The Corner House Girls in a Play

CHAPTER XXV

A GREAT SUCCESS

Miss Pepperill was not going to die. Dr. Forsyth made that good prophecy soon after Mrs. Eland had taken on herself the nursing of her strangely met sister.

The school teacher – so grim and secretive by nature – had been in a fever of worry and uncertainty long before the accident that had stretched her on this bed of illness. The relief her mind secured when her sister, Marion, and she were reunited did much to aid her recovery.

Nobody would have suspected that the calm, demure, little gray woman and the assertive, sharp-tongued school teacher were sisters; but the evidence of their own childish remembrances was conclusive. And that little Mrs. Eland should be the older of the two was likewise astounding.

There was still a sad secret on Mrs. Eland's heart. Mr. and Mrs. Buckham knew it. The smallest Corner House girl had prodded the doubt of her father's honesty to the surface of the hospital matron's mind.

"There ain't no fool like an old fool, it's my bounden duty to say," Mr. Bob Buckham remarked on the Monday of Christmas week, as he warmed his hands before the open fire on the hearth of the old Corner House sitting room.

He had come to town ostensibly to bring the Corner House girls' Christmas goose – a noble bird which Ruth had picked out of his flock herself on a recent visit to Strawberry Farm. But he confessed to another errand in Milton.

"I'd no business to talk out like I done about Abe and Lem Aden that first day you children was at our house. But I've allus hugged that injury to my breast. Marm says I ain't no business to, and I know she's right. But it hurt me dreadfully when I was a boy to lose my marm.

"The rascality lay between old Lem and Abe. Course we couldn't never prove anything on Lem, and he never had a good word himself for his brother. I read his letters to Abe – Mrs. Eland, she showed 'em to me – and there wasn't a word in 'em about my father's five hundred."

"Oh, dear me!" Ruth replied, "I wish it could be cleared up for the sake of Mrs. Eland and Miss Pepperill. You don't care about the money now, Mr. Buckham."

"No. Thank the good Lord, I don't. And as I say, I blame myself for ever mentioning it before you gals."

"'Little pitchers have big ears,'" quoted Agnes.

At that Dot flared up. "I'm not a little pitcher! And I haven't got big ears!" The smallest Corner House girl knew now that her ill-timed remarks during her first call with Tess on Mrs. Eland had, somehow, made trouble. "How'd I know that Lem – Lemon Aden's brother was Mrs. Eland's father? He might have been her uncle."

They had to laugh at Dot's vehement defense; but Mr. Bob Buckham went on: "My fault, I tell ye – my fault. But I believe it's going to be all cleared up."

"How?" asked Agnes, quickly.

"And will my Mrs. Eland feel better in her mind?" Tess asked gravely.

"That's what she will," declared the farmer, vigorously. "She told me about the old papers and the book left by her Uncle Lemuel over there to the Quoharis poorfarm where he died. I got a letter from her to the townfarm keeper, and I drove over and got 'em the other day.

"Like ter not got 'em at all – old Lem being dead nigh fifteen years now. Wal! Marm and me's been looking over that little book. Lem mebbe was a leetle crazy – 'specially 'bout money matters, and toward the end of his life. You'd think, to read what he'd writ down, that he died possessed of a lot of property instead of being town's poor. That was his foolishness.

"But 'way back, when he was a much younger man, and his brother Abe got scart over a trick he'd played about a horse trade and went West (the man who was tricked threatened to do him bodily harm), what old Lem wrote in that old diary was easy enough understood.

"There's some letters from Abe, too. Put two and two together," concluded Mr. Buckham, "and it's easy to see where my pap's five hundred dollars went to. It was left by Abe all right in Lem's hands; but it stuck to them hands!"

"Oh!" cried Agnes, "what a wicked man that Lemuel Aden must have been."

"Nateral born miser. Hated ter give up a penny he didn't hafter give up. But them two women – wonderful how they come together after all these years – them two women needn't worry their souls no longer about that five hundred dollars. I never heard as folks could be held accountable for their uncle's sins."

