CHAPTER XXIII

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BEE’S FAMILY.

A few days after Everard’s interview with Rossie, Beatrice went to New York, where she spent the winter, returning home early in April, and bringing with her a dark-eyed, dark-haired, elfish-looking little girl, whom she called _Trixey_, and whose real name was Beatrice Belknap Morton. She was the daughter of a missionary to the Feejee Islands, who had brought his invalid wife home to America, hoping the air of the Vermont hills might restore life and health to her worn-out, wasted frame. Bee did not know of his return, and saw him first at a missionary meeting which she attended with the friend at whose house she was stopping.

“The Rev. Theodore Morton will now tell us something of his labors among the Feejees,” the presiding clergyman said, and Bee, who was sitting far back near the door, rose involuntarily to her feet in order to see more distinctly the man who was just rising to address the audience, and who stood before them, tall, erect, and perfectly self-possessed, as if addressing a crowded New York house had been the business of his life.

Was it her Theo, whom she had sent from her to the woman in Vermont, more willing than herself to share his toils and privations in a heathen land. _That_ Theo had been spare and thin, with light beard and sandy hair; this man was broad-shouldered, with well-developed physique, and the hair, which lay in curls around his massive brow, was a rich chestnut brown, as was the heavy beard upon his cheek. It could not be Theo, she though, as she sank back into her seat; but the moment she heard the deep, musical tones of the voice which had once a power to thrill her, she knew that it was he, and listened breathlessly while he told of his work in those islands of the sea, and by his burning eloquence and powers of speech stirred up his hearers to greater interest in the cause. He loved his work because it was his Master’s, and loved the poor, benighted heathen, and he only came home because of the sick wife and little ones, who needed change of scene and air.

Where was his wife, Bee wondered, and when the meeting was over she drove to the house of a clergyman who she knew kept a kind of missionary hotel, and from him learned the address of the Rev. Theodore Morton. It was not at an uptown hotel, but at a second-rate boarding-house on Eighth street, where rooms and board were cheap, and there, on the third floor back, she found Mrs. Theodore Morton, the school-mistress from Vermont, who had so offended her taste with spectacles and a brown alpaca dress. The landlady had bidden her go directly to the room, where she knocked at the door, and then stood listening to a sweet, childish voice singing a lullaby to a baby. Again she knocked, and this time the voice said “Come in,” and she went in, and found a little girl of five years old, with black hair and eyes, and a dark, saucy, piquant face, seated in a low rocking-chair, and holding in her short, fat arms a pale, sickly baby of four months or thereabouts, which she was trying to hush to sleep. Near her, in an arm-chair, sat a round, rosy-cheeked little girl, who might have been three years old, though her height indicated a child much younger than that. On the bed, with her face to the wall, and apparently asleep, lay a woman, emaciated and thin, with streaks of gray in the long, black hair floating in masses over the pillow. Bee thought she must have made a mistake, but something in the blue eyes of the chubby girl in the chair arrested her attention, and she said to the elf with the baby in her arms:

“Is Mrs. Morton here,—Mrs. Theodore Morton?”

“Yes, that’s ma,—on the bed. She’s sick; she’s always sick. Tum in, but don’t make a noise, ’cause I’se tryin’ to rock baby brother to seep, like a good ’ittle dirl.”

“An’ I’s dood, too,” chirped the dumpling in the high chair. “I’ve climbed up here to det out of the way, an’ not wake mamma an’ make her head ache, an’ papa’s goin’ to bring me some tandy, he is, when he tums from the meetin’.”

There was no mistaking that blue-eyed, fair-haired child for other than Theodore Morton’s, and Beatrice stooped down and kissed her round, rosy cheek, and asked:

“What is your name, little one?”

“Mamie,—Mamie Morton; but dey calls me Bunchie, ’cause I’s so fat, an’ I’s mamma’s darlin’, and was tree ’ears old next week,” was the reply; and then Bee turned to the elf, and laying her hand on the jet-black hair, said:

“And your name is what?”

“Trixey everybody calls me but papa, who sometimes says Bee; but that ain’t my very name. It’s ever so long, with many B’s in it,” was the reply, and Bee’s heart gave a great bound, as she said:

“Is it Beatrice?”

“Yes, an’ more too, Beatrice sometin’.”

