Mary Louise at Dorfield Part 1

CHAPTER I
THE SEWING BEE

Dorfield was trying to settle down into its prewar quiet, but no matter how conservative and sleepy a town has been, when once it is shaken up with war activities it finds it difficult to go to sleep again. It may pull the bedclothes over its head and bury its ears in the downy pillows of memories of what it used to be but the echoes of marching troops, shouting crowds, martial music, newsboys crying extras, powder mills and so forth will reach it no matter how soft the pillows or thick the bedclothes.

The girls of Dorfield found it more difficult to settle down than anybody else. Fathers had always been busy, so had mothers. The returning soldiers had dropped into their old places and were at work almost as though there had been no amazing interlude of A. E. F. Only the girls seemed to be left out of the scheme of things. Many of them kept on working, although before the war the idea of making a living had been undreamed. The girls who, for purely patriotic reasons, had taken positions left empty by enlisted men, were loath to go back to the old state of dependence now that the men had returned.

“I am tired of being an unproductive consumer and I don’t intend to stand it any longer,” declared Elizabeth Wright.

“What are you going to do about it?” asked Lucile Neal.

“Do! I’m going to get a good job and hold it. I did the work in the bank just as well as Price Middleton, although I got only about half as much pay for it. I can type better than he can and write a business letter all around him. When he came back from the war, I stepped out as gracefully as you please and gave up my job. Nobody seems to be much worried about my future, that is, nobody but me, but I’ve been thinking a lot about what is going to become of me, not only because of money but because I am simply bored to death at the prospect of having no regular occupation.”

“I feel that way too,” said Laura Hilton. “I do wish Dorfield wasn’t so poky about its girls. Father says young women ought to stay at home and preserve fruit, unless it is necessary for the family finances that they should go out and work.”

“Always for the good of the family where the girl is concerned!” exclaimed Elizabeth, “and never the good of the girl! Suppose there isn’t any fruit! Suppose there is no sugar to preserve with! Suppose the beloved family is not fond of jam! Suppose there are more girls in the household than there are paring knives! Suppose one’s mother is so capable and industrious that there is no work left for the girls to do! Suppose a million things!”

The group of girls gathered on Colonel Hathaway’s porch laughed at the vehemence of Elizabeth Wright’s harangue. Elizabeth had always been different from the rest of her family, who were old-fashioned and conservative in their ideas. She was one of five sisters. The other four were quite content to live the life of “unproductive consumers” on the not very large income which was derived from an estate inherited by their father. Mr. Wright’s sole occupation consisted in writing letters demanding catalogues of rare books. These he pored over from morning until night. Sometimes, enticed by the extreme rarity and desirability of a book, he would decide he must have it in his fine collection but he usually took so long to decide and put off so long writing his order that, in nine cases out of ten, the desired book was sold before he sent for it.

Mrs. Wright was one of those thoroughly practical souls who glory in their activity and efficiency. She did everything so easily that she had never seen the necessity of teaching her daughters to do anything.

“They will learn soon enough!” she always declared. “Nobody taught me! They will marry and then they will learn.”

Elizabeth always winced when her mother announced so confidently that her daughters would marry. Perhaps they would but, on the other hand, perhaps they wouldn’t. She for one was sure she would not. Certainly it was not her aim in life as it seemed to be of her sisters. Marriage was all right if it was built on true love, as she was sure this marriage of Mary Louise’s was to be. In her heart of hearts Elizabeth wanted to write but she thought she had not lived long enough to have anything to write about.

Dear Mary Louise Burrows! How happy she looked with her friends gathered around her on her grandfather’s piazza! That piazza was a favorite place for the girls to assemble and now that Mary Louise was so soon to marry Danny Dexter it was almost a daily occurrence for them to meet there. Irene MacFarlane was there in her wheel chair, her countenance as calm and peaceful as ever, while her busy fingers embroidered a wonderfully dainty bit of lingerie for her friend’s trousseau. Alora Jones was there, not looking much happier than she had formerly, although her three millions had been almost doubled in the last few years, thanks to the war activities that wealth had indulged in. Poor Alora found it difficult to let herself go. Her wealth made her suspicious. Because she had been imposed upon once, she was ever looking out for similar experiences. She was happier with this band of friends, tried and true, than with anybody else in the world. Certainly they wanted nothing from her but friendship and that her shy heart was eager to give. Her artist father encouraged her in seeking out these wholesome, normal girls, hoping through them his daughter would begin to value life for what it was worth.

“We are cursed with money, Alora,” he would say, “but for Heaven’s sake, let’s forget it. In the meantime we must give and give!”

Pretty Laura Hilton was there, as small and bird-like as ever. By her sat Lucile Neal, who had inherited an executive ability from her father, the owner of the Neal Automobile Factory, and whose clear judgment was ever in demand when Mary Louise and her friends had any project on foot. Edna Barlow, the only poor girl in the group, was in the hammock with Jane Donovan, the daughter of Dorfield’s mayor.

All of the girls were sewing on Mary Louise’s trousseau. It was Irene’s idea that they should meet together in this way and busy themselves with this labor of love.

“To return to jobs,” said Elizabeth. “I’m going to find out what pays best and learn how to do it and then bust loose from my family. If they don’t like it, they can lump it. I want a latchkey and a bank account of my own. As it is, if I’m not in the house at a certain time, there is a hue and cry and father begins on what young ladies did in his day and Gertrude and Annabel look shocked and Pauline and Margaret say they would never be guilty of such unladylike behavior and they all agree that men don’t like independent girls and I’ll never get a suspicion of a beau if I don’t mend my ways—as though I wanted one if I’d have to make myself over to get him!”

“And what does your mother say?” laughed Mary Louise.

“Oh, Mother doesn’t say anything. She is always so busy she doesn’t even know I’m not there. With two servants in the house Mother still manages never to be idle one moment in the day. She is always baking and brewing, sewing and dusting, cleaning out closets or bureau drawers, airing beds, rubbing furniture, cleaning silver, doing a million and one things that the maids could do just as well as she. The truth of the matter is Mother should have had a profession outside of being a wife and mother. She has too much energy and efficiency to waste on a mere home.”

“But a mere home is the greatest thing in the world,” said Mary Louise, softly.

“Oh, yes, it is a good enough place, but it can be pretty uncomfortable with somebody always making you move to sweep under you. Why, my mother could run a big hotel and still have time to spare to keep the church sewing circle going.”

“She must be very unselfish,” said Laura Hilton, whose own mother was noted for being the best dressed and most frivolous woman in Dorfield, though very charming and kind-hearted withal.

“Oh, I don’t know about that!” answered Elizabeth. “She is never so happy as when she is bustling around doing for people. She would let all of us girls sleep all day and then cook breakfast herself and bring it up to us and have the time of her life doing it. I think it would be a great deal more unselfish if she would let us help and expend some of her energy on making us be a little more efficient instead of being so perfect herself.”

“Have you decided yet, Mary Louise, where and when you will be married?” asked Irene, gently changing the subject. Irene had the faculty of turning the conversation into smoother channels when she saw breakers ahead. Criticism of one’s mother and home was not conducive to smooth sailing for the ship of conversation.

“About decided,” blushed Mary Louise. “Danny and I think it would be nice to be married right here at home with only our intimate friends present. We haven’t any relations to speak of, neither one of us. Danny has his Uncle Jim O’Hara and I have Grandpa Jim—a Jim apiece and that is all. We have lots of intimate friends, though, when we begin to count up. Of course Danny wants to ask every man in his regiment besides all the friends he has made at the Neal Automobile Factory.”

“Father and the boys say he is the most popular man in the works in the short time he has been with them,” said Lucile.

Mary Louise blushed again. She was frankly delighted at the praise bestowed upon her fiancé. Danny’s popularity was very delightful to the girl and indeed it spoke very well for Danny Dexter that Dorfield was receiving him with open arms. He had come to the town unknown, poor, friendless except for the men in his regiment who one and all pronounced him a trump. All of his worldly possessions he could get in his army kit. But on his battle scarred face was a smile that was worth more than silver and gold and when he had won, right under the noses of a host of admirers, the love of the prettiest and most attractive girl in town, the rejected and dejected suitors of Mary Louise Burrows bore him no grudge but were willing to come dance at his wedding.

“Here comes Mrs. Markle!” exclaimed Mary Louise. “She has been so kind to me and Mr. Markle is perfectly dear to Danny. Both of them are so charming that we appreciate their seeing anything in us worth knowing.”

“Pooh!” cried Elizabeth Wright. “Everybody thinks you and Danny are worth knowing. The Markles aren’t so much of a muchness.”

“Oh, but they are lovely! Don’t you think so, Irene?” asked Mary Louise.

“I don’t know them very well,” responded Irene. “If you like them so much they must be worth knowing, however.”

Mary Louise looked at her friend, astonishment expressed in her countenance. That did not sound like Irene MacFarlane. What faint praise she gave the Markles! And her voice sounded so cold. What could be the matter? Could she be jealous of these new friends? Hardly that! Of course, Irene had been her first and only friend when Mary Louise came to Dorfield and stayed with Irene’s uncle, Mr. Peter Conant and his wife, dear Aunt Hannah. But since then she, Mary Louise, had made acquaintance with almost everybody in town and it would take all her fingers and toes to count her intimate girl friends. Irene had never shown jealousy before but had been as eager to enlarge her acquaintance as Mary Louise herself. Poor Irene was lame and had spent the whole of her life either on her back or in the wheel chair. She had an intense interest in humanity in general and girls in particular. Her friendship with Mary Louise had opened up a new life for the poor girl, bringing her more and more in touch with the outside world. But why this coldness where the Markles were concerned?

Nobody could deny that the Markles were a delightful couple. Mrs. Markle was a woman of about thirty, while her husband was nearer fifty but he seemed to be as fond of young people as his wife. They were strangers in Dorfield, having settled there since the war, but already they had taken a place in the society of the town and were looked upon as agreeable additions to the four hundred of Dorfield. Mr. Markle was engaged in the real estate business, which seemed to be thriving. To be sure, they lived in a small apartment, but it was in one of the best houses in town and, while they were not classed with the reckless spenders, they entertained frequently and in lavish style. The soft Persian rugs and exquisite paintings and etchings filled their apartment with harmony and beauty. There were cabinets of rare and wonderful curios, bookcases of first editions and carved furniture that looked as though it belonged in museums, so wonderful was it in design and finish.

 

CHAPTER II
A ROSE AND A SONG

As Mrs. Markle tripped up the steps of Colonel Hathaway’s porch, where the girls were holding their sewing bee, one could but wonder why Irene MacFarlane should have been chary of her praise of anyone so altogether charming. She was perfect from the tips of her tiny grey suede shoes to the hat which shaded the piquant face at just the right angle. Nature had not only endowed Hortense Markle with a rare and glowing beauty but hers also was the gift of knowing exactly how to clothe that beauty. Every portion of her costume was as carefully thought out and planned by the little artist as had been the rarest of her rugs by some Hindu weaver or the most choice of her pictures by some famous painter. She delighted in soft greys and pastel shades which set off to perfection her rich, almost oriental, beauty.

“She knows perfectly well if she wore brilliant colors they would be becoming but would coarsen her,” Irene said to herself as she watched the charming little lady mount the steps, her arm around Mary Louise, who had hurried down the walk to meet her new friend.

“Oh, why didn’t you girls let me know you were here sewing? I have been so lonely sitting up in my stuffy little apartment all alone. Only think, I might have been here all morning having such a pleasant time with all of you! I believe you think I am too old for you.”

This she said so gaily, giving such a ringing laugh at the thought of anybody’s thinking she was too old, that all the girls joined in, even Irene. Irene had wondered at herself as much as Mary Louise had. For the life of her she could not account for a feeling of antipathy that she felt for both Mr. and Mrs. Markle. It was not like her to take unaccountable dislikes, or even accountable ones. Her theory of life was to live and let live and her sympathy embraced all mankind, good and bad alike. Why could she not find room in her heart for this charming, beautiful young woman whose manner to her had always been gracious and kind?

“It is just a case of Dr. Fell,” Irene said to herself.

“‘I do not like thee, Dr. Fell—
The reason why I cannot tell;
But one thing ’tis, I know full well:
I do not like thee, Dr. Fell.’”