That was the way the old farmer made Mrs. Eland see it, too. After all, she could only be grateful to the two smallest Corner House girls for bringing her and her sister together.

"If I had not taught Tess the old rhyme:

"'First William, the Norman,
Then William, the son,'"

the matron of the Women's and Children's Hospital declared, "and Tess had not recited it in school, Teeny, you would never have remembered it and felt the strange drawing toward me that you did feel."

"And if you hadn't met that child, I have an idea that you'd have lost your position at this hospital – and then where'd we be?" said the convalescent Miss Pepperill, sitting propped up in her chair in the matron's room at the institution in question. "That child, Tess, certainly started all the interest now being shown in this hospital."

That Monday night was the first public presentation of the play for the benefit of the hospital. Few were more anxious or more excited before the curtain went up, for the success of The Carnation Countess, than the Corner House girls and Neale O'Neil; but there was in store for them in the immediate future much more excitement than this of performing in the play, all of which will be narrated in the next volume of the series, to be entitled, "The Corner House Girls' Odd Find: Where They Made It; and What the Strange Discovery Led To."

Ruth Kenway felt a share of responsibility for the success of the play, as she naturally would for any matter in which she had even the smallest part. It was Ruth's way to be "cumbered by many cares." Mr. Howbridge sometimes jokingly called her "Martha."

Dot was only desirous of singing her "bee" song with the other children, and then hurrying home where she might continue her work on a wonderful Christmas outfit for her Alice-doll. Alice was to have a "coming out party" during the holiday week, and positively had to have some new clothes. Besides, The Carnation Countess had become rather a stale affair for the smallest Corner House girl by this time.

Tess seriously hoped she would do nothing in her part of Swiftwing, the hummingbird, to detract from the performance. Tess did not take herself at all seriously as an actor; she only desired – as she always did – to do what she had to do, right.

As for Agnes, she was truly filled with delight. The fly-away's very heart and soul was in the character she played. She lived the part of Innocent Delight.

She truly did well in this first performance. No stage fright did she experience. From her first word spoken in the centre of the stage while Madam Shaw was being borne in by the Sedan men, till the last word she spoke in the final act of the play, Agnes Kenway acted her part with credit.

In truth, as a whole, the Milton school pupils did well in the play. The professor's fears were not fulfilled. Milton people did not by any means, laugh the actors out of town.

Instead, the packed house of the first night was repeated on the second evening. The matinée on the third day, which was given at popular prices, was overcrowded – they had to stop selling admission tickets. While the third and last evening saw a repetition of the crowds at the other performances.

The local papers gave much space each day to the benefit, and their criticisms of the amateur players made the hearts of boys and girls alike, glad.

The reports from the ticket office were, after all, the main thing. It was soon seen that a goodly sum would be made for the Women's and Children's Hospital. In the end it amounted to more than three thousand dollars.

"Why, that will give the hospital a new lease of life! Dr. Forsyth said so," Agnes declared at the dinner table the day after the last performance.

"It will pay Mrs. Eland's salary for a long time," Tess remarked, with a sigh of satisfaction.

"I don't know but that sounds rather selfish, after all, dear," Ruth said, smiling at sober little Tess.

"What does, Sister?"

"It seems that all you care about the hospital is that Mrs. Eland shall get her wages."

"Yes. I s'pose that's my special interest in it," admitted Tess, slowly. "But then, if my Mrs. Eland is there as matron, the hospital is bound to do a great deal of good."

"Oh! wisdom of the ancients!" laughed Agnes.

"Quite true, my dear," commented Mrs. MacCall. "Your Mrs. Eland is a fine woman. I've always said that."

"Everybody doesn't agree with you," said Ruth, smiling.

"Who doesn't like Mrs. Eland?" demanded Tess, quite excited.

"Our neighbor, Sammy Pinkney," Ruth replied, laughing again. "I heard him talking about her this very morning, and what he said was not complimentary."