No, I mean more than willingly. Gladly ! She'd want you to love her so you did it gladly." " The trouble is — " said Marcia. Then she stopped. We had a general idea of what she must be going to say, and we knew there was no way to say it. " What is the trouble ? " Titania asked. " The trouble is," Marcia continued, " you can't tell folks things, many things. After they're grown up, they don't — understand." Titania nodded. " I'm grown-up," she said. " Oh, no, you're not," we cried all together. " But Grandma — why, she's got gray hair ! " " Now," said Titania, u you listen to me. And you believe me, too. I'm Rain-in-the-Face ! Great Chief! Ugh ! " So we listened. " Most Rain-in-the-Face 279 of the people you call grown-up aren't grown up at all. Only they don't tell you so. They think you'd laugh. But when their hair is white, it's the fashion for them to behave in a certain way. So they Pretend." " But they don't do the same things we do," said Kay, quickly. "They don't want to do 'em." " They don't do 'em," said Titania, " because they've done them all once. You don't play c button-button ' now. You act in Shakespeare's plays." We drew long breaths and felt important. " I'm not Rain-in-the-Face for a minute," said Titania. "I'm a Pale Face, talking straight talk. I'm going to make a story of it. Once there was a palace — No, there is a palace. It is. In one room all the things are little : little chairs and tables, little cats and dogs, little cookies and little everything. You can break off chocolate and crumbly gingerbread anywhere." We drew a long breath. That was the kind of palace to have. "You live in it a long time," said Titania. " That is, it seems a long time. But by and by you begin to feel the chairs are too small and you can't 280 The Secret of the Clan sit in them, and the tables are too low and you have to bend over." " That's growing up," said Kay. "Then the wind rises and blows the glass out of the windows, and it blows you into another room. The door shuts behind you." "Is there any gingerbread in that room?" Ruth asked, eagerly. " Or any chocolate ? " " Yes, only it isn't quite the same. You have to make it there. You have to take the sugar and the chocolate and boil them and drop into molds, and you have to stir up the gingerbread and bake it. If you didn't, I don't believe you'd have any at all. And you have to make a lot, because you make it for the other room — the one with the little things — too." " Can't you ever go back into the little room ? " Ruth asked. The rest of us felt so serious over the question of the two rooms that we couldn't put any questions at all. "That's it," said Titania. "You can go back — to visit. You can't go back to stay. And think how lonesome it is when the little people sitting in the little chairs and eating the crumbly ginger- Rain-in-the-Face 281 bread you have made for them, say, c Go out of here. Go back into your own room. We don't want you/ " Kay and Marcia were crimson. " We never did," said Marcia. " We wouldn't say such a thing. Not to her, anyway." She meant the Grandmother. But we knew she thought the keeping Grandma out of our Pretends was just the same as telling her to go into the next room. " Are there other rooms ? " Ruth asked. " More than those two ? " " Yes," said Titania, " but we needn't think of those yet." " They don't want to play," Marcia burst out. " Old folks don't." " Not all the time," said Titania. " But some- times we act as if they couldn't play. Why, they can play better than we can, because they know all the games. They've lived in the room with the little tables and chairs, and they've lived in the room where the chocolates and gingerbread are made. So they don't know fewer games. They know more. They haven't forgotten how to Pre- tend. They can Pretend better." 282 The Secret of the Clan We were fascinated by the idea of these sober grown-ups Pretending. " What do you think they Pretend ? " asked Kay. " I think, most of the time," said Titania, " they Pretend to be happy when they're not. And if they have to play a game, they Pretend it's a nice game, and they'd rather play it than anything else." " I don't believe Crandma Pretends," said Mar- cia, decidedly. " You can't tell," said Titania. " Maybe she Pretends it's just as well to have grandchildren that don't like her, though she wishes awfully they did." "We can't like her," said Kay. "She always thinks her own way's the best way, better'n Grand- ma's or anybody's." Titania began to laugh. We didn't see anything to laugh at. " What is it ? " we all asked, one after another. If there was anything funny, we wanted to be in it. Titania kept on laughing and we kept on saying : — "What is it? what is it?" " I don't dare to tell you," said she, at last. Titania not dare? She looked so pretty when Rain-in-the-Face 2 83 she said it that she must have known she could dare anything. " Why not ? " said Kay. "You'll be mad/' said Titania, just as if she were as much a child and perhaps as much of an imp as we. No, we wouldn't be mad. We swore it. We crossed our throats and crossed our hearts. "Well," said Titania, "I've heard a lot about Crandma from one person and another, and I think I know what's made her think her own way is better than anybody's." "What?" we cried. We began to hope if we had got as far as finding out the reason, something might be done. "Because she's always had her own way," said Titania. "She's had it till she doesn't see there's any other. And — " she looked at us in turn, and sparks were frolicking in her eyes — " if you four don't look out and begin to walk Spanish, you'll be just like her." Here was a blow. We stared at her in silence, and I dare say we looked very much alarmed. Kay was the first to pluck up courage. "What's walking Spanish ? " she inquired, faintly. 