the sleeveless dolman type, black velvet, lined with grey and white
squirrel skins, a grey skin next a white. Vickie, so indifferent
to clothes, fell in love with that cloak. Her eyes followed it
with delight whenever Mrs. Rosen wore it. She found it picturesque,
romantic. Mrs. Rosen had been captivated by the same thing in the
cloak, and had bought it with a shrug, knowing it would be quite out
of place in Skyline; and Mr. Rosen, when she first produced it from
her trunk, had laughed and said: "Where did you get that?--out of
Rigoletto?" It looked like that--but how could Vickie know?
Vickie's whole family puzzled Mrs. Rosen; their feelings were so
much finer than their way of living. She bought milk from the
Templetons because they kept a cow--which Mandy milked,--and every
night one of the twins brought the milk to her in a tin pail.
Whichever boy brought it, she always called him Albert--she thought
Adelbert a silly, Southern name.
One night when she was fitting the lid on an empty pail, she said
severely:
"Now, Albert, I have put some cookies for Grandma in this pail,
wrapped in a napkin. And they are for Grandma, remember, not for
your mother or Vickie."
"Yes'm."
When she turned to him to give him the pail, she saw two full
crystal globes in the little boy's eyes, just ready to break. She
watched him go softly down the path and dash those tears away with
the back of his hand. She was sorry. She hadn't thought the
little boys realized that their household was somehow a queer one.
Queer or not, Mrs. Rosen liked to go there better than to most
houses in the town. There was something easy, cordial, and
carefree in the parlour that never smelled of being shut up, and
the ugly furniture looked hospitable. One felt a pleasantness in
the human relationships. These people didn't seem to know there
were such things as struggle or exactness or competition in the
world. They were always genuinely glad to see you, had time to see
you, and were usually gay in mood--all but Grandmother, who had the
kind of gravity that people who take thought of human destiny must
have. But even she liked light-heartedness in others; she drudged,
indeed, to keep it going.
There were houses that were better kept, certainly, but the
housekeepers had no charm, no gentleness of manner, were like hard
little machines, most of them; and some were grasping and narrow.
The Templetons were not selfish or scheming. Anyone could take
advantage of them, and many people did. Victoria might eat all the
cookies her neighbour sent in, but she would give away anything she
had. She was always ready to lend her dresses and hats and bits of
jewellery for the school theatricals, and she never worked people
for favours.
As for Mr. Templeton (people usually called him "young Mr.
Templeton"), he was too delicate to collect his just debts. His
boyish, eager-to-please manner, his fair complexion and blue eyes
and young face, made him seem very soft to some of the hard old
money-grubbers on Main Street, and the fact that he always said
"Yes, sir," and "No, sir," to men older than himself furnished a
good deal of amusement to by-standers.
Two years ago, when this Templeton family came to Skyline and moved
into the house next door, Mrs. Rosen was inconsolable. The new
neighbours had a lot of children, who would always be making a
racket. They put a cow and a horse into the empty barn, which
would mean dirt and flies. They strewed their back yard with
packing-cases and did not pick them up.
She first met Mrs. Templeton at an afternoon card party, in a house
at the extreme north end of the town, fully half a mile away, and
she had to admit that her new neighbour was an attractive woman,
and that there was something warm and genuine about her. She
wasn't in the least willowy or languishing, as Mrs. Rosen had
usually found Southern ladies to be. She was high-spirited and
direct; a trifle imperious, but with a shade of diffidence, too, as
if she were trying to adjust herself to a new group of people and
to do the right thing.
While they were at the party, a blinding snowstorm came on, with a
hard wind. Since they lived next door to each other, Mrs. Rosen
and Mrs. Templeton struggled homeward together through the
blizzard. Mrs. Templeton seemed delighted with the rough weather;
she laughed like a big country girl whenever she made a mis-step
off the obliterated sidewalk and sank up to her knees in a snow-
drift.
"Take care, Mrs. Rosen," she kept calling, "keep to the right!
