the belated sunset unregretting, and hastened to begin her preparations. There were the two front rooms up-stairs to be prepared. She would open the windows at once, and let the air sweep through all night. They had been shut up a long time, for she had brought the invalid down-stairs to the little sitting-room the last few months to save steps and be always within hearing. The second story had been practically unused except when Ellen or the children were over for a day or two.
She hurried up-stairs, and lit the gas in the two rooms, throwing wide the windows, hunting out fresh sheets and counterpanes. She could dust and run the carpet-sweeper over the rooms right away, and have them in order; and that would save time for to-morrow. Oh, it was good to have something cheerful to do once more. Just supposing she had yielded––as once that afternoon she almost had––to Ellen’s persistent urgings, and had gone home with her to-night! Why, the telegram might not have reached her till after the children had come, and found the house empty, and gone again!
Julia bustled around happily, putting the rooms into charming order, hunting up a little picture of the child Samuel kneeling in the temple, that Allison used to like, going to the bottom of an old hair trunk for the rag doll she had made for Leslie to cuddle when she went to sleep at night.
Mrs. Ambrose Perkins across the way looked uneasily out of her bedroom window at half-past nine, and said to her husband:
“Seems like Julia Cloud is staying up awful late to-night. She’s got a light in both front rooms, too. There can’t be company. I s’pose Ellen and some of her children have stayed down after all. Poor Ellen! She told me she simply couldn’t spare the time away from home any longer, but Julia was set on staying there. I never thought Julia was selfish; but I s’pose she doesn’t realize how hard it is for Ellen, living that way between two houses. Julia’ll go to live with Ellen now, of course. It’s real good of Herbert Robinson to ask her. Julia ought to appreciate having relatives like that.”
“Relatives nothing!” said Mr. Ambrose, pulling off his coat and hanging it over a chair. “She’ll be a fool if she goes! She’s slaved all her life, and she deserves a little rest now. If she goes out to Herbert Robinson’s, she won’t be allowed to call her eyelashes her own; you mark my words!”
“Well, what else can she do?” said his wife. “She hasn’t any husband or children, and I think she’ll be mighty well off to get a good home. Men are awful hard on each other, Ambrose. I always knew that.”
Julia Cloud meanwhile, with a last look at the neat rooms, put out her lights, and went to bed, but not to sleep. She was so excited that the darkness seemed luminous about her. She was trying to think how those two children would look grown up. Allison was nineteen and Leslie nearly seventeen now. Their mother had been dead five years, and they had been in boarding-schools. Their guardian was an old gentleman, a friend of their mother’s. That was about all she knew concerning them. Would they seem like strangers, she wondered, or would there be enough resemblance to recall the dear girl and boy of the years that were gone? How she clung to those cookies with hope! There was some remembrance left, or they would not have put cookies in a telegram. How impetuous and just like Allison, the boy, that telegram had sounded!
It was scarcely daylight when Julia Cloud arose and went down to the kitchen to bake the cookies; and the preparations she made for baking pies and doughnuts and other toothsome dainties would lead one to suppose that she was expecting to feed a regiment for a week at least.
She filled the day with hard work, as she had been wont to do, and never once thought of gray sunsets or dreary futures. Not even the thought of her sister Ellen came to trouble her as she put the house in order, filled her pantry with good things to eat, and set the table for three with all the best things the house afforded.
At evening she stood once more beside the front window, looking out sunsetward. There was nothing gray about either sky or road or landscape now. There had been brilliant sunshine all day long, and the sky lay mellow and yellow behind the orchard, with a clear, transparent greenish-blue above and a hint of rosy light in the long rays that reached their fingers along the ground between the apple-trees. In a few minutes the evening train would be in, and there would be rose in the sunset. She knew the signs, and the sky would be glorious to-night. They would see it as they came from the train. In fifteen minutes it would be time for her to put on her hat and go down to meet them! How her heart throbbed with anticipation!
Forebodings came to shadow her brightness. Suppose they should not come! Suppose they were delayed, or had changed their minds and should send another telegram saying so! She drew a deep breath, and tried to brace herself for the shock of the thought. She looked fearfully down the road for a possible Johnny Knox speeding along with another telegram, and was relieved to see only Ambrose Perkins ambling home for supper followed by his tall, smiling Airedale.
There was a shadow, too, that stood behind her, though she ignored it utterly; it was the thought of the afterwards, when the two bright young things had been and gone, and she would have to face the gray in her life again without the rose. But that would be afterwards, and this was now! Ten minutes more, and she would go to the station!
At that minute a great blue automobile shot up to the front gate, and stopped. A big lump flew into Julia Cloud’s throat, and her hand went to her heart. Had it then come, that telegram, saying they had changed their minds? She stood trembling by the window, unable to move.
But out from the front seat and the back as if ejected from a catapult shot two figures, and flew together up the front walk, a tall boy and a little girl, just as the sun dropped low and swung a deep red light into the sky, flooding the front yard with glory, and staining the heavens far up into the blue.
They had come! They had come before it was yet train-time!
Julia Cloud got herself to her front door in a tremor of delight, and instantly four strong young arms encircled her, and nearly smothered the life out of her.
“O you dear Cloudy Jewel! You look just the same. I knew you would. Only your hair is white and pretty,” Leslie gurgled.
“Sure, she is just the same! What did I tell you?” cried Allison, lifting them both and carrying them inside.
“Now, who on earth can that be?” said Mrs. Ambrose Perkins, flying to her parlor window at the first sound of the automobile. “It isn’t any of them folks from the city that were out to the funeral, for there wasn’t a car like that there, I’m certain! I mean to run over and borrow a spoonful of soda pretty soon, just to find out. It couldn’t be any of Tom’s folks from out West, for they couldn’t come all that way in a car. It must be some of her father’s relations from over in Maryland, though I never heard they were that well off. A chauffeur in livery! The idea of all that style coming to see Julia Cloud!”
“No, we didn’t come on the train,” explained Leslie eagerly. “We came in Allison’s new car. Mr. Luddington––that’s our guardian––was coming East, and he said we might come with him. We’ve been dying to come for ages. And he’d been promising Allison he might get this new car; so we stopped in the city and bought it, and Allison drove it down. Of course Mr. Luddington made his man come along. He wouldn’t let us come alone. He’s gone up to Boston for three days; and, when he comes back, he’s coming down here to see you.”
Leslie was talking as fast as an express train, and Julia Cloud stood and admired her in wonder.
She was slim and delicately pretty as ever, with the same mop of goldy-brown curls, done up in a knot now and making her look quaintly like the little five-year-old on a hot day with her curls twisted on the top of her head for comfort. She wore a simple little straight frock of some dark silk stuff, with beaded pockets and marvellous pleats and belts and straps in unexpected
