"Richard!" she gasped. "Oh, Richard!"
"Louise! Is it Louise? Your hair! It"s white!"
Mrs. Morton slipped an arm around Mrs. Smith"s waist and drew her across the lawn to the shelter of the cottage.
"I"m so thankful it"s _you_!" she exclaimed with a smile that relieved the tension of the meeting. "I like you so much better than any of the other Mrs. Smiths we have met this morning!"
"I guessed, of course, from your boys" names, that you were my brother"s wife," said the newly found sister, sinking into a chair; "but the children said there was no chance of their father or their uncle coming North this summer, and you never had seen me, so I took the risk of staying on until the first of September when my engagement at the art store ends."
"Why didn"t you tell me, Louise? It would have been such a happiness to me--to the children--to know. We"ve been defrauded of nearly two months"
joy."
"I shall be going in a week or ten days more," stammered Mrs. Smith, looking at her brother.
"You can tell me your plans later," he answered, "but don"t look at me as if I were driving you. Why, I came up here from Vera Cruz to find you and for no other purpose."
"You found a clue there?"
The slender woman seemed to shrink into her chair, her high-piled white hair shining against its red back and her eyes gleaming with tears.
He told her how he had come upon her picture.
"Did the Mexican tell you that my husband was shot there? My little Dorothy wakes even now in the night and thinks she hears voices whispering in the _patio_ under her window, voices of the men that called her father out to his death."
"We can all help make her happy enough to forget the hard days--and you, too, dear Louise."
Mrs. Morton threw her arms around her sister as the Ethels and Dorothy came rushing into the room from their morning on the bathing beach.
"Children, there"s good news. Dorothy is your very own cousin."
"Our cousin?"
"Really our cousin?"
"Grandfather Emerson always said our noses were alike."
"Nothing so good ever happened to us," and the Ethels seized Dorothy and the three went through the steps of the b.u.t.terfly dance with joyous smiles that rea.s.sured Dorothy"s mother as to her child"s welcome into the family.
"I"m so glad it"s _you_ who are the Aunt Louise we"ve wanted to know all our lives," cried Helen softly, kissing her aunt.
Roger shook hands with her gravely, feeling himself the representative of his father on an occasion of such family importance.
The Ethels rushed on to the porch when they heard d.i.c.ky coming up the steps.
"d.i.c.ky, d.i.c.ky, we"ve got a new aunt! Come in and see her."
d.i.c.ky went slowly into the room for purposes of inspection.
"_That_ ain"t a new aunt," he exclaimed; "that"th jutht my fire lady,"
and he curled up like a kitten in his Aunt Louise"s lap.
CHAPTER XXI
"WHO ARE WE?"
MRS. SMITH and Dorothy stayed to dinner with the Mortons and after dinner the younger members of the family party went to the beach in front of the cottage while the elders were talking in the house. Roger rolled up to the group cartwheel fashion as they gathered about the stone on which their new cousin was sitting.
"It"s the most wonderful event that ever happened to the Mortons," he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed breathlessly. "I suppose Aunt Louise is telling them in the house everything that has happened to her since before all of us were born, so perhaps you"ll tell us all the happy happenings that have happened to you."
Dorothy flushed and Helen, who guessed that the happenings of her aunt"s and cousin"s lives had not been very happy, hastened to interpose.
"What we want to know even more," she said tactfully, "is what Aunt Louise and you are going to do now. Wouldn"t it be just _grand_ if you could live in Rosemont!"
Dorothy"s face kindled.
"It would be for me," she agreed. "I"ve never been where there was any one belonging to me, and--well, that would be a "happy ending"!"
"Where was Aunt Louise planning to go for the winter?"
"I don"t know that she had any plans. She hadn"t the last time we talked about it, but that was a long time ago--way back at the time of the fire."
"Why can"t you both go home with us? We"re going in a day or two, you know."
"Mother"s engagement at the art store doesn"t end until the first of September. She wouldn"t leave them in the lurch."
"No, it wouldn"t be right," murmured Helen; "but I want her to rest just as soon as she can."
"She is tired," a.s.sented Dorothy, thinking as she answered how much more tired her mother was than any of the Morton cousins could understand.
The wear of constant anxiety about bread and b.u.t.ter and shelter is something beyond the understanding of those who have not experienced it.
It had made Dorothy older than her years and had turned her mother"s hair snow-white at forty-two.
"If only you live in Rosemont," said Ethel Brown, "we can go to school together. Ethel Blue and I have been almost like twins. If you are with us all the time we"ll be triplets."
"Oh!" cried Dorothy, clasping her hands.
"Do you suppose they"ll tell us what they"ve decided?" asked Ethel Blue anxiously. "Father will suggest something perfectly fine--he always does--and it will be like the end of a fairy story. You"re sure you"d like to live with us?" she questioned anxiously.
Helen gave Ethel Blue a touch to attract her attention, for Dorothy was almost crying. Ethel Blue threw her arm around her and gave her a hug.
At that minute Captain Morton"s voice was heard calling Dorothy from the house. She jumped up and ran in. When she came back a few minutes later she was radiant.
"It"s all arranged," she cried excitedly. "Some money has turned up from somewhere--a lot of it--that belongs to Mother, so we can live wherever we want to, and of course we"d rather live near you people than anywhere else in the world."
"All I"ve got to say," said Ethel Brown, "is that this is the finest sort of ending to the finest sort of summer. Just think of all the new things we"ve seen and done since we came up here, but I think the best of all has been starting the Club, because that"s going to last."
"I believe we"re going to have more fun out of that than out of anything we ever tried," said Helen.