“Beatrice Belknap, perhaps,” guessed the lady, and the child replied:

“That’s it, but how did you know?” and the great eyes, so very black and inquisitive, looked wonderingly at Bee, who answered:

“I am Beatrice Belknap, the lady for whom you were named, and I’ve come to see you. I used to know your father. Is he well?”

“Papa? Yes, he’s very well, but mamma,” and the child put on a very wise and confidential look as she added in a whisper, “mamma’s _shiffless_ all the time.”

Bee could not repress a smile at this quaint form of speech, and she asked:

“And do you take care of baby? Is there no nurse?”

“We had Leah over home,” Trixey said, “but she couldn’t come with us, ’cause we’re so poor, an’ papa has no money.”

“But he buyed me some yed soos,” Bunchie said, sticking up her little feet, encased in a new pair of red morocco shoes, the first she had ever had or probably seen.

How Beatrice’s heart yearned over these little ones who had known only poverty, and how she longed to lavish upon them a part of her superfluous wealth. There was a stir on the bed; the sleeper was waking, and a faint voice called:

“Trixey, are you here?”

“Yes, mamma. I’ve rocked brother to seep,” Trixey said, starting up, but holding fast to the baby as a cat holds to its kitten. “There’s a lady here, mamma, comed to see us,” the child continued, and then Mrs. Morton roused quickly, and turning on her side fixed her great sunken eyes inquiringly on Beatrice, who stepped forward, and with that winning sweetness and grace so natural to her, said:

“I doubt if you remember me, Mrs. Morton, as you only saw me once, and that for a few moments, before the _Guide_ sailed from here six years ago. I am an old friend of your husband’s. I met him in Paris first and many times after in America. Perhaps you have heard him speak of Miss Beatrice Belknap?”

“Yes, Trixey was named for you. It was kind in you to call,” Mrs. Morton said, and now she sat upon the side of the bed and began to bind up her long black hair, which had fallen in her neck.

“Let me do that,” Bee said, as she saw how the exertion of raising her arms made the invalid cough; and drawing off her gloves, her white hands, on which so many costly jewels were shining, were soon arranging and twisting the long hair which, though mixed with gray, was very glossy and luxuriant. “You have nice hair, and so much of it,” she said, and Mrs. Morton replied:

“Yes, it is very heavy even yet, and is all I have left of my youth, though I am not so very old, only thirty; but the life of a missionary’s wife is not conducive to the retaining of one’s good looks.”

“Was it so very dreadful?” Bee asked, a little curious about the life which might have been her own.

“Not dreadful, but hard; that is, it was very hard on me, who was never strong, though I seemed so to strangers. I could not endure much, and was sick all the way out, so sick that I used to wish I might die and be buried in the sea. Then Trixey came so soon, and the care of her, and the food, and the climate, and the manner of living there, and the terrible homesickness! Oh, I was so homesick, at first, that I should surely have died, if Theo had not been so good. He was always kind, and tried to spare me every way.”

“Yes, I am sure he did,” Bee said; feeling at the same time a kind of pity for Theo, who, for six years, had spared and been kind to this woman, after having known and loved her, Beatrice Belknap.

There was a great difference between these two women; one, bright, gay, sparkling, full of life and health, with wealth showing itself in every part of her elegant dress, from the India shawl which she had thrown across the chair, to the sable muff which had fallen on the floor; the other, sick, tired, disheartened, old before her time; and, alas, habited in the same brown alpaca in which she had sailed away, and which had been so obnoxious to Beatrice. The material had been the best of the kind, and after various turnings and fixings, had been made at last into a kind of wrapper, which was trimmed with a part of another old brown dress of a different shade. Nothing could be more unbecoming to that thin, sallow face, and those dark, hollow eyes, than that dress, and never was contrast greater between two women than that revealed by the mirror which hung just opposite the bed where Mrs. Morton was sitting, with Beatrice standing by her. Both looked in it together, and met each other’s eyes, and must have thought of the same thing, for Mrs. Morton at once changed her seat where she could not see herself, and as the hair was put up Beatrice also sat down, and, without seeming to do so, inspected very minutely the woman who was Theodore Morton’s wife.

