"Is your house big enough?"
"It has ten big rooms and an attic. Won"t that do?"
"Y--es. Do you lick?"
"Do I lick?" he echoed in surprise.
"When we are bad, you know."
"Oh! Well, I can, but I don"t very often. I am pretty easy to get along with; but folks have to mind. I am fond of _good_ children."
"I"m _usually_ good. I have been bad today, but I am ever so sorry now.
I always am when it"s too late to mend matters. But I don"t want you to think I am always such a pig and have to "pologize for my dinner. Yes, I"ll come to live with you, and of course the others will. Mrs. Grinnell says you are an awfully nice man."
"I am sure I thank Mrs. Grinnell," he answered with twinkling eyes, bowing gravely to the embarra.s.sed lady across the table.
"But what I can"t see is how you came to pick us out to take home with you,--_Mr. Tramp!_" She started to her feet in astonishment, having suddenly fitted the familiar face into its place in her memory.
"At your service, ma"am."
"Ain"t you my tramp?"
"Yes."
"Then you are just fooling about our going to live with, you."
"Not at all. I mean every word of it. Ask Grandma, ask Brother Strong, ask Gail, any of them."
"But what about the tramp?" she half whispered, still too dazed to understand.
"That is rather a long story," he smiled, stroking the tight ringlets of brown on one side of him, and the bright, golden curls on the other. "A year ago last spring I tried to be ill--play sick, you know; and the doctor told me a vacation of tramping was what I needed to put me in tune again. Having some pet theories in regard to the tramp problem of this country, I decided to take his words literally, so I turned tramp myself--just for a little time, you see. That is how you saw me first. I told my wife it was a case of love at first sight, and I became so much interested in this brave little family that I have kept watch ever since.
"Here was a family without any father and mother, and there were a father and mother without any family. You needed the one and we needed the other. But at first the way didn"t seem clear. I was given to understand that you didn"t want to be adopted, and as I found that Gail was legally old enough to take care of the family, I was just on the point of preparing to play guardian angel instead of grandfather, when I chanced upon some old church records telling about your own grandfather"s death. It gave a brief account of his life, and I was astonished to find that I knew him well,--in fact, as my big brother."
"Tell us about it," pleaded Hope, as he paused reminiscently.
"When I was a little shaver my father was a seaman, captain of a ship; but his whole fortune consisted of his vessel, his wife and son. Mother and I often used to go with him on his trips, but for some reason he left me at home the last time he set sail, and he never came back. New Orleans was his port. Yellow fever broke out while he was there, and so far as I have been able to find out, every soul of his crew died of it.
I had been left with a neighbor who had her hands full looking after her own children; so, when word came that my parents were both dead, she sent for the town officers, and told them I must go to the poor-farm. I was only about the size of Allee, here, but I knew that the poor-farm was a place much dreaded, and rather than be taken there, I tried to run away. Your grandfather found me. He was one of our nearest neighbors and knew me well, so when I sobbed out the whole terrible story into his sympathetic ears, he adopted me on the spot. He wasn"t more than a dozen years old himself, but he had a heart big enough to take in the whole world, and when he had coaxed me home with him and told his mother about my misfortune, I knew I was safe. They would never send me away again. So Hiram Allen became my big brother, and the Allen home was mine for ten long years. Then an uncle of mine whom everyone had thought was dead put in appearance and took me to sea on a long voyage which covered the greater part of four years. When I returned, Mother and Father Allen were dead and the younger fry had gone West,--no one seemed to know where. Then and there I completely lost sight of them, and it was only by chance that I--"
"Grandpa"s name wasn"t Hi Allen," mused Faith aloud, with a puzzled look in her eyes. "It was Greenfield, just like ours."
"Yes; that is one reason, I suppose, why I never found my big brother of my boyhood days. You see, he had a stepfather. His own parent was drowned at sea when he was a tiny baby, and his mother married again; so he was known all over the place as Hi Allen instead of Hi Greenfield, which was his real name. When he grew to manhood and entered the ministry he decided to take his own name. But, though I dimly remembered having heard people say that Mr. Allen wasn"t Hi"s own father, I never heard his real name spoken, to my knowledge, and I never once thought of the possibility of his a.s.suming it in place of his stepfather"s.
"When I discovered your grandfather"s ident.i.ty only a few days ago, the way seemed suddenly open to me. Hi Allen had shared his home with me when I was an orphan; I would share my home with his little granddaughters, alone in the world and in trouble,--for by this time I had heard about the mortgage and the battle being fought in the little brown house to keep the family together. Mothering this big brood is too great a task for Gail. She needs mothering herself. We want to adopt you, mother and I. Will you let us; for the sake of the dear grandfather who did so much for me?"
His face was so full of yearning tenderness that tears came to the eyes of the older members of the queer little party, and even the children had to swallow hard.
