The Staying Guest

“Well, yes; I think you might call it that,” said Ladybird, gravely considering the case. Then after a pause she added, “And Martha, we’ll have to fix high chairs for the babies; put cushions in the chairs, you know, or dictionaries, or something.”

“Did your aunts invite these people, miss?” said Martha, suspecting, more from Ladybird’s manner than her words, that there was something toward.

“I invited them,” said Ladybird, with one of her sudden, but often useful, accessions of dignity, “and my aunts are at present entertaining them. You’ll see about the high chairs, won’t you Martha?”

In reality, Ladybird’s strong friend and ally, Martha, was always vanquished by the child’s dazzling smile, and she answered heartily, “Indeed I will, miss; you’ll find everything in the dining-room all right.”

Reassured, Ladybird went back to the parlor, to find her party still going on beautifully. Stella’s graceful tact and ready ingenuity were the best assistance Ladybird could have had, and the child gave a sigh of relief as she thought to herself she had certainly succeeded in inviting the ones who would enjoy it the most.

At five o’clock supper was served. Although the technical details of the table proved a trying ordeal to most of the guests (indeed, only the half-witted ones were wholly at ease), yet the delicious viands, and the kind-hearted dispensers of them, went far toward establishing a general harmony.

The guests took their leave punctually at six o’clock, as they had been invited to do, and Miss Priscilla’s parting words to each evinced a mental attitude entirely satisfactory to Ladybird.

“Though I wish, Lavinia,” she said much later, after they had discussed the affair in its every particular – “I do wish that when you are about to cut up these fearfully unexpected performances of yours you would warn us beforehand.”

“I will, aunty,” said Ladybird, with a most lamb-like docility of manner, “if you’ll promise to agree to them as amiably beforehand as you do afterward.”

CHAPTER XIV

SOME LETTERS

As the weeks and months went on, life at Primrose Hall adjusted itself to the new conditions made necessary by the addition of a child and a dog to its hitherto unrippled routine.

Miss Priscilla lived with her usual energy; Miss Dorinda existed a little more calmly, and Ladybird lived and moved and had her excited being with all sorts of variations, from grave to gay, from lively to severe, ad libitum.

The winter passed much in its usual way, and after that the spring came, laughing. April tumbled into May, and May danced into June, bringing ecstasy to one little heart, for with late June days came the summer vacation from school.

“My aunties,” said Ladybird, looking up from a lesson she was studying, “who is the governor of this State?”

“Hyde,” replied her Aunt Priscilla. “Governor Horace E. Hyde.”

“Is he a nice man?” asked Ladybird, drumming on the table with both hands, and on the floor with both feet.

“Do stop that fearful noise, Lavinia. Yes, he is a fine, capable governor, and a true gentleman. Why?”

“Are you studying your history lesson, dear?” asked Aunt Dorinda. “Is it about the governor?”

“I’m studying my history lesson, but it isn’t about the governor,” answered Ladybird, truthfully. “I only asked because I wanted to know.”

“That is right, Lavinia,” said Miss Priscilla, approvingly. “It is wise to inquire often concerning such matters of general information; by such means one may acquire much valuable knowledge.”

“Yes, ’m,” said Ladybird. “Where is his office?”

“Whose, the governor’s? Oh, in the State House, I suppose, though he would doubtless have a private office at home.”

“Yes, ’m,” said Ladybird.

That same afternoon Ladybird collected some apples and cookies, and with a pad of paper and a pencil in her hand, and Cloppy hanging over her arm, she remarked that she was going down to the orchard, and went.

“You see, Cloppy,” she said as they walked along, “we’ve just got to help Stella, – my pretty Stella; she has no one to help her but you and me. She’s a damsel in distress, and we’re a brave knight. Of course we can’t fight for her with spears and lancets; but we can do better than that. The pen is mightier than the sword, and, Cloppy, I’ve got the very elegantest scheme. I’m going to write to the governor – the governor of the State, you know. He can do anything, and if I write him a nice letter, I’m sure he’ll send a duke, or a belted earl, or something that’s nicer than Charley Hayes, anyway. But oh, Cloppy-dog, how I do hate to write a letter! I can’t write very good, and I can’t spell very good, and I’m scared to death of the governor. You know he’s an awful big man, Cloppy, a great man, with a white wig and a cocked hat; but I’m going to do it, and I won’t tell my aunties, because I’m ’most sure they wouldn’t let me. But I must do something to rescue my beautiful Stella from dire dismay.”