She determined, however, to keep her unreasonable sentiments to herself and at least to be as cordial and polite to Mary Louise’s guest as she could manage to be.

“We sew here almost every morning,” said Irene. “We are helping to make Mary Louise’s trousseau.”

“How charming! Please let me help. Sewing is my one accomplishment.”

A thimble was found to fit the tapering finger and Mrs. Markle was soon as busy as the others in their task of love.

“I wish I could sew better,” exclaimed Elizabeth Wright. “I am going to have to pick out this foolish little flower that I have been trying so hard to make look as though it were growing on Mary Louise’s camisole. There now! I’ve cut a hole in it! Oh, what a stupid I am! Right in the middle of the garment and this crepe de chine costs ’steen dollars a yard! Oh me, oh my! I told you girls I ought to go into business and not try to be so girlie.”

“Let me see if I can’t set you right,” said Mrs. Markle. “I am past mistress at patching.” She took the garment from the unresisting hands of Elizabeth, quickly ripped out the crooked flower that poor Elizabeth had been vainly endeavoring to embroider on it and then, with deft sure fingers and a needle so fine one could hardly see it, she inserted an invisible patch where the cruel scissors had slipped. This needle she took from the lining of her velvet hand bag. It was much smaller than any found in the work boxes of the girls. Irene remarked on it.

“I never can get such tiny needles as that,” she said. “Perhaps if I could manage to shop for myself I might find one.”

“Oh, I’ll be delighted to give you some!” cried the older woman. “I am like you: I simply cannot sew with a spike.”

“That will be very kind of you,” said Irene, wishing she could be as pleasant to Mrs. Markle as Mrs. Markle was to her and hoping that her sentiments were not voiced in her words. She was trying hard to get over her feeling of dislike and distrust for the beautiful little lady but, even though she should give her a thousand fairy needles, she knew that she could not like her. She watched the process of putting in the invisible patch. It was the most perfect piece of needlework she had ever seen and Irene herself did all but perfect work.

“How on earth do you do it?” she exclaimed. “Why, one cannot tell where the patch is!”

The girls crowded around to see the little patch. If Irene did not know how to do it it must be wonderful indeed.

“It is quite easy when once you learn,” laughed Mrs. Markle. “I learned at the convent in Paris. First be sure and match the warp and woof of your material. It takes sharp eyes, but one thread out of place is fatal. Then use a bit of raveled crepe de chine for your thread and the rest is all plain sailing. Practice makes perfect. Now shall I embroider a rose over the place?”

“Oh, do!” cried Elizabeth, “and please somebody give me some plain basting to do on gingham aprons if the bride is to have such things.”

“Don’t you have to have a pattern for your rose?” asked Irene, reaching for her workbag. “I have some patterns here, very pretty ones, and some tracing paper.”

“No, thank you! I just make up as I go along—”

“Like the wonderful rug weavers of India,” cried Alora. “Do you sing a song as you go and weave the music into your work as they do, Mrs. Markle?”

“Why, yes, sometimes! But please don’t call me Mrs. Markle. I’m not so terribly old and you don’t know how I long to have someone call me by my own name, Hortense.”

“Doesn’t Mr. Markle?”

“He calls me Pet. Awfully silly, but he always has. I think it would be so pleasant if all of you girls would just call me Hortense. Won’t you?” She smiled so brightly on the ring of girls grouped around her that they succumbed to her charms. Even Irene melted a bit and decided that perhaps she did like the little lady a tiny bit after all. Anyone who could put in an invisible patch must be a desirable acquaintance.

“You see it has been many years since I have been with my own people and so few ever call me anything but Mrs. Markle. It is very lonesome to have persons so formal.”

As she talked she had been deftly outlining a rose on the front of the camisole, drawing it with needle and thread with strokes as sure as those of a great flower painter. Then choosing her silk from Irene’s basket she began to embroider. Irene was spellbound in her attention. The first petal took form under the flying fingers as though by magic.

And then the woman sang. It seemed hardly fair that anyone so beautiful and clever as Hortense Markle should also have a voice, but voice she did have of a rich depth that thrilled her audience.

‘⁠Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a flying:
And the same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious land of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.’”

“Lovely! Lovely!” cried the girls.

“I don’t know that tune,” said Laura Hilton, who had a sweet little voice of her own with a bird-like note and was ever in search of songs that would fit it. “I know the words, Herrick’s, aren’t they? But the tune is different from any I have ever heard.”

“It has a kind of teasing quality,” said Alora.

“The tune is my own,” declared the singer.

“Then you can write music too!” cried Irene. This was surely a remarkable person for her to take an unreasonable dislike to.

“Not write it—just sing it. I don’t know one note from the other except by ear,” answered Mrs. Markle still busily embroidering.

“I think the tune was fine,” put in Elizabeth, “but I can’t hand a thing to the words. Always hammering on girls to get married! It sounds too like home to me. I bet anything old Herrick was as withered and dried up as a salt herring. Losing his own prime was nothing. He, as a man, was perfectly sure that he was still attractive, married or unmarried—but the poor girls—it makes me more and more determined to get me a job.”

They all laughed heartily at Elizabeth’s taking the song personally and Mrs. Markle was much interested in what the girl expected to do and how soon she intended to begin doing it.

“I don’t blame you at all for wanting to do something. I often feel myself I should like to but Felix is so opposed. He is away so much I could easily carry on some occupation besides home making. What are you thinking of doing?”

“I don’t know. I can type but I don’t want to be a stenographer, at least I don’t want to be a man’s stenographer. Somebody might think it was up to me to marry the creature. I’d like to have a shop—a kind of literary work-shop—where one could get manuscript typed; where budding authors could have their spelling corrected and their punctuation put to rights. I’m a queen bee on spelling and punctuation. I might even write obituaries and valedictories for the going and coming. I might combine a kind of clipping bureau with it for folks who like to see their names in print. Of course I’d have to have a partner.”

“The very thing!” cried Mary Louise. “A friend of mine, Josie O’Gorman, wants to come to Dorfield to settle and she could go in with you. Josie is financially independent, but she says she simply must do something. You know her father was the great detective. He died last month,” she explained to Mrs. Markle.

“See, I have finished the rose!” Hortense interrupted and held it up for their inspection. It was so natural that one almost expected a fragrance to arise from it.

“But look! What is that on the edge of this petal?” cried Irene, who was bending over the embroidery entranced by its perfectness. “It looks like a tiny faded place.”

“So it is! That is where the tune got woven into my picture.

‘The same flower that smiles to-day
⁠To-morrow will be dying.’”

“Oh!” was all Irene could say, but she began all over to hate Hortense Markle for suggesting fading flowers where Mary Louise’s trousseau was concerned. “It wasn’t kind! It wasn’t kind!” she kept on saying to herself.

CHAPTER III
MATRON OF HONOR

“We were speaking of Mary Louise’s wedding when you came in,” Alora said to Mrs. Markle.

“And Danny’s!” put in Mary Louise.

“Oh, of course, Danny’s! Danny may be a wonder but he doesn’t count much on his own wedding day. That day is the bride’s,” laughed Alora.

“You are to have a church wedding, I fancy,” said Mrs. Markle.

“No, we are to be married here at home. Grandpa Jim much prefers it and so do Danny and I.”

“Oh, then of course it must be at home. Your house is large but the rooms do not open into each other for the best effect for a wedding. Why don’t you be married out of doors?” suggested Mrs. Markle. “It would be lovely. The guests could stand all along these terraces or anywhere they chose and the bridal party could approach through the opening in that wonderful old yew hedge. It would be a beautiful picture. I can see it now!” and she waved her hand towards the fine old sunken garden which was the pride of Colonel Hathaway and his granddaughter.

“The very thing!” exclaimed Elizabeth. “Don’t you think so, Irene?”

“It would be lovely.”

“Grandpa Jim would like it a lot, I am sure,” said Mary Louise.

“You are to have bridesmaids, of course,” continued Mrs. Markle. “Let them dress in pastel shades of palest and softest hue and carry sweet peas.”

“That will be great if we have different colors,” put in Elizabeth. “I am crazy about being a bridesmaid, but I must say I am not crazy about going around with about seven twins for the rest of the summer.”

“You are to have eight bridesmaids, then?” asked Mrs. Markle as she and her hostess went down to the garden to plan.

“Yes, eight besides my maid of honor,” explained Mary Louise. “You see, I couldn’t bear to leave out any of the girls.”

“And who is the maid of honor?”

“Irene MacFarlane! She is the very best friend I have in the whole world.” “But how can she be a maid of honor in a chair?”

“I don’t know, but she must be. In the house she can roll around quite easily. I am not sure about it out of doors but, if she can’t, we will abandon the idea of having it out in the garden.” Mary Louise spoke quite decidedly.

“That would be a pity.”

“Yes, but I must have Irene.”

Mary Louise had always said if she ever married she would have her dear friend as maid of honor and Irene had felt a fierce pride in the fact that she was chosen. She realized the moment the plan was suggested of having the ceremony out of doors that this honor was not to be hers. She could run her chair with great skill on smooth floors but she felt it would be awkward indeed to try to do it in the garden and then she felt that in some way she would mar the picture. She too could close her eyes and see the effect of the outdoor wedding with the old yew hedge as a background and the beds of old-fashioned flowers adding to the beauty of the scene; the bride in white and the eight bridesmaids in the pastel shades suggested by Hortense Markle.

“It will be beautiful and I must quietly get out of the picture,” Irene said to herself. It hurt her to think of it. The girl was sure she would never marry herself, nobody would ever want to marry such a poor little deformed person. She had settled that long ago, but it would have been pleasant to be the next one to the bride. Even that pleasure must be taken from her and she herself must be the one to put it away. She looked sadly after the girls as they trooped into the garden to join Mary Louise and Mrs. Markle.

“If she only had not suggested the outdoor wedding!” she sighed. “But I must not harbor resentment against Mrs. Markle. She is charming and so clever. Instead I must try to like her. I wish I could sew as well as she can.”

She picked up the dainty camisole whereon Hortense had embroidered the exquisite rose and examined it closely. She took from her basket a little magnifying glass she occasionally made use of in doing very fine embroidery. Through the glass she could see where the patch had been inserted.

“I must not look at people through a magnifying glass,” she mused. “If it magnified their perfections it would be all right, but it seems only to show up their faults. I have shown a poor spirit myself this morning, and if I turned the magnifying glass on my own soul, it would disclose many ugly patches and gashes.” She put her hand over her eyes and offered a silent prayer for a just and contrite spirit.

When the girls came back from the garden, they found Irene with a smile on her sensitive face and on her lips a gay little tune she was humming.

“I do hope you have decided to have the wedding out of doors,” she cried. “If it is out of doors, I can see it too, as I will be a spectator. From my chair I can see the procession as it comes through the yew hedge and follows the garden walk.”

“But, Irene—” began Mary Louise.

“Don’t but Irene me,” laughed the girl. “As for bridesmaids: they are like the purple cow to me, ‘I’d rather see than be one.’ Let me be a kind of vestal virgin, stationed near the altar.”

“But I have always said that I would have no maid of honor but you,” declared Mary Louise, “and I won’t.”

“You shall have to swallow your words then, my dear,” insisted Irene.

“If not a maid, you might have a matron,” suggested Hortense.

“Certainly,” agreed Irene.

“Nobody could take the place of Irene,” objected Mary Louise.

“But, honey, a place in a wedding procession is not a place in your heart,” whispered Irene, drawing her friend close to her.

“I have heard brides say that, unless they have an attendant, the thing is hard to go through with,” said Hortense. “Of course you might go on your grandfather’s arm, but it is not quite so picturesque as having all girls. Black coats, when all is told, are ugly affairs.”

“Grandpa Jim would rather not be too much in evidence, I think. The truth of the matter is he is afraid he might get stage fright. He says it is hard enough on him to have to give me away. Will you be my matron of honor, Hortense?”

“But, my dear, you must have closer and dearer friends than I am among the young married people. Nobody who loves you more, but—”

“Please,” begged Mary Louise.

“Why, of course! I feel more flattered than I can say.”

And so it was settled.

“We must plan the dresses, making each color the one the wearer prefers. I must wear pale grey, as I am merely the bride’s shadow. I must not show much.”

“And I want pink!” cried one.

“And I blue!” said another. And so on until all the colors in the rainbow and some others were appropriated either by the girls present for themselves or for the absent members.

