Barbara, very pretty, very casual as to what she ate, sat next to her father; she was the oldest of the seven Tolands, and slipping very reluctantly out of her eighteenth year. Ned, a big, handsome fellow of sixteen, came next in point of age, and then a tall, lanky, awkward blond boy, Richie, with a plain thin face and the sweetest smile of them all. Richie never moved without the aid of a crutch, and perhaps never would. After Richie, and nearing fourteen, was a sweet, fat, giggling lump of a girl called Sally, with a beautiful skin and beautiful untidy hair, and a petticoat always dragging, a collar b.u.t.toned awry, and a belt that never by any chance united her pretty shirt waist to her crisp linen skirt. Only a year younger than Sally was Theodora, whose staid, precocious beauty Barbara already found disquieting--"Ted" was already giving signs of rivalling her oldest sister--then came Jane, bold, handsome, boyish at eleven, and lastly eight-year-old Constance, a delicate, pretty, tearful little girl who was spoiled by every member of the family.
The children"s mother was a plump, handsome little woman with bright, flashing eyes, dimples, and lovely little hands covered with rings.
There was no gray in her prettily puffed hair, and, if she was stouter than any of her daughters, none could show a more trimly controlled figure. Mrs. Toland had been impressed in the days of her happy girlhood with the romantic philosophies of the seventies. To her, as an impulsive young woman brimful of the zest of living, all babies had been "just too dear and sweet," all marriages were "simply _lovely_" regardless of circ.u.mstances, and all men were "just the dearest great big manly fellows that ever _were_!" As Miss Sally Ford, Mrs. Toland had flashed about on many visits to her girl friends admiring, exclaiming, rejoicing in their joys, and now, as a mother of growing girls and boys, there still hung between her and real life the curtain of her unquenchable optimism. She loved babies, and they had come very fast, and been cared for by splendid maids, and displayed in effective juxtaposition to their gay little mother for the benefit of admiring friends, when opportunity offered. And if, in the early days of her married life, there had ever been troublous waters to cross, Sally Toland had breasted them gallantly, her fixed, confident smile never wavering.
At first Doctor Toland had felt something vaguely amiss in this persistent att.i.tude of radiant and romantic surety. "Are you sure the boy understands?" "D"ye think Bab isn"t old enough to know that you"re just making that up?" he would ask uneasily, when a question of disciplining Ned or consoling Barbara arose. But Mrs. Toland always was sure of her course, and would dimple at him warningly: "Of course it"s all right, Daddykins, and we"re all going to be happy, and not even think of our naughty old troubles any more!"
So the doctor gave her her way, and settled back to enjoy his children and his wife, his yacht and his roses; growing richer and more famous, more genial and perhaps a little more mildly cynical as time went on.
And the children grew up, their mother, never dreaming that Barbara at eighteen was more than the sweet, light-hearted, manageable child she had been at ten; that Ned was beginning to taste of a life of whose existence she was only vaguely aware; that Sally was plotting an escape to the ranks of trained nurses; that Ted needed a firm hand and close watching if she were not to break all their hearts. No, to Mrs. Toland they were still her "rosebud garden," "just the merriest, romping crowd of youngsters that ever a little sc.r.a.p of a woman had to keep in order!"
"Now, you"re going to wipe that horrid frown off your forehead, Daddy,"
she would say blithely, if Doctor Toland confessed to a misgiving in the contemplation of any one of his seven, "and stop worrying about Richie!
His bad old hip is going to get well, and he"ll be walking just like any one else in no time!" And in the same tone she said to Barbara: "I know my darling girl is going to that luncheon, and going to forget that her hat isn"t quite the thing for the occasion," and said to little Constance, "We"re going to forget that it"s raining, and not think about dismal things any more!" No account of flood or fire or outrage was great enough to win from her more than a rueful smile, a sigh, and a brisk: "Well, I suppose such things _must_ be, or they wouldn"t be permitted. Don"t let"s think about it!"