She was well educated,—and she was well born, too, being the daughter, and granddaughter, and great-granddaughter of clergymen, while on her mother’s side she came from merchants and lawyers, and very far back boasted a lieutenant-governor. But she lacked that softness, and delicacy, and refinement of manner which was Bee’s great charm. She had angles and points, and was painfully frank and outspoken, and never practiced a deception in her life, or kept back anything she thought she ought to say, or flinched from any duty. In short, she was New England to the back-bone, and showed it in everything. Vermont, or rather the little town of Bronson, where she was born, was placarded all over her, just as Paris and New York were written all over Bee, and she rejoiced in it and was proud of her birthplace. Beatrice’s presence there was evidently a trouble and an embarrassment. When Theodore Morton went to her and asked her to be his wife he had told her frankly that he had loved another and been refused, and she had accepted him, and asked no question about her rival. On board the ship in the harbor she had been so occupied with her own personal friends who were there to say good-by, that, though introduced to Miss Belknap, she had paid no attention to her, or noticed her in any way. When her first child was born, ten months after her marriage, she had wished to name it Sarah, for her mother, but her husband said to her: “I would like to call it Beatrice Belknap, if you do not mind.”

She did mind, for she knew now that Beatrice Belknap was her husband’s first choice, but she held it every wife’s duty to obey her husband so far as it was right, and as there was nothing wrong in this proposition she consented without a word, and the baby was named for Beatrice, but familiarly called Trixey, as that pet name suited her better. Of the Beatrice over the sea Theodore never spoke, and his wife never questioned him, and so she knew nothing of her until she woke from sleep and found her there in all her fresh beauty and bright plumage, which seemed so out of place in that humble room. Of course she was embarrassed and confused, but she would not apologize, except as she spoke of the life of privation they had led in that heathen land.

“And yet there was much to make me happy,” she said. “I knew we were doing God’s work,—which somebody must do,—and when some poor creatures blessed us for coming to tell them the story of Jesus, I was so glad that I had gone to them, and my trials seemed as nothing. And then, there was Theo, always the same good, true husband to me.” She said this a little defiantly, as if to assure Beatrice that the heart, which once might have beaten for her, was now wholly loyal to another.

And Bee accepted it sweetly, but had her own opinion on the subject still.

“Yes, the Mr. Morton I used to know could never be anything but kind to one he loved well enough to make his wife,” she said; and then, by way of turning the conversation from Theodore to something else, she asked: “Were you sick all the time you were there?”

“Yes, most of the time. My children were born so fast,—four in five years. I lost a noble boy between Mamie and baby Eddie; that almost killed me, and I’ve never been the same since. There is consumption in our family far back, and I fear I have inherited it. My cough is terrible at times, but I hope much from Vermont air and Vermont nursing. Oh, I have longed so for the old home at the foot of the mountain, for some water from the well, for mother, and to lie on her bed as I used to when I was a child, and had the sick-headache.”

Her eyes filled with tears as she said this, and she leaned wearily back in her chair, while Bee involuntarily laid her soft, warm hand upon the thin, wasted one where the wedding-ring sat so loosely. Just then the door opened and Theodore Morton came in, the same Beatrice had heard at the missionary meeting, the same with whom she had strolled through the Kentucky woods and on the shore of Quinsigamond Pond. He knew her at once, but nothing in his face or voice betrayed any consciousness of the past, if he felt it. He met her naturally and cordially, said he was very glad to see her, that it was kind in her to find them out, and then passed on to his sick wife, on whose head he laid his hand caressingly, asking if it ached as hard as ever, or if she was feeling a little better.

“You look better certainly,” he said, regarding her curiously, not knowing that the improvement was owing to the artistic way in which Beatrice had knotted up the heavy hair, which showed at the sides and added apparent breadth to the thin, narrow face.

What a noble-looking man he was, and how well he appeared, as if he had associated with kings and queens instead of the poor heathen, and what a change his presence made in that dingy back room, which, with him in it, had at once an atmosphere of home and domestic happiness. He had been there but a few moments at the most, but in that time he had smoothed his wife’s hair, and called her Mollie, the pet name she liked, and made her smile, had tossed Bunchie in the air and stuffed her fat hands with candy, had kissed little Trixey, and given her a new picture-book, and taken the baby from her and was walking with it up and down the room to hush its wailing cry. And between times he talked to Beatrice, naturally and easily, asking for the people he used to know in Rothsay, and if she was living there now; then, stopping suddenly, he said:

“I beg your pardon for taking it for granted you were Miss Belknap still. Are you married? You used to be a sad flirt.”

He said the last playfully, and the two looked at each other an instant, and their eyes dropped suddenly as if alarmed at what they saw.

