Nelly was so astonished and bewildered she did not know what to do.
She could not see the face of the lady who was kissing her for she held her so tight she could not look up; and, when she did look up, she did not at first know who the lady was.
"Why, Nelly, Nelly!" she cried; "have you forgotten me? Don"t you remember I came on in the same car with you? Why! I"ve been looking for you and asking for you all over Colorado."
Then Nelly remembered; but still she looked bewildered.
"Oh, yes! Mrs. Williams. I remember you very, very well," she said; "but you don"t look a bit as you used to."
"Come here! come here!" shouted Arthur; "come right here, all of you! Mamma, who is this girl, and what makes you kiss her?"
Arthur had been so long used to being the only child, and having all his mother"s affection showered upon him, that he really felt uncomfortable to see her kiss another child.
"Why, Arthur! Arthur!" exclaimed his mother, leading Nelly and Rob towards him; "don"t speak so. These are old friends of mamma"s that she knew before she ever saw you. Don"t you recollect my telling you about the little boy in the cars, that threw away the onions, and the little girl that had the nice wax doll all broken in the crowd? These are those very same children; and isn"t it wonderful that we should have found them here? I am very glad to see them: Nelly, Rob, this is my little boy, Arthur, and he will be more glad to know you than you can possibly imagine; for he can"t run about as you do. He has to lie in this chair all day."
While she was speaking, Arthur had been looking very steadily at Rob. He did not take much notice of Nelly. As soon as his mother stopped speaking, Arthur said to Rob:--
"How do you do? Mamma told me all about your throwing away the man"s onions ever so long ago, and I used to make her tell me over and over and over again, till she said it was almost as bad as having onions in the house. Didn"t you have fun when you did it?" and Arthur laughed harder than he had been seen to laugh for a long time.
"Why, no!" said Rob; "I don"t think it was much fun. I don"t remember much about it now; but I know I felt awfully mean: you see I felt like a thief when the man began to look for his onions."
Nelly was standing still, close to her new-found friend. She was thoroughly bewildered; she looked from Mrs. Williams to Arthur, and from Arthur to Mrs. Williams, and did not know what to make of it all: and no wonder. When Mrs. Williams bade Nelly good-by in Denver three years before, she was a thin, pale lady, dressed in the deepest black, and with a face so sad it made you feel like crying to look at her. She wore a widow"s cap close around her face, and a long, black veil; and she was all alone with her nurse; and she had no little boy. Now she was a stout, rosy-faced lady; and she wore a bright, dark-blue cloth gown, looped up over a scarlet petticoat; and on her head she wore a broad-brimmed straw hat with scarlet poppies and blue bachelor"s b.u.t.tons round the crown. At last Nelly could not contain her perplexity any longer.
"Oh! Mrs. Williams," she exclaimed; "what does make you so pretty now?"
"That isn"t my mamma"s name," cried Arthur; "her name is Mrs. Cook.
Wasn"t she pretty when you saw her in the cars? She"s always pretty now."
Mrs. Williams laughed very hard, and told Nelly she did not wonder that she was surprised to see her look so differently.
"I often think, when I look in the gla.s.s now," she said, "that I shouldn"t know my own self, if I hadn"t seen myself since three years ago."
Then she led Nelly to one side, and explained to her that she had met Arthur and his papa up at Idaho Springs, where she had gone immediately after leaving Nelly in Denver. Mr. Cook had taken Arthur there, to see if the water in the Idaho Springs would not cure his lameness. They had all lived in the same hotel at Idaho all winter, and in the spring Mrs. Williams had been married to Mr. Cook, and had thus become Arthur"s mother. Mr. Cook"s home was in New York; but they had come to Colorado every summer for Arthur"s sake. He always was much better in Colorado. While they were talking, Mr.
Cook came out of his tent; and surprised enough he looked to see his wife sitting on the ground with a little stranger girl in her lap, and Arthur in eager conversation with a boy he had never seen before. He stood still on the threshold of the tent for a moment, looking in astonishment at the scene.
