"Something important to talk to me about!" repeated Letty in astonishment. "Oh, what is it?"
"Sit there, dear child, facing me. Now look up at me so that I can watch your eyes. Tell me, Letty dear, have you ever thought about what you would do when you grew up?"
"Not very much; not at all since I have been with you. Before-when I was with the circus I used to wonder what I could do to get away from it all. I knew that I could never stand it to go on travelling about with a circus all my life. Mrs. Drake was very good to me and the baby was dear! But I hated the life; living in tents, always on the go; no school, no little girl friends, no home!"
She sat looking at the floor thoughtfully for a moment.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "NOW LOOK UP AT ME"]
"I suppose I ought to have thought about it more," she said humbly. "I am afraid I have taken your kindness too much as a matter of course, dear Mrs. Hartwell-Jones. I shall try to show you how truly grateful I am to you for giving me such a happy home! And you know how delighted I am about boarding-school," she added eagerly. "It seems just like-well, almost like heaven to be like other girls and go to school to learn things and be happy. I shall study hard and be good in school to show how grateful I am. And then, perhaps, when I am grown up, I can teach and pay you back for all you are going to do for me."
"You dear little girl!" cried Mrs. Hartwell-Jones with a sob in her voice, "I want no thanks but your happiness!
"But now, listen to what I have to say. How would you like being somebody"s little girl in earnest? To have a real home to go to in holiday time, and-and some one to love you and be as nearly a mother to you as it is possible to be?"
Letty looked puzzled and a little frightened.
"Have you found some of my relatives? some one to claim me?" she asked.
"Oh, Mrs. Hartwell-Jones, I don"t want to leave you! I don"t, I don"t!
You have taken as great care of me as my mother could have. Please don"t send me away!"
"No, no, dear, never. You don"t understand, Letty darling. Do you know what adoption means?"
"No, I am afraid I don"t," said Letty meekly. She hung her head and blushed, embarra.s.sed as she always was at her ignorance, when asked the meaning of something she did not know.
"It means," said Mrs. Hartwell-Jones slowly, "that any one who wishes, and there are no reasons why one should not do so, can take a little girl or boy into one"s home and make that child her very own, by law.
And it means, Letty darling, that if you are willing, I intend to take you to my home and make you my own little daughter!"
Letty sat staring at her with wide eyes. She was too bewildered-too overwhelmed to speak. Two great tears welled up in Mrs. Hartwell-Jones"s eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Then she gave an odd little cry and stretched out her arms.
"Oh, my little girl, my little girl!" she whispered.
Neither of them knew how long they sat there, wrapped in each other"s arms, not talking except for a quick question and answer now and then.
At last they were interrupted by a hesitating knock on the door, and Anna Parsons" voice was heard calling:
"Please, Mrs. Hartwell-Jones, mother says she is afraid the chocolate will spoil if it waits any longer."
Letty laughed and springing to the door, threw it wide open.
"Oh, Anna," she cried, "I am the happiest girl in the whole wide world!
Bring in the chocolate and cakes, quick."
Anna turned up her nose a trifle. It seemed rather a greedy thing to say that one was the happiest girl in the world at sight of hot chocolate and cakes-even if they were Madeira cakes. But then, she did not know the wonderful thing that had happened to Letty.
CHAPTER XVIII
A CABLEGRAM
In spite of Letty"s appearing to be overjoyed at the arrival of the chocolate and cakes, she did not eat very much. For some reason which Anna did not understand she did not seem able to keep quiet for an instant. Every second she would jump up to fetch some trifle for Mrs.
Hartwell-Jones, for which that lady had not felt the slightest need; or if she could think of nothing to do, would simply whirl about the room in an ecstasy of motion. Anna watched her with astonished curiosity.
These little afternoon tea-parties occurred every day now, and Anna Parsons was always included. Usually on the days when the twins and their grandmother were not present, Mrs. Hartwell-Jones did most of the talking, entertaining her little guests with descriptions of her travels across the seas or telling them bits of stories that she had read or written herself. But to-day it was Letty who talked. Talked! She became a perfect chatterbox. Indeed, she seemed like a different person altogether, with her sparkling eyes, red cheeks and prattling tongue.
Presently Anna Parsons asked some question about the ponies, Punch and Judy, and that set Letty off on her recollections of the circus. Soon she had Anna and Mrs. Hartwell-Jones both laughing heartily over her tales; little Anna nearly fell off her chair in her merriment over the account of the trick elephant"s puzzled behavior when they softened the clapper of his bell so that it would not sound when he rang it.
Then she told all the droll stories she could remember about Poll, Mrs.
