"Here's a bit of bread for you, Rob, my son," called Mr. Grey from his doorway1, waving an envelope alluringly2 toward Rob, who was on her knees dusting the stairs.
"Bread? I'm not hungry, Patergrey; besides, it looks too white to be well baked. What do you mean? Something nice, by the way you're beaming at me." And Rob arose from her humble3 posture4 to go to her father and investigate.
"It is bread—bread-on-the-waters, my girl," Mr. Grey retorted. "It is the first interest on the money you lent me."
"The machine?" cried Rob, trying to seize the letter which her father held tantalizingly5 above her head. "Oh, tell me quick if it is the machine."
"It is the machine. But we mustn't expect too much," Mr. Grey hastily added. "It is by[167] no means sold, nor even appraised6. This letter is from a man in New York who is interested in such things, and he writes that he is coming to Fayre the day after to-morrow to look into my improvements in bricquette making. That's all, but it is a beginning, and that's something in itself."
"I have but just come in," said her father, laughing aloud. "What a practical girl! And how truly her instinct guides her to the wisdom of feeding well the man whom you wish to impress! Do the best you can with the dinner, Robin8, and maybe he won't discover defects in the invention."
"There is none," retorted Rob, going off with a skip and a jump to impart the news to her mother and Wythie, and consult with them on ways and means.
The second day dawned clear and cold and brought with it, on the noon train, the anxiously awaited arbitrator of the fate of the bricquette machine.
Mr. Grey went to the station to meet him, and Wythie, Rob, and Prue watched their approach[168] to the little grey house from behind the muslin curtains in their chamber9.
There was an air of assurance and power about the stranger which filled Wythie with fear of his judgment10, and inspired Rob with confidence.
"Of course he will approve the machine if he knows what he's about," said Rob, "and he most certainly looks as though he knew."
Dinner was served at once, and Mr. Marston—by this name Mr. Grey presented his guest to his wife and daughters—Mr. Marston was enthusiastic in word and deed over his pleasure in what, he said, he never found in the city—old-fashioned, home cooking, prepared by the hands of ladies.
"You really have no business with a successful invention, Mr. Grey," said the guest—"you who are already so rich." And he smiled up into Prue's face, who had risen to remove his plate, with a look that conveyed his high sense of her value, and so embarrassed the child that she dropped his knife and fork with a clatter11.
"I don't like him," Rob confided12 to Wythie, when their father had borne Mr. Marston away for a preliminary smoke—like his colonial ancestors dealing13 with the Connecticut aborigines—leaving the girls with their mother to their task[169] of clearing away. "I don't like him—he's too good to be true—but if he only will like the machine my likings and dislikes don't matter."
Later Rob's father called her, and she went to help in displaying the invention which she almost felt was as much hers as her father's.
Silently she moved the parts of the machine, co-operating with her father as he talked, and silently the visitor watched the proceedings14, stroking his mustache and letting nothing escape his keen eyes, as Rob saw, while she, in her turn, sharply, though furtively15, eyed the impassive face concealing16 its owner's verdict on the Greys' hopes.
At last the exposition of the machine was over, and Rob busied herself with replacing the covers of the models, while her father and Mr. Marston dropped into neighboring chairs for its discussion.
"It's unquestionably a good thing, Mr. Grey," the visitor said. "The improvements are important, and, what is more, practical. I feel that I have no right to say anything definite until I have seen my partner, but I am perfectly17 within bounds in saying that I am thoroughly18 convinced as to the value of your patent, and that we shall be ready to make you an offer for it. At the[170] same time I should be glad if you will not show it to anyone else until that offer has been made and discussed; I should like to retain an option on the machine."
"When I wrote you, Mr. Marston, and allowed you to come here to see the invention, I considered it equivalent to a pledge not to allow anyone else to see what might become your property, and would be valueless to you if it were not protected," said Mr. Grey, quietly.
Rob waited to hear no more. She ran from the room, and caught Wythie and Kiku in a comprehensive embrace, meeting them as they came, one in the other's arms, across the hall.
"It's all right, it's all right, Oswyth, saint and martyr19!" she cried, whirling Wythie around, and sending Kiku leaping, panic-stricken by her onslaught, to the top of the portière at the door. "He says he's thoroughly convinced of the value of the patent, and he asks Patergrey to keep it for him till he can consult with his partner as to the offer they mean to make for it. Oh, I knew, I knew all along it was coming right, but now it has come right, I'm ready to die of joy."
