CHAPTER XVI
PETER LENDS A HAND
It was quite natural that Nancy should take her problems to Peter Hyde.
More correctly, she did not take them—Peter Hyde discovered them when, a few days later, he found Nancy alone in her Bird's-nest, completely surrounded by sheets of paper, a frown wrinkling her entire face, furiously chewing one end of her pencil.
There had, of course, to be some explanation of the manuscript. Nancy told him of the play she was writing, how she had really come to North Hero to finish it!
"I thought I'd have hours and hours to work. And I was so glad when I found this hiding place. I've been here, now, weeks and weeks, and have done scarcely a thing!"
"Is it because the Muse will not come?" asked Peter, eying the scattered sheets with awe.
"Oh, it would come—if it had a chance! My head's just bursting with things I want to write and I dream about them in my sleep. But—it sounds silly—I'm so busy. Maybe the things I do don't seem important but I just can't escape them."
She made room for Peter on the seat beside her. Then she told him of Aunt Milly; of that first trip to the orchard, how it had been the beginning of a new life for the little woman.
"I bring her downstairs every day now, right after breakfast, and she's one of the family. I'm going to coax Webb to make another sort of a chair; one she can wheel herself—I've seen them. She's learned to knit beautifully; she's so proud because she's working on a sock for the Belgian children—she says it's the first time she's ever felt useful! She helps B'lindy, too. It makes you want to cry to see how happy she is. But with all her independence she wants me all the time. When I start to leave her there's something in the way she looks at me that is just as though she reached out and caught me by the hand!"
Nancy described, too, how B'lindy was constantly finding little tasks for her that would keep her in the kitchen or on the back porch within sound of her voice.
"You see talking's the joy of B'lindy's life and my ears are new—they haven't heard all the things she has to say. Just when I think I can escape she begins telling me of the cake her mother baked for Miss Sabrina's mother the day the Governor of Vermont came to Happy House—or something like that!"
Anxious that Peter should understand everything Nancy made a vivid word-picture of Miss Sabrina and of the difficulties she had had in winning her. "I believe she's fond of me now, but she just doesn't know how to show it! She's never displayed one bit of affection in her whole life, I'm sure. She's stone. But sometime she's going to break—I'm doing my best to make her! I know she enjoys having dear little Aunt Milly around, but do you think she'd say so? Goodness no. But there's a lot of good in Aunt Sabrina and I'm bound to know it all, so I make it my duty to sit with her just so long each day while she tells me about the Leavitts and the other families of this Island. And there is something heroic about them all!
"So here I am, just tingling to finish the last act of my play and not a moment to myself! If it isn't precious Aunt Milly or Aunt Sabrina or B'lindy or even dear old Jonathan, it's Nonie or Davy or——"
"Or me," finished Peter Hyde, glancing significantly at the neglected work. "Your hands are full!"
Nancy went on earnestly. "And it all seems so worth while! Look at Nonie—she's a different creature already. I don't believe she pretends as much, either—her little body is catching up with her spirit. And Davy doesn't hang his head when he looks at you!"
Peter Hyde could understand her feeling toward the children. They had planned together to bring something more into those two starved young lives. Like Nancy, he was delighted at the results already apparent. It was work too worth while to be abandoned—for anything.
"Nonie fairly eats up the books I give her but she always wants to read them with me—it's so that she can ask questions. And the questions she asks! Every new thing she learns she immediately adapts to her own life. We've begun 'Little Women' and of course she plays Amy! Poor little flower, sometimes I think of old Dan'l and Liz and wonder from where on earth the child got her gift. And what a precious blessing it is to her!"
Recalling Davy's contempt for his sister's "actin' lies," they both laughed.
"How could anyone think bad things of Davy," cried Nancy, indignantly. "He's the soul of truth and honor! But up here he won't have a chance."
"Oh, yes, he will!" Peter contradicted. "If I'm any good reading character in a ten-year-old he'll make a chance. He's a leader, now. Look at the way the other boys follow his slightest suggestion!"
Davy's "club" was flourishing. The attractions that Peter and Nancy had added to its program had made it boom. Several new "fellars" had come in. The meetings were even more frequent than Liz cleaned the meeting-house, and now, because it had become known that Miss Sabrina's niece was a member of the club, no lickings awaited the members upon their return, rather impatient mothers eager to hear "what that girl at Happy House was up to now." There was some talk about turning the club into a Boy Scout troop; Mr. Peter had promised to organize them and train them.