“I am Bee Belknap still, and as great a flirt as ever,” Bee replied; and then the Rev. Theo did a most remarkable thing; he turned to his wife, and said:

“Mollie, dear, do you know I was once foolish enough to ask this gay bird to go with me to the Feegees, and she had the good sense to refuse. Wouldn’t she have cut a fine figure out there with all her finery and fashion?”

“Yes, I know,” Mollie said faintly, while Bee rejoined, laughingly: “You ought to be very thankful that I preferred fashion to Feegees; such a life as I should have led you.”

“You would have died,” Mollie rejoined, and the conversation on that subject ceased.

Theo had set things right for them all by his plain and playful allusion to the past, which, from that allusion, would be supposed to have no

## part in his present life, and to have left no mark upon him. He seemed

very happy with his children, and very kind to his wife, who was a different creature with his strong, mesmeric influence near her.

“I believe she’d be passably good-looking if she were decently dressed. She has good hair, not bad features, and rather fine eyes; but where are the glasses, she surely wore them away?” Beatrice thought, and at last she ventured to say: “Excuse me, Mrs. Morton, but did you not wear glasses on shipboard six years ago?”

“Yes,” was the reply, “my eyes were weak from over-study, trying to master the language, and I was obliged to wear glasses for a time. I laid them off after Trixey was born. Theo never liked me in them.”

As the short March afternoon was wearing to a close Beatrice soon rose to go, after first asking how long the Mortons intended to remain in the city.

“We have written to mother to know if she can receive us,” Mrs. Morton said, “and shall go as soon as we get her answer. I am afraid we shall crowd and worry her too much, for the house is small, and she and father are old and poor, and may not want us all.”

“Never mind, Mollie,” Theo said, “don’t kill the bear till you see it;” then, turning to Beatrice, he added, not complaining, but laughingly, “Mollie has a great way of borrowing trouble, while I wait till it comes.”

“It’s my poor health; my nerves; I can’t help it,” the invalid said, with a quiver in her voice and about her lips.

“Of course you can’t, Mollie,” and again the broad, warm hand was placed upon Mollie’s head by way of reassurance.

Theo went with Bee to her carriage, and handed her in, and told her to come again, and said he would call on her, and was not one whit more demonstrative when alone with her than he was up in that back room with his nervous wife looking on. But Bee did not quite believe he was perfectly happy. How could he be with _Mollie_.

And yet she was very sorry for Mollie, who, she was sure, was a much better woman than herself, and the next day, which was very fine, she drove again to No.—— Eighth street, and invited the sick woman to ride.

“The coupé is close, and I brought an extra shawl to keep you nice and warm,” she said, as she threw over Mrs. Morton’s shoulders her second-best India shawl, which covered up the black delaine, trimmed with half-worn silk, which Mollie wore.

It was her best, Bee knew, for little Trix had said, exultingly, “Ma’s got on her bestest down to day.”

“Yes, my best, and almost my all,” Mrs. Morton said, “but I have money for a new one; some English ladies give it me, and told me to get a black silk. I’ve never had one in my life: would you mind going with me somewhere and helping me pick it out: you are a so much better judge of silk than I am?”

Bee flinched a little inwardly as she looked at the dowdy woman, in her queer, old-fashioned bonnet, and thought of the fashionable ladies, her friends, who were sure to be shopping at this hour, and who always spied her out and pounced upon her. But she shut her teeth together hard, bade the coachman drive to Arnold’s, resolved to beard the elegant man at the silk counter, who was always so obsequious to Miss Belknap, the heiress and belle. Everybody was out that day, and Bee met at least half a dozen friends before she reached the silk counter, where she found her man, bland, attentive, and eager to serve her.

“Black silk,” she said, and he showed her at once samples varying in price from eight to ten dollars a yard.

“Oh, dear, no! something cheaper, much cheaper,” Mrs. Morton gasped; and then the clerk knew that the faded, countrified-looking woman whom he had not at all considered as belonging to Miss Belknap, was the real customer, and his face changed its expression at once as he put back his high-priced silks with an injured air, and said: “You will find what you want farther down. We have nothing cheap here.”

“I think you have,” Beatrice said to him. “Show me something at four dollars a yard.”

“Certainly,” and again the clerk was all smiles and attention, and began to exhibit his goods, while Mrs. Morton whispered nervously, “But, Miss Belknap, you don’t understand. I’ve only forty dollars; I cannot afford it.”

“I can,” Beatrice replied. “I have more money than I can spend. Let me give you the dress. I’ll take it as a great favor, and you can use the forty dollars for something else.”

