"Yes, tell me."
"No," repeated Val.
"Why not?" urged Emmie. "He"ll never tell."
"Never."
"Well, we"re talking about the _Comet_," confessed Emmie. "You don"t know about it, do you?"
"No."
"Of course he doesn"t, silly. I"ll be very angry if you tell."
"Isn"t a comet a difficult thing to keep quite to yourselves?"
"Not ours. It"s a paper."
"_Emmie!_"
"Well, he knows now. It"s an awfully nice kind of magazine. Val and me write it. It"s our secret."
"Pretty kind of secret now!" said Val. "But _I_ don"t care; I"m going away. I said I wouldn"t do another."
"But finish this one. Oh, do it, just a single solitary last time, _dear_ Val."
"Do, dear Val," echoed Ethan, smiling.
The quick blood flew into the girl"s face. "Dear" on his lips seemed not only a new word in the language; it called into being something that the wide world lacked before. It struck Val into silence. She sat and looked in her plate.
"We do the printing in father"s room when he"s well enough to be out digging and fussing with flowers," said Emmie.
"It"s a thing we started ages ago, when we were young," Val explained.
"It amuses Emmie."
"But there"s _no_ reason to give it up _now_," urged the younger girl.
"We thought we"d have to once for lack of paper," she said to Ethan.
"Grandma gave us only half-sheets. Then Val discovered great-grandfather Calvert"s old counting-house books."
"How did you do that?"
"They were in the closet under the stairs," said Val.
"An" Jerusha and Venie and most everybody thought there was a ghost there," added Emmie, with a certain reverence in her voice. "Val said she was goin" to see, and that was how we found all that jolly paper for the _Comet_."
"Emmie writes most of the poetry and all of the stories; I do the ill.u.s.trations," said Val.
"_And_ the conundrums _and_ the "Advice to Parents" column. Oh, Val, what would happen to you if grandma ever saw--"
She began to laugh.
"Miss Val," said Jerusha, putting her head in at the door, "yo" kin run so fas", honey, an" Miss G"no say de doctor"s kerridge is a stan"in" at de Tibbses do"; will yo" say de doctor"s wanted yer fur Ma.s.sa John." Val was off like an arrow from a bow before the old woman had finished.
Dr. Wharton was some time up-stairs. Mrs. Gano and Ethan were both in the sick-room. The verdict was that Mr. Gano was not, after all, dangerously ill, but ought to go South before it was too cold for him to travel, and that, at all events, the idea of going to New York in November was absolutely out of the question--"sheer madness."
The first keen edge of Val"s anxiety wore off in an hour or so. Her father sent for her. He wasn"t really even so ill as the doctor made out. Still, it was very sadly, and with a misgiving foreign to her experience, that she agreed to put off their joint expedition till the spring.
"And meanwhile," said her father, "since you are ambitious to be of use, it would be well if you took a more active part in the care of the house. Jerusha is very, very old, and--"
"I _do_ take care of my own room."
"Ah yes, but there are other things--"
"Before cousin Ethan came I used to help Venus on Sat.u.r.days with the parlor."
"_Before_ Ethan came?"
"Yes; I can"t do it while he"s here."
"Why not?"
"Oh, it looks so odd. None of the other girls do. Head in a dust-cap, and horrid black hands! Grandma wouldn"t like it at all, not while we have company."
Val seized the opportunity afforded by her father"s fit of coughing to consider her audience at an end.
When she came down-stairs from this interview, she found Emmie wandering about disconsolately. Ethan closeted with grandma. No lessons this morning.
"Come," said Val to Emmie, clutching for diversion at their one common interest, "we"ll do the magazine."
Emmie got the red and black ink, the fine and the broad nibbed pens, a pile of paper oddments tied with string, and a gigantic ledger, with one of its ma.s.sive calf-skin covers torn off, revealing the pages, blank at this end, coa.r.s.e like drawing-paper, and tough, like nothing one sees in these flimsy times--a fabric that, besides never wearing out, had been found to take kindly to the refinements of ornamental printing.
The girls established themselves in the dining-room. After executing the t.i.tle of Emmie"s story in florid Old English lettering, Val did a pen-and-ink sketch of the hero. That gallant individual had started out rather like Harry Wilbur. In this final issue he appeared with Ethan Gano"s marked and clear-cut profile, having borrowed from that gentleman not only his tall elegance, but the slight droop of the shoulders and the even more elusive characteristic by means of which, despite the occasional droop, he never lost the air of carrying himself well in some indefinable way.
"Now," said Val, bestowing a finishing touch.
Whereupon, with much gusto, Emmie began to read the last instalment of "The Brown House on the Hill," Val printing at dictation in a rapid, clear italic. The minutes flew. Venus would be coming in presently to set the dinner-table. The clock, chiming the hour, masked the sound of footsteps approaching from the opposite direction. Emmie raised her voice to be heard by the printer above the dozen strokes of noon:
"Ever--and--anon--Archibald--Abalone--murmured--in--Editha"s--ear:-- "Angel--I--adore--thee.""
"What nonsense is that you are reading?" said Mrs. Gano, in the sudden silence.
The two girls started like criminals. Not only was their grandmother standing at the door, but cousin Ethan was looking in at their discomfiture over her shoulder.
Val obscured the _Comet_ with the blotter. Emmie, grown very pink, had thrust Editha and Archibald Abalone under the table.
"What is it you have there, Emmeline?"
"Just a--just a thing I was reading Val."