“Suppose it rains!” suggested Elizabeth.

“But it couldn’t and it wouldn’t!” cried Lucile. “Not on Mary Louise’s wedding day.”

Irene was quietly gathering up her sewing things preparatory to her departure. As the girls discussed their bridesmaids’ dresses, she glanced at Hortense and could not help noting a kind of triumph in her bearing.

JOSIE O’GORMAN

Detective O’Gorman’s death while he was abroad on United States Secret Service brought sadness to the hearts of many, even to some of the criminals whom his almost uncanny powers had been instrumental in bringing to justice.

“A good thief has some respect for a good detective,” one noted cracksman, who was serving his term in the penitentiary, was heard to say when the news came that his one-time enemy was no more. “There is pleasure in trying to circumvent a man like O’Gorman, but most of these so-called detectives have gone into the business because they have failed as life insurance agents. It is no fun trying to get ahead of them. They are too easy.”

Little Josie O’Gorman mourned keenly the loss of her father. He had been everything to her and it was hard to feel that he was gone and she was never to see his dear, homely face again. Not that Josie thought his face was homely. She considered his funny fat nose more classic than the one worn by the sculptured Adonis and much more fitting to follow a scent; and his round eyes that could narrow down to slits when he got on the right track in a big case were to the daughter more expressive than Wallace Reid’s or any other movie hero’s.

Crushed at first by the blow of his sudden death, Josie had felt that never again could she go about the business of living; but the girl came of sturdy stock and she knew too well that her father would have been disappointed in her if she had given up to the grief that was well nigh overwhelming her.

“I must do as he would wish me to do. He would never sit and mope,” she declared to herself and immediately wrote to Mary Louise that she was thinking of coming to settle in Dorfield, as Washington was too sad for her right then.

“I am not going to stay with you, though, honey,” she wrote. “But must have a place of my own. I’ll engage in some business because I don’t know how to be idle. I must hunt a partner and perhaps I might get a flat and go to housekeeping.”

When Elizabeth Wright told Mary Louise of her unrest and determination to leave the ranks of unproductive consumers, Mary Louise immediately thought of Josie and how well the two girls might hit it off together.

Josie came, a sad little figure.

“Sadder than she would be if she had on mourning,” Mary Louise said to herself as she embraced her friend at the station.

“I guess you expected to see me in mourning,” Josie said as they took their seats in Mary Louise’s car. “Somehow I’d like to have it on, but Father hated it so that I decided not to wear it. He used to say that people in dripping black simply exuded gloom and had no right to impose their sorrows an all around them. I must do what he wanted.”

“That’s a brave girl!” cried Mary Louise, holding her close for a moment before she started the car. “I think the war has changed people’s ideas concerning mourning. But you should have a gold star. Your father certainly was serving Uncle Sam just as much as a soldier.”

“That is what I think and so I have a gold star, but I wear it where it can’t be seen. It is just as much satisfaction to me and I can feel it shining on my heart. But tell me about yourself! When are you and Danny going to begin to trot in double harness?”

“In six weeks! This is the fifteenth of April and we have set the first of June. I am so sorry you won’t be a bridesmaid.”

“Well, I will be one in spirit, but just now I can’t quite make up my mind to go through with it in the flesh. When you wrote asking me, I was just as happy as could be that you wanted me, but I felt that I must not try. The fact that you did ask me though is shining on my heart just like the gold star.”

“And now I believe I have a partner for you. I don’t know just what you mean to do and neither does your partner, but she means to do something.”

“Well so do I, and that makes a good beginning towards congeniality,” laughed Josie.

“Have you any ideas?”

“A few!”

“So has Elizabeth Wright.”

“Is that my partner’s name? I know I shall like her. I always do like Elizabeths. I’m awfully funny about names. Some names I simply can’t stand. Persons who have those names have to prove themselves to be worthy before I accept them, while the ones who have the names I like have a hard time proving themselves unworthy. I try to have an open mind where names are concerned, realizing that it is no fault of the namee but of the parents.”

“Did I have to prove myself worthy before you accepted me?” asked Mary Louise, amused as usual by her friend’s whimsical way of looking at things.

“Not at all! Your name was one of my strongest reasons for coming to your rescue, hiring myself to Mrs. Conant as a servant so that I might guard your interests and prove your grandfather’s innocence. I felt in my heart that the grandfather of a Mary Louise must be good.”

“Well, your instincts were right that time. I believe really and truly that Grandpa Jim is the best man in the world.”

“Now that my father is gone, I think maybe he is,” said Josie earnestly.

The girls were silent for a while as they sped through the streets of Dorfield. Finally, Mary Louise spoke:

“What are your ideas for an occupation?”

“Of course, my work in life is unraveling mysteries and I mean to be as clever a detective as my father’s daughter should be, but I have an idea that the best way to succeed is to keep it dark. Now this is my plan: I want to have a shop of some sort where all kinds of persons will come, where I can get in touch with all conditions of folk and they will think I am just the shopkeeper and have no idea of my real calling.”

“Oh, Josie, you are so clever!”

“Not a bit of it! Don’t begin flattering me or I’ll approach my work in the wrong spirit. Father always said one must have a humble and contrite heart or the fine points would slip by.”

“What kind of shop were you contemplating?”

“Something quite different from any shop Dorfield now boasts. But you tell me what this Elizabeth was thinking of so she can get the credit if she deserves it. We may have had the same plans in mind. Ideas seem to be in the air like flocks of birds and the same ones or ones of the same family light on several persons at the same time.”

“Elizabeth wants a literary work-shop, where one could get manuscript typed and corrected. She thought she might combine a clipping bureau with it and even write articles for persons who had not the brains to do their own work. She says she could do obituaries and valedictories and club papers for aspiring females, also speeches for politicians. Elizabeth is very clever but comes of the stuffiest, most conservative family. The mother is one of those women who are work crazy but never want their daughters to raise their hands and the father is living about fifty years too late. Mrs. Wright would have been a wonder if she had had the outlook to go into business instead of wasting all her energies on cleaning and cooking and getting husbands for her daughters. Elizabeth is dead tired of being what she calls ‘an unproductive consumer.’ The taste she had of being at work and drawing a salary during the war has ruined her as far as taking her place in the family of daughters, all of them striving towards the matrimonial goal. Elizabeth is determined to break the bonds.”

“Bully for Elizabeth! She sounds fine to me. I like the idea of the literary work-shop and clipping bureau. Does she know short-hand as well as typewriting?”

“I believe she knows it but has no speed, having just picked it up by herself.”

“Better and better! She is the kind that picks things up by herself. When can I see my partner?”

“She will come to see you this morning. Elizabeth always wants to get what she is interested in going immediately. She is like her mother in some ways but a much more comfortable person to be with.”

They found Elizabeth Wright awaiting them when they arrived at Colonel Hathaway’s residence.

“Please excuse me if I have come too soon, but I couldn’t wait,” she cried as she came forward to embrace Mary Louise and shake hands with her future partner.

“You couldn’t come too soon for me, but Josie may be tired after her long trip,” suggested Mary Louise.

“Not at all! I never let a trip tire me. My father used to say that it was nonsense for persons to get tired on a trip. ‘Just let the engine do the work and sit back and read and think and mix with your fellow passengers and you won’t get tired. The persons who let a journey make them tired are usually the ones who feel somehow that they must help pull the cars.’”

Elizabeth laughed. Already she was liking this funny little friend of Mary Louise. What an amusing looking person she was! Her features were not plain, although certainly not beautiful. Her hair was decidedly red, her face freckled but with a healthy color which kept the freckles from being too apparent. Her eyes were her best points, although at times she could make those eyes as stolid and dim as a half-wit’s. Her teeth were excellent, but as she usually laughed with her eyes one seldom saw her teeth. Elizabeth thought her face was interesting.

Josie O’Gorman was older than Mary Louise and her other friends, but there was something very youthful about her little figure and as she always dressed in misses’ sizes and cuts she could easily have passed for seventeen, although she was at least twenty-two. She said she bought juvenile clothes because they fitted her small figure and because they were especially designed for boarding school girls who were late for breakfast and had no time to fool with hooks and eyes. Her favorite style of dress was a one-piece affair that slipped over her head like a middy blouse. It hung in straight pleats from yoke to hem, confined loosely at the waist by a low hanging leather belt. Her headgear was always a straight brimmed sailor and her shoes of a broad-toed, low-heeled, sensible style. In the winter she wore blue serge in the morning, white serge in the evening and heavy white rajah silk for dress-up. In the summer, it was blue linen in the morning, white linen in the evening and linen lawn or crepe de chine for dress-up. Josie always looked fresh and well dressed, if not in the latest fashion, and she had to take no thought whatsoever concerning her apparel, not even as much as a man, since she had no collar button with which to contend and no stiff collars to be frayed out by heartless laundries. She could carry everything she possessed in a small wardrobe trunk with its convenient compartments for different garments. She always kept her clothes in her trunk whether she was at home or on a visit and a neat handbag ready packed with a change of linen and toilet articles in case of a sudden journey being sprung upon her. That was the result of her father’s training.

Detective O’Gorman used to say: “If we are to track criminals we must be as ready as criminals and I am sure no thief or murderer worthy of the name would have to stop and pack a grip to go on an enforced trip whether he knew he was hounded or not.”

Josie desired above all things to be as much like her father as a young girl could be like a middle-aged man and she was bidding fair to succeed.

She constantly quoted her father, who had been full of wise saws. Sometimes Josie gave him credit for sayings that were well known to have belonged either to Solomon or Good Richard, but the devoted daughter was sure they had originated with Detective O’Gorman and those other two less brilliant gentlemen had plagiarized his wisdom.

“Now tell us, Josie, what are your plans for a shop?” suggested Mary Louise after Elizabeth and Josie had finished sizing each other up. “I have told Josie what you are contemplating, Elizabeth.”

“My idea is a kind of higgledy-piggledy place, a place where one can get anything under heaven that is needed, because, if we happen not to be carrying it in stock, we will take orders for it if there is time to wait for an order or we will go out and shop for it if the thing can be bought in Dorfield. We will bargain to furnish anything from strawberries in January to information concerning the identity of the doorkeeper in Congress who dropped dead when news came of Cornwallis’ surrender. I know of a shop called ‘The Serendipity Shop.’ That, I believe, is the name Leigh Hunt gave to a place where one could go in and find out anything. But that has too erudite and obscure a meaning for us, who mean to be quite plain and simple. I think Higgledy-Piggledy Shop would be a grand name for us. Don’t you?”

“Splendid!” was the verdict of both her listeners.

“I have perhaps the most complete collection of encyclopedias and dictionaries outside of the Congressional Library. Father was daffy about exact information and had systematically collected all books that professed to contain such information from ‘Inquire Within, 3,700 Facts for the People,’ to the latest and most down-to-date dictionary of war slang. These books will be invaluable.”

“Will you let our customers—clients—patients—whatever we will call them, have access to these books?” asked Elizabeth.

“Not on your life! No more than doctors let us read their books for fear we might cure ourselves and they would be minus fees.”

CHAPTER V
THE WRIGHT FAMILY

The Wright family was up in arms over Elizabeth’s decision “to go into trade.” That was the way they expressed the fact that their daughter and sister was going to open up the Higgledy-Piggledy Shop with the unstylish girl from Washington.

“What will people say?” questioned Gertrude.

“I haven’t a doubt it will simply ruin her chances for ever having a proposal,” said Annabel. “Elizabeth is pretty enough, but she is so peculiar. Men don’t like peculiar girls.”

“She is so selfish to be doing such a silly thing,” complained Pauline. “I just know people will get mixed and think Margaret and I are the ones.”

“Well, it is too bad,” put in Mrs. Wright, as she bustled in. “I am sure I have done my best to make all of you girls have a good time and, now the war is over, I hoped Elizabeth would be contented to make her debut in society. Of course, I could put my foot down and say she shouldn’t, but I hate to take issue with her—”

“Yes, and if you do she will simply go off and live with that funny little Miss O’Gorman, who never had a beau in her life, I could wager anything. What does Father say?” yawned Margaret, who was busily engaged in putting an extra polish on her already highly glazed finger nails.

“Say about what?” asked Mr. Wright as he entered the room, his arms laden with pamphlets with which he was planning to spend a happy morning.

“Say about Elizabeth’s crazy plan to open up a foolish shop,” explained Margaret.