Don't spoil your nice coat. My, ain't this real winter? We never
had it like this back with us."
When they reached the Templeton's gate, Victoria wouldn't hear of
Mrs. Rosen's going farther. "No, indeed, Mrs. Rosen, you come
right in with me and get dry, and Ma'll make you a hot toddy while
I take the baby."
By this time Mrs. Rosen had begun to like her neighbour, so she
went in. To her surprise, the parlour was neat and comfortable--
the children did not strew things about there, apparently. The
hard-coal burner threw out a warm red glow. A faded, respectable
Brussels carpet covered the floor, an old-fashioned wooden clock
ticked on the walnut bookcase. There were a few easy chairs, and
no hideous ornaments about. She rather liked the old oil-chromos
on the wall: "Hagar and Ishmael in the Wilderness," and "The Light
of the World." While Mrs. Rosen dried her feet on the nickel base
of the stove, Mrs. Templeton excused herself and withdrew to the
next room,--her bedroom,--took off her silk dress and corsets, and
put on a white challis n?glig?e. She reappeared with the baby, who
was not crying, exactly, but making eager, passionate, gasping
entreaties,--faster and faster, tenser and tenser, as he felt his
dinner nearer and nearer and yet not his.
Mrs. Templeton sat down in a low rocker by the stove and began to
nurse him, holding him snugly but carelessly, still talking to Mrs.
Rosen about the card party, and laughing about their wade home
through the snow. Hughie, the baby, fell to work so fiercely that
beads of sweat came out all over his flushed forehead. Mrs. Rosen
could not help admiring him and his mother. They were so
comfortable and complete. When he was changed to the other side,
Hughie resented the interruption a little; but after a time he
became soft and bland, as smooth as oil, indeed; began looking
about him as he drew in his milk. He finally dropped the nipple
from his lips altogether, turned on his mother's arm, and looked
inquiringly at Mrs. Rosen.
"What a beautiful baby!" she exclaimed from her heart. And he was.
A sort of golden baby. His hair was like sunshine, and his long
lashes were gold over such gay blue eyes. There seemed to be a
gold glow in his soft pink skin, and he had the smile of a cherub.
"We think he's a pretty boy," said Mrs. Templeton.
"He's the
prettiest of my babies. Though the twins were mighty cunning
little fellows. I hated the idea of twins, but the minute I saw
them, I couldn't resist them."
Just then old Mrs. Harris came in, walking widely in her full-
gathered skirt and felt-soled shoes, bearing a tray with two
smoking goblets upon it.
"This is my mother, Mrs. Harris, Mrs. Rosen," said Mrs. Templeton.
"I'm glad to know you, ma'am," said Mrs. Harris. "Victoria, let me
take the baby, while you two ladies have your toddy."
"Oh, don't take him away, Mrs. Harris, please!" cried Mrs. Rosen.
The old lady smiled. "I won't. I'll set right here. He never
frets with his grandma."
When Mrs. Rosen had finished her excellent drink, she asked if she
might hold the baby, and Mrs. Harris placed him on her lap. He
made a few rapid boxing motions with his two fists, then braced
himself on his heels and the back of his head, and lifted himself
up in an arc. When he dropped back, he looked up at Mrs. Rosen
with his most intimate smile. "See what a smart boy I am!"
When Mrs. Rosen walked home, feeling her way through the snow by
following the fence, she knew she could never stay away from a
house where there was a baby like that one.