There were tears in Mrs. Morton’s eyes, and her face was very white, as she said:

“No, no; that’s too much from you, a stranger. Theo would not like it.”

“I’ll make it right with Theo. I’m not a stranger to him,” Bee answered, and so the silk was bought, and velvet to trim it with, and then they moved to another part of the store for something for the children, and met a whole regiment of ladies, Mrs. Gen. Stuckup with Mrs. Sniffe, who were delighted to see Bee, but looked askance at her companion, wondering if it was some poor relation of whom they had never heard, and commiserating Bee, who must feel so mortified.

She was not mortified one whit now, though she had been at the start, but she despised herself thoroughly for it and was very attentive to her companion, and when Mrs. Sniffe, who was frightfully envious of her, and never failed to sting her if she could do it, asked her in an aside, with a roll of her eyes; “Who is that frump of a woman, and how came she fastened to you?” she answered, readily, “It is Mrs. Theodore Morton, wife of a returned missionary, whose name you must have seen if you ever read the papers. He is very highly esteemed by the board as a Christian and a gentleman. Some connection of Gov. Morton, of Massachusetts, I believe.”

“Oh, yes, and you are doing missionary work in your own way, I see. It’s quite like you,” Mrs. Sniffe said, as she passed on to the laces and left Bee and Mrs. Morton to themselves.

“That woman made fun of me and called me a frump,” Mrs. Morton falteringly said, with a quivering lip, but fire in her eye, as she looked after the retreating bundle of velvet, and silk, and ostrich feathers.

“Never mind. You don’t care for her. They say she used to work in the factory at Lowell, and married a man old enough to be her father, but he had a million, and died, and left it to her, and now she is Mrs. Sniffe, and leads a certain class of simpletons,” Bee replied, and so Mrs. Morton was reconciled to Mrs. Sniffe’s snub, and more than reconciled to her husband’s first love when she saw how kind and generous she was, spending her money so freely, and doing it all as if it were a great favor to herself rather than an act of charity to the poor woman, who returned to her boarding-house laden with more dry-goods for herself and children than she had seen during the entire period of her married life.

It was two days before Beatrice went again to her family on Eighth street, and then she found Mrs. Morton alone, and very much depressed, on account of a letter that morning received from her father.

As she gave Beatrice the letter to read, I will give it to my readers. It was as follows:

“MY BELOVED DAUGHTER:—Many thanks be to God for having brought you safely to America, and given us to believe that we shall see your face again and that of the little ones, our grandchildren. I cannot tell you how glad we are, your mother, and myself, and Aunt Nancy, too, though I think she dreads the litter and the grease-spots the children are sure to make, her life has been so quiet, you know. For myself, I long to see the bairns and hear their young voices. It will make me young again, though the years are bearing me down now so fast. Sixty-eight is nigh on to three score and ten, our allotted time.

“And now about your coming here for the summer. Of course you are welcome as the blossoms of May, but I should be keeping back something if I did not tell you just the situation of things in the old parsonage. Your mother is down with nervous prostration, and has been for months, and as she is very weak I occupy a separate room from hers. Your Aunt Nancy has another, and that only leaves your own old room for you and Theodore and the three children. Of course, I don’t count that place over the woodshed, where we can have a bed for a girl or a boy. You cannot have three children in your room even when your husband is away, it is so small, and Nancy would as soon have a woodchuck in with her as a child; so at first it was a question how to dispose of you. But Providence provided, as He always does. Your mother and I made it a subject of prayer, asking in our blind way that God would incline Nancy either to change rooms, or to have a little cot set up in hers, and feeling confident He would hear the prayer of faith. He did hear and answer, but in His own way, which was not ours. He did not soften your Aunt Nancy, but he sent your cousin Julia to us to say that she would gladly take _one_ of the little girls for a while. You know she is rich and has no children, and it will be a nice home for the child, and Nancy says, ‘Let her have the one that will be likely to fill our house the fullest and make the most _to do_,’ whatever that may be.

“And now, having stated the case as it is, we shall be glad to see you any day, only on Nancy’s account you may as well let us know, as everything will have to be scoured with soap and sand. I hear her now at the kitchen table, which somebody has spilt a drop of milk on.

“Your mother joins me in love, and prays for you.

“Affectionately your father, “CYRUS BROWN.”

“What a nice letter, and what a good old man he must be,” Beatrice said, as she finished reading.

