The Four Corners Abroad

"Good for you, Nan!" cried the doctor. "You are loyal to the core. That is the way to talk. I am going to sit down this very night and write to father about what you have said. It will do him good to know how you feel. He thinks a lot of Miss Nancy Corner."

"Must you go?" said Mrs. Corner as he rose to take his leave.

"Yes, I must. I am not fairly in harness yet, but I have a lot to do."

"You will come in and see us often, I hope."

"Won't I? Mother is depending on it, I can tell you. The fact of you all being here made it easier for her to see me go. And Mrs. Corner, remember, I am yours to command. You must not fail to call upon me for anything in the wide world that I can do for you, just as you would on Tom Lewis or any of the boys at home. I want the privilege of being your right hand man, as I am the only one of your townsmen here."

"You are a dear boy," said Mrs. Corner laying her hand affectionately on his shoulder, "and I shall be delighted to take you at your word whenever occasion requires on condition that you write to your mother that I say she needn't worry over her son while Mary Corner is on hand to have an eye to him."

"I'll do it and it will be no end of comfort to her. She expects me to come home with forty slashes on my face and an insatiable thirst for beer."

"Are you going to wear a green or a blue cap or what color?" asked Jean.

"I'll wear my own American headgear, if you please."

"And you won't have those sword cuts all over your face?" said Jack.

"Not if my present stock of vanity holds out. I am afraid you would never be my sweetheart if I allowed myself to be hacked up in that style, Jack."

"Oh, but I shall never be your sweetheart," returned Jack calmly. "I am Carter's. I used to be Clarence's, but I most forget him, and he doesn't write to me, but Carter does."

"I see. Well, anyhow, I shall not submit to having my noble countenance marred. Now, I must go, Mrs. Corner. It is so good to see you all and such a temptation to stand and talk. I'll come soon again, if I may."

"As often as you please. I've neither music nor German to absorb me, for I intend to spare myself all I can, so when the others are busy you will find at least one at leisure," Mrs. Corner assured him and he went off leaving all with a feeling of nearness to home which his presence had given.

A new arrival at the pension that day filled the last of Fräulein Bauer's rooms, and decided who was to complete the house party. A pleasant American woman with her son and daughter took rooms opposite the Corners. The family now consisted of the six Corners with Jo Keyes, Mrs. Hoyt, son Maurice and daughter Juliet, a stout Russian lady and her son, "the Herr Professor," as the Fräulein called him, a jovial German, and a severe looking dame whose nationality no one seemed to know. Nan insisted that this last person was a Nihilist, while Jo declared she was an American refugee. Mary Lee thought she must be Italian, because she liked macaroni and asked for more olive oil on her salad. She did not seem to be very fluent with German, though no one had heard her speak any other language. She sat at the extreme end of the table, and bowed with great stateliness to the others whenever she came in or went out.

It was Miss Helen who at last discovered the lady's nationality, and announced with great glee that she knew.

"I am positive she is Russian or Polish or something like that," declared Nan. "I am sure she has a bomb concealed in her room and has designs upon the Prince Regent."

"I am convinced she is Italian," Mary Lee differed from her sister. "She has such black eyes and hair, and I saw her with a letter in her hand that had an Italian stamp on it, and it was addressed to Signorina something or other."

This seemed fairly good proof, but still Miss Helen shook her head.

"She might be Spanish," ventured Jo, "for, as you say, Mary Lee, she is very dark. If she were Russian why doesn't she talk to the other Russians at the table?"

"I hadn't thought of that," said Nan, "though maybe she doesn't want them to know she is Russian for fear they will find out her plots."

Miss Helen laughed aloud. "You are away off, Nan," she said.

"Perhaps she is a Greek." Jack thought up this.

"Or a-a-Austrian," Jean ventured.

"Then she'd speak better German," objected Nan.

"What do you say, Mary?" asked Miss Helen. "No one so far has guessed right. You must have a chance."

"She might be French, perhaps Canadian French."

"But the Italian letter," spoke up Mary Lee.

"I had one from Italy myself this morning addressed to Signora Corner," Mrs. Corner told her.

"Then that falls through," said Jo. "Give it up, Miss Helen."

"My dears, she's plain, dyed-in-the-wool, United States American, from Chelsea, Massachusetts."