“Well, it seems strange to me that one of my blood should engage in mercantile pursuits. There has never been a member of the family that I know of, in trade. What is the nature of her undertaking?”

Mr. Wright always used the longest words he could think of. The strange thing was he did not often seem to have to think of them but had them on his tongue’s end.

“As far as we can make out they are going to sell everything from pins to pianos,” said Gertrude.

“She will have to stop when the warm weather sets in, because I have taken the lake cottage for two months, July and August, and expect to close up the house in town,” declared Mrs. Wright briskly.

“Why don’t you get it a month earlier and force Elizabeth to come in June?” suggested Pauline.

“Good idea! I could get it quite cheaply for June, they may even let me have it for almost nothing, as June is an off month for the lake and it is better for property to have a tenant than not, especially where one takes such good care of a place as I am sure I try to do. I shall have to ask you girls to go in the parlor or dining room this morning, I am going to have this room thoroughly cleaned. The books must be dusted and the walls wiped down. The windows were washed last week, but it would not hurt them to be washed again. I may have the rug beaten too.”

“Oh, Mother, for pity’s sake, the library is clean enough!” complained Annabel. “Why don’t you let us stay put?”

“Not at all! I work my fingers to the bone trying to make a comfortable home for your father and you girls and all I ask of you is to move to another room.”

Mr. Wright had settled himself on the sofa with his catalogues and was loath to move, but move he must, as a sullen colored maid came in with broom and rags and ladder and pail.

“I ain’t never wucked fur no lady possessed with sech a clean devil befo’,” she grumbled as she began to dismantle the room. “Th’ ain’t no wonder th’ ain’t no nap lef on this here cyarpet. It done had all the nap breshed off’n it. It’s a wonder the winders don’t come inter holes with all the washin’ they gits. Yo’ maw don’t let the dus’ git laid befo’ she’s a stirrin’ it up again,” she said to the girls as they reluctantly trailed from the room.

The abused creatures had hardly settled themselves in the parlor when Mrs. Wright called from upstairs:

“Girls, come on up here! Miss Pinkie and I are ready to try on those shirt waists. All of you come, as we are ready for all of you.”

Miss Pinkie was the sewing woman engaged spring and fall for a month at the time to get the family in order. Mrs. Wright sewed with her and occasionally one of the daughters condescended to make buttonholes or put a little finishing handwork on the garments. Miss Pinkie was a good sempstress but undervalued her acquirements so that she was willing to work for very little money. Mrs. Wright with her usual efficiency did all the cutting and fitting, although Miss Pinkie was quite capable of doing it herself.

“Heavens! Mother won’t let us sit still a minute,” complained Pauline.

“Sometimes I think Elizabeth shows her sense to get out of it all,” whispered Margaret to Gertrude, but Gertrude looked so shocked at her younger sister that Margaret declared she was just fooling. It did not seem very hard lines to have to go upstairs and stand to have shirt waists fitted on one, but the idle Wright girls felt it to be. How much happier they would have been if their mother had seen fit to have them make their own clothes, but that lady thought she was doing everything in her power to make her children contented in working for them from morning until night. It was much easier to sew for them than to teach them how to sew.

“I need more buttons,” said Mrs. Wright briskly as the daughters entered the sewing room. “Are you going out this morning, any of you girls?”

“We had not planned to go. We aren’t dressed for the street,” drawled Gertrude. “We were up late last night at the dance.”

“Well, never mind, then! I can get them myself. I am afraid you would not get the right size anyhow,” was the mother’s cheerful acceptance of her daughter’s selfishness. “It won’t take me a minute to get dressed and I can market for to-morrow while I am down town. I think I’ll step in and see how that foolish Elizabeth is getting on while I am near the building.” Her curiosity was as strong as her disapproval.

“Oh, let’s all of us go!” exclaimed Pauline. And so the four who were too weary to change their dresses to go buy buttons went gayly off to prepare themselves to visit their foolish sister in what they considered her degrading stronghold.

“I’ll see the agent and engage the cottage at the lake for June, while I am down town,” said Mrs. Wright as she bustled into her street clothes after having fitted the shirt waists and given Miss Pinkie minute directions as to how to sew them up.

Mrs. Wright and her daughters made a handsome group as together they walked down the street. The mother had been a very pretty girl and still was a good looking woman, although she had no time to give to her own appearance. She spent all the money and time that could be spared on beautifying her daughters. Her object in life was to marry them well and it was said by the knowing ones of Dorfield that she kept a list of the eligible young men of the town and carefully cultivated them in degree according to their eligibility.

“Who was that young man who bowed to you just now?” she asked Pauline sharply. “I never saw him before.”

“He’s a friend of Danny Dexter’s. I met him last night at the dance. He’s on a newspaper, I believe.”

“What newspaper?”

“The Recorder. He dances divinely.”

“You did not tell me his name.”

“I don’t know it.”

“Weren’t you introduced?” she asked, shocked.

“Oh, yes, but I didn’t catch his name. It was kind of Frenchified in sound.”

“Well you had better find out. He looks quite nice. We might ask him to call and then have him down to the lake for a week end. We must not go to the lake before Mary Louise Burrows’s wedding. I would not have you girls miss it.”

“I don’t believe for an instant she intends to ask any of us but Elizabeth, who has to be asked as she is bridesmaid,” said Gertrude.

“Not ask you! Absurd! You can just leave that to me. Of course, I know she is supposed to have only her intimate friends and all that, but Danny Dexter knows every man in Dorfield and they are sure to be there.” Quite cheerfully the Wright girls were willing to leave it to her, for they felt sure it would come out all right with such a major general maneuvering for them.

The buttons were bought; the next day’s marketing done; the real estate agent interviewed and the cottage at the lake engaged for June at a bargain; and then the cavalcade started for the old building where Josie and Elizabeth had rented a room which they were rapidly converting into a Higgledy-Piggledy Shop.

“It all seems so vulgar,” commented Pauline, as with raised skirts she tripped up the far from clean stairs.

“Not even an elevator,” from Gertrude.

“I’d like to come down here and scrub this place!” exclaimed Mrs. Wright.

“Well, for Heaven’s sake don’t!” cried Annabel. “It is bad enough to have one’s sister keeping a shop without having one’s mother scrubbing one.”

They all of them laughed at Annabel’s rueful countenance and, without knocking, opened the door and walked into the Higgledy-Piggledy Shop.

CHAPTER VI
THE HIGGLEDY-PIGGLEDY SHOP

It was well named! If higgledy-piggledy meant topsy-turvy I am sure there was no place on the globe so suited to that name. Our young would-be shopkeepers were busily engaged trying to get order out of chaos when the Wright family came bursting in on them.

“Heavens, what a mess!” cried Gertrude.

“Yes, but we are not ready for callers,” said Elizabeth rudely. It was a great irritation to her that her family should have turned up at that particular moment. Why couldn’t they let her alone? After everything should be in order, she hoped they would come to see how clever their arrangements were, but just now it was too much to have them come poking in her place of business.

“We are very glad to have callers at any time,” declared Josie, who had been literally standing on her head in a packing box from which she had been unearthing the last of the encyclopedias. The astute Josie had no idea of going into business with the ill will of anyone it was possible to avoid. She well understood how the Wrights looked upon this seemingly mad venture of Elizabeth’s and she was anxious to do all she could to make things easier for her youthful partner.

“Our things have just come and we are trying to get them placed. Wouldn’t you like me to show you how nicely we are to be fixed up?” she asked Mrs. Wright, in whose energetic countenance she saw some hope of interest.

“Why, yes, I should,” answered that lady, looking at Josie earnestly. She rather liked what she saw in Josie O’Gorman’s countenance and certainly she could not help being interested in the girls’ plans.

They had rented a long narrow room that covered the entire second floor of the shabby old building which was squeezed in between two sky-scrapers so tightly that it seemed to be gasping for breath. It had been spared destruction and improvement because of some hitch in the title and nobody had been willing to put money in a piece of property with an unfortunate name for getting its owner into trouble. The consequence was that tenants were difficult to obtain and impossible to hold. Even real estate agents did not like to handle it. It was now in the hands of Mr. Markle and it was from him that Josie and Elizabeth had rented it. On the ground floor was a cleaning and dyeing establishment and the third floor was cut up into several rooms in which various small industries were carried on.

“It isn’t exactly what we wanted, but it was cheap and we can make it attractive, I believe,” Josie explained. “Thank goodness it has a fire place, not that that makes much difference right now but when next winter comes we will be glad of its cheeriness. We are planning to branch out in so many directions and this huge room will give us plenty of space in which to expand. In front we are to have our reception room and shop where we will display our wares. In the back I am to live and have kitchen, bedroom and bath. The middle part is to be our store room.”

“Are you to draw chalk marks to show which is which?” asked Mr. Wright, who was becoming more and more interested in her eager little hostess.

“I am to have partitions made in the back, not to go all the way to the ceiling but just high enough to give me some privacy, and we are to have a huge portiere to divide the front shop from the store room and a smaller one cutting off our information bureau. The carpenters are going to work to-day on our partitions and the plumbers also are to install our bath tub, kitchen sink, gas stove, etc. My furniture is here and I intend to set up housekeeping immediately.”

“Not in all this confusion?”

“But all this confusion will be worse confounded in a few hours. Mary Louise is coming in a few minutes and is bringing her own housemaid to help clean up and Danny Dexter is coming later in the afternoon with some of his friends to help.”

Mrs. Wright began to feel sorry that she had not put off their visit until afternoon. Her ruling passion of having her daughters receive attention from young men was uppermost. She had not thought of this absurd shop as a place where desirable young men might come. At any rate, she intended to wait until Mary Louise should arrive and set the matter at rest in regard to all of her daughters being invited to the wedding.

While Mrs. Wright’s ruling passion was the desire to have her daughters popular and married, another passion was almost as strong in her bosom and that was, cleaning up. What a field here presented itself! She was sure she could take hold of the disorder and get things cleaned and into place much better than could Mary Louise’s maid. This Josie O’Gorman might be able to scrub and clean, but she was pretty sure her daughter Elizabeth could not; at least she had never seen her do more than dust the parlor at home.

“Here, child, give me that hammer! You don’t know how to open a box,” she said to Elizabeth, who was drawing nails from the top of a huge box of books.

“But I can,” insisted Elizabeth; “at least I can learn.”

“Pooh! Just let me do it.” She grasped the hammer, but Elizabeth refused to release her hold.

“I am going to open the box,” she announced firmly and proceeded to carry out the statement in spite of her mother’s protests.

Amazement was depicted on the countenance of Mrs. Wright. Mary Louise arrived just then, followed by a maid carrying a great basket of provisions.

“Luncheon!” said Mary Louise. “The carpenters and plumbers are to have lunch with us.”

“What fun!” exclaimed Josie and Elizabeth.

“I am sorry I can’t ask all of you to join us,” said Mary Louise, graciously taking in Mrs. Wright and the four daughters in her polite smile, “but I did not count noses, or rather mouths, for so many, and carpenters and plumbers do eat so much.”

“I think Elizabeth had better come on home with me,” said her mother a little stiffly. She did not want to do anything to anger Mary Louise, but she did think she was coming it a little strong to be asking one of her daughters to sit down and eat with the carpenters and plumbers. No doubt they were very worthy persons but hardly fit associates for such aristocrats as the Wrights.

“Indeed I am not coming home,” spoke up Elizabeth quickly. “I have a great deal to do this afternoon and you people at home might as well get used to the idea that I am going to be away from home every day and all day.”

“By the way, my dear,” said her mother suavely, “I have rented the lake cottage for June, July and August, so you shall have to forego the pleasures of shop keeping for those months at least, as we are to shut the town house.”

“Oh, I’ll just stay with Josie then,” said Elizabeth. “I have no idea of giving up my business every summer.”

Mrs. Wright looked shocked. This was a new thing for a member of her family not to be accepting the arrangements she made for them. She would have to take this refractory Elizabeth in hand. In the meantime, she decided not to let her daughter remain to lunch with carpenters and plumbers unchaperoned. Besides, she did so want to get her finger in the pie of straightening up the debris incident to unpacking. She was sure Mary Louise’s maid knew nothing at all about how to go to work to get the place cleaned up.

