"I know, papa--the cameo; but she would have been glad to see the cottage used as it is."
They turned into the drive, and Mr. Armstrong nerved himself for the sight of his old home. Suddenly he cried out, and caught his daughter"s arm. "Is it only memory, or have I lost my senses? The face is there!"
Adelaide laughed rea.s.suringly. "I don"t wonder that it gave you a turn, papa; it did me, too, when I saw the same sight in Miss Prillwitz"s window last winter, but it is only dear Mrs. Halsey looking out for us."
"Then thank G.o.d!" exclaimed Mr. Armstrong, leaping from the vehicle and hurrying forward. "Do you not remember me? my own!--my wife!"
His wife remembered: the veil which had blinded her for years fell at the sight of her husband"s face.
Happily the shock had not been as sudden as it seemed; during the time which she had spent in the cottage the conviction had grown upon her that this had been her home. She had asked Adelaide its history, and learning that it had been built for her mother, who had been drowned in the great steamboat disaster, a hope had sprung up in her heart, which she dared not express to any one, that she had found her own again.
Adelaide had said that she expected her father, and Mrs. Halsey waited only to see his face to be a.s.sured of the truth.
Adelaide"s delight at finding that Mrs. Halsey was her lost mother, and Jim her brother, was genuine and intense. "I knew, all the time, that Jim was somebody"s child," she exclaimed, incoherently. "It is all too good to be true! too good to be true!"
"Jim deserves a better father than he has found," said Mr. Armstrong, "and by G.o.d"s grace he shall have a better.
"It is too bad to break up this nice little arrangement of a summer home for the poor children," he added, "and I will allow the cottage to be used for this purpose just so long as the tennis club desire to maintain it; but I must have my wife. Please remember that we have been parted from each other a very long time. I am going West next week, and I must take her with me; and it will not do Adelaide any harm to have a glimpse of the great West before we send her to school in the fall. Jim has had as much of the West as he can stand at present, and we will leave him in the best school that we can find."
"But what shall we do for a housekeeper for the cottage?" Adelaide asked, in dismay.
"Mrs. Trimble has just left the hospital, fully recovered, but I have no doubt she would prefer to run your little enterprise rather than to return to the store; and as I have deprived you of your housekeeper I don"t mind paying Mrs. Trimble to supply her place for the remainder of the summer. It will do Mr. Trimble good, too, to complete his convalescence here, and perhaps in the winter they will accept the janitorship of your tenement."
"My tenement!" Adelaide replied, in surprise.
"Yes, I intend to give you the management of this property, which I have always considered your own. You have a matter of twenty thousand dollars insurance money, which, with the ten thousand which I have deposited to your name in the savings bank, you may use in erecting a model tenement on the site of the old Rickett"s Court building. I think I shall have some more money for you to put into the enterprise if the patent works well. I shall give Mr. Trimble a share in the profits of that invention over and above the five thousand dollars already paid him, but I think that he would like one of your suites of rooms in return for acting as janitor and agent of the building, and it will not interfere with his teaching mechanics to the boys at the Home."
"If you please, papa," said Adelaide, "I like the plan of engaging Mr.
Trimble as janitor, but I would rather be my own agent and collect the rents myself; then I can see just what improvements are needed, and be sure that my tenants are all comfortable."
For the remainder of their stay in the East the Armstrongs busied themselves with architects" plans and specifications. Adelaide enjoyed planning the bathrooms and conveniences of different kinds. "And the paving-stones must be taken up in the court," she said, "and a nice gra.s.s-plot laid out in their place, and we will have pretty iron balconies before every window, and a fire-escape."
"Yes, daughter," replied her father, "I will make you a present of that, outside the other matters--the very best kind of fire-escape to be found in the city; and, while we are about it, I will send one to the Home of the Elder Brother."
Adelaide"s interest in her tenement did not wean her away from the Home, and I have since observed that it is always those who, seemingly, are already doing as much as they can in the way of charity who are always ready to lend a helping hand to other enterprises, and that it is the earnest workers of little means, as well as the wealthy philanthropists, who
"To the ages Fair bequests, and costly, make."
The Armstrongs went West, and Adelaide created an interest for the Home in her new surroundings, while Milly kept up the enthusiasm of the tennis club at the Pier. That club flourished in a manner unheard of, heretofore, in a place where everyone was so busy doing nothing that even the exertion of tennis had been voted a bore. It was not tennis, however, that kept them together, or gave the members their bright, jolly looks, but the Paradiso Cottage.
"For we may find a zest In any true employ Which, like a whetstone in the breast, Shall give an edge to joy."
But while we all worked in our different ways, it was our corresponding secretary who was the clasp to the necklace, or rather, the central battery which sent currents of life pulsating through the connecting wires. The scapegrace who plotted and schemed mischief, she who had erstwhile reveled in the name of "the malicious, seditious, insubordinate, disreputable, skeptical Queen of the Hornets," had become a wise and enterprising central manager of a helpful charity.
The summer vacation is over, and we have all met again for another winter at Madame"s; Amen Corner and Hornets all filled with a fine enthusiasm for our work, and a deep, true affection for one another.
The Home rests, we are told, on very slender foundations. There is no financier as a backer, no estate, no great endowment, nothing to ensure its existence from year to year but the hearts and hands of ten young girls. Nothing else? They forget that we have behind us and with us the Elder Brother, with all the estates del Paradiso.
"By each saving word unspoken, By Thy will, yet poorly done, Hear us, hear us, Thou Almighty! help us on."
THE END.