CHAPTER XII.

A HAPPY TRANSFER.

[This chapter should really be in three parts, as you will see after you have read it. On the whole, I believe we will put it that way, though each part will have to be very short, because I have not room to tell you all I would like.]

PART I.

DILLY was taking a last walk with Hart Hammond; they went to Table Rock again, because it was so lovely there they couldn't help it.

"Does it seem as though we had been hiding up on this old mountain for nine weeks?" asked Hart, as they turned away from the pink and purple and golden sky, and moved homeward.

"Oh!" said Dilly, "I was just thinking of that, and it truly doesn't seem possible. And yet when I think of all the lovely things that have happened, it seems as though we had been here most a year."

Hart laughed and gave her an admiring smile; certainly there had been a great change in her. The pale-faced, languid little girl who used to move about with a slow, quiet step was gone; and in her place was a red-checked, bright-eyed maiden with springing step, and cheery voice, and energy in every movement. Hart Hammond knew there had also been a great change in himself; but of this, he said nothing.

"You have evidently got well," he said, watching the sparkle in her eyes.

"O yes! I have; I'm just as well as I can be; won't father be surprised and glad?"

"What are you going to do when you get home? Do you expect to go to school?" He was watching her closely, and could not fail to see a little of the brightness die out of her face; her voice, too, was lower than it had been.

"I don't think I can," she said, speaking slowly. "I have thought about it a good deal; and I don't see how I can. You know father has only me; and there is no school within a mile of where we live; and if there were, I could not afford to go to it; father could not pay the bills this winter, I am sure; and then there's the dressing; and besides, I have to keep house for him. O no! Of course I cannot go to school. I do not mean to think any more about it."

"But you would like very much to go?"

Then a pair of wondering eyes were raised for a minute to his face, and Dilly answered gravely,—

"Why, of course every girl wants to go to school; mother wanted me to get ready to be a teacher; maybe I can, some day, but of course I could not expect to go this winter, and I am not going to let father know I want to do it."

PART II.

In the little kitchen the table was set for two: baked potatoes, and broiled steak, and homemade bread, and pudding of Dilly's own baking; in fact it was all Dilly's work; and her cheeks were red with stove heat and exertion and excitement this October noon, as she set the chair for her father, and waited while he washed his hands and turned down his shirt sleeves and made himself nice. Dilly had been at home but forty-eight hours and had accomplished wonders; even to the baking of three loaves of perfect bread.

"Well, well, well!" said Mr. West, as he took his seat. "What a dinner this is, to be sure; fit for a king! And you made the bread, and broiled the steak, and everything. Well, well! Who would have thought you could ever do it, when you went away last summer. This is living! And you've cleaned the room, too! You're just a genius, Dilly; father hasn't had anything like this since you've been gone. But I tell you what it is, my girl, I like the red cheeks best of all. I didn't ever expect you would look like this again. Why, your cheeks are puffed out as they used to be in the old home." This is only a hint of what he said. Never was father happier to get his girl again.

All the busy afternoon Dilly lived in a kind of happy dream. It was so nice to feel strong and well; to be able to sweep, and mop the floor, and clean the little cupboard, and wash all the dishes, and do a hundred other things, and, feel tired, it is true, but not at all as though she was going to fall to pieces, as she used to do in those breathless days before she went to the mountain. Then she had learned so many new things this summer; Jeannette had known a great deal besides fine ironing, and had taught her all she could. Dilly felt sure she could keep a comfortable home for her father, and was happy. When she had her pretty tea-table arranged, with a white cloth and shining dishes, and a dear little one egg cake of her own baking, and, to crown all, a lovely cut-glass dish of late peaches which Mrs. Hammond had sent over with her love, Dilly felt that she was certainly the happiest girl in the city.

It was while they lingered at the tea-table that her father spoke the thought which was troubling him.

"There's one thing, my girl, that worries me; I can't see my way clear to have you in school, this winter; I meant to, and I tried for it with all my might; but in spite of all my planning, I'm afraid I can't bring it to pass."

"No," said Dilly bravely, "of course you can't, father; I don't think of such a thing; I'm going to keep house for you this winter; and I can study a good deal at home; Mr. Hart will lend me books, and he will help me with my lessons sometimes; he said he would. Father, you can't think what a nice, splendid young man he is! He is going to take a class in our Sunday-school; he says he wants little bits of girls, and I must help him teach them. Won't that be nice?"

In the privacy of her own little cupboard of a room, Dilly did shed two tears that night; but she dashed them bravely away, and said aloud: "To think of my crying about school, when I have so much to be glad over! I am not so 'very' old that I can't afford to wait a year; and I can learn a good deal at home; and I'll keep a beautiful house for father."

PART III.