"Oh, dear," Nancy sighed, perplexed and torn, "it's like having a dream you've dreamed crumble all to pieces! I wanted to have my play done before my—I mean, I wanted to finish it up here and then send it straight to Theodore Hoffman himself. Of course you don't know him. He's one of the greatest dramatists and play producers in the world. I know it's daring in me and maybe he won't even give a minute to my little insignificant effort, but—whatever he may say, I'll know it is the best criticism I can get!"
To Nancy's surprise Peter displayed a considerable knowledge of plays and actors, critics and producers. He could see her problem, too—how she was torn between the claims of Happy House and her beloved work.
Nancy was grateful for his sympathy and because he did not laugh at her. But of course, why should anyone who could find music in waving corn not understand her own dreams!
Peter's face looked very much as though he was tackling some problem of drainage—or a new incubator.
"When you get right down to plain facts, it's a question of conserving time. You're wasting it—somewhere. I believe you can double up a bit. Let Aunt Milly listen to Belinda, and teach Aunt Milly to help Nonie. I'll take care of Davy. You say Aunt Milly likes to feel she's useful—if you start her she can help Nonie a lot and Nonie'll give her something to think about, too."
Nancy considered this with brightening eyes. "I believe you're right! I've just been selfish, trying to do everything myself just because I loved to, and stupid—to think no one else could do it! Of course Aunt Milly can read with Nonie—and play with her, too. I'll begin this very day. I'll have a school here in the orchard and Nonie and B'lindy and Aunt Milly shall come. It'll be the funniest school you ever heard of," Nancy laughed. "I'll teach B'lindy the joy of seeing Hopworth 'young 'uns' eat her best molasses cookies!"
Nancy's face showed that she was mentally leaping far ahead in her plans. Peter felt that he had been left out.
"Let me be the head taskmaster or whatever you call it. You'll doubtless need a strong hand now and then. Anyway, you don't know how much it helps my work mixing a little fun with it!"
Now that her problems were straightening Nancy felt very kindly and gracious and happy.
"Of course, you may come to the orchard—whenever you want! Oh, you have helped me so much," she cried, with a smile that brought a sudden gleam in Peter Hyde's eyes. "Now, if you'll give me a hand putting these pages together, I'll run in and prepare Aunt Milly and B'lindy."
Following along the lines of Peter's suggestion, Nancy's "school" developed rapidly. She covered sheet after sheet of paper with "schedules" and finally to her satisfaction, blocked off every waking moment of her pupils' day. Aunt Milly fell heartily in with her plans; she was proud to know that she could help. The books for Nonie that Nancy had spirited to Happy House were as fascinating to her as to Nonie.
After the first day Aunt Milly thought of a great many new "lessons" they could begin for Nonie. With the promise that after awhile she could make for herself a "pinky" dress, like Nancy's, Aunt Milly taught her to hem and seam and tuck. At the same time Nonie learned that it was quite as bad to wear a torn, soiled dress as to say "him and me" or "I ain't."
"You're wonderful, Aunt Milly," Nancy had declared, after this innovation in the school. "I never would have thought of it, myself." She laughed, ruefully. "I'd better study with Nonie, I guess, and learn to mend, myself."
Nancy had told Aunt Milly, too, of Nonie's pretend-mother. Perhaps that was why Aunt Milly's voice was very sweet and tender as she and Nonie talked and played and read together. Nonie liked to wheel the chair; she began to look forward to bolder excursions beyond the gate to the village.
B'lindy, in her heart still a little distrustful that "no good could come from encouragin' them Hopworths," nevertheless found countless excuses to join the little group under the apple trees, sometimes bringing some hideous lace crocheting that had been years in the making but would some day—if B'lindy lived long enough to complete it—cover a bed. Sometimes she brought a basket of goodies and other times came empty-handed and just sat idle with a softened look in her old eyes as they rested on the purple rim of mountains across the water.
"I guess it makes a body work better for restin' a spell," she said, after one of these intervals.
But with the success of Nancy's new plans were two little clouds—small at first but growing with each day. One was the realization that very soon her work for these dear people could go on without her. And though in one breath she told herself that this was fortunate, because her stay at Happy House must end with her father's return, in the next she was swept with a sharp jealousy that, after she had gone, Aunt Milly and B'lindy and Nonie and Davy would still gather under the apple tree.
Since the afternoon Peter Hyde had found her with the manuscript she had not laid eyes upon him!
A sense of hurt at his neglect did not grow less when she learned from old Jonathan, after one or two questions, that he had gone over to Plattsburg; rather it gave way to a resentment that Peter, considering what good chums they had grown to be and the "school" and everything, should have gone off on any such trip without one word of parting!