Ladybird climbed one of her favorite apple-trees, settled Cloppy comfortably in her lap, and placing her paper pad on him as on a desk, prepared to write. A puckered brow was for a long time the only outward and visible sign of her inward and spiritual resolve to help her friend.

“Oh,” she said at last, “it is harder even than I thought it would be; but I’ll do it for my Stella.”

“Of course,” she thought, “‘Dear Mr. Governor’ must be the way to begin it, because there isn’t any other way.”

After writing the three words, she paused again, trying to remember what her language lessons had taught her. “I only remember one rule,” she said to herself, talking aloud, as she was in the habit of doing, “and that is: ‘Never use a preposition to end a sentence with.’ But goodness me! if I can’t begin a sentence, it doesn’t make much difference what I use to end it with; does it, Clops?”

She poked the dog with her pencil, to which he responded by a series of wriggles.

“Do keep still, Cloppy, or I’ll never get my letter done. Now let me see. I think another rule was something like, ‘If you have a story to tell, state it clearly, and in as few words as you can’t get along without.’ Now I’m not going to tell any story; it’s the solemn truth; but I suppose the rule’s the same for that.”

After long and hard work, and much scratching out and putting in again, Ladybird succeeded in producing the following epistle:

Dear Mr. Governor:

It is a traggedy! Stella is a lovly girl, and that silly Charley Hayes is not good enough; but I don’t know of any other men in Plainville, except married ones, and the ragman, so what can I do? But you are noble, brave, and powerful, so please send by return mail a nice, handsum, good, young man. I mean send a letter about him, with blue eyes if possible, and anyway, an earl. Don’t tell Stella right off. Send the earl to me, and I will see if he will do. Please write to

    Ladybird Lovell,
    Primrose Hall,
    Plainville.

P. S. And I am much obliged. I would have said more thanks but this is a business letter.

    Ladybird.

“Now, Cloppy,” said Ladybird, as she finished reading her work of art, “I do really think that’s a very nice letter, and I do really believe the governor will send a perfectly lovely young man for my Stella, and then Charley Hayes can go and marry somebody else.”

Cloppy wagged his tail, and blinked his eyes in his usual bored fashion, and Ladybird scrambled down from the apple-tree and trotted off to the post-office to mail the important letter. She stamped it carefully, and addressed it to “Governor Hyde, State House.”

“Now,” she said, as she walked home in great satisfaction, “I just guess I’ve done something for my friend, and I wish the answer would come quick.”

It is not remarkable that Ladybird’s letter should have safely reached its destination. It was opened among the other mail by Gilbert Knox, the governor’s private secretary. As letters of a similar type had been received before, and found no favor in the governor’s eyes, not even as interesting curiosities, young Knox was about to toss it into the waste-basket, when his chum Chester Humphreys came into the office.

“Hello, Chester,” he said; “you like odd tricks. Here’s a letter that may interest you. Want to read it?”

Chester Humphreys read Ladybird’s letter.

“You might go down to Plainville,” said Gilbert Knox, “and personate the earl.”

“I don’t think I care for the lovely Stella,” returned Humphreys; “besides, I’m not an earl. But I’d like to see the kid that wrote that letter. I think I’ll write and make an appointment with her just for fun.”

“Do,” said the secretary; “that is, if you see any fun in hunting up a little freckle-faced child, who will probably be too shy to speak to you after you get there.”

“I don’t see anything in this letter,” said Humphreys, scanning it again, “to make me inevitably deduce freckles, nor yet shyness. In fact, the more I look at it, the more I think that baby’s a genius; and anyway, I’ve nothing to do, and it’s lovely country down there, and I’m going to chance it.”

“All right,” said Knox. “You’d better write her that you’re coming.”