peering with jealous eyes and welling hearts from safe coverts at the enemy who was scouring the woods and gardens in behalf of her villa was about to invade the sacredness of their homes. Not that they had hitherto cared much about that home; but it was all they had and the world looked blank and unliveable to them now with the terror of their school days installed for incessant duty.
The little girls with down-drooped yellow lashes, and peaked, sallow faces strangely like their father's, hurried home to hide away their treasures in secret places in the attic, known only to themselves, and to whisper awesomely about how it would be when “she” came.
"She smiled at me in school yesterday," whispered Helena, the sharp fourteen year old. "It was like a gnarled spot on a sour apple that falls before it's ripe."
"Oh, be careful," hushed Prudence, lifting her thin little hands in dismay. "What if Aunt Jane should hear you and tell her. You know she's going to be our mother, and she can do what she likes then."^
"Mother nothing!" flouted Helena grandly, "she'll not mother me, I can tell you that. If she lets me alone I'll stay, but if she tries to boss me I'll run away."
Nevertheless Helena took the precaution to tiptoe lightly to the head of the stairs, to be sure the attic door was closed so that no one could hear her.
"Helena!" gasped Prudence, beginning to cry softly. "You wouldn't dare! You wouldn't leave me alone?"
"Well, no," said Helena relenting. "I'd take you with me p’raps; only you'd be so particular we'd get caught like the time I stole the pie and had it all fixed so Aunt Jane would think the cat got it, and you had to explain because you thought the cat might get whipped!"
"Well, you know Aunt Jane hates the cat, and she'd have whipped her worse'n she did us. Besides—”
"Aw, well you needn't cry. We've got enough to do now to keep quiet, and keep out of the way. Where's Nate?"
"I saw him going down toward the saw-mill after school——”
"Nate won't stay here long," stated Helena sagely. "He just despises Maria Bent."
"Where would he go?" said Prudence, drying her tears as her little world broke up bit by bit. "Helena Whitney, he's only ten years old!"
"He's a man!" snapped Helena. "Men are diffrunt. Come on, let's go hide in the bushes and see what they get. The idea of Julia Fargo and Harriet Wells making all that fuss getting flowers for her wedding when they've talked about her so; and only last week she took that lovely book away from Harriet Wells just because she took it out in geography class and began to read."
Hand in hand, with swelling throats and smarting eyes filled with tears they would not shed, the motherless children hurried away to the woods to watch in bitterness of spirit the preparations for the wedding, which was almost like watching the building of their own funeral pyres.
Nevertheless the time of hiding could not be for always and the little brood of Whitneys were still under stern discipline. Aunt Jane held them with no easy hand. Promptly at half-past two they issued forth from the big white house clothed in wedding garments, their respective heads neatly dressed in plait or net or glossy ringlet, or firmly plastered down. Young Nathan's rebellious brown curls were smooth as satin, the water from their late anointing trickling down his clammy back as with dogged tread and downcast, insurgent look he marched beside his frightened, meek little sisters to the ceremony which was to them all like a death knell.
The familiar old red school-house appeared in the distance down the familiar old street, yet the choking sensation in their throats, and the strange beating and blurring of their eyes gave it an odd appearance of disaster. That surely could not be the old hickory tree that Nate had climbed so often and hidden behind its ample friendly trunk to watch Maria Bent as she came forth from the school-house door in search of him. How often had he encircled its shielding trunk to keep out of sight when he saw her looking for him! Now, alas, there would be no sheltering hickory for sanctuary from her strong hand, for Maria Bent would be no longer the school marm merely; she would be at close range in their only home; she would be mother! The name had suddenly taken on a gruesome sound, for they had been told that miming by Aunt Jane as she combed and scrubbed and arrayed them, that such address would be required of them henceforth. Call Maria Bent mother! Never!
Nate as he trudged, thought over all the long list of disrespectful appellations that it had been their custom among themselves to call their teacher, beginning with "Bent Maria" and ending with "M’wry-faced-straighten-er-out"; and inwardly resolved to call her nothing at all, or anything he pleased, all the time knowing that he would never dare.
Miranda, on the other side of the street, watched the disconsolate little procession, with their Aunt Jane bringing up the rear, and thanked her stars that she was not going forth to bind herself to their upbringing.
She had purposely lingered behind the Spaffords as they started to the wedding, saying she would follow with little Rose; and she came out of the front door and locked it carefully, just as the Whitneys issued forth from Aunt Jane's grooming. Rose jumped daintily down the steps, one at a time, watching the toes of her little new pink slippers, and tilting the ruffled pink silk parasol her father had brought her from New York. She looked like a sweet pink human rose, and the little prim Whitneys, sleek and scared though they were, turned envious eyes to watch her, almost forgetting for the moment the lump in their throats and the hot, angry feeling in their hearts, while they took in the beauty of the parasol, the grace of the small light feet, and the bobbing floss of golden curls as Rose skipped along by Miranda's side.
Miranda herself was wearing a new green and brown plaid silk, the pride and glory of her heart, bought with her own money and selected by her beloved Mrs. Marcia on her last trip to New York. Her bonnet was green shirred silk with a tiny green feather, and her red hair looked like burnished copper glinting out beneath. Miranda did not know it, never would, but she was growing to be a most attractive woman, and the twinkle of mischief in her eyes made one always look a second time at her cheerful freckled face.
Proudly she looked down at the dainty Rose, and compared her with the unhappy Whitneys doing the funeral march to their father's wedding. Not for any money would she be to-day in Maria Bent's place, but she walked the prouder and the more contented that she had had the chance.
There was a pleasant bustle about the school-house door when they all arrived. But the little Whitneys, their feuds laid aside at this time of their common sorrow, huddled together just inside the door of the school room, as far from the scene of action as possible, with dropped eyes and furtive sidewise glances, never daring even to whisper.
There were wreaths of flowers on each desk, zinneas, peonies, asters, roses, pansies, larkspurs and columbine; some of the smaller flowers were wreathed around a plateau of velvety moss on which in white pebbles and with varying designs the letters M.B. and N.W. were tastefully entwined. Each scholar had taken pride in getting up an original design for his or her own desk, and the result was unique and startling.
"How touching of them to want to please teacher!" exclaimed Ann Bloodgood, who lived in the next township and therefore did not know the current feeling.
But, however touching, the decorations only served to remind the three older Whitneys of their own mother's funeral. Nate hung his head and frowned hard behind the golden-rod-embowered stove, trying not to see or think of that other day five years ago when odors of flowers filled the air and he had had that same lump in his throat and gasp in his chest. That had been bad enough, but this day was worse. He had half a mind even now to bolt through that school-house door and never come back. But when he looked out to calculate how likely he was to get off without being seen, his father came walking up the
