She kissed her mother, and put the flowers into a gla.s.s beside the bed.

"You're looking better to-night, I believe, dear," said the mother.

"I've been worried about you all day. You were so white and tired this morning."

"Oh, I'm feeling fine, mother dear!" said Shirley gayly, "and I'm going down to make your toast and poach you an egg while Carol finishes getting supper. George will be here in ten minutes now, and Harley ought to be in any minute. He always comes when he gets hungry. My!

I'm hungry myself! Let's hurry, Carol. Doris, darling, you fix mother's little table all ready for her tray. Put on the white cloth, take away the books, set the gla.s.s with the roses in the middle very carefully. You won't spill it, will you, darling?"

Doris, all smiles at the responsibility accorded her, promised: "No, I yun't spill it I'll move it tarefully."

There was something in Shirley's buoyant air that night that lifted them all above the cares that had oppressed them for weeks, and gave them new hope. She flew around, getting the supper things together, making her mother's tray pretty, and taking little extra pains for each one as she had not felt able to do before. Carol caught the contagion, and mashed the potatoes more carefully, so that there wasn't a single lump in them.

"Goodness! But it's been hot in this kitchen all day, Shirley," said Carol. "I had the back door open, but it just seemed stifling. I got the ironing all done except a table-cloth, and I guess I can finish that this evening. I haven't got much studying to do for to-morrow.

Nellie Waite stopped, and left me my books. I don't believe I'll have to stay at home another day this week. Mother says she can get along.

I can leave her lunch all ready, and Doris can manage."

Shirley's conscience gave a sudden twinge. Here had she been sitting under a lovely tree by a brook, eating her lunch, and dreaming foolish day-dreams about living in a barn, while Carol stayed at home from school and toiled in the kitchen! Perhaps she ought to have come home and sent Carol back to school. And yet perhaps that nice young Mr.

Graham would be able to do something; she would not condemn herself until the morrow, anyway. She had tried to do her best. She had not gone off there selfishly just to have a good time by herself when her dear ones were suffering. It had been for their sake.

Then George came in whistling, and Harley banged in gayly a minute later, calling to know whether supper was ready.

"'Cause I gotta date with the fellas this evening, and I gotta beat it," he declared impatiently.

The shadow of anxiety pa.s.sed over Shirley's face again at that, but she quieted her heart once more with her hopes for to-morrow. If her plan succeeded, Harley would be away from "the fellas," and wouldn't have so many questionable "dates" to worry them all.

George was in a hurry, too.

"Gee, Shirley, I gotta be at the store all evening," he said, bolting his food hurriedly. "I wouldn't 'a' come home, only I knew you'd worry, and mother gets so upset. Gee, Shirley, what we gonta do about a house? It's getting almost time to move. I went to all those places you suggested at noon to-day, but there wasn't a vacant spot anywhere.

There's some rooms on Louden Street, but there's all sorts in the house. Mother wouldn't like it. It's dirty besides. I suppose if we look long enough we could find rooms; but we'd have to get along with only two or three, for they come awful high. We'd have to have three anyway, you girls and mother in one, us boys in the other, and one for parlor and kitchen together. Gee! Wouldn't that be fierce? I oughtta get a better job. We can't live that way."

"Don't worry, George; I think we'll find something better," said Shirley with a hopeful ring in her voice. "I've been thinking out a plan. I haven't got it all just arranged in my mind yet, but I'll tell you about it pretty soon. You don't have school to-morrow night, do you? No, I thought not. Well, maybe we can talk it over then. You and I will have to go out together and look up a place perhaps," and she smiled an encouraging smile, and sent him off to his school happily.

She extracted a promise from Harley that he would be in by nine o'clock, discovered that he was only going to a "movie" show around the corner with one of the fellows who was going to "stand treat" on account of a wonderful ball game they had won, found out where his lessons were for the morrow, promised to help him when he returned, and sent him away with a feeling of comfort and responsibility to return early. She washed the dishes and ironed the table-cloth so Carol could go to her lessons. Then she went up and put Doris to bed with a story about a little bird that built a nest in a tall, beautiful tree that grew beside the place where the little girl lived; a little bird that drank from a little running brook, and took a bath on its pebbly sh.o.r.e, and ate the crumbs and berries the little girl gave it, and sat all day on five little blue eggs.

Harley came in at five minutes after nine, and did his lessons with her help. George came home just as they finished. He was whistling, though he looked tired. He said "the prof." had been "the limit" all the evening. Shirley fixed her mother comfortably for the night, and went at last to her own bed, more tired than she had been for weeks, and yet more happy. For through it all she had been sustained by a hope; inspired by a cultured, pleasant voice, and eyes that wanted to help, and seemed to understand.

As she closed her eyes to sleep, somehow that pleasant voice and those kind eyes mingled with her dreams, and seemed to promise relief from her great anxieties.

