"Well, this is our last--of the mountains. We go on Tuesday."

"It isn't your last of us, though, or of what we want of you," rejoined Sin Saxon. "We must have the tableaux for Monday. We can't do without you in Robin Gray or Consolation. And about Tuesday,--it's only your own making up of minds. You haven't written, have you? They don't expect you? When a week's broken in upon, like a dollar, the rest is of no account. And there'll be sure to be something doing, so many are going the week after."

"We shall have letters to-night," said Susan. "But I think we must go on Tuesday."

Everybody had letters that night. The mail was in early, and Captain Green came up from the post-office as the Minster party was alighting from the wagons. He gave Dakie Thayne the bag. It was Dakie's delight to distribute, calling out the fortunate names as the expectant group pressed around him, like people waiting the issue of a lottery venture.

"Mrs. Linceford, Miss Goldthwaite, Mrs. Linceford, Mrs. _Lince_ford!

Master--hm!--Thayne," and he pocketed a big one like a dispatch.

"Captain Jotham Green. Where is he? Here, Captain Green; you and I have got the biggest, if Mrs. Linceford does get the most. I believe she tells her friends to write in hits, and put one letter into three or four envelopes. When I was a _very_ little boy, I used to get a dollar changed into a hundred coppers, and feel ever so much richer."

"That boy's forwardness is getting insufferable!" exclaimed Mrs.

Th.o.r.esby, sitting apart, with two or three others who had not joined the group about Dakie Thayne. "And why Captain Green should give _him_ the bag always, I can't understand. It is growing to be a positive nuisance."

n.o.body out of the Th.o.r.esby clique thought it so. They had a merry time together,--"you and I and the post," as Dakie said. But then, between you and me and that confidential personage, Mrs. Th.o.r.esby and her daughters hadn't very many letters.

"That is all," said Dakie, shaking the bag. "They're only for the very good, to-night." He was not saucy: he was only br.i.m.m.i.n.g-over glad. He knew "Noll's" square handwriting, and his big envelopes.

There was great news to-night at the Cottage. They were to have a hero, perhaps two or three, among them. General Ingleside and friends were coming, early in the week, the Captain told them with expansive face.

There are a great many generals and a great many heroes now. This man had been a hero beside Sheridan, and under Sherman. Colonel Ingleside he was at Stone River and Chattanooga,--leading a brave Western regiment in desperate, magnificent charges, whose daring helped to turn that terrible point of the war and made his fame.

But Leslie, though her heart stirred at the thought of a real, great commander fresh from the field, had her own news that half neutralized the excitement of the other: Cousin Delight was coming, to share her room with her for the last fortnight.

The Josselyns got their letters. Aunt Lucy was staying on. Aunt Lucy's husband had gone away to preach for three Sundays for a parish where he had a prospect of a call. Mrs. Josselyn could not leave home immediately, therefore, although the girls should return; and their room was the airiest for Aunt Lucy. There was no reason why they should not prolong their holiday if they chose, and they might hardly ever get away to the mountains again. More than all, Uncle David was off once more for China and j.a.pan, and had given his sister two more fifties,--"for what did a sailor want of greenbacks after he got afloat?" It was "a clover summer" for the Josselyns. Uncle David and his fifties wouldn't be back among them for two years or more. They must make the most of it.

Sin Saxon sat up late, writing this letter to her mother:--

DARLING MAMMA,--I've just begun to find out really what to do here.

Cream doesn't always rise to the top. You remember the Josselyns, our quiet neighbors in town, that lived in the little house in the old-fashioned block opposite,--Sue Josselyn, Effie's schoolmate? And how they used to tell me stories and keep me to nursery-tea? Well, they're the cream; they and Miss Craydocke. Sue has been in the hospitals,--two years, mamma!--while I've been learning nocturnes, and going to Germans.

And Martha has been at home, sewing her face sharp; and they're here now to get rounded out. Well now, mamma, I want so--a real dish of mountains and cream, if you ever heard of such a thing! I want to take a wagon, and invite a party as I did my little one to Minster Rock, and go through the hills,--be gone as many days as you will send me money for.

And I want you to take the money from that particular little corner of your purse where my carpet and wall-paper and curtains, that were to new-furnish my room on my leaving school, are metaphorically rolled up.

There's plenty there, you know; for you promised me my choice of everything, and I had fixed on that lovely pearl-gray paper at ----'s, with the ivy and holly pattern, and the ivy and scarlet-geranium carpet that was such a match. I'll have something cheaper, or nothing at all, and thank you unutterably, if you'll only let me have my way in this. It will do me so much good, mamma! More than you've the least idea of.

People can do without French paper and Brussels carpets, but everybody has a right to mountain and sea and cloud glory,--only they don't half of them get it, and perhaps that's the other half's lookout!

I know you'll understand me, mamma, particularly when I talk sense; for you always understood my nonsense when n.o.body else did. And I'm going to do your faith and discrimination credit yet.

Your bad child,--with just a small, hidden savor of grace in her, _being_ your child,--

ASENATH SAXON.

CHAPTER XVI.

"WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL US?"

Sat.u.r.day was a day of hammering, basting, draping, dressing, rehearsing, running from room to room. Upstairs, in Mrs. Green's garret, Leslie Goldthwaite and Dakie Thayne, with a third party never before introduced upon the stage, had a private practicing; and at tea-time, when the great hall was cleared, they got up there with Sin Saxon and Frank Scherman, locked the doors, and in costume, with regular accompaniment of bell and curtain, the performance was repeated.