284 The Secret of the Clan "It's behaving yourselves," said Titania. Now we had got so far, she seemed perfectly willing to mention the worst she thought. "It's doing what the Grandmother tells you to. It's doing what the governess tells you." "We've done everything you told us," said Marcia, feebly. "Every single thing." " Bless you," said Titania. " But that's nothing. Haven't we had a gay old time doing it ? " We had. We owned it rapturously. "Well, what you've got to do," said Titania, "if you're ever going to be worth your salt, is to do what you don't like, too. If Amy Fullerton tells you to find out the cubic contents of forty thousand acres of wheat that isn't yet sown, you must do it." She must have seen doubt in our faces, for she added, " I don't care if you can't. You've got to." We didn't see exactly what she meant, but we began to have a feeling that to do a thing when you couldn't was very splendid, and we'd got to enter for it. We didn't say anything. We looked into the fire, and though it was dying down, nobody moved to put on a stick. " I don't care," said Kay, suddenly. " I don't Rain-in-the-Face 285 believe old folks do want to play, or they'd do it They wouldn't mind what anybody said." "Well," said Titania, "their plays are different. Sometimes they're only looking on. Just like going to the theatre, Marcia. Is there anything nicer than that ? " No, Marcia thought there was nothing nicer. " But," said Titania, " sometimes they do like to go into the room where the little chairs and tables are, and play just as we do. When we had Red Riding Hood, did anybody play better or play harder than the Good Fairy ? And wasn't that Grandma ?" It certainly was. Everything she said had a way of sounding true. Again we thought it over. Then Marcia got up, and Pete was instantly on his feet, wagging, " Ready ? " "Well," said Marcia, "if we've got to tell Grandma, we might as well go and do it." " Pocahontas ? " said Titania, " the Chief? " That made it seem a little easier and a Httie more like the way we liked things to be. It is astonish- ing to think how much pleasanter things are if there is a little bit of Pretend in them. We all got up then, and Titania asked: — 286 The Secret of the Clan " Don't I have to promise anything, or have my arm pricked or something, so I shall be really in the Tribe ? I want to be in so there'll be no way to get me out, no matter how poor a brave I am. We wondered how she should know exactly what it was proper to do to make a promise binding ; but then we remembered she had been in the room where the little tables and chairs are and the choco- late and crumbly gingerbread, and that now she didn't seem more than half over the sill. " There's no jelly here," said Kay, doubtfully, and even that didn't surprise her. She listened quite gravely while we discussed it, and when we decided that it would do to put the initiation off till to-morrow, said she was rather glad, because she'd like to have on her brightest wam- pum. So we went out of the Wigwam, and were walking soberly home when Kay remembered a question we'd all thought of and forgotten. "Titania, how did you guess it? How did you guess there was a Tribe ? " " Oh," said Titania, " one of you said c wigwam ', and I thought if there was a Wigwam there must be a Tribe. And you hadn't told me anything about Rain-in-the-Face 287 the Tribe any more than you had about the night you ran away, and I guessed they might have some- thing to do with each other. That's all." " Why/' said Kay, " we haven't told you yet about That Night. And now you're in the Tribe, we can." " Not just yet," said Titania, " not till you've told Pocahontas. The Great Chief must know things before the other braves." We felt this was fair and what a Tribe should do ; but we walked on, feeling rather sober over it. We were glad it had been made right for us to tell ; we were tired of not telling. We were so relieved we couldn't talk about it, to think that now we could be forgiven by Just Grandpa and not have to go and live with Crandma. But it still seemed as if there was not going to be quite so much fun. Marcia opened the door and let Titania go in first. Then, when we were inside, Titania stood back to let us precede her : for Grandma sat by the window, and I think Titania knew we should want to speak at once and have it over. We went in in a sort of disorderly bunch, full of our important news. We were going to confess. We thought it a grand thing to do, and that everybody would listen hard to 288 The Secret of the Clan every word, and then say " How noble ! " Perhaps the story would even be written to Aunt Tabitha, and she would think I was even a more glorious child than she had dreamed, and had had " an in- fluence " over the naughty others. Perhaps Uncle Terry — There stood Uncle Terry in the middle of the floor. He held some yellow slips of paper. He seemed to have been reading from them, some- thing important, we saw, for the Grandmother