Wythie turned so white that Rob held her closer for another reason, fearing she was going to faint. "We must find Mardy," was all[171] Wythie said, but her smile was so beatific20 that Rob was more than satisfied.
When Mr. Grey came back from the station, where he had been to speed his guest, he found his household waiting him, half delirious21 with joy.
"It's all right now, isn't it, Patergrey?" cried Rob. "There's no danger in our being as glad as we please, is there? It's sure and sure that the invention will go, isn't it? That man settled it, didn't he?"
"No risk at all in rejoicing, Mary," said Mr. Grey, disregarding Rob, and answering the girl's question to his wife, to whom he held out his arms with smiling, quivering lips, and eyes bright at once with joy and tears.
"Will it be much, Sylvester?" asked Mrs. Grey, still afraid to be glad.
"The offer? It will not be less than fifty thousand, if it is to be accepted, Mary; that will put the Grey family into brighter colors, and free the little grey house of its burden again," said Mr. Grey, stroking his wife's abundant hair. "And, Rob," he added, as the girls caught their breath with a gasp22 of ecstasy23, "make a note of the name of John Lester Baldwin, and his address on Broadway, in New York. I will give[172] it to you, and I want you to remind me to write him—he was a college chum of mine, an honest man and a good lawyer. I mean to take his advice as to the patent; I would trust it utterly24."
Rob obediently made the memorandums on a pad, and her father straightened himself, taking a long breath. "It is a curious sensation to have succeeded, after so long," he said. "I hardly know how to adjust myself to it."
Rob and Wythie exchanged glances, noting with the anxiety they always felt for the dear father's safety, the dilation25 of his bright eyes and his quickened breath.
"You have done enough, Patergrey," cried Rob. "You have made the machine, and we'll do the adjusting, never fear! Mayn't I ask the boys and Frances down to-night to rejoice with us, Mardy? And won't you get your hat and coat and go with me to invite them, Patergrey? The fresh air will bring us both to our senses—I feel as though my head were a thistle in September."
"We should all be better for the boys and Frances, Rob," said her mother, and at the same moment Mr. Grey said: "Yes, let's have the young folks in, and play twirl the platter, and make molasses candy, and have a real, children's[173] party—I feel as though I wanted to get down to a basis of pure jollity and be thoroughly a boy, now that for the first time in years I feel the pressure of care lightened."
"Then get your hat—why, here come the boys now! Then I can't go, Patergrey! Suppose you and Mardy take a walk instead, and we'll keep Battalion26 B to supper, and I'll make them get it!" cried Rob.
"It would be pleasant, Mary, to celebrate by a stroll together; we don't get one of our all-to-ourselves times very often," smiled Mr. Grey. "Let's leave our girls to prepare our triumphal banquet, and pretend we're young lovers again, with no tall girls to bother us."
Mrs. Grey laughed happily, and almost ran away to get ready for her walk, and soon she was leaning on her husband's arm, and the three girls were watching her as she laughed up into his face, as they strolled in the direction of Miss Charlotte's to bring her the glad tidings of the coming of prosperity to the little grey house.
"See how young and happy Mardy looks," sighed Wythie. "Only think, if she will look like that all the time! Do you suppose, can it be, girls—and boys—that this isn't too good to be true?"
[174]
"It's just barely good enough for you to be true," said Bruce. "We don't believe that only bad things happen outside of books, do we, Rob?"
"No, sir; we believe only in good things—even when the bad ones happen!" declared Rob. "Tommy Tucker sang for his supper, but if you two big fellows want yours you've got to chop wood for kindling27, or you won't get it. And, Bart, would you mind very, very much if you were asked most politely to go and fetch Frances?"
"Yes, I'd mind, because I like to be around when you're fussing, but I'm willing to offer myself a sacrifice, if nobody else will," said Bartlemy, looking around for his hat.
Poor Bartlemy could not hurry Frances sufficiently28 to get back to the little grey house before supper was ready, and "the fun over," as he grumblingly29 said. Rob patted his head like a big dog's. "Never mind, Bartie dear," she said, soothingly30, "you shall wash all the greasiest31 pans!"
"What shall we do to celebrate?" asked Prue, when everything was cleared away, and the dining-room table rolled to the wall to allow games.
"I'll tell you," cried Mr. Grey, with an inspiration. "Let's rifle the attic32 and invoke33 our an[175]cestors to enjoy with us the prospect34 of securing to future Greys this little house they loved. We know what treasures there are in the chests and horse-hair trunks up there, don't we, girls?"