“Gertrude, you and Annabel and Margaret and Pauline can go on home. I am going to stay and help these girls get this place in order. I can get it done in no time and then I’ll bring Elizabeth home with me.”

She began by taking off her hat and jacket and tying around her ample waist an old curtain that had been used in packing some of Josie’s treasures.

Elizabeth was aghast for a moment. It looked as though her mother could not even let her run the little shop without her assistance. Where would be her highly prized independence if Mrs. Wright was to superintend everything and even do the cleaning? Why couldn’t she let her alone? She looked appealingly at her sisters, who were reluctantly taking their departure. She caught Margaret’s eye. Margaret was the sister who was a little like Elizabeth in that she occasionally rebelled, at least in spirit, against the state of inertia in which the very managing mother held her entire family. Margaret was quick of tongue too and not in the least in awe of her efficient parent.

“Now, Mother!” she cried, coming to Elizabeth’s assistance. “I should think you could see with half an eye that you are not in the least needed here. For pity’s sake, let Elizabeth have half a chance and stop butting in.”

“What do you mean?” asked Mrs. Wright severely.

“I mean the girls were getting on perfectly well here without your assistance and you have a sempstress at home and the library was in a sad state when we left and company is coming to supper—and—”

“Heavens! I forgot all about that! But this seems more important. I—”

“Oh, come along, Mother!” insisted Margaret.

Mary Louise and Josie had retired to the back of the long room. They were intensely sorry for Elizabeth, but felt that it was something they could not very well interfere with. If her mother chose to come down to the shop to make a nuisance of herself, it could not be helped. After all she was Elizabeth’s mother and must be treated with respect. It was with a feeling of intense relief that they saw her untie the old curtain and don her hat and coat.

“I cannot stay to-day,” she said as the two girls came towards her. “I am extremely sorry, as I am sure I could have straightened you out in short order. You will never manage to get all of this trash cleared away, I am sure, unless you, Miss O’Gorman, are much more capable than Elizabeth.”

“I am not a bit more, but I am sure we can do it,” declared Josie with a twinkle in her eye.

“I am much interested in your wedding,” went on Mrs. Wright, riveting her attention on Mary Louise. “In fact I am going to put off our going to the lake for a few days so that we will be able to attend. I am deeply disappointed not to be making Elizabeth’s bridesmaid’s dress myself, but since it was decided Mrs. Barlow was to make them all, of course, I had to give way to her. At least, I can have the satisfaction of making dresses for my other girls.”

“Oh—yes—of course!” Mary Louise managed to say. “I’ll be so glad to have you stay over.”

With a triumphant swoop Mrs. Wright gathered together her four daughters and ushered them out of the shop and down the dusty stairs. She was so delighted that her superior management had drawn from Mary Louise an invitation for her entire family to the highly desirable wedding reception that she forgot all about making a point about taking Elizabeth home for luncheon.

“I hate to leave her,” she said, after Pauline reminded her of her remissness, “but one can’t manage everything at once.”

“No?” questioned Margaret with a rising inflection that might have been taken for impertinence by her mother had she not been taken up with gazing at an automobile full of young men stopping in front of the ramshackle building where the Higgledy-Piggledy Shop was coming into being.

“How do you do, Mr. Dexter?” she said graciously, as the young man who was driving the car raised his hat.

“I believe my soul they are going up to the shop,” she said with some irritation to her daughters. “And what are those things they are carrying? Why, it is plumbing! There is a bath tub and pipes right in the car with them. And look! The car behind them, also full of young men, is bringing a gas stove.”

“And there is Billy McGraw driving a lumber wagon!” exclaimed Gertrude.

Billy McGraw was known as the richest young man in Dorfield, the richest and the best dressed, and to see him in khaki trousers, evidently left over from his recent army experience, and olive drab sweater on top of a load of lumber was too much for the curiosity of the Wrights.

“What can it mean?” wondered Annabel.

“It means that those are the carpenters and plumbers who are to lunch at the shop,” laughed Margaret. “Now aren’t you glad you didn’t drag Elizabeth away by the hairs of her head?”

“Well, well!” was all Mrs. Wright could answer, but when she got her breath after the surprise of finding out who the carpenters and plumbers were, she began with her usual ease to congratulate herself on her superior management.

“Sometimes we are wise just to leave things in the hands of Providence,” she said.

“Yes, but I am afraid Provy would never have wormed out of Mary Louise an invitation to her wedding for the entire Wright family,” said Margaret, pertly. “Some things we must attend to ourselves.”

CHAPTER VII
THE CAPTAIN OF HER SOUL

What a gay luncheon was that given in honor of the carpenters and plumbers! The huge hamper produced such a variety of goodies and the quantity was quite up to the quality, so that Josie, while she was thankful that Mary Louise had not invited the Wrights to remain, nevertheless wondered at her statement that there was not food enough for the extra mouths. There seemed to be food enough for a whole regiment, but when she saw how Danny and his friends attacked the provisions, she realized that Mary Louise had not been guilty of the polite fabrication which she feared.

Empty packing boxes were turned over and covered with white crepe tablecloths and the table set with paper plates and drinking cups and Japanese napkins. Piles of sandwiches, dishes of salad and cold meats, pickles and olives were placed thereon and the center decoration consisted of a great Lady Baltimore cake.

“It’s the birthday cake for the Higgledy-Piggledy,” explained Mary Louise, sticking in the center a pink candle.

“But it’s not a year old yet,” objected Billy McGraw. “It’s just born, I should say.”

“But this is a Japanese spread, you see,” laughed Mary Louise, “with Japanese napkins and tablecloths, Japanese crab salad, and so forth, and you know the Japs count their kids’ birthdays from the time they are born and a new born Japanese baby is one year old.”

“I sit corrected,” said Billy. “When do we eat?”

“Isn’t he the limit?” asked James Drake, another one of Danny’s chums who had fought with him in the Dorfield regiment. “I have never seen the likes of Billy for feeding his face.”

“Some faces are meant to be fed,” suggested Bob Dulaney, the young newspaper man who had made such an impression on Margaret Wright the evening before at the dance. “Billy’s face is that kind of face, one crying out to be fed. I was sure relieved when the armistice was signed before Billy got a chance to catch a bomb in that mouth of his.”

Billy grinned delightedly at this sally. His mouth was large, but it was saved from ugliness by thirty-two perfect teeth.

“What’s the use of my coming safe out of the trenches if you shoot off your gab and hit me in my fatal spot, you old ink pot?”

Bob Dulaney was, like Danny Dexter, not a native of Dorfield, but he had fought with that regiment during the war and after peace was declared had drifted to the spot where so many of his friends lived and, having obtained a position on the Recorder, had decided to settle in the pleasant old town. He was a delightful young man, full of wit and humor and quite as popular with the regiment as Danny himself. He had joined Danny in his undertaking of doing the carpentering and plumbing for the girls, although he was well known to have absolutely no mechanical skill.

“The only nail Bob ever hits on the head is a verbal one,” Danny explained, “but he hits them all right. He has come along to help lift and carry, not that he is much on that, unless it is an argument which is to be carried on.”

“He is some lifter too,” suggested Tim Turner, one of the other young men.

“Right you are!” laughed James Drake. “Remember the old cock he lifted off the roost that night on the outskirts of Nancy?”

“Remember it! I’ll never forget it, and how he went back for the ding dong,” said Tim.

“What’s a ding dong?” asked Josie, innocently.

“That’s Tim’s French for turkey,” cried Billy. “He means dindon.”

“Oh,” blushed Josie, “excuse me!”

“Not at all,” said Tim, blushing in his turn.

“You mean you won’t excuse her?” teased Billy.

“I mean—I mean—Oh you dry up!”

“But when are we to eat?” persisted Billy.

“Laura Hilton and Lucile Neal were coming in to help us,” said Mary Louise. “They will be along in a minute. It is really not quite time. I’m sorry you are so hungry.”

“Sorry! I’m glad, terribly glad—in fact, I’m thanking God for the room that is in me,” declared Bob Dulaney. “But let’s wait for the young ladies if it takes all day.”

“I do wish Irene could have come,” sighed Mary Louise. “I hated to drive off without her. She looked so sweet and patient sitting there in her chair and waving to me as cheerfully as though she expected to be one of the party. I left her in our garden where she loves to wheel her chair.”

“Who is Irene?” asked Bob Dulaney.

“Oh, Irene MacFarlane is my very best friend,” explained Mary Louise. “She is lame and has to spend all her waking hours in a wheel chair. She gets around remarkably well, but can’t go anywhere unless there is an elevator, as stairs are too much for her. I do wish Josie and Elizabeth could have found a place on the ground floor, just for Irene’s sake.”

“I wish we could have,” said Josie, “especially as Irene is almost a member of our firm. She is to take charge of our needlework department, but we shall have to carry everything to her.”

“If you only had an elevator,” sighed Mary Louise wistfully, the picture of her poor friend still in her mind, sitting so patiently in her chair, her fair smooth brow expressing peace and contentment when she must have felt some chagrin at Fate that she could not join the merry crowd at the Higgledy-Piggledy Shop.

“I forgot something important!” exclaimed Danny suddenly. “Can you put off luncheon just about ten minutes?”

“Why, of course, if you must go,” said Mary Louise. “Laura and Lucile will be here in two minutes,” consulting her tiny wrist watch. “Lucile inherits too much efficiency from her father ever to be a minute late.”

“Just a minute, sweetheart,” Danny whispered. “I’ll be back before you know I’m gone.”

“I doubt that,” smiled Mary Louise with a meaning understood by the happy Danny.

“Come on, Bob! You are the person who has to help lift. You come with me, please.”

“More bath tubs or another gas stove?” asked Bob as he raced down the steps after Danny. The two young men jumped into the car and were off and around the corner on two wheels before an excited cop had time to read their fast disappearing number.

“My Mary Louise wants something and I’m going to get it for her.”

“I heard her say she wanted an elevator. Is that what you are going to get?”

“Yes! When I can manage it, but that shall have to wait awhile until I can make my plans. Now I’m going to get Irene and you and I are going to carry her upstairs. She doesn’t weigh much.”

“Fine! I reckon we could manage her between us even though she weighed five hundred. How did you happen to think of it?”

“Well, you see I feel so terribly unworthy of Mary Louise that I made up my mind that the only way I could make up in the least little teensy weensy bit to her for what she is and what she has done and is going to do for me in marrying me is never to let her express a single desire without trying to gratify it.”

“Mighty noble of you, old fellow, but mightn’t you spoil her if you persist in such a policy?”

“Spoil my Mary Louise! Why, man, she is pure gold. You could not spoil her if you tried. It would have been done long ago by her grandfather and her friends if it could have been done. She never wants anything for herself. It is always for others.”

“Well, I am glad to be doing something for Miss Burrows, but I am pretty glad if we can help give the poor lame girl a lift too.”

When Irene saw Mary Louise drive off in her car with Dilsy, the housemaid, sitting on the back seat holding the huge hamper of lunch on her knees, it had taken all of her self-control not to show how, for the moment, the realization of her lameness, her handicap, was almost more than she could bear. She was able to keep an unruffled brow and to smile bravely, waving her handkerchief until the car was out of sight. Then she bowed her head and, in spite of her determination not to give way, she wept a few bitter tears.

She said to herself:

“Irene MacFarlane, I am ashamed of you. The idea of your being such a baby. I know you are missing lots of fun, about the best kind of fun. I know you do miss a lot of things, but stop whining and think of all the wonderful things that do come to you. Think of the joy of having such a friend as Mary Louise. Think of the good health you have in spite of your lameness. Think of all the books you can read. Think of the pupils you get in music. Think of the new Victrola Mary Louise’s Grandpa Jim gave you. Think of all the wonderful records you own and all you are to own in future. Think of the mockingbird singing now in the hedge. Think of Uncle Peter and Aunt Hannah and how they love you. Powder your nose this minute so they won’t know you have been making a baby of yourself!”

She produced from her work bag a tiny vanity case and carefully powdered her exceedingly well formed nose, looking critically at herself the while.

“You are not a bad looking person, Irene MacFarlane, but if you turn crybaby you’ll be hideous. Hold up your head and behave yourself if you have a spark of sense.” She laughed and held up her head and then in a low tone recited Henley’s Invictus.

“It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.”