looked as excited as he. "Grandmother — " began Marcia, but nobody seemed to hear her. Grandma looked at Titania and smiled and nodded. And Uncle Terry, who had all this time been so stiff and proud whenever Titania even glanced his way, turned straight to her and said: — " Listen to this. It's from Drayton." I remembered who Drayton was. Uncle Terry had sent his play to him. He hadn't said a word about the play since Titania came, but before that he was always talking to Grandma about Drayton. Some- times he said: "If Drayton would play a thing of mine, I should be made. ,, Sometimes he said : " Not a word from Drayton ! I bet you he hasn't even read it." The telegram was a long one. It Rain-in-the-Face 289 was all about the play. Drayton thought it was " tremendous ". He should be in New York in a week, and then would Uncle Terry come on and sign the contract and talk things over. He should begin rehearsals at once, and " try it out in Minne- apolis ". I thought Drayton must be a very rich and extravagant gentleman to send so long a tel- egram. When Aunt Tabitha sent one, as she did once, I remembered, to Mr. Meredith, she took half an hour trying to get it all into ten words. One part of the telegram I didn't understand. " If it hadn't been for your wife's magnificent acting of your one-act play, I never should have taken this. Your genius is peculiar. She made me see what is in you." When Uncle Terry got to that, his voice sounded queer, and he didn't look at anybody. He stood staring at the paper, and I saw his hand shake a little. I thought somebody would say something in a minute and tell what it all meant; but Uncle Terry dropped the hand that held the paper and stood there looking straight ahead of him, and then he put his lips tight together and made a queer sound in his throat, and turned, and went out of the room in about two steps. Grandma looked at Ti- tania again, u 290 The Secret of the Clan " My dear ! " said she, and held out her arms. " Oh ! " said Titania, in a kind of choked voice. " Oh, do you think — " but she didn't finish. She ran to the Grandmother, and sank down on the floor beside her, and the Grandmother put her arms round her, and they rocked back and forth and cried a little and then laughed. And we stood there in a huddling group, like frightened sheep, and very lonesome and very small. For things were hap- pening that we didn't understand in the least, and everybody had forgotten all about us. Here were we, ready to make our great sacrifice and tell our secrets, and promise to tell more, and do what other people expected, and now nobody was listening. It came over us all at once, I think, that the people in the second room in the palace had their secrets, too, and they weren't telling them any more than we were. Titania was the first to remember us. She lifted her face from Grandma's arm, and we could see she had really cried : for there were tear splotches on the lovely cheek, and she took out her little handkerchief and dabbed at Grandma's sleeve where the tears had wet it, and said she had spoiled the pretty gown. Rain-in-the-Face 29 1 "I'm glad of it," said Grandma. "If it makes a spot, I shall love to look at it and remember this day." Marcia was turning softly, to get out of the room. That must have made Titania think of us. She sprang to her feet. " O children ! " said she. " I forgot. I mustn't keep you from Grandma. I'll run away." Children ! she hadn't called us children once before. We felt as if we were really alone in the room of the little tables and little chairs. Titania had gone out and shut the door. She and Grandma were in the other room, and we were lonesome. Marcia kept on straight toward the hall. Kay was crying softly, and Marcia — but I didn't really see it and I tried not to. For Marcia was too proud to cry, and if she did, a tear or two, if you liked her you wouldn't notice it. " Children ! " Titania was calling after us. " Girls ! " We didn't stop. We somehow couldn't. We went upstairs into Kay-and-Marcia's room, and there remembered we hadn't taken off our things. So we threw them down in a careless way, as if we might never need to put them on again, and so it 292 The Secret of the Clan was just as well to have them in what Mary called a "wopse"; and then we tried to find something to do, to appear unconcerned and keep us from look- ing at one another. Marcia washed her hands, and Kay took out a pile of handkerchiefs and began assorting them, as if it were the most important thing in the world. " I must turn my ring," said Ruth. Why she said it and why she carefully turned the ring we didn't know, and I'm sure she didn't. I stood at the window drumming on the pane to the "Faust March" I had heard Flutino whistling that morning. " Laura," said Kay, sharply, " I wish you'd stop that noise." I did stop it. Then I did something worse. I asked a question. " What do you s'pose the telegram meant by his wife acting in his play ? " " I know," said Ruth. " She must have acted in it before she died." " Was she an actress ? " I asked. "Yes, I s'pose so," said Ruth. " Of course she was, if she acted in the play." U But what made him look so ? " I went on. Rain-in-the-Face 293 stupidly. " He looked as if he was going to cry. And then he ran right out of the room. I bet he did cry, too." " They always cry when they think about the loved and lost," said Ruth, and Marcia