"Oh, you never saw our old-fashioned clothing!" cried Wythie. "Why, that's the very thing, papa! Get lamps, boys, and come up to the attic. We'll dress up and have an old-folks' concert, just for ourselves. You never saw such things as we have up there!"
Older and younger, all the Greys with their four guests, and lamps enough to light the party, and with Kiku-san on behind, hoping for mice, repaired to the attic.
A pleasant musty odor of dried herbs, camphor, and cedar-wood greeted them, and queer shadows wavered big on the slanting35 walls to meet them.
"What a fine place!" exclaimed Basil. "Why don't we come here oftener?"
Mrs. Grey produced her keys and threw open chest after chest, and Wythie, Rob, and Prue, with enthusiastic help from Frances, began shaking out garments of more than a hundred years ago, as well as the big skirts and poke36-bonnets37 of the '50s.
Huge embroidered38 collars, long, hand[176]wrought lace veils, brocaded silks, frail39 with age; gigantic leghorn bonnets; short, much-shirred waists; high stocks for men, ruffled40 shirts, tight, short-waisted blue coats; the high, pointed41 collars in which our grandfathers did penance42 in the days of "Tippecanoe"; grotesque43 high and narrow beaver44 hats, and broad ones of white silk, all these were brought forth45 into the flickering46 light amid shouts of laughter and impatient clutches from hands eager to try the effect of something that particularly struck an individual fancy.
"No fair trying on up here," cried Prue, at last. "We must take everything we want downstairs, and fit ourselves out there; we'll never get down this way."
So everybody piled all that one pair of arms could carry into a great heap, and each one lifted his burden and carefully picked the way down the narrow, steep stairs, made particularly uncertain by the wavering lamp-light.
"Now, ladies to the right; gentlemen to the left," ordered Wythie. "You go into your room, papa, with the boys, and Mardy and Frances shall come into ours with us, and we'll do our best. Don't I wish you had wigs47 with queues!"
[177]
It took nearly three-quarters of an hour of excited hurrying and much laughter from both sides of the hall before the impromptu48 fancy-dress party was robed, and then at a signal nine queer figures appeared in two lines, and stopped short, each convulsed at the sight of the other.
Mr. Grey, in knee-breeches and cocked hat of an earlier period, was more imposing49 but not nearly as funny as Bruce in the costume of the '30s, nor as Basil, portentously50 scowling51 between the sharp collar-points like those which served as gateways52 to Daniel Webster's eloquence53.
Bartlemy, in a long-tailed, short-waisted black coat which must have belonged to some clerical Grey, and with an incongruous white-silk hat, was so funny that Prue forgot her frail, rose-besprinkled muslin, and sat straight down on the floor to laugh at him. Wythie had found a muslin frock, short and tucked-in skirt and waist, and slippers54 such as Jane Austen's heroines tripped about in, and her pretty face was framed in a big leghorn hat, tied down into a poke at back and front. She looked as if she had stepped out of a Sir Joshua Reynolds portrait.
Rob had made herself into a lady of Revolu[178]tionary days, hair high, and gown of brocade low in neck, and draped with an immense embroidered fichu. Prue's muslin did not much antedate55 the civil war, but Frances had arrayed herself in a gown which Dolly Madison would have recognized as the latest fashion had she come to life to see it.
Mrs. Grey seemed to have taken what no one else wanted, but nothing else that she had on mattered much while she wore the great pink gauze turban which crowned her hair.
"It's a real pity no one can see us," declared Frances, when they were mustered56 in the dining-room, and had dropped, breathless with laughter, into the old chairs which should have welcomed gladly the figures of their youth returning to them.
"We'll get up a real affair, give an old folks' concert or something, in costume—we'd have a great one," cried Bruce. "Will you, say toward spring?"
"Very likely," said Rob, "but what are we going to do now, this minute?"
"You are going to dance," said Mrs. Grey. "I'm going to play for you, and if our piano is old and thin, then you must remember that it is in old-time costume also, and not mind."
[179]
"We can have a fine square-dance," cried Prue. "Just four couples—papa, will you dance?"
"Will I? Will I not?" Mr. Grey cried, gayly. "Whose patent are we celebrating, I'd like to know? Rob and I are head couple."
He gave his hand to Rob, Basil and Wythie took one side, Bruce and Frances the other, while tall Bartlemy and Prue fell together, as they usually did.
Mrs. Grey played, concealing as well as she could, with her fine touch and real talent, time's ravages57 on the queer, yellow-keyed old piano.