It was about that time that Hart Hammond leaned back in the easy chair in his mother's luxurious sitting-room and asked,—"Mother, what are we going to do with Dilly this winter?"

"Do with her?" repeated Mrs. Hammond, smiling on him. "She is doing for herself by this time; as nice a little housekeeper as her father ever imagined."

"I know, but—we don't intend to drop her in this way, do we?"

"I don't want to drop her," said Mrs. Hammond earnestly; "she is a dear little girl, whom I shall always love; but I don't see my way clear to doing what I would like for her. It would be pleasant to keep her with Effie all winter; I feel safe when the child is in her care; but she ought to be in school."

"That's just it," said Hart decidedly; "she must be in school, of course; she is a smart girl and ought to have an education. But she tells me she must keep house for her father."

"So she must, I suppose, unless some other way can be contrived."

"Some other way 'must' be contrived; she is too young to have the care of a family on her shoulders. Why couldn't her father take his meals here, and have the room over the carriage-house for himself? If we give the gardens into his charge, we ought to have him at hand; it would be much more convenient for you."

"In that case what would become of Dilly?"

Now aunt Helen, sitting in her easy chair in her lovely white wrapper, leaned forward resting her head on her hand and listened to this and much other talk which followed; and thought, while she listened.

Aunt Helen, who had been all her life an invalid; having teachers come to her in her intervals of rest from pain, but never going to school a day in her life; never running and frolicking through the world like other girls, always belonging to easy chairs, and couches, and wrappers, and slippers; aunt Helen, all alone in the world, with much money, much leisure, and much pain. She had been on Monteagle with her sister-in-law during the last three weeks of their stay, and had admired the deft-handed little maiden who took such thoughtful care of Effie, and was always ready with a helpful hand for her. Now she listened and thought, and at last she spoke: "Give her to me!"

"Who?"

"This little girl, this Dilly. I like her very much; and it has occurred to me that I might have her do for me the thing which I have never been able to do for myself. I wanted to go to school, and to study music, and to do a dozen other things which I could not; why not have her do them for me? It is an excellent idea; I wonder I have never thought of it before. That is just it; Dilly shall live my life for me; the part of it I planned to live, and never could carry out."

That was the way the conversation began; I have no space in which to tell you the rest of it; the long, long talk which followed; the plan to have Dilly come next door to aunt Helen's own beautiful home which it pleased her to keep up in the style it had worn when father and mother were living. Dilly should be her little friend and companion nights and mornings, and a busy schoolgirl during the day; and aunt Helen would live through her the life which had been planned for her own girlhood and never carried out.

Hart was exceedingly pleased. "I like it for her sake," he said, "she deserves such advantages, and will make more of them than most girls would; she is going to make a grand woman some day; and then I like it for you, aunt Helen; I know she will be a comfort to you. Oh! Her father will consent. I have been talking with him this afternoon about her going to school; he wants it very much, but cannot see his way clear to sending her; she is the very apple of his eye."

Well, it was all arranged, so far as those three people could arrange it, that night. What Dilly said when she heard the story, and what her father said and thought and did, I cannot tell; you must imagine it. Nothing so unutterably wonderful had ever happened to a girl before; so both Dilly and her father think.

This one sentence I must give you; it tells a great deal.

"Father," said Dilly, having been silent and thoughtful for some time, "I thought when I came down from Monteagle, that it was not likely I would ever see another mountain; but it seems to me now as though you and I were going to live on mountains all the time."

So you will see that all of our little party were pleased and glad. No, not all; I forget poor little Effie Hammond, who in her fall coat, buttoned from head to foot, her new fall hat pushed back on her yellow head, and her worst-looking doll grasped by the neck, wandered disconsolately, all the long, cool days in search of Dilly, and missed her every minute.

"How glad Effie will be to have Dilly for a next door neighbor," said aunt Helen, as the days went by, and the plans for the winter began to take shape. "Many a happy hour she will give the child."

"Yes, indeed!" said mamma. "She loves Effie almost as much as Effie does her; and it is really pitiful to see how disconsolate the baby is without her. I have tried to make her understand; but I don't think she fully realizes anything but that Dilly is away and she wants her."

"When is Dilly to come to aunt Helen?" asked Hart, that evening, as he lifted Effie on his knee for a frolic.

"On Monday, I believe; the school opens on Wednesday, you know; and her father thinks they can close up their dreary little home Monday morning."

"Then we know two people who will be glad, don't we Effie?" Hart said, tossing her toward the ceiling.

"You are almost as fond of her as Effie is, I believe," said the smiling mother.

"I am 'very fond' of her," said Hart, "I have reason to be."

Then the mother bestowed on him a most loving look, out of which all the wistful unrest was gone, and said with emphasis, "So have I."