turned upon her. " Ruth," said she, " I wish you wouldn't talk that kind of sickening talk. Anyway, if you're going to do it, you needn't do it in here. This is our room, and when you're in here you've got to behave yourself." Now Kay was just as much upset as Marcia, and just as nervous. " It's my room as much as it is yours," she said, crossly. " And Ruth can say what she wants to, in my half of it, anyway." "Then," said Marcia, "if it's half yours and half mine, we'll divide it. Here's a string." And they were so cross and so miserable that they actually did pounce on the new ball of twine they had bought for kites, and Marcia tied one end to the gas jet, and they began to divide the room. If they had suddenly gone crazy, Ruth and I couldn't have been more amazed. We hurried to the door, trying to be as small as possible and make 294 The Secret of the Clan as little noise, and when we'd got the door open and I was out, Ruth hesitated a minute, to ask, in a little voice : — " When are we going to tell Pocahontas ? " " Never," said Marcia. " Don't stay here bothering. We've got to divide this room. ,, CHAPTER XVI THE GOOSE GIRL AND THE PRINCESS THE end of this parting was that we didn't have supper with Pocahontas and Rain-in- the-Face. Nobody seemed to want to be with anybody else, except, perhaps, those two hug- ging each other in the sitting room. As Ruth and I fled down the stairs, we saw Uncle Terry dis- appearing at the front door, and we, too, went out to stand on the porch and wonder what was going to happen now Kay and Marcia had divided their room. Uncle Terry kept straight on " up street ", and Ruth guessed he was going to answer the telegram and tell the actor how glad he was his play had been taken. We didn't quite know where to go. We didn't want to go in, because we felt the Grandmother and Titania were talking together and didn't expect us, and we couldn't bear to disturb Kay and Marcia since they had quarrelled. Then we heard a whistle, bold and free. It was Flutino 295 296 The Secret of the Clan whistling " The Minstrel Boy ", and in a second here he was, coming up the path. " Mother wants to know," he began, the minute he saw us, " if you'll all four come down to tea. Waffles! And Bridget's got the irons all hot." He seemed like an angel come to promise supper to our little bodies and peace to our troubled souls. " Til ask Grandma," said Ruth. Then she hesitated. For some reason we couldn't have told, it didn't seem possible to ask a favor of her before we had made our confession. And whether we were ever going to make that now that the grown- ups were busy with their own affairs and had for- gotten all about us, we didn't know. " Flutino," said Ruth. "Yes," said Flutino. "You go ask Grandma. She's in the sitting room." "All right," said Flutino. He never expected reasons, but went straight ahead doing whatever would make everybody the more at ease. When he had gone in, we stood still and listened, though it wouldn't have done us any good through the thick hall door, and in a minute he was out again. The Goose Girl and the Princess 297 " Yes," he said, " only you've got to come home straight after supper." " Why ? " asked Ruth. " I don't know why," said Flutino, " only you've got to. Where are the rest ? " " Up in Kay-and-Marcia's room," said Ruth. " Come out on the grass and whistle." So he did whistle, not the " Minstrel Boy " this time, but " Come o'er the Stream, Charlie ", which meant, with Flutino and us, that whenever you heard it and whatever you were doing, you were to "rush". Kay came to the window and threw up the sash. "What is it?" she asked. She didn't look hot and cross now. She looked pale and as if she were rather frightened at having things go so far. "Waffles," said Flutino. "They're all stirred up. Come on." I didn't think they would come if they were in the midst of a quarrel. I thought they'd be too miserable. But I was wrong. In a minute they appeared, both a little queer as well as pale, and Pete came with them. He was in his usual spirits. We raced down to Flutino's, and while Bridget was 298 The Secret of the Clan giving a last stir, we went round to the low shed at the back of the house, and Marcia told me how they used it to play "The Witch of the Glass Moun- tain ". The game took them up over the shed roof, and Mrs. Gray always thought they would break their necks ; but they never did. " Oh, can't we do it now ? " I begged, but Marcia said there wasn't time before the waffles. " Besides," said Flutino, " it's a warm weather play. We'll do it first thing in the spring." " Yes," said Marcia, gloomily, " if we're here." But he didn't notice, so she didn't have to ex- plain. Then Mrs. Gray tapped on the window, and we went in, and ate a great many waffles ; and Mrs. Gray, in her pretty figured silk and long chain, was very polite to us, exactly as if we were a real party. And when we got up from the table, it was time to go home. " I'm so sorry," said she. " I hoped we could have some singing. But come again soon. Come to-morrow night if you can. We'll have something nice." " We'd like to," said Marcia, earnestly. " We'd like to very much. You see — " There she stopped, but we knew she was on the point of say- The Goose Girl and the Princess 299 ing we might go away to live and the chances of seeing her and Flutino would be few. Flutino walked home with us and said he wouldn't