Women who knew Mrs. Toland spoke of her as "wonderful." And indeed she was wonderful in many ways, a splendid manager, a delightful hostess, and essentially motherly and domestic in type. She was always happy and always busy, gathering violets, chaperoning Sally or Barbara at the dentist"s, selecting plaids for the "girlies"" winter suits. Her married life--all her life, in fact--had been singularly free from clouds, and she expected the future to be even brighter, when "splendid, honourable men" should claim her girls, one by one, and all the remembered romance of her youth begin again. That the men would be forthcoming she did not doubt; had not Fate already delivered Jim Studdiford into her hands for Barbara?
James Studdiford, who had just now finished his course at medical college, was affectionately known to the young Tolands as "Jim," and stood to them in a relationship peculiarly pleasing to Mrs. Toland. He was like a brother, and yet, actually, he bore not the faintest real kinship to--well, to Barbara, for instance. Years before, twenty years before, to be exact, Doctor Toland, then unmarried, and unacquainted, as it happened, with the lovely Miss Sally Ford, had been engaged to a beautiful young widow, a Mrs. Studdiford, who had been left with a large fortune and a tiny boy some two years before. This was in Honolulu, where people did a great deal of riding in those days, and it presently befell that the doctor, two weeks before the day that had been set for the wedding, found himself kneeling beside his lovely fiancee on a rocky headland, as she lay broken and gasping where her horse had flung her, and straining to catch the last few agonized words she would ever say:
"You"ll--keep Jim--with you, Robert?"
How Doctor Toland brought the small boy to San Francisco, how he met the dashing and indifferent Sally, and how she came at last to console him for his loss, was another story, one that Mrs. Toland never tired of telling. Little Jim had his place in their hearts from their wedding day. Barbara was eleven years old when, with pa.s.sionate grief, she learned that he was not her half brother, and many casual friends did not know it to this day. Jim, to the doctor"s delight, chose to follow the profession of his foster father, and had stumbled, with not too much application, through medical college. Now he was to go to New York for hospital work, and then to Berlin for a year"s real grind, and until the Eastern hospital should open cla.s.ses, was back in his old enormous third-floor bedroom upstairs, enjoying a brief season of idleness and petting, the handsome, unaffected, sunshiny big brother of Mrs. Toland"s fondest dreams.
"And he can hardly keep his eyes off Babbie," the mother confided to her sister-in-law.
Miss Toland gave her a shrewd glance.
"For heaven"s sake don"t get that notion in your head, Sally! Babbie may be ready to make a little fool of herself, but if ever I saw a man who _isn"t_ in love, it"s Jim!" said Miss Toland, who was a thin, gray-haired, well-dressed woman of forty, with a curious magnetism quite her own.
Miss Toland had lived in France for the ten years before thirty, and had a Frenchwoman"s reposeful yet alert manner, and a Frenchwoman"s art in dressing. After many idle years, she had suddenly become deeply interested in settlement work, had built a little settlement house, "The Alexander Toland Neighbourhood House," in one of the factory districts south of San Francisco, and was in a continual state of agitation and upset because worthy settlement workers were at that time almost an unknown quant.i.ty in California. Just at present she was availing herself of her brother"s hospitality because she had no a.s.sistant at all at the "Alexander," and was afraid to stay in its very unsavoury environment alone. She loved Barbara dearly, but she was usually perverse with her sister-in-law.
"You may say what you like about notions in my head," Mrs. Toland answered with a wise little nod. "But the dear girl is _radiant_ every time she looks at him, and both Dad and I think we notice a new _protective_ quality in Jim--"
"Did Robert say so?" Miss Toland asked dryly. To this Mrs. Toland answered with a merry laugh and a little squeeze of her sister-in-law"s arm.
"Oh, you old Sanna!" she chided. "You won"t believe that there"s a blessed time when Nature just takes the young things by the hand and pushes them right into happiness, whether or no!"
This little talk had taken place just before breakfast, and now Mrs.
Toland was rea.s.suring herself of her own position with many a glance at Barbara and at Jim. Barbara seemed serious almost to ungraciousness--that might be a sign. Jim was teasing Sally, who laughed deeply and richly, like a child, and spilled her orange juice on her fresh gown. Perhaps he was trying to pique Barbara by a.s.suming an indifferent manner--that might be it----
"Jim!" It was Barbara speaking. Jim did not hear. "Jim," said Barbara again, patient and cold.