Goldberg"s parrot; and about the wonderful day Emma Fames had spent with her at Willow Grove and how she had saved Jane and Christopher from the bear.
"This mention of the twins and Willow Grove set Mrs. Hartwell-Jones thinking of the letter she had received from the children"s mother. Both she and grandmother had written to Mrs. Baker, Jr., and the answer had been most satisfactory, both earnest and enthusiastic. Mrs. Baker had described her visit to Mrs. Grey and told what a sweet, cultured, refined woman she had found her to be, and how carefully brought up and guarded Letty had been.
"Unless these three years with a traveling circus since her mother"s death have spoiled her, I am sure you could find no more ladylike child than Letty," she had written. "Certainly she has sufficient birth and breeding to overcome any little bad habits she may have acquired, and in the proper surroundings I am sure she will grow into a charming, refined gentlewoman. Moreover, she may prove to have an inestimable gift. Her mother told me that she herself sang quite well when she was a younger woman, and that she had a strong conviction that Letty had inherited her voice."
Mrs. Hartwell-Jones sat thinking over this letter and all the little incidents of the child"s past life that Letty had told her from time to time, and she breathed a little prayer of thanksgiving that a precious soul had been entrusted to her care.
"But I thought you didn"t like the circus," exclaimed Anna at last, when she could laugh no more.
"I didn"t," answered Letty positively, becoming grave all at once. "I didn"t like it at all!" She was silent for a moment and then said soberly: "Anna, did you ever get into a deep, dark wood with lots of low, th.o.r.n.y bushes and vines among the trees that caught your feet and tangled them and p.r.i.c.ked you when you tried to walk through? And then, all at once you came out into the bright, bright sunshine? Then, if you looked back at the wood, while you were safe outside in the warm sunshine, it did not look so dreadful, but you found that it had some rather bright spots in it here and there. Well, that is how I feel about the circus."
"Oh!" said Anna wonderingly.
"Oh, oh, it is so nice to be out in the sunshine again!" sighed Letty clasping her hands and looking across at Mrs. Hartwell-Jones with tears in her eyes. "So nice!"
Mrs. Hartwell-Jones opened her arms without a word, and Letty ran to them with a glad little cry. Anna stared at the pair in amazement, quite unable to account for this display of emotion. Then, with a sudden instinct that she was not wanted for the moment she rose, gathered the teacups softly together on the tray and tiptoed out of the room.
It was some time before Mrs. Hartwell-Jones and Letty were again interrupted. This time it was the sound of a horse"s hoofs in the road below and then Grandfather Baker"s voice calling "Whoa!"
"Our supper guests are arriving," exclaimed Mrs. Hartwell-Jones smiling.
"Oh!" cried Letty, jumping to her feet. "May I tell them?"
"Of course you may, my dear, that is, the children. The grown-ups already know. I could not keep my secret from Mrs. Baker."
Letty flew out of the room, and met the Baker family mounting the stairs. She looked so radiantly happy that Christopher felt sure that there was going to be something particularly good for supper.
When they had all gathered in the sitting-room, after the greetings were over, Letty announced her glorious news, and then, oh, what excitement prevailed! The old Parsons house had never known anything like it. Every one talked at once, no one knew what any one else was saying, and no one answered questions. Indeed, n.o.body expected to be answered at first, nor said anything of any importance. They just "oh"d" and "ah"d" and kissed one another and laughed-and cried a little bit too, the feminine part.
At this point Christopher drew his grandfather aside and said in a disgusted voice:
"There they go again! What makes women and girls cry so much, grandfather? They"re as bad when they"re pleased as when they"re sorry."
Letty"s cheeks grew redder and redder, and her eyes danced and sparkled until they were fit companions for the stars that were already beginning to peep through the darkening sky outside. For it was growing later and later. Christopher began to be afraid that n.o.body would remember about supper. He could not be the one to remind Mrs. Hartwell-Jones, since he was her guest, but the picnic in the woods seemed farther and farther in the past until at length he decided that it had happened the day before-or maybe years ago! A fellow"s stomach can"t stay empty forever, you know, and he began to wonder what were the first symptoms of starvation.
Mrs. Hartwell-Jones came to herself and a realization of her duties as hostess in time, however, to save him from the actual pangs of starvation, and Mrs. Parsons, who had come up with Anna "to see what it was all about" hustled down-stairs again with the promise that she would have supper on the table "in a jiffy."
At table the grown-ups, who all sat together at one end of the table, seemed to have a good deal to say to each other that was serious, but the children were brimful of fun and nonsense, and Letty kept the twins in a gale of laughter, just as she had kept Anna Parsons and Mrs.
Hartwell-Jones in the afternoon.