come in. The Grandmother must want us for something. And when we went silently into the house, there were the Grandmother and Titania in the sitting room, only not quite as we had left them. They were before the fire; and as soon as we had even opened the door, they both called out : — " Come in ! Get your things off and come in." We did get our things off, but without much hope that anything desirable was to happen to us. In spite of our knowing how splendid Titania had been to us and how square she was, I couldn't help feeling she had hinted to Grandmother that some- thing was to be told her, and that we were being called in to " ' fess ". There were other chairs at the fire. We were all expected to sit down. We did it stiffly, and then Titania got hold of one of Marcia's hands and laughed a little, and said : — " Let me hang on to somebody. I'm going to tell a story, and I'm nervous." She looked — oh, prettier than I had ever seen her. She was in white, and there was a fine gold 300 The Secret of the Clan circle round her head. We stopped thinking about ourselves, and began to think of Titania. At least I did, and I believe we all felt very much alike. " I've got to make a kind of confession/* said she. " I've been pretty naughty. The Grand- mother thinks I have, and nobody's going to like me any more till I tell just how it was." " My dear ! " said Grandma. " Others have been naughtier than you." "Yes, I know you think so," said Titania, "and besides, you'll like me whether I deserve it or not. But nobody else will. So I'm going to 'fess. You didn't see Uncle Terry anywhere, did you, girls ? " Yes, we'd seen him going " up street ". " Oh," she said, " maybe he'll be back. I'll wait a bit. Uncle Terry's got to hear it, too." It was all very odd, and we sat and looked at the fire and felt miserable and awkward. But just as I was wondering whether, if Uncle Terry didn't come, we should sit there for hours and stare at the fire and nobody say a word, the front door opened and he walked in. " That you, Terry ? " Grandma called. " Yes," said he. The Goose Girl and the Princess 301 " Come in," said Grandma. " Come in here. We're waiting for you." He stopped to leave his hat and coat, and then he came and stood in the door a minute and looked at us. His eyes were big and bright, and he looked as if he had been running or thinking hard or even laughing, there was so much color and motion in his face ; yet he seemed tired, too. " Come here, Terry," said Grandma, quietly. " Come and sit down." He stood there a second, and then Titania looked up at him and said, in a gentle voice : — " I am going to tell a story. I want you to hear it and see if I tell it right." But he didn't move, and then she said : " Please ! " and he came and drew a chair back a little out of our circle and sat down in it. I thought afterward he moved the chair away because he didn't want us to see his face. " This story," said Titania, " is called c The Goose Girl and the Princess'." A ripple of pleas- ure went over us of the Tribe. Surely things couldn't be so bad if stories with titles like that — once-upon-a-time Titles Ruth called them — could be told. And sure enough that was how she began. " Once upon a time there was a Goose Girl. I 302 The Secret of the Clan call her a Goose Girl because she did nothing buf stupid things all day and nearly all night, stupid as tending geese. She was an actress, really." Marcia sat up straighter and moved a little nearer. "Yes, Marcia, she was on the stage. But she didn't care so very, very much about it. Only she could sing a little and dance a little, and she had her living to earn, and that was a way she knew." " Why didn't she herd geese ? " Kay inquired, and Marcia said, " Sh ! " " She did herd geese. The singing and dancing were just like herding geese to her. They brought so many people to see her and hear her, and half the time the people were like geese exactly. So you see she was a Goose Girl. Well, one day a Prince came along, and he said, c Will you marry me?' c Yes,' said she, c of course I will. You're the only Prince I've ever seen.' " " Did she love him ? " Ruth inquired, in a whisper. " Oh, yes, of course she did. She wouldn't have married him if she hadn't. Now the Prince had written a play — " At that moment I began to know the Prince was Uncle Terry. He was sitting perfectly still, The Goose Girl and the Princess 303 though once or twice he drew a long, long breath. I heard him. " It was a queer play/' said Titania. " Nobody seemed to like it. He took it to one person after another, and they'd read it and say : c It's a very queer play. We are not sure whether we like it very much, or whether we don't like it at all. Anyway, we're pretty sure the geese won't like it. So we can't give it to them.' Now the Goose Girl, having married the Prince, had become a Princess, and she said to the Prince, c Nobody understands you. Nobody but me. And I understand geese, too. Geese go in flocks. If you lead them carefully, they'll go just the way you want them to.' But the Prince said, c I know you always made the geese go the way you wanted them to, but I never liked to have you do it. You were a Goose Girl then, but now you are a Prin- cess. You can't be leading geese.' " Then Uncle Terry spoke. " Maisie ! " said he, and moved in his chair. But Titania took no notice of him. " Now the Goose Girl knew