She had begun in a whisper, but as the poem clutched her heart strings, as that particular poem always did, she spoke aloud. Her voice was singularly clear and musical. She had not noticed a car stopping at the entrance to Colonel Hathaway’s nor did she realize that two young men were walking towards her across the close cut grass.

Danny and Bob took off their hats and stood with heads bowed while the girl finished her impassioned recitation of that gallant hearted poem.

“I felt kind of like I was in church,” Danny said to Mary Louise afterwards when telling her of the occurrence.

“And so you were,” she had replied. “Somehow the Divine which is within all of us is more apparent to the naked eye in Irene than in any one else I know. And where God is, there is his Church.”

When Irene looked around and saw the two young men, she was devoutly glad she had powdered her nose. Irene did have much of the Divine within her but she also had enough of the feminine to wish to appear at her best when good looking young men suddenly came upon her.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “How do you do, Danny?”

“I do finely except that I am starving and I can’t eat until you consent to come eat with us. This is my friend Mr. Dulaney, Bob for short. And, Bob, this is our best friend, Miss MacFarlane, Irene for all times.”

“How do you do, Bob for Short?”

“And how do you do, Irene for all Time?”

He took the lame girl’s hand in his and looked earnestly in her eyes. The skillful use of the vanity case did not deceive him. He saw in her eyes that she had been suffering, and that not many minutes before. Powdering her nose had not thrown dust in his eyes if it did fool Danny. He saw and understood. The calm peace of her brow he felt was but a camouflage worked by an indomitable will to conceal the anguish of soul the poor girl must often have suffered. His gaze was so kind that Irene felt she had made a new friend.

“Will you go?” asked Danny. “Lunch in the shop awaits us.”

“But I can’t get up stairs,” faltered Irene. “You see, there is no elevator.”

“Yes there is—a human elevator like this,” and grasping wrists the young men formed what children call a basket and stooped invitingly in front of Irene’s chair. “Mary Louise is sad without you and you know we can’t let Mary Louise be sad.”

“So are we all, at least so am I, now that I have seen Irene for all Time. Put on your hat and come on, please do,” Bob entreated.

“But I am too heavy.”

“Heavy! Why we have carried in a porcelain bath tub and a gas range. I am no good except to carry on,” insisted Bob. “Must I tell anyone you are gone?”

“No, I live right next door, but Aunt Hannah is out and she will know I am with Mary Louise if I’m not at home.”

“Here is your hat, so tie it on,” he said, taking a pretty garden hat from the back of Irene’s chair. “What a nice hat! I certainly do like hats that have some raison d’etre. Now this hat really shades and still one can see under it,” he laughed, peeping under the brim and, without any by your leave, he stooped and picked Irene up in his strong arms and started for the car.

“We don’t need a basket just now, I can tackle this burden alone. Danny, you can climb in and get up steam.” Tenderly he deposited Irene on the back seat and got in beside her and away they speeded for the postponed luncheon.

“I think it is great for you to pick up and come without even having to fluff up your hair or change your dress,” Bob said, looking admiringly at the neat little lawn frock worn by his companion.

The first thing one noted about Irene MacFarlane was her exquisite neatness and freshness. Her hair was soft and abundant and the glossy coils gave evidence of much brushing. Her complexion was clear and, while not rosy, still there was a soft glow of health in the oval of her cheeks. No longer was the lame girl delicate but, under the watchful care of Aunt Hannah and Mary Louise, she had thrown off the fragility of her early girlhood and now could boast of almost perfect health. Of course, her form of exercise was restricted, but what gymnastics she could do she did religiously. The consequence was in those slender arms and well formed shoulders there was a great deal of strength and under the artistic tapering of her fingers there was concealed a grip of steel. The lines of her figure were good. Nature had meant her for a “perfect woman, nobly planned,” but the disease which had attacked her in infancy had withered and enfeebled the lower limbs.

Irene’s clothes were of extreme simplicity but her skill with a needle was manifest in the well fitting frocks which she pressed herself with the help of a lap-board and an electric iron. There was never a wrinkle in Irene MacFarlane’s dress, but nobody ever saw her fussing over her clothes. When she arose in the morning, she dressed for the day. Mary Louise used to say her friend reminded her always of a narcissus flower, not the hot-house kind but the ones that came up year after year in Grandpa Jim’s old-fashioned flower beds.

CHAPTER VIII
THE ORCHID BROOCH

“Why don’t we begin on the eats?” demanded Billy McGraw. “I am starving in the sight of plenty.”

“He is always that way,” said Tim Turner. “Ever since the time in the trenches there has been no satisfying Billy. Bet anything the trenches will be filled up and leveled over before Billy is filled up.”

“Well, I hope they will be leveled over before I am,” laughed Billy, good-naturedly. “It’s so Miss Wright, I can even eat beans and stew, two things at which most of the returned soldiers balk. Still no one answers me—why do we wait?”

“We are waiting for Danny,” blushed Mary Louise. “He had to leave for a few moments.”

“Tut, tut! Don’t begin by spoiling him.”

“But you couldn’t spoil Danny,” insisted his loyal little fiancée. “I don’t know what he went out for, but I am sure he had some unselfish reason.”

“You can’t spoil me either,” pleaded Billy.

“Any more than you can gild the lily or paint the rose. You are already in a state of decomposition,” put in Tim.

“Somebody take pity on me and feed me! Danny may be gone a year or so. He often goes away and doesn’t return. Even now he may be eating at a restaurant—”

“Here, here’s a sandwich!” said Elizabeth Wright. “Here are two sandwiches and a chicken leg.”

“Gee! You are a nice girl,” cried Billy. “About the nicest girl I know. You’ll be even nicer if you sit over here by me while I get on the outside of this ambrosia.”

He looked at Elizabeth Wright with a feeling of real interest. Up to that moment he had only regarded her as one of the Wright sisters with the managing mother of whom he lived in holy terror. Being an exceedingly well off young man, he was on Mrs. Wright’s list with triple stars as one of the most eligible possibilities in Dorfield. He had felt that the Wright girls were quite as eager for his attentions as their mother, but this Elizabeth seemed to be different from the rest somehow. She did not seem to care whether he paid her attention or not. To be sure, she fed him, but it was with the compassion she might have shown a hungry dog, and when he asked her to sit down by him on the window seat while he ate the purloined sandwiches and chicken leg, she declined, saying she must help Josie unpack and had no time to watch the animals feed.

“Cruel!” he murmured through a muffling tomato sandwich. He could not help smiling to think how Mrs. Wright would have been shocked at a daughter of hers refusing even such a simple invitation as watching a desirable parti eat.

Billy McGraw had been in a fair way to become spoiled with all the money he could spend. He was an only child, with a doting mother of his own and all the managing mammas in Dorfield reaching out after him for their daughters. But the war had come just in time to save him not only from the managing mammas but from himself and the inevitable spoiling that wealth and self-indulgence was sure to bring him. He had enlisted as a private at the first call of his country and the training he had received in the ranks was to prove of life-long benefit to him. His was a lovable nature and it was hardly his fault that he had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but it was much to his credit that when the test came he was able to dispense with that same silver spoon and could manage to stomach the army beans often without even the formality of a fork. Now that the war was over he had returned to Dorfield with more purpose in his life. He had realized it was up to him to work in spite of his wealth and, having some mechanical skill, he had applied to the Neal Automobile Factory for a job with the determination of learning the business from the beginning. The consequence was he was enjoying his short Saturday as much as any workman in Dorfield. Lunch with a bunch of interesting girls would fully repay him for the job of carpentering and plumbing that Danny Dexter had mapped out for him for the afternoon.

“Here they are!” he shouted, peering down from the window, and in a moment Danny and Bob arrived with Irene borne between them in their improvised basket.

“Oh, Danny! You darling!” cried Mary Louise, rushing forward and embracing Irene, who sat smiling like a queen on her throne. “Here, sit here, Irene, in the seat of honor at the head of the packing box.”

“Wasn’t it lovely of them to come for me?”

“No lovelier than for you to come with us,” said Bob Dulaney in an undertone.

Laura and Lucile had arrived exactly on time and immediately the feast began. There was so much hilarity that the cleaning and dyeing establishment below began to wonder what manner of industry was to be conducted above them and some of the roomers on the third floor crept down and peeped in the door to see what all the fun was about.

In the midst of the luncheon, Mrs. Markle came tripping up the steps.

“Oh, please excuse me, I had no idea of interrupting a party,” she said. “I merely wanted to see Mary Louise for a moment and went by her home and was sent here by her darling old colored butler.”

“Oh, but you are not interrupting, Hortense,” declared Mary Louise, drawing her new friend into the room and introducing her to Josie and some of the young men with whom she was not acquainted. She knew most of the persons seated around the packing boxes.

“You must sit down and have some lunch,” said Josie hospitably. She looked keenly at the new arrival and evidently what she saw pleased her, as she smiled engagingly, making room for Hortense at her own right hand.

Indeed it would have been a critical person who would not have conceded that Hortense Markle was a delightful picture on that pleasant Saturday in May. Her gown was, as usual, exquisite. It was mauve and of soft material that clung to her shapely form. Her hat, a small toque, was formed of orchids and her one ornament was a brooch of wonderful workmanship. It was an orchid of rare beauty made of gold and enamel with a large diamond shining like a dew drop from its centre.

She took her seat, remarking as she did so that, since she had run in on them, she felt sure she would make less disturbance by sitting down than by making all the male guests stand while she transacted her business with Mary Louise.

“She is a lady of discrimination,” declared Billy McGraw to Elizabeth, by whom he had found a seat. “I know you think I am insatiable, but please take another sandwich and make out it is for yourself and then slip it to me. It is working in the factory that makes me so hungry. Sometimes I get empty enough to chew a rubber tire.”

“What a pretty woman!” said Bob Dulaney to Irene, by whose side he had found a seat and to whom he had been talking steadily during the gay luncheon.

“Yes, she is lovely,” said Irene, hoping devoutly her tone of voice was not divulging the feeling of something akin to hate that she could not help nursing for the dainty little newcomer, but, try her best, she could not put into her answer the enthusiasm that she wished to. Bob looked at his companion keenly.

“What’s up!” he asked himself. “Whatever it is, I’ll bet Irene for all Time is in the right. She doesn’t like the pretty lady and I wonder why.” But he said nothing to let Irene know he had fathomed her feelings in the matter.

“Excuse me,” said Billy McGraw, whose eyes showed plainly the admiration he felt for Mrs. Markle, “but do you know I think that’s the most beautiful breast-pin I ever saw except one I saw like it once.”

“Oh, I didn’t know there was one like it in the world,” said Mrs. Markle. “I declare these artists are an unreliable lot. My husband had this made for me by an old goldsmith in Munich. It was after his own design. Poor Mr. Markle worked on it for days and days and took such delight in the fact that it was to be the only thing of its kind in the whole world. Now that wretched old goldsmith has no doubt duplicated it.”

“The one I speak of was made at Tiffany’s. Of course, it too was supposed to be unique. Jerald Thomas had it made for his wife. I fancy old Jerry didn’t do the designing, though, for he is more of an adept on Wall Street reading the ticker than he is drawing orchids. I should like to see it closely if you wouldn’t mind,” he pleaded. “I have a perfect passion for finely wrought gold and enamel.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” answered Mrs. Markle, blushing a bit, which made her even lovelier than before, “but this brooch is a kind of keystone to my costume. You girls will understand, I know,” and she looked appealingly at the females. “Of course, mere man doesn’t know how a woman puts on her frock and then pins it at exactly the right place. I know it doesn’t show, all this care we take, but I am sure, if we didn’t take the care and if we put our brooches in the wrong place and at the wrong angle and had our gowns too tightly drawn up in front or too much open, then you would note the difference. I must confess that, when I dress, I go to work with a certain reverence, the kind of reverence a painter feels for his palette and canvas.”

“Well, far be it from me to ruin the picture,” laughed Billy. “And let me do reverence to the artist,” bowing low. “It was stupid of me to look at such perfection and to ‘consider the lilies’ just as though somebody had not been toiling and spinning to bring forth so much beauty.”

“I know you think I am foolish,” said Mrs. Markle, blushing again.

“Indeed we don’t, Hortense, we think you are exactly right not to ruin the effect of your lovely gown,” put in Mary Louise. “I know just exactly how it is. Sometimes I have a horrid time getting myself to look right and nothing would make me undo the work.”

