The Four Corners

Jack was discovered before a tub in the wash house. In the absence of Ginny, the washerwoman, at breakfast, she had seized the opportunity of taking her place and was about to plunge her best muslin frock into the water with the stockings and underwear when Nan came upon her. "Jacqueline Corner, what are you up to now?" cried Nan, snatching the frock from her.

"I'm just helping Ginny to wash," replied Jack with her usual air of injured innocence when discovered under such circumstances.

"You were just helping Landy when you wasted the paint and ruined your blue frock," said Nan sarcastically. "Walk yourself right out of here. Ginny is perfectly capable of doing the washing without your assistance. Besides that lawn frock doesn't go in with black stockings; a pretty mess you'd make of it. Ginny won't thank you for mixing up her wash when she's sorted it all out. Try your energies upon something you know about, young lady."

Jack flung herself away. "You're always saying I mustn't do this and I mustn't do that," she complained. "You're a regular old cross-patch. You're not my mother to order me around."

"Mother sent me to see after you, so there," returned Nan. "I'm next to mother, too, for I'm next oldest. Where's Jean?"

"I don't know and I don't care," returned Jack, sullenly.

"Who's a cross-patch now? Here comes Ginny; you'd better make tracks out of here."

Jack fled and Nan returned to the house to find her mother ready to sit down to her sewing. The girl carefully shut the door and then established herself on an ottoman near her mother. "What does my Aunt Helen look like?" she asked abruptly.

Her mother looked up in surprise. "That's the second time lately that you have asked me about your Aunt Helen. Why this sudden interest, Nannie?"

"I'll tell you presently. It's part of the secret."

"Oh, it is. Well then, Helen has dark hair and blue eyes, a fair skin and little hands and feet. She is quite small, not much taller than you."

"It all sounds right," said Nan reflectively, "except the hair. Is she quite old, mother?"

"She is younger than I."

"Oh, then, of course, it is some one else, only my little lady has a very young smile. Maybe she isn't so awfully old. Could any one younger than you have real white hair, mother?"

"Why, yes, I have seen persons much younger whose hair had turned quite gray. Sometimes hair turns gray quite suddenly from illness or grief or trouble."

"Could Aunt Helen's hair be gray by this time?"

"It could be, though it was dark when I saw her last."

Nan pondered upon this and then said: "Well, anyhow, whoever it was, she told me I was to tell you that she was my godmother. Did I have two godmothers?"

"Yes, but I was one. What is all this about? Whom have you seen, and where did you see her?"

Nan launched forth into her story, her mother listening so attentively that her sewing lay untouched in her lap. When Nan had concluded, Mrs. Corner picked up her work again, but she was so agitated that she was unable to thread her needle.

"Who was she? Who was she?" queried Nan.

"Your Aunt Helen, without doubt."

"But I thought she was in Europe with my grandmother."

"So I thought. She evidently came over on some matter of business, leaving your grandmother there."

"Are you sorry I saw her, mother?" asked Nan, leaning her elbows on her mother's lap and looking up into her face. "I told her I ought not to go to Uplands because you don't like us to. Are you sorry I went? Are you angry, mother?"

"No, I think I am glad, Nannie."

"Then I am glad, but why didn't she come to see you when she was so near? Did she say mean horrid things, too? I can't imagine her doing anything hateful and mean."

A pained expression passed over Mrs. Corner's face. "What do you know about that sad time, Nannie? I have never mentioned it to you children."

"No, but Unc' Landy told me grandmother said bitter things. I know you didn't though."

Mrs. Corner sighed. "I said one thing, Nannie, that I have often regretted since, and it is because of it that your Aunt Helen did not let me know of her being here. It was in a moment of deep distress. I was hurt, indignant. I felt that I had been left desolate with insufficient means to support my children, and in the only interview I had with your grandmother I said, 'I hope I shall never again behold the face of one of the Corner family except the children of my beloved husband who bear his name.'"