Dakie Thayne was stage-manager and curtain-puller; Sin Saxon and Frank Scherman represented the audience, with clapping and stamping, and laughter that suspended both; making as nearly the noise of two hundred as two could: this being an essential part of the rehearsal in respect to the untried nerves of the _debutant_, which might easily be a little uncertain.

"He stands fire like a Yankee veteran."

"It's inimitable," said Sin Saxon, wiping the moist merriment from her eyes. "And your cap, Leslie! And that bonnet! And this unutterable old oddity of a gown! Who did contrive it all? and where did they come from?

You'll carry off the glory of the evening. It ought to be the last."

"No, indeed," said Leslie. "Barbara Frietchie must be last, of course.

But I'm so glad you think it will do. I hope they'll be amused."

"Amused! If you could only see your own face!"

"I see Sir Charles's, and that makes mine."

The new performer, you perceive, was an actor with a t.i.tle.

That night's coach, driving up while the dress-rehearsal of the other tableaux was going on at the hall, brought Cousin Delight to the Green Cottage, and Leslie met her at the door.

Sunday morning was a pause and rest and hush of beauty and joy. They sat--Delight and Leslie--by their open window, where the smell of the lately harvested hay came over from the wide, sunshiny entrance of the great barn, and away beyond stretched the pine woods, and the hills swelled near in dusky evergreen, and indigo shadows, and lessened far down toward Winnipiseogee, to where, faint and tender and blue, the outline of little Ossipee peeped in between great shoulders so modestly,--seen only through the clearest air on days like this.

Leslie's little table, with fresh white cover, held a vase of ferns and white convolvulus, and beside this Cousin Delight's two books that came out always from the top of her trunk,--her Bible and her little "Daily Food." To-day the verses from Old and New Testaments were these: "The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and he delighteth in his way." "Walk circ.u.mspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time."

They had a talk about the first,--"The steps," the little details; not merely the general trend and final issue; if, indeed, these could be directed without the other.

"You always make me see things, Cousin Delight," Leslie said.

"It is very plain," Delight answered; "if people only would read the Bible as they read even a careless letter from a friend, counting each word of value, and searching for more meaning and fresh inference to draw out the most. One word often answers great doubts and askings that have troubled the world."

Afterward, they walked round by a still wood-path under the Ledge to the North Village, where there was a service. It was a plain little church, with unpainted pews; but the windows looked forth upon a green mountain side, and whispers of oaks and pines and river-music crept in, and the breath of sweet water-lilies, heaped in a great bowl upon the communion table of common stained cherrywood, floated up and filled the place. The minister, a quiet, gray-haired man, stayed his foot an instant at that simple altar, before he went up the few steps to the desk. He had a sermon in his pocket from the text, "The hairs of your heads are all numbered." He changed it at the moment in his mind, and, when presently he rose to preach, gave forth in a tone touched, through the very presence of that reminding beauty, with the very spontaneousness of the Master's own saying, "Consider the lilies." And then he told them of G.o.d's momently thought and care.

There were scattered strangers, from various houses, among the simple rural congregation. Walking home through the pines again, Delight and Leslie and Dakie Thayne found themselves preceded and followed along the narrow way. Sin Saxon and Frank Scherman came up and joined them when the wider openings permitted.

Two persons just in front were commenting upon the sermon.

"Very fair for a country parson," said a tall, elegant-looking man, whose broad, intellectual brow was touched by dark hair slightly frosted, and whose lip had the curve that betokens self-reliance and strong decision,--"very fair. All the better for not flying too high.

Narrow, of course. He seems to think the Almighty has nothing grander to do than to finger every little cog of the tremendous machinery of the universe,--that he measures out the ocean of his purposes as we drop a liquid from a phial. To me it seems belittling the Infinite."

"I don't know whether it is littleness or greatness, Robert, that must escape minutiae," said his companion, apparently his wife. "If we could reach to the particles, perhaps we might move the mountains."

"We never agree upon this, Margie. We won't begin again. To my mind, the grand plan of things was settled ages ago,--the impulses generated that must needs work on. Foreknowledge and intention, doubtless; in that sense the hairs _were_ numbered. But that there is a special direction and interference to-day for you and me--well, we won't argue, as I said; but I never can conceive it so; and I think a wider look at the world brings a question to all such primitive faith."

The speakers turned down a side way with this, leaving the ledge path and their subject to our friends. Only to their thoughts at first; but presently Cousin Delight said, in a quiet tone, to Leslie, "That doesn't account for the steps, does it?"

"I am glad it _can't_," said Leslie.

Dakie Thayne turned a look toward Leslie, as if he would gladly know of what she spoke,--a look in which a kind of gentle reverence was strangely mingled with the open friendliness. I cannot easily indicate to you the sort of feeling with which the boy had come to regard this young girl, just above him in years and thought and in the att.i.tude which true womanhood, young or old, takes toward man. He had no sisters; he had been intimately a.s.sociated with no girl-companions; he had lived with his brother and an uncle and a young aunt, Rose. Leslie Goldthwaite's kindness had drawn him into the sphere of a new and powerful influence,--something different in thought and purpose from the apparent unthought of the present little world about her; and this lifted her up in his regard and enshrined her with a sort of pure sanct.i.ty. He was sometimes really timid before her, in the midst of his frank chivalry.

"I wish you'd tell me," he said suddenly, falling back with her as the path narrowed again. "What are the 'steps'?"

"It was a verse we found this morning,--Cousin Delight and I," Leslie answered; and as she spoke the color came up full in her cheeks, and her voice was a little shy and tremulous. "'The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord.' That one word seemed to make one certain.