"I beg your pardon!" Jim said with swift contrition. His glance flashed to Barbara for a second, flashed back to Sally. "Now, you throw that--you throw that," said he to the latter young woman, in reference to a gla.s.s of water with which she was carelessly toying, "and you"ll be sorrier than you ever were in your life!"
"Sally, what are you thinking of!" her mother said.
"Look out--look out!" Sally said, swinging the gla.s.s up and down.
Suddenly she set it back on the table firmly. "You deserve that straight in your face, Jim, but Mother"d be mad!"
"Well, I should think Mother would!" Mrs. Toland said, in smiling reproof. "But we interrupted Bab, I think. Bab had something dreadfully important to say," she added playfully, "to judge from that great big frown!"
"It wasn"t dreadfully important at all," Barbara said, in cold annoyance.
"Oh, wasn"t it? And what was it, dear?"
"It was simply--it was nothing at all," Barbara protested, reddening. "I was just thinking that we have to have that rehearsal at the clubhouse this afternoon, and I was wondering if Jim would walk down there with me now, and see about getting the room ready----"
"Dad"s got an eleven-o"clock operation, and I"m going to a.s.sist," said Jim.
"Did you forget that, dear?" Mrs. Toland asked.
"It"s of no consequence," said Barbara, her voice suddenly thick with tears. Her hand trembled as she reached for a m.u.f.fin.
"Keith, do you want to go down with us to the rehearsal this afternoon?"
said Sally amiably to the little guest.
"Oh, I don"t think the whole pack of us ought to go!" Ted protested in alarm. "You aren"t going to let Janey and Con go, are you, Mother?"
"Oh, why not?" Mrs. Toland asked soothingly. Barbara here returned to the discussion with a tragic: "Mother, they _can"t_! It would look perfectly awful!"
"Well, you don"t own the yacht club, you know, Babbie," Ted supplied sweetly.
"Well," said Barbara, rising, and speaking quickly in a low voice, "of course the whole family, including Addie and Hee, can troop down there if they want to, but I think it"s too bad that I can"t do a thing in this family without being tagged by a bunch of _kids_!"
The door closed behind her; they could hear her running upstairs.
"Now she"ll cry; she"s getting to be an awful cry baby," said Janey, wide eyed, pleasurably excited.
"Doesn"t seem very well, does she, Mummie? Not a bit like herself," said the head of the house, raising mild eyebrows.
"Now, never mind; she"s just a little bit tired and excited over this "Amazon" thing," Mrs. Toland a.s.sured him cheerfully, "and she"ll have a little talk with Mother by and by, and be her sweet self again by lunch time!"
The little episode was promptly blotted out by the rising tide of laughter and conversation that was usual at breakfast. Miss Toland presently drifted into the study for some letter writing. Jim took a deep porch rocker, and carried off the morning papers. Richie, sitting at his father"s left, squared about for one of the eager rambling talks of which he and his father never tired. The doctor"s blue eyes twinkled over his theories of religion, science, history, poetry, and philosophy.
Richie"s lean, colourless face was bright with interest. Ted volunteered, as she often volunteered of late, to go for the mail, and sauntered off under a red parasol, and Mrs. Toland slipped from the table just in time to waylay her oldest son in the hall.
"Not going to catch the 9:40, Ned?" she asked.
"Sure pop I am!" He was sorry to be caught, and she saw it under his bluff, pleasant manner.
"You couldn"t take the 10:20 with Dad and Jim?"
"I"ve got to meet Reynolds at half-past ten, Mother," the boy said patiently.
"Reynolds!" she frowned. "Don"t like my fine big boy to have friends like that--" His eyes warned her. "Friends that aren"t as fine and dear and good as he is!" she finished, her hands on his shoulders.
"Reynolds is all right," said Ned, bored, and looking coldly beyond her.
"And you"ll be home for dinner, Ned?"
"Sure! Unless the Orpheum should be awfully long. In that case we may get a bite somewhere."
"Try to be home for dinner," persisted the mother. And, as if to warrant the claim on his consideration, she added: "I paid the Cutter bill myself, dear, and Dad will pay Jordan next month. I didn"t say anything about Cutter, but he begged me to make you _feel_ how wrong it is to let these things run. You have a splendid allowance, Ned," she was almost apologetic, "and there"s no necessity of running over it, dear!"