The Four Corners

"We have an old phaeton," said Nan; "it's rather dingy looking, but that is all that is the matter with it, and there is the sleigh. We don't need either since we sold the horses, but mother doesn't like to part with them for the small price we could get for them and she says maybe some day we can afford to keep a horse."

"We must surely see about having our horses here," repeated Ran, and that very night he wrote home to his father to make the request.

A week later the horses arrived and were stabled near-by. Polly Lewis was generous enough to send her mare to one of the girls once in a while and so many a long and delightful ride did the cousins have. Sometimes several of them would pile into the old phaeton and sometimes two would go horseback and the rest would drive. Strange to say, though Mary Lee was so much less impetuous than Nan, and fonder of boys' sports, she sat a horse less well and was never the graceful and fearless rider that Nan was, though many a girl might have envied even her good seat and steady hand.

There were other tourneys, too, when Randolph generally was victor and crowned Jean who was his special favorite, thus causing pangs of jealousy in Jack's ambitious heart. Nan, seeing this, resolved to do her best for Jack's sake and practiced so diligently that once Ran's successes rendering him careless, she actually did take the championship from him and to Jack's great delight, crowned this little sister, making a flowery speech as she did so.

Aunt Sarah smiled contemptuously at these performances which she called "fool nonsense," but since the children kept well, were not in bad company, and did not neglect their school duties, she did not forbid them their exciting plays. After the arrival of the horses belonging to the Gordon boys, Pete was not again expected to play the part of a curvetting steed, but was allowed to rest on his laurels.

CHAPTER VIII

THE SUNSET-TREE

Although the girls had plenty of time for play, Aunt Sarah saw to it that they had no really idle moments. She was the most industrious of persons herself and accomplished wonders which she explained by saying her daily nap of half an hour so fortified her that she could do two days' work in one by taking two rests in the twenty-four hours. She was quick to perceive defects in young people and in a half sarcastic, half humorous way, commented upon them. Upon Jean, such remarks had little effect; they angered Jack, slightly annoyed Mary Lee, but they hurt Nan to the quick, she being the most sensitive of them all. Proud and romantic, high-spirited and impatient, she was often thrown from a pinnacle of eager expectation into the depths of a present discomfort. It was on such occasions that she fled to her nook in the pines which she had finally named "Place o' Pines." Here she would often solace herself by writing to her mother whom she missed, perhaps, more than any of the others did. Reports coming from Mrs. Corner were on the whole favorable. "If I can stay long enough," she wrote, "the doctors give me every hope of entire recovery."

It was one afternoon when Aunt Sarah had been particularly exacting that Nan fled to Place o' Pines. She had not been there for some time, having been occupied in too many ways to have many moods. This, however, had been a particularly horrid day. In the first place she had come down late to breakfast and Aunt Sarah had said: "Good-afternoon," when she entered the dining-room. That made all the others giggle and she felt so small. She needn't have been late, of course, but while she was putting on her shoes and stockings she thought of a new tune and had been humming it over so as not to lose the air, and, as she sat there dreaming, the time slipped away.

Then of course, Mary Lee might have seen that she was in a bad humor and should not have teased her about dawdling, making her answer sharply.

"You old sharp corner," Mary Lee then had said.

"You're a Corner yourself as much as I am," Nan had retorted. "You're an angle; you're an angle worm," was Mary Lee's triumphant reply. And then Randolph had shouted with laughter. Nan's cheeks reddened as she remembered his mirth. She hated to be laughed at, especially by boys, and by older boys worst of all. She didn't mind Ashby and Phil so much, for they were younger, but she did very much mind Randolph's laughter, so she had taken to her heels and had not spoken to any of them since. She hoped they would let her alone and that she would be safe in her hiding-place till supper-time.

It was two months since her mother had left home and longer since she had parted from her Aunt Helen. As she came through the orchard to where the pines stood sombrely green, she saw a charred space just outside her tiny grove. The boys had evidently been there roasting potatoes, for there were skins and corn-husks scattered about.

"Oh, dear," sighed Nan, "if they have found out my darling grove, I shall never have any more peace." But, apparently, the boys had not entered the charmed castle, for as Nan crept through the underbrush she saw that all was as she had left it, only a bit of white paper fluttered from the music rack to which it was fastened by a pin.

"They have been here after all," she exclaimed, "and have found me out. I suppose that is some foolish note they have left." She took the paper to the edge of the grove where it was lighter and read:

"Come, come, come,
Come to the sunset-tree.
The day is past and gone;
The woodman's axe lies free,
And the reaper's work is done.

"Come at ten o'clock to-morrow by command of your

    "Fairy Godmother.

"October 14."

Surprised and pleased, Nan's first thought was "I must go tell mother." Then with a rush came the recollection of her mother's absence. She was the only one who knew the secret. Her Aunt Helen had returned. Had she come alone?

Nan looked across the little brook toward Uplands. The house seemed as silent and deserted as in the weeks and months past. Slipping the paper into her blouse, she determined to go and reconnoitre.

The house looked grim and uninviting. Nan wondered if ever it had seemed otherwise, if ever the doors had been thrown open and from the windows had looked smiling faces, her Aunt Nancy's, her Aunt Helen's, her father's. The stick-tights and jimson weed held her with detaining hands as she ran back through the unmown lawn. They seemed like unseen fingers from fairies under a spell. Nan wondered at what mystic word the doors of this haunted dwelling would fly open to her.