"Oh, Edward! Edward!" exclaimed Mrs. Cook, "this is my little friend! Think of our having found her at last, down in this valley!"
"Is it possible!" said Mr. Cook. "Why, I am as glad to see you, my little girl, as if I were your own uncle. I didn"t know but I should have to go journeying all about the world, like my famous ancestor, Captain Cook, to find you; for my wife has never given up talking about you since I have known her."
Mr. Cook was so tall and so big Nelly felt half afraid of him. He was as tall as Long Billy, and twice as big: he had a long, thick beard, of a beautiful brown color, and his eyes were as blue as the sky. Nelly thought he looked like one of the pictures, in a picture-book Rob had, of "Three Giant Kings from the North who came Over the Sea." But when he smiled you did not feel afraid of him; and his voice was so good and true and kind that everybody trusted him and liked him as soon as he spoke.
"Was Captain Cook really an ancestor of yours?" asked Nelly, eagerly.
"Oh!" cried Rob, bounding away from Arthur, and looking up with reverence into this tall man"s face, "are you a relation of Captain Cook? Have you got any of his things? Did you know him? Did he ever tell you about his voyage? We"ve got the book about them: I know everywhere he went."
Mr. Cook lifted Rob up in his arms, and tossed him over his shoulders, and whirled round with him, and set him down on the ground again, before he answered. This was a thing Mr. Cook loved to do to boys of Rob"s size. Boys of that age are not used to being picked up and tossed like babies; but Mr. Cook was so strong he could toss a big boy as easily as you or I could a little baby.
"No, sir, I am not a relative of Captain Cook"s, so far as I know, nor of any other Cook, except of all good cooks: I am a first cousin and great friend and lover of all good cooks," shouted this jolly, tall man, whose very presence seemed like sunshine. "Ralph, you cook of cooks and for all the Cooks, is our breakfast ready?"
Ralph chuckled with inward laughter as he tried to answer with a quiet propriety. Long as he had lived with Mr. Cook, he had never grown accustomed to his droll ways.
Rob and Nelly looked on with amazement. This was a sort of man they had never seen.
"Oh, I wish papa was like this," thought Rob: in the next second he was ashamed and sorry for the thought. But from that moment he had a loving admiration for Mr. Cook, which was about as strong as his love for his own father.
As soon as Mr. and Mrs. Cook had eaten their breakfast, they walked up to the house with Nelly. Rob stayed behind with Arthur, entirely absorbed in the microscope. Nelly"s feet seemed hardly to touch the ground: she was so excited in the thought of taking Mrs. Cook to see her mother. She utterly forgot all the changes which the three years had brought to them: she forgot how poor they were, and that her mother was at that moment hard at work churning b.u.t.ter. She forgot every thing except that she had found her old friend, and was about to give her mother a great surprise. She opened the door into the sitting-room, and, crying, "Mamma! mamma! who do you think is here?"
she ran on into the kitchen, turning back to Mr. and Mrs. Cook and crying, "Come out here! Here she is!"
Mrs. March looked up from her churning, much astonished at the interruption, and still more astonished to see two strangers standing in her kitchen doorway, and evidently on such intimate terms with Nelly. Mrs. March had on a stout tow-cloth ap.r.o.n which reached from her neck to her ankles; this was splashed all over with cream. On her head she had a white handkerchief, bound tight like a turban. Altogether she looked as unlike the Mrs. March whom Mrs.
Cook had seen in the cars as Mrs. Cook looked unlike the Mrs.
Williams. But Mrs. Cook"s smile was one n.o.body ever forgot. As soon as she smiled, Mrs. March exclaimed:--
"Why, Mrs. Williams! how glad I am to see you again. Pray excuse me a minute, till I can take myself out of this b.u.t.tery ap.r.o.n: walk back into the sitting-room."
"No, no!" laughed Mr. Cook, "I know a great deal better than that! I was brought up on a farm. You can"t leave that b.u.t.ter! Here! give me the ap.r.o.n, and let me churn it: it"s twenty-five years since I"ve churned; but I believe I can do it." And, without giving Mrs. March time to object, he fairly took the ap.r.o.n away from her, and tied it around his own neck, and began to churn furiously.