"Now sing," ordered Mr. Grey, when, the dance over, he dropped weary, but happy, into a chair. The quaint58 figures with the flushed young faces gathered about the old piano, and sang as they were bidden, sang until the clock in the hall startled them by striking eleven.
"Why, I had no idea of the time!" cried Frances. "Mamma will think I'm stolen. I must hurry and get into my present-day things and fly home. We've had a lovely time, dear Grey people! There never was a place where people had so much fun without trying, and because they couldn't help it, as in the little grey house."
"And there never was a place where good luck[180] was more needed, nor where people were more grateful for hearing that it had come to them, than in the little grey house to-day," added Rob, as she wound her arm around her friend's waist, and bore her away to her room.
"Oh, Rob," said Frances, "and oh, Wythie," she added, turning back to include Wythie in the caress59 she gave Rob, "you know how glad I am of what that man told you! It's well you do, for I can't begin to tell you how glad I am. Isn't it perfectly blessed?"
"It's the beginning of the end of our troubles, that's all it is, Francie," said Rob. "This isn't the little grey house to-night; it's Pandora's box, with everything bad flying out, and only hope left."
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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alluringly
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| 诱人地，妩媚地 | |
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humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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posture
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| n.姿势，姿态，心态，态度；v.作出某种姿势 | |
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5
tantalizingly
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| adv.…得令人着急，…到令人着急的程度 | |
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6
appraised
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| v.估价( appraise的过去式和过去分词 )；估计；估量；评价 | |
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sanguine
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| adj.充满希望的，乐观的，血红色的 | |
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robin
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| n.知更鸟，红襟鸟 | |
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chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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clatter
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| v./n.(使)发出连续而清脆的撞击声 | |
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confided
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| v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的过去式和过去分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
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dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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furtively
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| adv. 偷偷地, 暗中地 | |
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concealing
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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martyr
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| n.烈士，殉难者；vt.杀害，折磨，牺牲 | |
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beatific
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| adj.快乐的，有福的 | |
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delirious
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| adj.不省人事的，神智昏迷的 | |
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gasp
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| n.喘息，气喘；v.喘息；气吁吁他说 | |
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ecstasy
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| n.狂喜，心醉神怡，入迷 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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dilation
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| n.膨胀，扩张，扩大 | |
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battalion
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| n.营；部队；大队(的人) | |
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kindling
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| n. 点火, 可燃物 动词kindle的现在分词形式 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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grumblingly
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| 喃喃报怨着，发牢骚着 | |
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soothingly
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| adv.抚慰地，安慰地；镇痛地 | |
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greasiest
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| adj.脂肪的( greasy的最高级 )；（人或其行为）圆滑的；油腻的；（指人、举止）谄媚的 | |
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attic
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| n.顶楼，屋顶室 | |
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invoke
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| v.求助于(神、法律)；恳求，乞求 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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slanting
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| 倾斜的，歪斜的 | |
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poke
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| n.刺，戳，袋；vt.拨开，刺，戳；vi.戳，刺，捅，搜索，伸出，行动散慢 | |
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bonnets
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| n.童帽( bonnet的名词复数 )；（烟囱等的）覆盖物；（苏格兰男子的）无边呢帽；（女子戴的）任何一种帽子 | |
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embroidered
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| adj．绣花的 | |
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frail
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| adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的 | |
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ruffled
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| adj. 有褶饰边的, 起皱的 动词ruffle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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41
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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penance
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| n.（赎罪的）惩罪 | |
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grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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beaver
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| n.海狸，河狸 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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flickering
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| adj.闪烁的，摇曳的，一闪一闪的 | |
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wigs
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| n.假发，法官帽( wig的名词复数 ) | |
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impromptu
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| adj.即席的，即兴的；adv.即兴的(地)，无准备的(地) | |
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imposing
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| adj.使人难忘的，壮丽的，堂皇的，雄伟的 | |
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portentously
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scowling
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| 怒视，生气地皱眉( scowl的现在分词 ) | |
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52
gateways
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| n.网关( gateway的名词复数 )；门径；方法；大门口 | |
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53
eloquence
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| n.雄辩；口才，修辞 | |
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54
slippers
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| n. 拖鞋 | |
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antedate
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| vt.填早...的日期，早干，先干 | |
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56
mustered
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| v.集合，召集，集结（尤指部队）( muster的过去式和过去分词 )；（自他人处）搜集某事物；聚集；激发 | |
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ravages
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| 劫掠后的残迹，破坏的结果，毁坏后的残迹 | |
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58
quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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caress
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| vt./n.爱抚，抚摸 | |
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