“Yes,” Mrs. Morton answered, hesitatingly; “it is nice, and he is good, and mother, too; but the idea of losing one of the children is dreadful to me. There is always some thorn in my rose. I have thought so much of going back to the old house under the apple trees, and having my little ones with me; and now you see what he says,—one must go to Cousin Julia Hayden.”

In Mrs. Morton’s roses there would always be thorns, fancied or real, but Bee did not tell her so; she merely asked: “Who is Mrs. Hayden? Is she fond of children? Will she be kind to them?”

“She is my cousin on mother’s side,” Mrs. Morton said. “She is the great woman of Bronson, and the richest, and lives in the grandest house. She never had any children of her own, and I do not think her very fond of them. She would be kind in a certain way, but very exacting. She does not understand them. She used to teach school, and was very strict, indeed. She could not make allowances for the difference between herself and little folks. She is Aunt Nancy’s own niece.”

“And who is Aunt Nancy?” Bee asked, and Mrs. Morton replied, “Mother’s old maid sister, Nancy Phillips, who has always lived with us. She is the neatest, most particular person you ever saw; and because she is strong and willing, and mother is feeble, she has run the house so long that she thinks it is her own, and orders father as if he were a dog. But she has many excellent traits, and they could not live without her. She was always kind to me, and I’d rather trust my children with her than with Cousin Julia Hayden. It is very hard, and makes me so nervous.”

“Yes, I can fancy it all,” Bee said; and then, recurring to the letter, she added: “You are to give up the one which will fill the house the fullest and make the most noise. Now, which is that?”

Instantly the eyes of both went over to the window, where Trixey was combing and brushing Bunchie’s hair, pulling and snarling it awfully, and talking all the time as fast as her tongue could fly. Yes, there was no mistake. Little Trix would fill the house the fullest and make the greatest _to do_, and Mrs. Hayden would never understand her, or make allowance for her busy, active ways; and Beatrice wanted her for herself, and said at last to Mrs. Morton: “Will you let me have Trixey, for as long a time as Mrs. Hayden would keep her? I know I can make her happy. You can trust her with me.”

Mrs. Morton was sure of that. During the few days she had known Miss Belknap she had received from her too many kindnesses to think of her as other than a friend, and one to be trusted. At first, she had looked a little suspiciously upon the elegant woman who had been Theo’s first choice, and who was so unlike herself, and she had more than once thought, “How could he have chosen me after knowing her?” She did not say “love me,” for she had been morally sure that when she became Theodore Morton’s wife there was not much love on his side at least. She had loved him for years, and been picked out for his wife since she was a little girl. His father and grandfather had been clergymen, and he had been her father’s pupil when the Rev. Mr. Brown taught a small school for boys, by way of ekeing out his salary. Theo had said then he meant to be a missionary, and she had said she meant to be one, too, and wise ones predicted that they might go together. But the young man wandered very far away from quiet Bronson, and its staid, old-fashioned people, and went to Europe, and fell in with Bee Belknap, and forgot the plain, angular Mary Brown, in the home under the apple trees, who had mended his clothes, and studied Latin and Greek, and talked enthusiastically of a missionary’s life as the happiest and best a man could choose. He had never quite believed it possible that a bright, gay creature like Bee, with hundreds of thousands at her command, would go with him to those islands in the far-off Pacific, but he nevertheless asked her the question, and her answer, given tearfully and sadly, and rather as a refusal of the Feejees than of himself, scattered the sweetest dream of his life, and with a new-made grave in his heart he went back to Bronson on a matter of business he had with Mr. Brown. That he should take a wife with him seemed a necessity, and as Mary was ready, and more than willing, and he cared little now who it was, so that she was good and true and pure, he married her with no love in his heart for her, only a great respect, and a registered vow that she should receive from him everything but love, and if it were possible, should never feel the absence of that. And she had not, for he had kept his vow religiously, and only when he gave the name to Trixey had she experienced a little prick of jealousy, and felt curious with regard to the original Beatrice. If he did not choose to tell her of the lady she would not ask, and so knew nothing till she met her in New York, and was dazzled and bewildered, and troubled, and a very little annoyed at first, and finally won by the sparkling, brilliant woman who had done so much for her, and who now stood offering to take Trixey off her hands and save her from Mrs. Hayden. She knew she could trust her, and that Trix would be safe with her, but she shrank from parting with the helpful, motherly child, who did so much for her and the baby, and she hesitated in her answer, and said at last she would see what Theodore would say.