the Prince had another play, a little short one, but just as queer. And she went to a very powerful person she knew, 304 The Secret of the Clan a person that was always trying to please the geese, and she said to him, c Will you put on a little queer play, if I tell you I know the geese will like it ? ' So he read the play, and he said, c I'll put it on if you'll play in it, and show the geese just what to like/ 'Why, yes,' said she, C I will. But perhaps you'd better not tell the Prince till after he's sold it to you.' There was where she began to be hateful and wrong and bad. She loved the Prince, but she didn't tell him that." It began to seem to me as if there was the very mischief in not telling things to people you loved. " So the person bought the play, and then the Princess said to the Prince, c I am going to play in it.' c No, you are not,' said he. c Yes, I am,' said she. c It's the only way the geese will like it.' c I forbid it,' said he. c I can't help it,' said she." cc Maisie, don't ! " said Uncle Terry. His voice sounded so miserable that Ruth ran round to him and stood beside him ready to kiss the top of his head. That was her favorite way with him ; but he didn't notice her. " c Then you don't love me/ said he. c Then you don't understand me,' said she. But she knew the most important thing in the world was to get The Goose Girl and the Princess 305 the little play played, and she thought he'd forgive her afterward, when he saw how well it came out. And he left her and ran home to the most beautiful lady in the world, and sat down and wrote poetry, and the Goose Girl played in the play, and all the geese loved it. And then she wrote to him : c Isn't it time for us to see each other? For I've done driving geese, and I want to be a Princess again/ And what do you think he said ? " " Tell," said Marcia. " I can't," said Titania. " It broke her heart." " Til tell," said Uncle Terry. " He didn't say anything. He didn't answer the letter. I was a dolt and a fool and a brute." " You see," said Titania to us, " he thought she didn't care about him, or she couldn't have done what he asked her not to." " Silly ! " said Grandmother. cc And you had to come 'way on here, Maisie, to see him and help us all out of our scrapes." " I never should," said Titania, looking straight across us at Uncle Terry, and seeming for a minute a little proud, "if I hadn't crossed with Tabitha and she told me the Grandmother said you weren't — weren't having a very good time, either." x 306 The Secret of the Clan Uncle Terry got up and stepped over my feet to Titania, and put out both his hands to her. She didn't wait a minute. She sprang up and gave him hers. " Maisie," said he, " Fm not a prince. I'm a chump and a selfish brute. If you want to act, you shall, and I'll go with you." Then he bent down and kissed her hand. He seemed to kiss her rings instead of her hand ; but I saw it was a plain gold ring he kissed. " No, dear/' said Titania, " I don't want to act. But I did want the plays to go, and now I think they will." " Speaking of Tabitha — " said Grandma. She was wiping her spectacles and then she wiped her eyes. But she was not allowed to finish. Whether it was that we were all so excited with goose girls and princesses and Uncle Terry's being hateful and Titania's being naughty, I don't know ; but Marcia seemed to throw herself at Grandma and sat there on the floor, her elbows on Grandmother's lap. And Kay hurled herself down on the other side, and since it seemed to be the fashion, Ruth and I tried to wedge in between. The Goose Girl and the Princess 307 " Grandma/' said Marcia, " where we went That Night was — " " Ruth's afraid, you know, afraid of the dark and lots of things/' said Kay. "And she stayed all night alone in the State House. And we knew she was going to sometime — " " That is, we knew she was going to do lots of such things," said Marcia, " only we didn't know which, any night. And when we waked up and missed her and her bed hadn't been slept in, we got scared and we went to find her. And we couldn't find her — " "They never thought of the State House," said Ruth, proudly. " I was there all the time." The Grandmother was looking from one to an- other of the eager faces. She looked almost as excited as they. And what do you think she said ? She didn't say, " Nobody must ever do such a thing again." She didn't prim her mouth and say, " I'm very glad you've made up your minds to tell." She just leaned over Ruth and stroked back her hair and said, " My lambie, is that true ? Are you really afraid of things and Grandma didn't know it ? " But Ruth didn't feel afraid then, the least bit. I understood how that was. When there are a lot of 308 The Secret of the Clan people in the room, and the light is bright, and the fire dances, you don't think you'll ever be afraid again. So she was telling only the truth when she smiled at Grandma and said : — " Oh, I shan't be any more. I've outgrown it." And really, as I remember back, I believe she wasn't, and I wasn't, either. For as soon as the grown-ups found out we had felt that way, they took pains to show us the Dark is just as kind as the Light, and that, if we go along the highway carrying our pat of butter and our loaf of bread, as we're told, the Wolf in the Wood won't hear us and the Bear will stay in his den-O. But I wanted to have something to do on that great