"Now you two go in and sit down," he said, "and leave this little girl and me to attend to this b.u.t.ter. You"ll see how soon I"ll "bring" it!" And indeed he did. His powerful arms worked as if they were driven by steam; and in less than a quarter of an hour the b.u.t.ter was firm and hard, and Nelly and Mr. Cook had become good friends. He liked the quiet, grave little girl very much; but, after all, his heart warmed most to Rob, and the greater part of his talk with Nelly was about her brother.
In the meantime, Mrs. Cook and Mrs. March were having a full talk about all that had happened. There was something about Mrs. Cook which made people tell her all their affairs. She never asked questions or pried in any way, but she was brimful of sympathy and kindly intent; and to such persons everybody goes for comfort and advice. Mrs. March had always remembered her with affectionate grat.i.tude for her goodness to Nelly, and she was glad of the opportunity, even three years late, to thank her for that beautiful wax doll.
"It is as good as new now," she said. "Nelly keeps it rolled in tissue paper, in the box. She does not play with dolls any more, but it is still her chief treasure."
"Not play with dolls!" exclaimed Mrs. Cook: "why, she is not fifteen."
"I know it," replied Mrs. March, "but our hardworking life here has made both the children old for their years: especially Nelly. She was naturally a thoughtful, care-taking child. Rob is of a more mirthful, adventurous temperament. He has taken the jolly side of the life here; but Nelly has grown almost too sober and wise. She is a blessed child."
"Yes, indeed, she is," replied Mrs. Cook; "and she was so when I first knew her. I never could forget her earnest face. I want you to let her and Rob too be with us just as much as possible while we are here. We shall stay a month: perhaps six weeks, if it does not grow too cold. We find it is much better for Arthur to stay quietly in one place than it is to move about. He gains much more. Travelling tires him dreadfully."
"I shall be more than glad to have the children with you as much as possible," replied Mrs. March; "but that will not be so much as I could wish: for we are all working very hard now; and two days each week the children go to Rosita, to sell eggs and b.u.t.ter. That is the greater part of our income this summer."
Mrs. March said this in a cheerful tone, and as if it were nothing worth dwelling upon, and Mrs. Cook did not express any surprise; but in her heart she was much grieved and shocked to find that the Marches were so poor, and as soon as she was alone with her husband she told him of it with tears in her eyes.
"Only think, Edward," she said, "of those sweet children going about selling eggs and b.u.t.ter in the town."
Mr. Cook was a very rich man; but his father and his grandfather had been farmers; and in Mr. Cook"s early years he had driven the market-wagon into town many a time and sold potatoes and corn in the market. It did not, therefore, seem so dreadful to him as it did to his wife that Rob and Nelly should carry about eggs and b.u.t.ter to sell in Rosita. Still, he was sorry to hear it, and exclaimed:--
"Do they really? The plucky little toads! That"s too bad--for the girl: it won"t hurt the boy any!"
"Oh, Edward!" said Mrs. Cook, "you wouldn"t like to have Arthur do it."
"No, I wouldn"t like to have him do it," replied Mr. Cook: "most certainly I wouldn"t like to have him; but that wouldn"t prove that it mightn"t be better for him in the end if he had to. But fate has taken all such questions as that out of our hands, so far as poor Arthur is concerned." And Mr. Cook sighed heavily. Arthur"s condition was a terrible grief to his father. All the more because he was so well and strong himself, Mr. Cook had a dread of physical pain or weakness. Many times a day he looked at his helpless son, and said in his inmost heart:--
"Rather than be like that, I would die any death that could be invented."
It was a mercy that Arthur did not inherit his father"s temperament.
He was much more like his mother: so long as he could be amused, and did not suffer severe pain, he did not so much mind having to lie still. When Rob said to him, one day:--
"Oh, Arthur, doesn"t it tire you horribly to stay in that chair?"
Arthur answered:--