Everybody laughed at this, as it was a well known fact among Mary Louise’s friends that she spent less time in front of the mirror than any pretty girl ever did. Being blessed with wavy hair that arranged itself, she had nothing to do but coil it in a low knot at the nape of her neck. She had many tastefully chosen gowns but they must be easy to get into with no complications of hooks and buttons to madden her. She often changed her dress on the fly trusting to luck that she was all right. And she usually was.

“Heavens above! I didn’t mean to get in bad. Please, Mrs. Markle, forgive me. It has actually taken my appetite away. I believe everybody here is down on me,” moaned Billy.

“Not at all, Mr. McGraw, and to show that I am not I’ll ask you to come call on us at our apartment and then you can see my little breast-pin to your heart’s content.”

“Thank you! Thank you! Now I believe I will have another piece of cake. My appetite is restored,” grinned Billy.

Bob Dulaney looked thoughtfully at Irene while the above conversation was carried on. His eye fell on the brooch at her throat, a pretty little enameled violet, as modest at the model from which it was taken and as unassuming as its wearer. He wondered if Irene could take off her pin without upsetting her costume. He smiled at the thought. On Irene’s smooth brow was a slight pucker and in her honest clear eyes he could detect a slight suggestion of scorn. It passed immediately and her usual placid expression returned, but the young man wondered again what the lame girl had against the beautiful Mrs. Markle and if she had any reasons for what he felt was a distrust of the fair stranger. He looked up and caught a twinkle in the eye of Josie O’Gorman. As though conscious that someone was catching her twinkling when she had no idea of letting anyone onto the fact that she was amused, Josie immediately took on the dull fish-eyed expression which was the despair of her friends.

“Umhum!” said Bob Dulaney to himself. “These girls are up to something, at least that funny red-headed one is.” And having a nose for news, an essential to every good newspaper man, he began to go over the situation in his mind.

“Enter a beautiful stranger, known to most of the company! Immediately Irene, who seems to be all kindliness and loveliness, shows what might almost be called temper, except that it was so carefully kept in that one could hardly see it. The beautiful stranger refuses with the utmost tact to take off her breast-pin, giving what seemed a good excuse and again Irene’s fair brow is clouded and the little red-headed girl who is going to help keep the Higgledy-Piggledy Shop is plainly amused, even delighted, but does not want anybody to know how she feels. A mystery is a mystery and, even though it prove nothing more than some kind of girlish foolishness or jealousy, me for the solving of it!”

CHAPTER IX
THE BOOK OF CRIMINALS

The carpenters and plumbers were soon busy with their tasks. The old building rang with the sound of hammer and saw. The partitions for bedroom, kitchen and bath were up in an inconceivably short time with the help of the tongue and groove sealing which had been cut the right length at the lumber yard under Danny’s directions. The ready-made doors were hung and the bath and small gas range put into place by the muscular Bob and connections made by those more expert in pipe fitting.

“It has been finished so rapidly it is almost like the little house Peter Pan built Wendy,” laughed Elizabeth.

“It is lovely,” said Lucile, “but I’d be afraid to sleep in a room that had no top to it. Just think how easy it would be for burglars to crawl over the partitions and run off with the family plate!”

“But there is no family plate and what there is will be out in the shop and not in my bedroom. Our bedroom, I should say, as I think Elizabeth will be spending the summer with me,” laughed Josie. “I’m never afraid and besides I carry a small automatic for emergencies.”

“You do? How amusing!” said Mrs. Markle, who had stayed on through the afternoon in spite of the fact that she had declared she had only a moment and wanted to see Mary Louise on some important matter which she forgot to divulge. She had been very charming and the young men, one and all, as Billy McGraw expressed it, “fell for her.”

“Don’t forget you are coming to call on us,” she said to that young man, sweetly. “I want you and Mr. Markle to know each other. You are sure to like each other. I know you think I am foolish, but my husband is such a dear.”

“Foolish because your husband is a dear?”

“I mean foolish to talk about it. I know it is not the thing in this day and generation for the wife to be too much in love with her husband, but I am hopelessly old-fashioned.”

“You evidently don’t know Dorfield, Mrs. Markle. It seems to be the style here for wives to be very fond of their husbands, but, of course, Dorfield is a million years behind the times, thank goodness!”

“It is lovely to see a young man who feels that way about things. So many young men are inclined to be facetious on the subject. Sometimes they seem to think I am not worth talking to because I am so unfeignedly devoted to my husband. Of course, I could have a much gayer time if I could disguise my feelings, but I can’t do it. They seem to think that, because Mr. Markle is so much older than I am, I must not be sincere in my protestations of affection. How absurd they are!”

“Your protestations?”

“No, I mean the young men.”

Now the above conversation sounds very silly when put down in cold print, but when it was carried on by a wonderful beautiful young woman with a voice that thrilled one down the spinal cord with a certain rich cello quality, eyes that were so deep and glorious that Billy in looking in them had a kind of feeling he must catch hold of something to keep from falling in, and withal a friendly, sweet, girlish grace, it did not seem at all silly to Billy McGraw. He forgot all about what a nice girl Elizabeth Wright was and how he had fully intended to ask her to go to the next dance with him, forgot why he had been asked to have lunch at the Higgledy-Piggledy Shop, forgot everything but how extremely lovely Mrs. Markle was and what a lucky dog her old husband was. Never having met that gentleman, he pictured him as tottering on the brink of the grave.

“Hey, Billy, pipe fitting going on! Come on and help! What do you think you are here for?” called Danny.

Mrs. Markle blushed again adorably.

“Oh, please go! I am mortified that I should have kept you chatting with me when they need you. You see sometimes I get just a teensy bit lonesome and long for the companionship of someone nearer my own age, just to talk foolishness to. My dear husband is so—so—deep and intellectual—not that you are not intelligent too—oh, ever so much so, but you don’t mind stooping to my foolish prattle.”

Billy went off to fitting pipes with quite a glow, around his generous, boyish heart.

“Poor little girl! I fancy she does get bored with such an old dry-as-dust as Markle must be. I’ll see if I can’t give her some good times.”

“Now do tell me something of what your plans are in this delightful place,” said Mrs. Markle, joining Josie and Elizabeth, who were busily engaged in unpacking more and more books, which Irene, seated on a low chair, was dusting and placing on the shelves.

“Well, this corner is our information bureau. These books are all of them different kinds of encyclopedias. Anybody who wants to know anything can come to us and we can come mighty near telling him or her what is wanted.”

“Where did you get such a collection, child? It is wonderful.”

“It was my father’s,” said Josie, with the look in her eyes that always came at mention of her father.

“Your father was the great detective, was he not?”

“Yes!”

“He was a wonderful man, so I have heard.”

“Yes, he was, thank you.” Josie’s tone was quite final, so Hortense did not pursue the subject.

“What else are you to do in your shop?” she asked.

“Oh, we are to have the literary work-shop, of which I spoke to you,” said Elizabeth. “And we are to have antiques of all kinds, and we are to take orders for sewing and fancy work. We will order any book direct from the publisher. We take orders for score cards, menu cards, name cards, or anything of that sort. Of course, we don’t do those things ourselves, but we will take the orders and get a small commission for them. Now Josie wants to open up a laundry where we have all kinds of fine laces, table linen, etc., done up. If that grows we shall have to get someone to take hold of it, but Josie says she can wash and iron as well as a blanchisseuse de fin and, if we don’t get too many orders, she will attend to that end herself.”

“It is my one accomplishment,” said Josie, “and I have a passion for it. I’d rather launder laces and fine linen than do anything in the world. I am no good at sewing or embroidering, but I can certainly add to anyone’s needlework by my manipulation of a flat-iron.”

“How interesting!” said Hortense. “Now I adore needlework, but am helpless with an iron and the more I wash things the dirtier they get. I have just finished some napkins and despair of ever getting them done up properly. My maid is a wretched laundress, almost as bad as her mistress. How I should love to be your first customer! Please let me bring my damask to you.”

“Why, of course,” answered Josie. “As soon as the boys get the gas stove up I am ready for washing and as soon as they get the electric wires installed I am ready for ironing.”

Irene had gone on steadily with her dusting while Hortense had been talking, never once looking up from her task. Occasionally, she opened one of the books and glanced at its contents. What a lot of learning one could find between the covers of those solid books! One long narrow book with a binding evidently home-made attracted her attention. She opened it, but its contents were still as a closed book to her. It was closely written manuscript of strange characters about as unintelligible as the notes of a stenographer would ordinarily be to her employer.

“What is this, Josie?”

“Oh, that is my father’s notebook! I am glad to see it,” exclaimed Josie. “I never intended to pack it with the other books but in the confusion of getting off I forgot it. I wouldn’t lose it for all the wealth of the Indies.” She clasped it to her bosom.

“That is the one you told me about?” asked Mary Louise, joining the group in the corner, “with all the notes he made about criminals and suspected criminals? Perhaps you don’t know it, Hortense, but Josie’s father knew more about the criminals in the United States, and the world perhaps, than almost anybody.”

“Ah, indeed! The book must be interesting reading for a student of criminology. I abhor the subject myself.”

“What’s that you abhor?” asked Bob Dulaney, who had no occupation for the time being, having helped lift everything that could be lifted and so had leisure to join the girls.

“Criminology!”

“Why, it is the most interesting subject in the world,” said Bob.

“Well, you would like this book then,” said Mary Louise, explaining it to the newcomer. Josie stood by with her fishy-eyed expression.

“You don’t mean Detective O’Gorman’s book! Why, I didn’t know you were the daughter of Detective O’Gorman. Know about him! I should say I did. Why, there isn’t a newspaper chap in the United States that doesn’t know about him. Gee, I’d like to get my hooks on his book.”

“Well, his book is all pot hooks, so it wouldn’t do you much good if you did,” laughed Josie, opening it so he could glance down a page. “I wouldn’t let it out of my possession for a mint of money.”

“If it’s something old Lifter wants you had better nail it down,” said Tim Turner. “Remember what I told you about the ding dong.”

“I guess it will be safe here,” said Josie, putting the slim volume of mysterious manuscript between two ponderous tomes. “Sure,” laughed Bob, “unless I come snooping in at night. It wouldn’t be so hard to make an entrance in this old building.”

“Don’t say such things,” begged Mary Louise. “I am scared to death to have Josie stay here by herself as it is.”

“Nonsense!” declared Josie.

“Not nonsense at all!” insisted Mary Louise. “Anyhow, I am glad you can’t stay to-night.”

“Well, as far as our work is concerned she can,” declared Danny. “The water and gas are connected and the walls of her house are built.”

“She just can’t, though!” said Mary Louise, putting her arm around her friend. Josie put on her dull-eyed look and said nothing, only hugged her darling Mary Louise with warm affection.

CHAPTER X
CHIEF CHARLEY LONSDALE

“Why don’t you like Mrs. Markle?” Josie asked Irene as they sat in Mary Louise’s car while she went in a shop on a housekeeping errand on their way home from the Higgledy-Piggledy after the strenuous day of unpacking and carpentering and plumbing.

“Why do you think I don’t like her?” and Irene tried not to give herself away to the astute Josie.

“Why, Irene dear, you couldn’t deceive a flea!”

“I hope I wasn’t rude to her. I try always to be extra polite to her.”

“Oh, you were polite enough, but your eyes are ‘wells of truth’ and one only has to look in them to know what your sentiments are.”

“I didn’t know that! Mercy, what am I to do? Put on smoked glasses?”

“Fortunately, you are inclined to like mankind, so won’t have to wear smoked glasses all the time,” laughed Josie. “But you haven’t told me why you don’t like her.”

“I have no reason for a strange feeling of distrust and abhorrence that comes over me when she approaches. I know she is beautiful and clever and charming and I fully realize that I am foolish to harbor such sentiments, but, try as I may, I cannot get rid of the feeling. It is one of nameless depression, a kind of smothered sensation.”

“Like some persons have when cats come in the room?”

“Exactly! Now do you think I am mean and silly?”

“No, not in the least! I think you perhaps have some kind of occult power that I wish I had myself. Now I don’t fancy the lady myself, but it is because her name is Hortense.”

“Why, what has that to do with her character?”

“Nothing on earth, but I have an antipathy to certain names and Hortense is one of them. Of course, I am well aware of the fact that there are many good Hortenses, as many as there are good Josies, but, somehow, it seems that I am not the one to meet the good ones. They are always a bit false, the Hortenses I have known. Now you are thinking I am silly. Confess!”