occasion. "And we're going — " I began, and so anxious was I to get my word in that my voice came out in a thin little shriek — " we're going to tell you every single thing as long as we live." And what do you think the Grandmother said then ? She smiled at me and nodded, as if to say, " I understand how nice you mean to be." But she really said : — " You needn't tell me everything, dears. You'll have a better time if you keep some little secrets of The Goose Girl and the Princess 309 your own. Only you tell the things you'd better tell, that's all. You can judge." Perhaps it wasn't very clear ; but we understood. She meant, " I'm not going to spoil your fun." I thought of something then that I felt I must know at once. I looked at Titania, and there Titania stood with Uncle Terry's arm round her. What a happy Titania ! What a happy Uncle Terry ! I had never seen them look like that. I was very bold just then. It seemed as if everybody could say and do anything, it was such a lovely time. I went to Titania and reached up and whispered in her ear : — " Have you told him about the Tribe ? " " No," said she. " No, indeed ! " cc Shall you ? " I asked her, anxiously. " No," said Titania. " Haven't you got to ?" I asked, " now he's your husband ? " She laughed out. " Rain-in-the-Face ! " said she, in a deep voice nobody caught but me. " Big chief! Ugh ! " I turned about to hear Marcia asking the Grand- mother, in a tone as anxious as mine must have been : — 310 The Secret of the Clan " Grandma, do you mean if we do everything you say, we haven't got to tell about all the — games and things ? " " Why, little dears/' said Grandma, " you don't suppose I can't trust you out of my sight ? It's just that this question of the night was a very particular one. That's all." " And shall you write to Crandma and say we've told, and you're going to keep us here ? " Kay asked, " No," said the Grandmother. "In the morning I shall telegraph. But, Kay, you must try to get over that way you have of saying c Grandma'. It sounds like c Crandma'." We looked at one another. Was that one of the many things we ought to tell ? We thought not. " Terry," said Grandma, " have you had any supper ? " Uncle Terry laughed. " No," said he. " I believe I was walking at supper time. I took a walk — thinking over Maisies and things." " Well," said the Grandmother, " you two go out in the kitchen and see if Mary hasn't left a The Goose Girl and the Princess 311 little tray on the pantry shelf. Mary's gone to church." They turned away, his arm still about Titania's waist; but at the door they stopped. I had been watching them, and so had Kay and Ruth and Marcia. My throat felt very choky, and I swal- lowed hard. I had suddenly thought, as I saw them walking off like the Prince and Princess gone to be happy ever after, that Titania was his. She wasn't ours any more. We had lost her. " Wait a minute," said she ; and Uncle Terry waited. She came back to us. She took Marcia's face by the chin and lifted it and kissed it. Then she kissed Kay and Ruth, and then she kissed me. She looked very sweet and serious, but she smiled at us. " Rehearsal to-morrow," she said. cc Ten o'clock sharp. Merchant of Venice." Marcia cried out in rapture. " Oh ! " said she, " are we going to have it just the same ? " "Why, yes," Titania said. " Of course we are." Kay dared her question. " Shall you stay till Amy Fullerton comes ? " 3T2 The Secret of the Clan " I shall stay," said Titania, " forever ! If the Grandmother'll let me. And the Prince. Come, poor hungry boy ! " " Oh, what will Aunt Tabitha say? M I cried out, and the Grandmother called to me : — "Speaking of Tabitha, — I've had a note from her, Laura, and she wants me to tell you there's something lovely for you to hear in her next letter. What should you say if she should marry that nice Mr. Meredith, and we all went over to see her next summer and then you came back to live with me?" What should I say ? I didn't know. I was so confused with all this talk of husbands and the sight of Uncle Terry's arm round Titania's waist that I could only breathe, " Oh, my ! " I wanted to live with them both, the Grandmother and Aunt Tabitha; but they were so dear they'd probably manage it somehow. " Tabitha's so humorous about it," said the Grandmother. " Let me see, where's her letter ? Oh, here it is. This is what she writes : c You have always said I ought to change my name. So now I'm going to do it. Only it's the last name I'm going to change, not the first.' Now run," The Goose Girl and the Princess 313 said Grandma. "This has been a most exciting evening. I think I shall go to bed myself. I'll come and tuck you in." We went upstairs without another word. I sup- pose we, too, were tired, but it seemed as if every- thing was perfectly splendid and was going to be " forever ", as Titania said. Only Ruth was puz- zled. She stopped us at the head of the stairs. " I don't know now," said she, " which wife Titania is." Pete had escaped from the kitchen, and came hurtling up the stairs, and Marcia stooped to collar him. " Which wife ? " repeated Kay. " Why, goonie, he's had only one." " But there was his first wife," said Ruth. She was too tired to think it out. "We made up the first wife," said Marcia. " Titania's the first, the first and second both. Don't you see, goonie? Come in here and I'll explain it to you." So we went into