Theodore approved the plan heartily, if Trixey must go somewhere to be out of the sick grandmother’s and Aunt Nancy’s way. But now there arose trouble in an unexpected quarter. Trixey herself demurred. She loved the pretty lady, and was interested to hear about the dolls and dresses, and the cats and kittens, and pretty little tea-set and table, and wash-tub, and flat-iron, which should all be hers in that new home in Ohio. The wash-tub, and flat-iron, and tea-set made her waver a little, till she glanced at Bunchie, when, with quivering lip, she said:

“What good to have ever so many sings, and Bunchie not with me to see me use the flat-iron and was-tub, and sit at the other end of the table when I makes the tea?”

This was the ground she took. Bunchie would not be there to share her happiness, and she did not swerve from it until her father appealed to her sense of right, and told her the real reason why she should go. Grandpa’s house was very small, and he was poor. Grandma was sick, and Aunt Nancy could not have so many children round.

“But I could help her lots. I’d rock baby brudder to seep, and wipe the dishes ever so many times, and be so good and still as Bunchie,” pleaded the little girl; but she was persuaded at last to go because it was right, and God would love her if she did, and take care of Bunchie and baby brother, and in the summer she should come and see them in the old home; and so it was quite settled that Trixey was to go with Beatrice, who felt more and more the wisdom of the decision when that very afternoon she met Mrs. Hayden herself in Mrs. Morton’s room, and had an opportunity of judging what manner of person she was, and what Trixey’s chance for happiness would have been with her.

She was a tall, large, finely-formed woman, with great black eyes, bushy eyebrows, and a growth of hair about her wide mouth which gave her a more masculine appearance even than did her figure and size. She spoke loudly and decidedly, as one used to her own way, as well as to dictate the way of others. Her dress was very rich and showy, but not _New-Yorkey_ a bit, Bee decided, after a rapid survey of the lady, who scrutinized her as closely, and decided that she _was_ New-Yorkey, and wondered who her dressmaker was. To faded, plain Mrs. Morton she was very patronizing and frank, and told her that what she wanted was fresh air, and cold baths, and oatmeal to bring her up again, while her mother, who had been sick so long, needed effort and energy. She could get up if she only thought so. Nervous prostration was not a disease; it was a fancy, which, if indulged in, would end in one’s being bed-ridden.

“I’ve made it a rule to guard against nervousness in every form, and what is the result? I have never been sick a day in my life, and have no idea how it feels to have the headache, or the toothache, or the backache, or, in fact, any ache, and that is the way it should be.”

She looked the woman never to have an ache or pain, or if she had, to strangle it at once, and Beatrice shrank from her involuntarily as from an Amazon, while poor, sick Mrs. Morton colored scarlet, and roused in defense of her own ailments, which Mrs. Hayden seemed to think she could help.

“Just because you’ve never been sick, Julia,” she said, “you cannot understand it in others, but you go out a missionary once, and have four children in six years, and be as poor as poor can be, and you might know something of aches and pains, and have some weaknesses which cold baths and oatmeal could not cure.”

“I would not go out as a missionary, and I would not have the four children in six years; so you see it is not a supposable case,” Mrs. Hayden retorted, and then Bee hated her, and was doubly glad that little Trix was not to fall into her hands.

Mrs. Hayden herself was not sorry. She had made the offer from a sense of duty, for she was high up in everything of that kind, and performed her duties rigidly, from dieting her husband, a weak, feeble man, on oatmeal and pearl barley, to telling her neighbors their faults, and how they could amend them. She did not like children, and it had cost her something to make up her mind to have one in her house; but she had made the offer, and meant to stand by it if it should be accepted. Finding it convenient just then to visit New York, she had called upon her poor relations to learn the result of her offer, and when told what it was she expressed no regret, but asked many question about Miss Belknap, who seemed to her to be crazy to think of taking Trixey. Suddenly there flashed upon her the recollection of a rumor heard years ago, and, in her usual brusque way, she asked:

“Is she the girl to whom Theo was once engaged, and who jilted him?”

“They never were engaged, but he liked her,” Mrs. Morton answered faintly, while a throb of neuralgic pain shot through her head, and a bright red spot burned on her cheeks.