“No, not at all silly, but a bit unreasonable,” laughed Irene. “I fancy Mrs. Markle’s parents gave her that name and she had nothing to do with it.”

“I am not so sure of that. They may have named her plain Jane or even Maria or Hannah and she may have felt Hortense more in keeping. I’ll give it to her she has wonderful taste and Hannah would have been out of tone with her general make-up. Why do you think she wouldn’t let that young Mr. McGraw see her pin?”

“Why, wasn’t her reason given sufficient?” asked Irene.

“Not to me! Either there was something about the pin she did not want him to see or she wanted to get him to come to her apartment and call and thought that would be a good way to manage it.”

“Oh, Josie, you are hard on her!”

“Well, when you don’t like a person, you might as well find out why and that is what I am doing. I am just trying to analyze my emotions and find a cause for the effect. I must prove to myself for my own private satisfaction why the bristles stand up on my spine when the pretty lady comes around.”

“You did not show you felt that way in the least. I wish I could hide my feelings as well as you,” sighed Irene.

“Please don’t try to! You, with your instinct to detect evil, would prove too valuable to a would-be detective. Not that I am one,” quickly added Josie, who was determined not to let anyone know of her dual occupation.

After an early tea, Josie, in spite of objections raised by Mary Louise, insisted upon going back to her Higgledy-Piggledy apartment.

“I might just as well get used to it, honey. It is going to be in a mess for a while yet, but if I can be there early and late just so much the sooner will we begin operations. To-morrow is Sunday and I can have a nice long day to write letters that must be written and look over some papers. That won’t be too much like working on the Sabbath, and I can begin to work in dead earnest early Monday morning. I’ll see you at church to-morrow though, however.”

Josie refused the offer Mary Louise made of sending her home in her car but insisted her legs were made to use, and if she got too accustomed to riding around in cars, it would spoil her for more primitive forms of locomotion.

Josie did not go directly to her shop after leaving Colonel Hathaway’s, but slipping down a side street she walked quietly into the police station. Josie had a power inherited directly from her father of being almost invisible, that is she moved so quietly and was so unobtrusive in manner and dress that she could pass in a crowd absolutely unnoticed, and even where there was not a crowd, she had a way of effacing herself so that she might stand in one’s presence for minutes without being observed. And after she was observed, it would tax the powers of the most alert to describe the girl, so neutral could she appear. Her red hair even seemed to become dun and colorless when she, for some reason, was intent on being unnoticed.

The police station was quiet. It was too early for the usual Saturday night bustle of business. An officer was dozing at his exalted desk with a great book open in front of him, the book where the business of the day was recorded. At the door sat another policeman. He too was napping with his stiff belt unbuttoned and his helmet cocked over his closed eyes, his legs stretched out as though to trip up the unwary.

Josie was far from being in that class, however. She quietly and lightly jumped over the hurdle of legs and slipped under the nose of the man at the desk and made her way down a hall to the door of the Chief of Police, Captain Charley Lonsdale.

The chief was not asleep, far from it, but he was lost in the perusal of some closely written sheets over which he was knotting his beetling brows. His door was ajar and with a small tap to announce herself Josie entered and stood before him. He grunted in acknowledgment that he knew someone was in his presence to whom he would give his attention when he solved some troublesome problem.

“Well, what is it?” he finally jerked out, looking up from his papers. “Why, bless my soul! If it ain’t little O’Gorman. Child, I am glad to see you. I can’t tell you how I have felt about your father. Why, we’ll never get over his loss in the service. What he didn’t know about criminals was not worth knowing. A good man too! A good man, for sure! I wish I had him here right now to help me out with a case. I don’t see why those fellows in the East think their crooks are working around here. I don’t believe they are,” he declared, glancing again at the papers which had so absorbed his attention on Josie’s entrance.

“What is the case?” she asked, looking keenly at the chief.

“Oh, just the same old tale of crooks, but this time they seem to be stealing lots of things besides money. They have actually walked off with the entire furnishings of apartments, rugs, sideboards, pictures, even beds and wardrobes and whole sets of china. There must be an unbroken chain of them extending through the states. It is post-war conditions that we might have expected, but it seems to be even worse than we had anticipated and now they are worrying me about things that were lost in New York and Boston. I am sure nobody would come to Dorfield with stolen goods. Aren’t you?”

Josie said nothing and the chief looked at her keenly.

“Well?” he asked. “What do you say?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you still dabble in detective work?”

“No, I never did dabble.”

“So!” he laughed. “You were in it in dead earnest.”

“Exactly!”

“Well, you are your father’s own daughter and waste no words. I reckon you are here hunting a job.”

“I have a job, sir, I am keeping a shop.” Josie then told him of the Higgledy-Piggledy Shop and what her ideas were in regard to the running of it in connection with a secret detective service.

“Already I have a clue I want to follow up, sir,” she told him, “but, of course, if you could put me on the force it might be a help to me at some time. The shining star displayed on occasions sometimes has a good effect.”

“You are right. Sometimes it means more than a loaded pistol,” laughed the chief.

“Well, good-by, sir,” and Josie flitted from the chief’s office and by the drowsing attendants in the outer office without their being conscious of the fact that she had been in the building.

“What a fine little girl!” mused the chief. “She knows how to leave when her business is over with, too. That’s something precious few folks understand. I wish I had more like her on the force. I forgot to ask her if she had a telephone.” He rang his bell, which buzzed teasingly near the ear of the policeman sprawling at the door over whose legs Josie had lightly jumped.

“Casey,” he asked when the huge Irishman made his appearance trying to conceal the fact that he was not quite awake, “has the young lady got out of sight?”

“Yes, sorr, clane out of sight!” And Casey blinked rapidly.

“Well, that’s all!” said the chief shortly.

“Yes, sorr!” and Casey made a hasty retreat.

He remarked to the man at the desk, whose slumbers had also been broken by the buzzer:

“Sure an’ Chief Charley has been slapin’ an’ dramin’ uv the ladies. He was arfter wantin’ to know if the young lady was out uv sight. I could truthfully tell him she was that. There’s been no young lady here.” ></div<

CHAPTER XI
A SKELETON KEY

It was dusk when Josie fitted the great brass key into the door of the Higgledy-Piggledy Shop. The place looked very large and bleak and Josie felt small and lonesome, but she said to herself that it was no time to give way to such weakness. She did not switch on the light, although the amateur plumbers and electricians had not left until everything was in O. K. condition. Instead she produced a small search light and with its aid went to work on a mysterious bit of business. Peering along the shelves, she put her hand on the book of her father’s notes, the one with the home-made binding. Diving into the tray of a small trunk, she produced a handful of papers covered with cryptic hieroglyphics similar to those found in the precious notebook. With deft fingers she ripped the back from the notebook, carefully placing the contents in a large pocket in her petticoat. Securely pinning it with a huge safety pin, then smoothing out the loose papers she had extracted from the trunk, she proceeded to do a clever and neat job of amateur book binding sewing on the old back of the notebook. Then she put the book between the ponderous tomes where it had been before.

Patting her pocket where reposed the precious notes and also the huge brass key which she had removed from the door after locking it, Josie then made her way by the packing boxes and debris, that all the willing workers had not been able to clear away on that busy Saturday afternoon, back to the bedroom. Her little iron bed was made up with fresh linen and pretty dimity spread and looked very inviting to the tired girl.

“I’d certainly like to tumble in,” she yawned, “but this is no time for sleep. Father always said: ‘Work first and then sleep!’”

Shutting the door to the partition which divided her bedroom from the shop, she turned on the shaded reading light which Danny had placed at the head of the bed, under the directions of Mary Louise, and drawing up a low chair she unpinned the notes and drew them from her pocket.

“Dear Father!” she sighed. “What a man he was!”

Detective O’Gorman had taught his daughter the code in which he made his notes and Josie could read the hieroglyphics as easily as she could printed English. She could write it as rapidly as a first-class stenographer can short-hand. Turning over the leaves she came to one that riveted her attention.

“Exactly!” she muttered. “He could have been a great novelist if he had not have been so busy being a great detective. There never were such accurate, concise descriptions. Here are their aliases too: my, what a lot of names they can answer to—and as many crimes as names if one can only catch them in the act. They have so many confederates they always go scot free. Won’t my father be proud of me if I am the one to get them? I mean to be that one, too.”

She put the notes back in her pocket, pinning them carefully as before. Then she produced from another pocket a small revolver which she examined critically.

“I’m not going to use it, but it must be ready—in case—”

She stopped suddenly.

“What’s that? Tenants stumping around overhead? Rats in the wainscoting? There are rats.” She listened intently, switching off the light hanging over her bed.

“That old-fashioned brass lock will be easy to open with a skeleton key,” she decided. “If they are coming here it will be only a moment before they are in the room.” Grabbing her tell-tale hat and gloves and small bag, she dived under the bed, the pretty dimity spread hanging down on the side making a curtain for her retreat.

The town clock was striking twelve as the skeleton key finally unlocked the door. Josie lay very still listening eagerly.

“We might just as well switch on the light,” said a man’s voice.

“A bit imprudent, but, of course, nobody in this stupid old town would notice.” The voice was undoubtedly Mrs. Markle’s.

“I fancy everybody, even the police force, is asleep by now,” laughed the man.

Josie felt for her detective’s badge pinned in the breast pocket of her dress, and smiled happily in her retreat behind the dimity spread.

“Here is the book, Felix, exactly where that dull little O’Gorman girl put it. Do you think you will ever be able to make out the code?”

“Sure! There is no code I can’t work. It may take time but it will be great fun to find out what that old devil O’Gorman thought of us. It will be helpful too to find out exactly what he knew; and think of destroying all trace of our identity.”

“Umhum! I am dull and my father was a devil,” mused Josie. “Two more reasons for catching you red-handed, you Markles!”

“Here are the scissors,” went on the rich voice of Mrs. Markle. “Let me rip out the notes, Clumsy! Here, these blank papers can be stitched in their place. The girl will no doubt not think of opening this book for weeks, maybe never, but she knows the code and might want to read the notes sooner. There you are! Now put it back in between those big books. Now shall we be off?”

“Let’s look around now that we are here. This is a clever idea of that O’Gorman girl’s, to run this shop. Are you sure she is so dull?” asked the man.

“Sure! She has a fish eye and a face like a dumpling.” “O’Gorman had too, and he wasn’t dull,” said Mr. Markle with some doubt in his tone.

“Oh, trust me, Felix, to know when a woman has sense. I don’t believe she even has any humor.”

Josie smothered a giggle and drew her little revolver from her pocket. The interlopers were pushing open the door of her bedroom and without further ceremony switched on the light. The girl could see their feet from her hiding place, and exceedingly shapely, well shod feet they were.

“A pretty snug place,” said Felix. “Nothing worth lifting, however.”

“Not now, but wait until they begin to stock up with antique furniture and jewelry and what not. There will be plenty then. I am going to give them lots of work so I can come here often. One will get to know very desirable persons through these girls. That little soft fool, Mary Louise, knows everybody and she is very much interested in this venture and is going to push it for all it is worth. My first job for them is laundering those napkins I have just finished.”

“Oh, what a clever pet it is!” and Felix stopped and kissed Hortense. “A man never had such a partner before, I am sure.”

“What an old goose you are!” Her voice was as pleased and affectionate as any woman’s might have been who had won her husband’s approbation by some wifely act.

“Come on now! Let’s get out. We have what we came for and I am eager to get busy on that old devil O’Gorman’s code.”

They switched off the light and locked the door carefully. Josie scuttled from under her bed and ran to the front window. Peeping down into the faintly lighted street she saw the Markles walking off affectionately, arm in arm.

“And poor man, he is going to master Father’s code so he can read Francis Thompson’s ‘The Hound of Heaven,’” and Josie allowed herself a good laugh.

The notes Mr. Markle had so carefully carried off were nothing more than Josie’s lessons she had written out when her father was teaching her the code.

“Maybe it will do them some good,” said the girl with a feeling akin to sympathy in her heart. “I feel kind of sorry for the poor wretches. Father said he always felt sorry for criminals.”

As the girl undressed she recited “The Hound of Heaven.”

“I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd tears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet—
‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’”

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article  Metasyntactic variable, which is released under the  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.