IV
Vickie did her studying in a hammock hung between two tall
cottonwood trees over in the Headmaster's green yard. The
Headmaster had the finest yard in Skyline, on the edge of the town,
just where the sandy plain and the sage-brush began. His family
went back to Ohio every summer, and Bert and Del Templeton were
paid to take care of his lawn, to turn the sprinkler on at the
right hours and to cut the grass. They were really too little to
run the heavy lawn-mower very well, but they were able to manage
because they were twins. Each took one end of the handle-bar, and
they pushed together like a pair of fat Shetland ponies. They were
very proud of being able to keep the lawn so nice, and worked hard
on it. They cut Mrs. Rosen's grass once a week, too, and did it so
well that she wondered why in the world they never did anything
about their own yard. They didn't have city water, to be sure (it
was expensive), but she thought they might pick up a few
velocipedes and iron hoops, and dig up the messy "flower-bed," that
was even uglier than the naked gravel spots. She was particularly
offended by a deep ragged ditch, a miniature arroyo, which ran
across the back yard, serving no purpose and looking very dreary.
One morning she said craftily to the twins, when she was paying
them for cutting her grass:
"And, boys, why don't you just shovel the sand-pile by your fence
into dat ditch, and make your back yard smooth?"
"Oh, no, ma'am," said Adelbert with feeling. "We like to have the
ditch to build bridges over!"
Ever since vacation began, the twins had been busy getting the
Headmaster's yard ready for the Methodist lawn party. When Mrs.
Holliday, the Headmaster's wife, went away for the summer, she
always left a key with the Ladies' Aid Society and invited them to
give their ice-cream social at her place.
This year the date set for the party was June fifteenth. The day
was a particularly fine one, and as Mr. Holliday himself had been
called to Cheyenne on railroad business, the twins felt personally
responsible for everything. They got out to the Holliday place
early in the morning, and stayed on guard all day. Before noon the
drayman brought a wagon-load of card-tables and folding chairs,
which the boys placed in chosen spots under the cottonwood trees.
In the afternoon the Methodist ladies arrived and opened up the
kitchen to receive the freezers of home-made ice-cream, and the
cakes which the congregation donated. Indeed, all the good cake-
bakers in town were expected to send a cake. Grandma Harris baked
a white cake, thickly iced and covered with freshly grated coconut,
and Vickie took it over in the afternoon.
Mr. and Mrs. Rosen, because they belonged to no church, contributed
to the support of all, and usually went to the church suppers in
winter and the socials in summer. On this warm June evening they
set out early, in order to take a walk first. They strolled along
the hard gravelled road that led out through the sage toward the
sand-hills; tonight it led toward the moon, just rising over the
sweep of dunes. The sky was almost as blue as at midday, and had
that look of being very near and very soft which it has in desert
countries. The moon, too, looked very near, soft and bland and
innocent. Mrs. Rosen admitted that in the Adirondacks, for which
she was always secretly homesick in summer, the moon had a much
colder brilliance, seemed farther off and made of a harder metal.
This moon gave the sage-brush plain and the drifted sand-hills the
softness of velvet. All countries were beautiful to Mr. Rosen. He
carried a country of his own in his mind, and was able to unfold it
like a tent in any wilderness.
When they at last turned back toward the town, they saw groups of
people, women in white dresses, walking toward the dark spot where
the paper lanterns made a yellow light underneath the cottonwoods.
High above, the rustling tree-tops stirred free in the flood of
moonlight.
The lighted yard was surrounded by a low board fence, painted the
dark red Burlington colour, and as the Rosens drew near, they
noticed four children standing close together in the shadow of some
tall elder bushes just outside the fence. They were the poor Maude
children; their mother was the washwoman, the Rosens' laundress and
the Templetons'. People said that every one of those children had
a different father. But good laundresses were few, and even the
members of the Ladies' Aid were glad to get Mrs. Maude's services
at a dollar a day, though they didn't like their children to play
with hers. Just as the Rosens approached, Mrs. Templeton came out
from the lighted square, leaned over the fence, and addressed the
little Maudes.
"I expect you children forgot your dimes, now didn't you? Never
mind, here's a dime for each of you, so come along and have your
ice-cream."
The Maudes put out small hands and said: "Thank you," but not one
of them moved.
"Come along, Francie" (the oldest girl was named Frances). "Climb
right over the fence." Mrs. Templeton reached over and gave her a
hand, and the little boys quickly scrambled after their sister.