"He'll see how well we can get along without him," she had declared to herself after the third day. After all he probably was hiding something; this sudden disappearance must have some connection with it.
His comradeship had grown very pleasant, she admitted, but, she told herself, it belonged to the real Anne Leavitt, like Aunt Milly and Nonie and the others, he must drop out of her life when she left Happy House.
So that he might not even be missed by Davy and his cronies, Nancy devoted one entire afternoon to teaching the boys of the club how to build a fire without matches. When, after repeated and discouraging failures, the last one had joyfully succeeded, Nancy had promised to teach them to wig-wag at the very next meeting.
When Nancy returned to the house, flushed and tired from the hours on the beach, old Jonathan, at the door, presented her with a half-blown rose, its stem thrust through a folded sheet of paper.
"Mr. Peter, over to Judson's, asked me to give it t'you."
With a certain set of the college men and girls Nancy had been very popular; more than once pretty tributes of flowers had come to her. She had accepted them rather indifferently, had kept them with dutiful care in water and had pasted the cards that had come with them in her remembrance book. But this gift was different; it was quaint—and so pretty!
"If you will meet me at seven in the orchard I will tell you a surprise that will tickle you to pieces," Peter Hyde had scrawled across the paper.
"How—funny!" laughed Nancy, reading and re-reading the lines. "What can it be?"
If Nancy had asked herself why she sang as she dressed for supper she would have thought, truthfully, that it was because she was ravenously hungry and B'lindy's supper smelled very good; and she chose to wear, from her slender wardrobe, a pink organdy, because it would be cool—not that she even dreamed, for a moment, of doing such a silly thing as going to the orchard at seven o'clock, to meet Peter Hyde!
A dozen times, during the evening meal, she resolved that Peter Hyde's surprise could wait. He presumed, indeed, to think that, after he had absented himself for so long without one little word of explanation, she would go running at the crook of his little finger!
However, she put the pink rose in her belt and occasionally slipped it out to smell of it. It was the most beautiful rose she had ever seen—she must ask Jonathan its variety.
At five minutes of seven she picked up her knitting and sat resolutely down between her aunts on the hollyhock porch. Just as Aunt Sabrina was telling her how, back in 1776, Robert Leavitt had dined with Benedict Arnold on the flagship of his little Champlain fleet, two days before its engagement with the British, the old clock within the house struck seven. With her breath caught in her throat Nancy counted sixty, twice—then suddenly sprang to her feet and rushed off the veranda.
"Why, Nancy—dear," cried Aunt Milly, startled.
"Humph," grunted Aunt Sabrina, clicking her needles faster than ever.
Peter was in the orchard. He had been there since quarter of seven. He was disappointed at the coolness of Nancy's greeting; it seemed to him that he had been gone for ages, and he had, during his absence, quite foolishly, been looking forward to this meeting.
He had hoped, too, that she might wear the rose.
"One guess where I've been," he commanded lightly, as he held out his hand to assist her into the tree.
"Dear me, how can I tell? Buying plows or pigs or——"
Nancy tried to make her tone seem airily indifferent, when all the time she was really consumed with curiosity and a desire, too, to tell him how splendidly her work was going.
"I have seen Theodore Hoffman!"
"What?"
"Don't look as though you thought I'd gone mad. He's human. I happened to hear that he was staying at Bluff Point, so I went over to see the gentleman."
Nancy's eyes did say that she thought he had gone quite out of his mind!
"How did you dare?"
"I know a fellow that knows him. He was very nice—as I said, he's human, terribly human. You should see him playing tennis!"
"What—what did you say to him?"
"I told him I had a little friend who was soon to become one of the greatest playwrights in the world and——"
"Peter!" Nancy lifted an imploring finger. "Honest, what did you say? And why——" she was suddenly abashed. He had done this for her.
Peter kept his tone light.
"You see I did have some pig business over that way, so it was easy enough to do a favor for a little pal at the same time. Hoffman was very nice—he's going to be around up here for some weeks and promised me he would drive over here. Now it's up to you to have the manuscript ready."
"Oh, Peter, I'm frightened! You're a darling! I shall always bless pigs! Of course I'll have it done—I'll work night and day. I'll go straight back to the house now." She jumped to the ground. In her haste she forgot the poor rose she had hidden behind her.
Peter, crestfallen at her sudden flight, found it, however. He smiled, whimsically, as he held it in the palm of his hand.
"Nice little kid," he said, as he had said once before, then he put the rose carefully into his pocket.