Guardy Lud was delighted with the crisp brown sausages, fried potatoes, and buckwheats with real maple-syrup; and he laughed, and ate, and told stories with the children, and kept the old dining-room walls ringing with joy as they had not resounded within the memory of Julia Cloud. Then suddenly the door opened, and there stood Ellen Robinson, disapproval and hauteur written in every line of her unpleasant face! One could hardly imagine how those two, Julia and Ellen, could possibly be sisters.
Dismay filled Julia Cloud’s heart for an instant, and brought a pallor to her cheek. How had she forgotten Ellen? What a fool she had been to tell Ellen to come early in the morning! But she had not realized that Mr. Luddington would be willing to come out to her humble home and stay all night. She had supposed that the arrangements would be made in the city. However, it could not be helped now; and a glance at the kind, strong face of the white-haired man gave her courage. Ellen could not really spoil their plans with him there. He felt that the arrangement was good, and with him to back her she felt she could stand out against any arguments her sister might bring forth.
So she rose with a natural ease, and introduced her. “My sister Mrs. Robinson, Mr. Luddington”; and Ellen stiffly and still disapprovingly acknowledged the introduction.
“I won’t interrupt,” she said disagreeably. “I’m just going up to look over some of my mother’s things.” And she turned to the back stairway, and went up, closing the door behind her.
Mr. Luddington gazed after her a second; and then, taking his glasses off and wiping them energetically, he remarked:
“Well, well, bless my soul! It must be getting late! We’ve had such a good time I didn’t realize. Those certainly were good buckwheats, Miss Cloud. I shan’t forget them very soon. And now I suppose we’d better get down to business. Could we just go into the other room there, and close the door for a few minutes, not to be interrupted?” and he cast an anxious glance toward the stair-door again.
Julia Cloud smiled understandingly, and ushered them into the little parlor ablaze with fall sunshine, its windows wreathed about with crimsoning woodbine; and, as she caught the glow and glint from the window, she remembered the gray evening when she had looked out across into her future as she supposed it would be. How beautiful and wonderful that the gray had changed to glow! As she sat down to enter into the contract that was to bind her to a new and wonderful life with great responsibilities and large possibilities, her heart, accustomed to look upward, sent a whisper of thanksgiving heavenward.
The details did not take long, after all; for Mr. Luddington was a keen business man, and he had gone over the whole proposition, and had the plan in writing for her to sign, telling just what were her duties and responsibilities with regard to his wards, just how much money she would have for housekeeping and servants and other expenses, and the salary she would receive herself for accepting this care.
“You’re practically in a position of mother to them, you know,” he said, beaming at her genially; “and I declare I never laid eyes on a woman that I thought could fill the part better!”
Julia Cloud was quite overwhelmed. But the matter of the salary troubled her.
“I think it should not be a matter of money,” she demurred. “I would rather do it for love, you know.”
“Love’s all right!” said the old man, smiling; “but this thing has got to be on a business basis, or the terms of the will will not allow me to agree to it. You see what you are going to undertake means work, and it means sticking to it; and you deserve pay for it, and we’re not going to accept several of the best years out of your life for nothing. Besides, you’ve got to feel free to give up the job if it proves too burdensome for you.”
“And you to dismiss me if I do not prove capable for the position,” suggested Julia Cloud, lifting meek and honest eyes to meet his gaze.
“Well, well, well, I can see there won’t be any need of that!” sputtered the old gentleman pleasantly. “But, however that is, this is the contract I’ve made out. And I’m quite satisfied. So are the children. Are you willing to sign it? Of course there’s a clause in there about reasonable notice if there is dissatisfaction on either side; that lets you out at any time you get tired of it. Only give me a chance to look after these youngsters properly.”
Julia Cloud took the pen eagerly, tremblingly, a sense of wonder in her pounding heart, and signed her name just as Ellen’s heavy footsteps could be heard pounding down the back stairs. Leslie seized Julia, and gave her a great hug as the last letter was finished, and then threw open the parlor door in the nick of time to save her Aunt Ellen from seeming to be deserted.
Ellen Robinson appeared on the scene just in time to witness the hearty hand-shake that Guardy Lud gave Julia Cloud as he picked up the papers and went up-stairs for his suitcase while Allison went after the car to take him to the train.
“Is that man married? Because, if he isn’t, I don’t think it’s respectable for you to go and live near him!” declared Ellen in a penetrating voice to the intense distress of Julia Cloud, who was happily hurrying the dishes from the breakfast table.
But Leslie came to the rescue.
“Oh, indeed, Aunt Ellen, he’s very much married! Altogether too much married for comfort. He would be a dear if it wasn’t for his silly little old bossy wife! But he doesn’t intend to live anywhere near us. His home is off in California, and he’s going back next week. He’s only waiting to see us settled somewhere before he goes back; so you needn’t worry about Aunt Jewel’s morals. We’ll take good care of her. But isn’t he a dear? He was my Grandfather Leslie’s best friend.”
Leslie chattered on gayly till the visitor’s footsteps could be heard coming down-stairs again, and Ellen Robinson could only shut her lips tight and go into the kitchen, from which her sister beat immediately a hasty retreat lest more unpleasant remarks should be forthcoming.
Julia Cloud bade Mr. Luddington good-by, standing on her own front steps, and then waited a moment, looking off toward the hills which had shut in her vision all her life. The two young people had rushed down to the car, and were pulling their guardian joyously inside. They seemed to do everything joyously, like two young creatures let out of prison into the sunshine. Julia Cloud smiled at the thought of them, but her soul was not watching them just then. She was looking off to the hills that had been her strength all the years through so many trials, and gathering strength now to go in and meet her sister in final combat. She knew that there would be a scene; that was inevitable. That she might maintain her calmness and say nothing unkind or regrettable she was praying earnestly now as her eyes sought the hills.
Across the road behind her parlor curtains Mrs. Perkins was keeping lookout, and remarking to a neighbor who had run in:
“Yes, I thought as much. There’s always a man in the case when a woman acts queer! Now, doesn’t that beat all? Do you suppose he’s a long-lost lover or something, come back now he knows she’s free? Seems to me I did hear there was somebody died or something before we came here to live, but she must have been awful young.”
The car moved noisily away, and the old gentleman leaned out with a courteous lift of his hat toward Julia Cloud. She acknowledged it with a bow and a smile which Mrs. Perkins pounced on and analyzed audibly.
“Well, there’s no fool like an old fool, as the saying is! Just watch her smirk! I’m mighty glad Ellen Robinson’s there to relieve me of the responsibility. She’ll be over after a while, and then we’ll know who he is. There goes Julia in. She watched him out o’ sight! Well, I wonder what her mother would think.”
Julia Cloud went