She was far more a lady, in her brown alpaca dressing-gown, than was this blunt women in her velvet and silk; and so Beatrice thought when she came in immediately after her identity with Theo’s first love had been proved. Mrs. Hayden never acknowledged any person her superior, but she saw at a glance that Miss Belknap was _somebody_, and an _important_ somebody, too, and thought to stamp herself as somebody, by talking of her house, and grounds, and servants, and the watering-places she frequented, and the people she had met. She was now stopping on Madison avenue with Mrs. Sniffe, who was Mr. Hayden’s cousin; probably Miss Belknap knew Mrs. Sniffe, or at least had heard of her. She attended Dr. Adams’ church, and was quite a leader there.

“_Do_ you know her?” she asked squarely; and Bee replied:

“Yes, I have some acquaintance with Mrs. Sniffe. I meet her occasionally at parties.”

Something in the tone made Mrs. Hayden look suspiciously at Beatrice, as she wondered whether it was Mrs. Sniffe who was only to be met at general parties, or Miss Belknap herself; while Mrs. Morton felt emboldened to say:

“Mrs. Sniffe,—that’s the woman we met at Arnold’s who called me a frump. Maybe she forgets that she once worked in the factory at Lowell.”

She had fired her heavy gun, and felt better for it, inasmuch as she had hit the enemy, who reddened, as she replied:

“I believe she was there for a short time, but honest labor does not hurt a person in this country.”

Then she talked of Mrs. Sniffe’s grandeur and style, until Bee was tired of it and arose to go, promising to call next day and decide when to take Trixey. Mrs. Hayden followed her into the hall, and, begging her pardon, asked who made the dress she was wearing.

“Mademoiselle Verwest made it and sent it to me. Her address is No.——, Rue St. Honoré, Paris,” Bee replied.

And, somewhat discomfited, Mrs. Hayden bowed her thanks, and returned to her cousin, whom she badgered about her weak nerves, and want of energy, until the poor woman burst into an uncontrollable fit of weeping, and cried herself sick.

Beatrice found her in bed next day, and as the little room seemed so close and full of children, she carried Trixey away with her to her friend’s house, and for a day or two devoted herself wholly to the child, who was kept in such a state of surprise and bewilderment that she did not once cry for the mother down on Eighth street. Beatrice bought her a doll nearly as large as herself, and bought her a kitchen, with wash-tub and stove, and a China tea-set and table, and beautiful dresses for herself, and then whisked her off to the train before she had time to recover from the excitement of so many wonderful things. Mr. Morton was at the depot, but Trixey did not see him. It was thought better that she should not, so he looked his farewell from a distance, but said good-by to Beatrice, and held her hand closely pressed in his own, as he said:

“God bless you, Bee, for all you have done for us. We never can forget it. Good-by. You will, of course, write to Mollie as soon as you get home.”

“Yes, certainly,” Beatrice said, hating herself because the name Mollie as spoken by Theo grated on her nerves, and seemed in some way a wrong to herself.

Bee knew such feelings were foolish, and as often as they rose within her, she took Trix in her lap and kissed her, and talked to her of the mother they were leaving so far behind, and whose eyes looked at her through the child’s, save that Trixey’s were larger, and more weird in their expression.

It was late in the afternoon when they reached Rothsay, and were driven to Elm Park. Bee had telegraphed to Aunt Rachel that she was coming with a little girl, so everything was in readiness for them, and Trixey was made much of, and talked to and looked at, until she began to nod in her chair, and was taken up to bed.

That evening Everard came up to Elm Park with Rosamond. They had just heard of Bee’s return, and hastened at once to see her. Everard was looking about the same as when Beatrice saw him last, except that he was perhaps a little thinner. He was working pretty hard, he said, and earning some money, but his dress did not indicate anything like reckless expenditure upon himself, and Beatrice felt sure that Josephine was drawing heavily upon him.

He was now quite at home at the Forrest House, and was there nearly every evening, and Beatrice felt something like a throb of fear when she saw his eyes resting upon Rossie, as if loth to leave the fresh young face, which had grown so bright and attractive during the last few months. She was growing very pretty, and her figure looked graceful and womanly when at last she arose to go, and stood while Everard folded her shawl around her, drawing it close up about her neck so as to shield her throat, which was a little sore. Something in that shawl adjustment and the length of time it took sent another thrill through Bee’s nerves, and the moment they were gone she went to her room, where Trixey lay sleeping, and bending over the child, wondered if in all lives things got as terribly mixed as they were in hers and Everard’s.

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