It was with a feeling of excitement and antic.i.p.ation that she dressed the next morning and hurried away. Something was coming, she felt sure, some help for their trying situation. She had felt it when she knelt for her usual prayer that morning, and it throbbed in her excited heart as she hurried through the streets to the office. It almost frightened her to feel so sure, for she knew how terrible would be the disappointment if she got her hopes too high.

There was plenty to be done at the office, a great many letters to answer, and a telegram with directions from Mr. Barnard. But she worked with more ease than for some time, and was done by half-past eleven. When she took the letters out to Mr. Clegg to be signed, he told her that she would not be needed the rest of the day, and might go at once if she chose.

She ate her bit of lunch hurriedly, and made herself as fresh and tidy as was possible in the office. Then she took her way to the fourth floor of the Ward Trust Building. With throbbing heart and glowing cheeks she entered the office of Walter Graham, and asked for Mr.

Sidney Graham.

The office-boy had evidently received instructions, for he bowed most respectfully this time, and led her at once to the inner office.

CHAPTER IV

The afternoon before, when Mr. Sidney Graham had returned to his office from seeing Shirley to the elevator, he stood several minutes looking thoughtfully at the chair where she had sat, while he carefully drew on his gloves.

There had been something interesting and appealing in the spirited face of the girl, with her delicate features and wistful eyes. He could not seem to get away from it. It had left an impression of character and a struggle with forces of which in his sheltered life he had had only a vague conception. It had left him with the feeling that she was stronger in some ways than himself, and he did not exactly like the sensation of it. He had always aimed to be a strong character himself; and for a young man who had inherited two hundred and fifty thousand dollars on coming of age, and double that amount two years later, with the prospect of another goodly sum when his paternal grandfather's estate was divided, he had done very well indeed. He had stuck to business ever since leaving college, where he had been by no means a nonent.i.ty either in studies or in athletics; and he had not been spoiled by the adulation that a young man of his good looks and wealth and position always receives in society. He had taken society as a sort of duty, but had never given it an undue proportion of his time and thoughts. Notably he was a young man of fine balance and strong self-control, not given to impulsive or erratic likes and dislikes; and he could not understand why a shabby little person with a lock of gold over one crimson cheek, and tired, discouraged lights in her had made so strong an impression upon him.

It had been his intention just before Shirley's arrival to leave the office at once and perhaps drop in on Miss Harriet Hale. If the hour seemed propitious, he would take her for a spin in his new racing-car that even now waited in the street below; but somehow suddenly his plan did not attract him deeply. He felt the need of being by himself.

After a turn or two up and down his luxurious office he took the elevator down to the street floor, dismissed his chauffeur, and whirled off in his car, taking the opposite direction from that which would have taken him to the Hale residence. Harriet Hale was a very pretty girl with a brilliant mind and a royal fortune. She could entertain him and stimulate him tremendously, and sometimes he almost thought the attraction was strong enough to last him through life; but Harriet Hale would not be able to appreciate his present mood nor explain to him why the presence in his office for fifteen minutes of a nervy little stenographer who was willing to live in a barn should have made him so vaguely dissatisfied with himself. If he were to try to tell her about it, he felt sure he would meet with laughing taunts and brilliant sarcasm. She would never understand.

He took little notice of where he was going, threading his way skilfully through the congested portion of the city and out into the comparatively empty highways, until at last he found himself in the suburbs. The name of the street as he slowed up at a grade crossing gave him an idea. Why shouldn't he take a run out and hunt up that barn for himself? What had she said about it, where it was? He consulted the memorandum he had written down for his father's edification. "Glenside Road, near Allister Avenue." He further searched his memory. "Big stone barn, wide approach like a grand staircase, tall tree overhanging, brook." This surely ought to be enough to help him identify it. There surely were not a flock of stone barns in that neighborhood that would answer that description.

He turned into Glenside Road with satisfaction, and set a sharp watch for the names of the cross-avenues with a view to finding Allister Avenue, and once he stopped and asked a man in an empty milk-wagon whether he knew where Allister Avenue was, and was informed that it was "on a piece, about five miles."

There was something interesting in hunting up his own strange barn, and he began to look about him and try to see things with the eyes of the girl who had just called upon him.

Most of the fields were green with spring, and there was an air of things doing over them, as if growing were a business that one could watch, like house-cleaning and paper-hanging and painting. Graham had never noticed before that the great bare spring out-of-doors seemed to have a character all its own, and actually to have an attraction. A little later when the trees were out, and all the orchards in bloom, and the wild flowers blowing in the breeze, he could rave over spring; but he had never seen the charm of its beginnings before. He wondered curiously over the fact of his keen appreciation now.

The sky was all opalescent with lovely pastel colors along the horizon, and a few tall, lank trees had put on a soft gauze of green over their foreheads like frizzes, discernible only to a close observer. The air was getting chilly with approaching night, and the bees were no longer proclaiming with their hum the way to the skunk-cabbages; but a delicate perfume was in the air, and though perhaps Graham had never even heard of skunk-cabbages, he drew in long breaths of sweetness, and let out his car over the smooth road with a keen delight.