Kay-and-Marcia's, and the first thing Marcia did was to run into the string that cut the room in two. " Joe Pye Weed ! " said she. " What's that ? " j 14 The Secret of the Clan That same instant she knew, and so did Kay, and they laughed, and Kay said : — " Here's my knife." But before they could cut the string, Pete began jumping over it like a circus dog practising his tricks ; and we clapped and clapped and Marcia cried : — " Good dog ! Best dog in the Tribe ! " Printed in the United States of America. npHE following pages contain advertisements of Macmillan books by the same author, and books for boys and girls. EVERY BOY'S AND GIRL'S SERIES A series of books which have been proved to have each its points of special appeal to young readers. Attractively bound in cloth, each, y$ cents The Adventures of Dorothy By Jocelyn Lewis Illustrated by Seymour M. Stone Alices Adventures in Wonderland By Lewis Carroll With forty-two illustrations by John Tenniel Aunt Jimmy's Will By Mabel Osgood Wright Illustrated by Florence Scovel Shinn The Bears of Blue River By Charles Major With illustrations by A. B. Frost and others The Bennett Twins By Marguerite Hurd Bible Stories retold for Young People (In one volume) The New Testament Story By W. F. Adeney, M.A. With illustrations and maps The Old Testament Story By W. H. Bennett, M.A. With illustrations and maps Boy Life on the Prairie By Hamlin Garland Illustrated by E. W. Deming Children of the Tenements By Jacob A. Rus With illustrations by C. M. 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Nesbit "Carrots": Just a Little Boy By Mrs. Molesworth Us: An Old-Fashioned Story By Mrs. Molesworth Cuckoo Clock By Mrs. Molesworth The Dwarf's Spectacles and Other Fairy Tales By Max Nordau - Continued With illustrations by Frank T. Merrill With illustrations With illustrations With fifty illustrations by John Tenniel With illustrations With illustrations by Arthur Hughes and Sidney Hall With many illustrations by the author Illustrated With illustrations by C. E. Brock With illustrations by Charles E. Brock Illustrated by H. R. Millar Illustrated by Walter Crane Illustrated Illustrated Illustrated by H. A. Hart, F. P. Safford, and R. McGowan The Story of a Red Deer By J. W. Fortescue The Little Lame Prince By Dinah Mulock Craik, author of "John Halifax, Gentleman * NEW STORIES FOR BOYS Deering of Deal By Latta Griswold. With illustrations by George C. Harper, Cloth, i2mo. §1.25 This is the kind of a story which keeps boys up late at night to finish. Tony Deer- ing, the hero, is just good enough and just bad enough to appeal to every lad from twelve to twenty — and to make some of the lads' fathers brighten up a bit, too. Tony goes to Deal School ; the reader meets him upon his entrance to the first form and he follows him for three or four years through hazing episodes, football games and other school contests, debates and secret organization fights, forbidden spreads and temporary disgraces, to his graduation as one of the most popular fellows the school has ever produced. Sam By Edmund L. Pearson, author of " The Believing Years." Cloth, 121710. %I.2$ Some of the boys whose acquaintance the reader made in Mr. Pearson's former book go for a cruise on a small schooner with an old sea captain. The adventures which they have, some of them exciting, others amusing, as they explore the rivers, the bays, the ocean and the small towns of the New England coast, make up the book. This is all material in the handling of which Mr. Pearson is particularly adept, giv- ing him delightful opportunity for the display of those whimsicalities which form half the charm of his writing. The possibility of meeting an occasional pirate ship or of uncovering buried treasure or of finding a smuggler's cave — possibilities belief in which makes life half worth living to the average boy — all come into the action naturally and the whole trip is invested with mystery. Don't Give Up the Ship By C. S. Wood. Frontispiece in colors and half-tone plates by Frank Merrill. Decorated cloth, i2tno. $1.25 With Perry's famous victory on Lake Erie as the center of interest Mr. Wood has written a stirring story of the War of 1812. Beginning just before the outbreak of hostilities he follows the career of a vigorous young fellow who attaches himself to Perry and renders no little service to the government in the campaign. Incidentally a splendid pen picture of the Commander of the Lakes is given. The book is one which should strike home to the hearts of the American youth to-day, one hundred years after the events so vividly described. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York Peeps at Many Lands Travel books which aim to describe foreign places with special reference to the interests of young readers. They deal with children's life in home and school, their games and occupations, etc. Each is illustrated with 12 colored plates and sells at 55 cents by mail, 6$ cents The volumes included BELGIUM BURMA CANADA CEYLON CHINA CORSICA DENMARK EDINBURG EGYPT ENGLAND FINLAND FRANCE GERMANY GREECE HOLLAND HOLY LAND ICELAND in the series : — INDIA IRELAND ITALY JAMAICA JAPAN KOREA MOROCCO NEW ZEALAND NORWAY PARIS PORTUGAL RUSSIA SCOTLAND SI AM SOUTH AFRICA SOUTH SEAS SPAIN SWITZERLAND PUBLISHED BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York Wm mn RETU norther! 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