Mrs. Templeton took them to a table which Vickie and the twins had
just selected as being especially private--they liked to do things
together.
"Here, Vickie, let the Maudes sit at your table, and take care they
get plenty of cake."
The Rosens had followed close behind Mrs. Templeton, and Mr. Rosen
now overtook her and said in his most courteous and friendly
manner: "Good evening, Mrs. Templeton. Will you have ice-cream
with us?" He always used the local
idioms, though his voice and
enunciation made them sound altogether different from Skyline
speech.
"Indeed I will, Mr. Rosen. Mr. Templeton will be late. He went
out to his farm yesterday, and I don't know just when to expect
him."
Vickie and the twins were disappointed at not having their table to
themselves, when they had come early and found a nice one; but they
knew it was right to look out for the dreary little Maudes, so they
moved close together and made room for them. The Maudes didn't
cramp them long. When the three boys had eaten the last crumb of
cake and licked their spoons, Francie got up and led them to a
green slope by the fence, just outside the lighted circle. "Now
set down, and watch and see how folks do," she told them. The boys
looked to Francie for commands and support. She was really Amos
Maude's child, born before he ran away to the Klondike, and it had
been rubbed into them that this made a difference. The Templeton
children made their ice-cream linger out, and sat watching the
crowd. They were glad to see their mother go to Mr. Rosen's table,
and noticed how nicely he placed a chair for her and insisted upon
putting a scarf about her shoulders. Their mother was wearing her
new dotted Swiss, with many ruffles, all edged with black ribbon,
and wide ruffly sleeves. As the twins watched her over their
spoons, they thought how much prettier their mother was than any of
the other women, and how becoming her new dress was. The children
got as much satisfaction as Mrs. Harris out of Victoria's good
looks.
Mr. Rosen was well pleased with Mrs. Templeton and her new dress,
and with her kindness to the little Maudes. He thought her manner
with them just right,--warm, spontaneous, without anything
patronizing. He always admired her way with her own children,
though Mrs. Rosen thought it too casual. Being a good mother, he
believed, was much more a matter of physical poise and richness
than of sentimentalizing and reading doctor-books. Tonight he was
more talkative than usual, and in his quiet way made Mrs. Templeton
feel his real friendliness and admiration. Unfortunately, he made
other people feel it, too.
Mrs. Jackson, a neighbour who didn't like the Templetons, had been
keeping an eye on Mr. Rosen's table. She was a stout square woman
of imperturbable calm, effective in regulating the affairs of the
community because she never lost her temper, and could say the most
cutting things in calm, even kindly, tones. Her face was smooth
and placid as a mask, rather good-humoured, and the fact that one
eye had a cast and looked askance made it the more difficult to see
through her intentions. When she had been lingering about the
Rosens' table for some time, studying Mr. Rosen's pleasant
attentions to Mrs. Templeton, she brought up a trayful of cake.
"You folks are about ready for another helping," she remarked
affably.
Mrs. Rosen spoke. "I want some of Grandma Harris's cake. It's a
white coconut, Mrs. Jackson."
"How about you, Mrs. Templeton, would you like some of your own
cake?"
"Indeed I would," said Mrs. Templeton heartily. "Ma said she had
good luck with it. I didn't see it. Vickie brought it over."
Mrs. Jackson deliberately separated the slices on her tray with two
forks. "Well," she remarked with a chuckle that really sounded
amiable, "I don't know but I'd like my cakes, if I kept somebody in
the kitchen to bake them for me."
Mr. Rosen for once spoke quickly. "If I had a cook like Grandma
Harris in my kitchen, I'd live in it!" he declared.
Mrs. Jackson smiled. "I don't know as we feel like that, Mrs.
Templeton? I tell Mr. Jackson that my idea of coming up in the
world would be to forget I had a cook-stove, like Mrs. Templeton.
But we can't all be lucky."
Mr. Rosen could not tell how much was malice and how much was