Behind a copse of fine old willows, age-tall and h.o.a.ry with weather, their extremities just hinting of green, as they stood knee-deep in the brook on its way to a larger stream, he first caught sight of the old barn.

He knew it at once by something indefinable. Its substantial stone s.p.a.ciousness, its mossy roof, its arching tree, and the brook that backed away from the wading willows, up the hillside, under the rail fence, and ran around its side, all were unmistakable. He could see it just as the girl had seen it, and something in him responded to her longing to live there and make it into a home. Perhaps he was a dreamer, even as she, although he pa.s.sed in the world of business for a practical young man. But anyhow he slowed his car down and looked at the place intently as he pa.s.sed by. He was convinced that this was the place. He did not need to go on and find Allister Avenue--though he did, and then turned back again, stopping by the roadside. He got out of the car, looking all the time at the barn and seeing it in the light of the girl's eyes. As he walked up the gra.s.sy slope to the front doors, he had some conception of what it must be to live so that this would seem grand as a home. And he showed he was not spoiled by his life in the lap of luxury, for he was able to get a glimpse of the grandeur of the spot and the dignity of the building with its long simple lines and rough old stones.

The sun was just going down as he stood there looking up. It touched the stones, and turned them into jewelled settings, glorifying the old structure into a palace. The evening was sweet with the voices of birds not far away. One above the rest, clear and occasional, high in the elm-tree over the barn, a wood-thrush spilling its silver notes down to the brook that echoed them back in a lilt. The young man took off his hat and stood in the evening air, listening and looking. He could see the poetry of it, and somehow he could see the girl's face as if she stood there beside him, her wonderful eyes lighted as they had been when she told him how beautiful it was there. She was right. It was beautiful, and it was a lovely soul that could see it and feel what a home this would make in spite of the ignominy of its being nothing but a barn. Some dim memory, some faint remembrance, of a stable long ago, and the glory of it, hovered on the horizon of his mind; but his education had not been along religious lines, and he did not put the thing into a definite thought. It was just a kind of sensing of a great fact of the universe which he perhaps might have understood in a former existence.

Then he turned to the building itself. He was practical, after all, even if he was a dreamer. He tried the big padlock. How did they get into this thing? How had the girl got in? Should he be obliged to break into his own barn?

He walked down the slope, around to the back, and found the entrance close to the ladder; but the place was quite dark within the great stone walls, and he peered into the gloomy bas.e.m.e.nt with disgust at the dirt and murk. Only here and there, where a crack looked toward the setting sun, a bright needle of light sent a shaft through to let one see the inky shadows. He was half turning back, but reflected that the girl had said she went up a ladder to the middle floor. If she had gone, surely he could. Again that sense that she was stronger than he rebuked him. He got out his pocket flashlight and stepped within the gloom determinedly. Holding the flash-light above his head, he surveyed his property disapprovingly; then with the light in his hand he climbed in a gingerly way up the dusty rounds to the middle floor.

As he stood alone in the dusky shadows of the big barn, with the blackness of the hay-loft overhead, the darkness pierced only by the keen blade of the flash-light and a few feebler darts from the sinking sun, the poetry suddenly left the old barn, and a shudder ran through him. To think of trying to live here! How horrible!

Yet still that same feeling that the girl had more nerve than he had forced him to walk the length and breadth of the floor, peering carefully into the dark corners and acquainting himself fully with the bare, big place; and also to climb part way up the ladder to the loft and send his flash-light searching through its dusty hay-strewn recesses.

With a feeling utterly at variance with the place he turned away in disgust, and made his way down the ladders again, out into the sunset.

In that short time the evening had arrived. The sky had flung out banners and pennants, pencilled by a fringe of fine saplings like slender brown threads against the sky. The earth was sinking into dusk, and off by the brook the frogs were tinkling like tiny answering silver rattles. The smell of earth and growing stole upon his senses, and even as he gazed about him a single star burned into being in the clear ether above him. The birds were still now, and the frogs with the brook for accompaniment held the stage. Once more the charm of the place stole over him; and he stood with hat removed, and wondered no longer that the girl was willing to live here. A conviction grew within him that somehow he must make it possible for her to do so, that things would not be right and as they ought to be unless he did. In fact, he had a curiosity to have her do it and see whether it could be done.

He went slowly down to his car at last with lingering backward looks.

The beauty of the situation was undoubted, and called for admiration.

It was too bad that only a barn should occupy it. He would like to see a fine house reared upon it. But somehow in his heart he was glad that it was not a fine house standing there against the evening sky, and that it was possible for him to let the girl try her experiment of living there. Was it possible? Could there be any mistake? Could it be that he had not found the right barn, after all? He must make sure, of course.

But still he turned his car toward home, feeling reasonably sure that he had found the right spot; and, as he drove swiftly back along the way, he was thinking, and all his thoughts were woven with the softness of the spring evening and permeated with its sounds. He seemed to be in touch with nature as he had never been before.

At dinner that night he asked his father:

"Did Grandfather Graham ever live out on the old Glenside Road, father?"

A pleasant twinkle came in the elder Graham's eyes.