"Suppose," Nan said to herself, "an ogre lived in that dark woods and I was in his power." She gave a little self-reproachful sigh as she reached the sunset-tree. "Mother would tell me that I was in the power of an ogre, I suppose," she continued, sitting down on the gnarled roots which stretched far along above soil. "Mother would say old ogre Impatience and the bad fairy that makes me get to dreaming, had me in their clutches. Maybe they have. I wish I could tell my fairy godmother about it, and that she could give me a phial of precious liquid to squeeze on the ogre's eyelids so he would go to sleep and never wake up; and I wish she would give me a charm to change the fairy that makes me dream into one that would make me jump right up and get dressed in a jiffy. I wonder why it is I always love so to moon over my shoes and stockings. All sorts of ideas come to me then. Perhaps if I did nothing but put on shoes and stockings I'd some day have an idea come to me that would be worth while." The whimsy of spending the rest of her life in putting on shoes and stockings made her laugh.

The sunset was gorgeous gold and red over the top of the hill. Lakes and mountains and turreted cities appeared in the sky. "The holy city," said Nan, becoming grave. "That is where papa is. Now up go the roses," she went on as pink clouds detached themselves and drifted off overhead. "I'm sending you those roses, papa," she said. "Please take them into heaven with you and I'll try to get rid of the ogre Impatience and the Poppy fairy. Poppies put you to sleep they say, so I'll call her that. To-morrow I'll stand on one foot to put on my shoes and stockings, for if I sit down I am lost. I wish I knew, papa darling, if you could look through those bright golden cracks in the sky and could see me standing here under the sunset-tree."

She returned soberly home and deliberately sought out Mary Lee and the boys whom she found practicing the double shuffle on the back porch.

"Where have you been?" asked Ran, pleasantly.

"In the enchanted woods," returned Nan, "but it was getting gruesome there so I came away."

Ran laughed. He was getting used to these speeches from Nan, and rather liked them.

"I can do it now," said Mary Lee eagerly. "I got Mitty to show me. See, Nan." And she executed the step easily.

"I don't know that step, but I know another one," said Nan, glad to perceive that her ill temper of the morning was forgotten, and being a little ashamed of supposing that they would miss her much when she went off alone.

The noise of their break-downs brought Aunt Sarah to the door. "What in the world are you all doing?" she asked.

"Just doing some steps," replied Mary Lee, expertly executing her double shuffle.

"You might have been better employed," returned Aunt Sarah. "It would have been just as well, Mary Lee, if you had been giving some attention to darning your stockings. There is a fine large hole in the knee of one where you scraped it against a tree you were climbing, I suppose. And, Nan, it wouldn't do any harm if you were to see where you left the shirt-waist you took off this morning. We are not Japanese to hang up things on the floor."

"I wish we were," answered Nan. "I'd like to wear kimonos and shoes that slip up and down at the heel, and I'd not mind living in a house made of paper screens."

"Poor protection they'd be to you," replied Aunt Sarah, "for you would punch a hole in every one before a day was over."

Nan was not destructive and considered this an unjust imputation, so she stalked off with her head in the air. She didn't believe but that she had hung up the shirt-waist and that it had slipped down. Aunt Sarah was so particular and was always dinging at her about leaving bureau drawers and closet doors unclosed. When one is in a hurry, how is it possible always to see that everything is just so?

She found the waist not on the floor of the closet, but by the chair where she had laid her clothes the night before. There were some of Jack's belongings, too, strewed around the room, but Mary Lee's and Jean's were carefully put away. Nan hung up the waist and then sat down by the window. Suppose the things in the big house at Uplands had been allowed to lie around helter-skelter, she didn't believe it would look so attractive as she imagined. This brought a new train of thought which she carried out, leaning her arms on the sill, her chin resting upon them till Aunt Sarah's entrance aroused her from her reverie.

"Up in the clouds, I suppose," she exclaimed. "You ought to live in a balloon or a sky-scraper, Nan, you so seldom want to come down to earth. I want you to find Jack and Jean and tell them to come in and get ready for supper."

Nan departed on her errand, smiling to herself in the thought that she had a secret from them all. She was out of sorts with everybody in the house, but to-morrow would be the sunset-tree and Aunt Helen.

She was promptly on hand at the trysting-place the next morning, though finding some difficulty in getting there in time as it seemed that Aunt Sarah had a hundred things for her to do. That she did not dream over them goes without the saying, and Aunt Sarah congratulated herself upon the seeming improvement under her reproofs. Promptly, as Nan appeared, the little figure of her Aunt Helen was seen approaching her. She did not wait for Nan to come up but ran toward her and clasped her in her arms, and Nan gave her as close a hug. Her imagination was strongly appealed to by this relative, so little known and who had chosen such fascinating methods of becoming acquainted.

"You dear Aunt Helen," cried Nan, "where did you come from?"

"You know me then," said her aunt.

"Oh, yes. When I told mother, she guessed who you were."

"And she let you come to meet me to-day?" said Miss Helen, with a strain of eagerness in her voice.

"She didn't know. She wasn't here to ask. She's gone away, you know."

"I didn't know. Tell me about it, please."

Nan poured forth her woes and fears concerning her mother.

"Oh, dear, oh, dear," sighed Miss Helen. "We didn't know. Oh, my dear."