"I have talked the matter over with Gail, and she agrees if the rest of you will consent. I am not a millionaire, but we are pretty well fixed in a material way and can give you a great many pleasures and advantages that the little town of Parker can never offer. There are fine schools in the city, and college for Gail. We have a piano and violin and all sorts of music, a horse and buggy, a big barn, and a splendid yard in a nice locality, with plenty of room for tennis or any other kind of gymnastics. Maybe some day there will be an automobile--"
"I don"t care about pianos and nautomobiles," interrupted Peace. "It"s the kind of people you are that I am thinking about. Mrs. Grinnell says you"re the president of a big college and everyone knows you. If that"s so, you ought to be pretty nice, I sh"d think. _I_ like you, anyhow, and I b"lieve you"ll like us, too. But I"m an awful case, even when I don"t mean to be. Maybe you would rather--didn"t I--weren"t you--I saw you in Swift & Smart"s store!"
"Yes, my lady! Twice in the city I have seen you and Allee, and both times I thought surely you knew me, but I don"t believe you did."
"No, I didn"t. I "member now. It was you who gave us that gold money when we were selling flowers. But you look different with new clothes on and a clean face."
"Why, you little rascal! Wasn"t my face clean when I came here to get something to eat?"
"It might have been, but it was p.r.i.c.kly looking with the mustache all over your chin, and I like you lots better this way. I almost didn"t know you the night you got supper for us, either."
"And the rice burned."
"And I broke Bossy"s leg and you sent us Queenie to take her place, and Faith said I was worse than Jack of the Bean Stalk, and--I bet you _are_ the fellow that pinned the money to the gatepost and grain sacks! Now, aren"t you?"
"I am afraid I am."
"You told me once before that you weren"t."
"No, I didn"t. I just asked you if it wouldn"t be a queer kind of _tramp_ who could do such a thing. Isn"t that what I said?"
"Y--es," she finally acknowledged. Then the puzzled frown in her forehead smoothed itself away and she wheeled toward the oldest sister with the triumphant shout, "There, Gail, didn"t I tell you he was a prince in disgus--disguise? Now ain"t you sorry you didn"t spend the money? She has got it all saved away yet. I must kiss you for that, Grandpa, even if it didn"t do us any good." She threw her arms, drumstick and all, about his neck and gave him a greasy smack, immediately rubbing her lips with the back of one hand.
"Aha! That"s no fair," he protested. "You rubbed that off."
"No, I didn"t. I just rubbed it in. Thank you, I don"t care for any pie tonight. Somehow this drumstick filled me up full. I can"t eat a bite more. Have you been waiting all this time for me? Well, let"s go back into the parlor then, and do the rest of our talking. I"ve sat on the tip edge of nothing until I am tired. There"s more s.p.a.ce in the front room."
"Do you know, Peace Greenfield," cried Mr. Campbell, pretending to feel insulted at her intimation that he had not given her a large enough share of his chair, "the first time I ever called at your house, I found you sitting on the gatepost,--the _gatepost_, mind you,--about so square," measuring with his hands; "and just as I turned in from the road, you began to sing, "The Campbells are coming, oho, oho!" What kind of a reception do you call that? And tonight you weren"t even going to give me any supper."
"Oh," she hastily a.s.sured him, "I didn"t mean you by that song. I used to think that the Campbells were little striped bugs that eat up the cuc.u.mber plants, and the very morning that you came here for breakfast I found two in the garden. What are you laughing at? I know better now, but I truly didn"t have a notion what your name was then. You must have known I didn"t. But I am awfully glad you came and that you kept coming even when I was bad and made you work so hard. I am sorry, but never mind, I am _deformed_ now."
"Deformed, child? Where?"
"Right here in my heart! I am going to be as good as gold all the time after this. I think the angels must have sent you. We"ve always wanted a first-cla.s.s grandfather and grandmother, but we never "xpected to get "em until we found our own inside the Gates some day. Just the same, I spoke to G.o.d about it, and He probably had the angels hunt you up. So I have _deformed_ and now I"ll be real good. I"m truly sorry I was such a selfish pig about wanting a drumstick tonight. I s"pose that"s why the drumstick filled me up so quick and didn"t leave any room for pie.
Custard is my favorite."
"Perhaps that is the reason," he agreed, quite as serious as she. "We always are happiest when we are unselfish. Now, let"s forget all about the badness and just remember the goodness. I have some of the most splendid plans for what we shall do when I have my six girls at home with me. What beautiful times we shall have, mother!"
"How can we ever thank them?" whispered bright-eyed Gail to Mrs. Strong, under cover of the lively conversation at the other end of the table.
"By loving them," promptly answered the little woman, offering up a prayer of thanksgiving that the brave little orphan band had found such a beautiful home. "They are n.o.ble people and have hungered all their lives for just that very thing."
"But love seems such a little thing to give for the blessings we shall enjoy from their hands."
"Ah, my dear, that is where you are mistaken, Love is _everything_."
THE END.