"Oh, oh," came a chorus of laughing exclamations. "The very idea! How did you find it out?"

"I encountered her on my way down-stairs this morning, and she asked me if I knew where she could find a second-hand book-shop. I happened to know of one and I told her. We were going in the same direction and we walked together a little way."

"Is she any kind of an anything?" asked Jack.

"That is rather a vague question," said Miss Helen. "Couldn't you be a little more exact, Jack dear?"

"I mean is she a doctor or a teacher or anything like that? She looks like she might be something besides just a plain woman."

"She certainly is a plain enough woman," remarked Nan with a laugh.

"She didn't mention that she had a profession, though I think she is here for a special purpose, perhaps," Miss Helen told them.

"American," said Jo reminiscently; "that's the limit. It shows that one can never tell. Why, we might have discussed our most intimate affairs before her, and never have dreamed she could understand a word of what we said."

"Which goes to show that one must be very careful about one's speech when traveling abroad," said Mrs. Corner.

"What do you think of the new girl and boy?" Jo asked Nan that same day.

"They're rather nice, I think. The boy seems a jolly sort of somebody and the girl is very friendly. They are going to school and seem to have a number of friends here, which will make it pleasant for us. Mother likes Mrs. Hoyt. They know some of the same people at home and spent an hour reminiscing after dinner. I am glad on mother's account, and Aunt Helen's, too, that she is so nice."

The American part of the pension soon resolved itself into a very congenial party. Nan struck up a friendship with Juliet Hoyt, while Maurice dangled after Jo and Mary Lee. Maurice was a merry, gentlemanly lad with dancing brown eyes, and a frank mouth. He was always ready for fun, and as both Mary Lee and Jo were very fond of outdoor sports the three had long walks together and promised themselves later that they would skate and rodel and ski as often as they could.

It was not long before Maurice's schoolmates found out that Mrs. Hoyt's sitting-room was a very pleasant place, and that she herself was a sympathetic person into whose ears they could pour their woes or whom they could come to in hours of homesickness to be comforted, therefore there was scarcely a day passed but some one of Dr. Mann's schoolboys wandered into Pension Bauer for cheer.

Nan and Mary Lee had always been thrown a great deal with their boy cousins, and Jo was so full of life that she naturally attracted boys, so it must be confessed that Mrs. Hoyt was not the one chiefly sought. "But there is safety in numbers," she said to Mrs. Corner, "and I want my children to have good honest friendships among both boys and girls, so do please let your young people frolic with mine; it won't hurt them one bit. Moreover I think it is much the better plan to allow them to have their friends here where I can overlook them and take part in what goes on. It seems to me that the surest way of keeping the confidence of both my boy and girl is not to be too severely critical, and to make whatever place stands for home as happy as possible."

Mrs. Corner quite agreed with her, and though half a dozen boys vied with one another to see which could nearest match in socks and neckties the color of Jo's winter suit, the Sunday after she appeared in it, and though Maurice insisted upon sending daily notes to Mary Lee these were all very harmless matters. It was something to make even their elders laugh to see the six boys in green socks and neckties as near of a color as possible, and when Mrs. Corner read the little jokes which passed for notes she saw what very innocent nonsense it all was. So the young folks had the best of times and afforded much amusement to their families.

"Winter is at hand," said Nan one day as she came in from her lessons. "They are covering up our beautiful fountain that we all love so, and they are beginning to pack up the rosebushes and plants in the parks. I wish you would see how beautifully they do it. They have loads and loads of evergreen stuff that they put around the bushes, so when they are done up, instead of looking like scarecrows wrapped in straw they are nice, neat, well-shaped cubes and cylinders of green that don't offend the eye in the least. Of course they can't do the fountain that way, for it is too big, and it has to have an actual house of boards built over it. I am thankful for one thing, for though they cover up so much else they can't do anything to the Frauenkirche."

"I am glad of that myself," returned Miss Helen. "I love the way those two big towers dominate the city."

"It is such a nice orderly place," Nan went on. "If a pile of boards and building materials must be in the street, it is piled up as carefully as possible so as to take up the least room; it isn't pitched helter-skelter all over the place as it is so often at home."

"They certainly do things of that kind very carefully; I suppose because they take more time. We are always in such a rush at home."