"I don't blame you," said Nan, taking her mother's hand between her own. "They were horribly mean to go off with their money and not give you a penny. They ought at least to have let you live in the big house and use the piano."

Her mother smiled. "That is the way you look at it. Well, we get along somehow without them, thanks to Aunt Sarah. I am sorry I did not try to be more friendly to Helen. She was dominated by her mother and it was no doubt a choice between her and you children. She was very fond of you as a baby and she has not forgotten. Her mother's sadly jealous and envious spirit is what has made all the trouble."

"I was four years old when they went away," said Nan. "I don't remember them at all, though I remember dear daddy perfectly."

"Let's not talk of it any more," said Mrs. Corner.

"Aunt Helen said we might see each other again some day. Do you suppose they will come back and will be nice to us and let us go up there sometimes?"

"We cannot say. I do not look into the future to find such possibilities, Nannie. You must not build too many air-castles."

"Oh, but I like to," replied Nan. "It's lots of fun to do it and if they don't amount to anything I've had the fun of the building and nobody's hurt when they tumble down."

"In that case I suppose it doesn't make much difference, and when one is naturally a castle-builder it is hard to give up the habit."

"It isn't as bad as sucking one's fingers as Jean does, for it doesn't put my mouth out of shape; it only amuses me and I often forget my castles an hour after they are ten stories high. I suppose I am not to tell the children about Aunt Helen."

"I think I wouldn't yet."

"No," said Nan with a mature air. "I think it's best not. They mightn't understand. Besides, as she isn't a polywog nor a newly hatched bird, Mary Lee wouldn't be very much interested in her."

CHAPTER IV

A MOTHER'S SECRET

The first days of autumn brought back school days. Aunt Sarah had gone to visit a nephew in lower Maryland, leaving behind her mementoes in the form of the coat of paint for the front fence, a new cover for the living-room table, and many stitches put in made-over garments for the children. She had further dispensed her bounty in a direction of which the children as yet knew nothing, and it was Nan who first heard of it from her mother.

Aunt Sarah's absence was felt in more ways than one. Mrs. Corner was her favorite niece. A tiny grave in the old churchyard marked the resting place of her namesake, Nan's elder sister, who was her mother's first-born and who lived but three short months. It may have been that Aunt Sarah's heart went out more tenderly toward her own sister's child because of this loss which was so heavy a grief to them both, but whether it was because of this bond between them or because they mutually loved and respected each other, it is true that any sacrifices which Miss Dent felt she could make she made for the Corner family, and when she was with them no task was too heavy for her, and her wise counsel and helpful hands were greatly missed by Mrs. Corner.

It was just after Aunt Sarah's departure, and while school was still a novelty, that Nan, running in to tell her mother of the day's doings, noticed that Mrs. Corner was sewing not for one of the children but for herself. This was so unusual that Nan remarked it, and forgetting her school gossip exclaimed, "Why, mother, you are making a new frock! Where did you get it?"

Her mother dropped her work with a sigh. Nan noticed that the dear face was pale and sad. "Aunt Sarah gave it to me," was the answer. There was silence for a few moments after this, while Mrs. Corner went on with her work of measuring off the black breadths. "I have something to tell you, little daughter," she then said. "You had a secret to tell me a little while ago, and now I have one to tell you." She paused. "It isn't a happy secret, Nan," she went on, "but as you are my eldest and my staff to lean upon, you must try to help me bear it without rebelling."

Nan grew very sober. This was such a melancholy beginning that she feared what might follow, but being a young person who never thrust aside unpleasant things when she knew they must be met she said firmly, "Don't bother about me, mother; I'll be as brave as a lion."

The scissors snipped along the edges of the pattern while Mrs. Corner bent over her work. Presently she said, "It is this, Nannie: that I must leave you for awhile."

All sorts of notions flew to Nan's mind. Was her mother perhaps going to Europe to hunt up her Aunt Helen? Was she going to see Cousin Henry Dent in Maryland? "Oh, mother," she cried, "tell me quick. Where are you going?"