Cloudy Jewel & Aunt Crete's Emancipation. Grace Livingston Hill
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“Well, we must do something, that’s certain, if we have to run away again. It would never do to have those two appear here now. Mercy! think of Aunt Crete in her old black and white silk sitting next table to that lovely lady in gray. I should simply sink through the floor.”
“We can’t run away, Luella,” snapped the practical mother. “We’ve paid for our room two weeks ahead. I didn’t want to do that; but you thought if Aunt Crete should get any nonsense into her head about our coming home, we could tell we’d paid for the room, and that would settle it with her. So now it’s done, and we can’t afford not to abide by it. Besides, what good would that do? We couldn’t afford to go anywhere but home, and that would be as bad as it was in the first place. We’ve got to think it out. If I just had hold of Crete a minute, I’d make her fix it up. She’d have to think some way out of it herself without any of my help, to pay her for her stupidity in coming. I can’t understand how she’d do it.”
“I didn’t think she’d dare!” glared Luella with no pleasant expression on her face.
“I’ll tell you what we’ll have to do, Luella,” said her mother. “We’ll slip down those stairs in the back hall. I went down one day, and they go right out on the piazza that runs in front of the dining-room. We’ll just slip in the back door, and get our breakfast right away. It’s getting pretty late. You better hurry. They’ve likely come up from town on that very early train, and they’ll sit and wait for us. We’ll ring for a messenger bell-boy, and send down a note that my ankle is so much worse I can’t come down-stairs, and you can’t leave me. We’ll say: ‘Mrs. Burton and Miss Burton regret that they cannot come down as requested; but Mrs. Burton is confined to her bed by a sprained ankle, and her daughter cannot leave her. Miss Ward will have to come up.’ You write it on one of your visiting-cards, Luella, and we’ll send it down as quick as we get back from breakfast. Hurry up. The only thing about it will be that climb up three flights after breakfast, but it won’t do for us to risk the elevator. Crete might recognize us, for the elevator goes right by that second-floor front parlor. What I don’t understand is how they got in there. It’s only rich people can afford that. But, land! Crete’s just like a baby; hasn’t been out in the world ever; and very likely she never asked how much the rooms were, but just took the best she could lay eyes on. Or more likely it’s a mistake, and she’s sitting in that little reception-room down on the office floor, and thinks it the second floor because she came up such a long flight of steps from the sidewalk. We’ll have to tell the bell-boy to hunt up the fellow that brought up their cards, and take it to the same folks. Come on now, Luella, and go slow when you turn corners. There’s no telling but they might be prowling round trying to hunt us; so keep a lookout.”
Thus by devious and back ways they descended to a late breakfast, and scuttled up again without being molested.
Luella wrote the note on her card as her mother dictated, and a small boy all brass buttons was despatched with careful directions; and then the two retired behind their ramparts, and waited.
Time went by, until half an hour had elapsed since they came back from breakfast. They had listened anxiously to every footfall in the hall, and part of the time Luella kept the door open a crack with her ear to it. Their nerves were all in a quiver. When the chambermaid arrived, they were fairly feverish to get her out of the way. If Aunt Crete should come while she was in the room, it might get all over the hotel what kind of relatives they had.
Mrs. Burton suggested to the chambermaid that she leave their room till last, as they wanted to write some letters before going out; but the maid declared she must do the room at once or not at all. The elevator slid up and down around the corner in the next hall. They heard a footfall now and then, but none that sounded like Aunt Crete’s. They rang again for the office-boy, who declared he had delivered the message in the second floor, front, and that the lady and gentleman were both in and said, “All right.” He vanished impudently without waiting for Luella’s probing questions, and they looked at each other in anxiety and indignation.
“It is too mean, ma, to lose this whole morning. I wanted to go in bathing,” complained Luella, “and now no telling how long I’ll have to stick in this dull room. I wish Aunt Crete was in Halifax. Why couldn’t I have had some nice relatives like that lovely old gray-silk lady and her son?”
Just then the elevator clanged open and shut, and steps came down the hall. It certainly was not Aunt Crete. Luella flew to the door at the first tap; and there, submerged in a sheaf of American Beauty roses, stood the functionary from the lower floor, with a less pompous manner than he had worn before. The roses had caused his respect for the occupants of the fourth floor, back, to rise several degrees.
Luella stood speechless in wonder, looking first at the roses and then at the servant. Such roses had never come into her life before. Could it be—must it be—but a miserable mistake?
Then the servant spoke.
“Miss Ward sends de flowers, an’ is sorry de ladies ain’t well. She send her regrets, an’ says she can’t come to see de ladies ’count of a drive she’d promised to take to-day, in which she’d hoped to have de ladies’ comp’ny. She hopes de ladies be better dis even’n’.”
He was gone, and the mother and daughter faced each other over the roses, bewilderment and awe in their faces.
“What did he say, Luella? Who sent those roses? Miss Ward? Luella, there’s some mistake. Aunt Crete couldn’t have sent them. She wouldn’t dare! Besides, where would she get the money? It’s perfectly impossible. It can’t be Aunt Crete, after all. It must be some one else with the same name. Perhaps Donald has picked up some one here in the hotel; you can’t tell; or perhaps it isn’t our Donald at all. It’s likely there’s other Donald Grants in the world. What we ought to have done was to go down at once and find out, and not skulk in a corner. But you’re always in such a hurry to do something, Luella. There’s no telling at all who this is now. It might be those folks you admired so much, though what on earth they should have sent their cards to us for—and those lovely roses—I’m sure I don’t know.”
“Now, ma, you needn’t blame me. It was you proposed sending that note down; you know it was, mother; and of course I had to do what you said. I was so upset, anyway, I didn’t know what was what. But now, you see, perhaps you’ve cut me out of a lovely day. We might have gone on a ride with them.”
“Luella,” her mother broke in sharply, “if you talk another word like that, I’ll take the next train back home. You don’t know what you are talking about. It may be Aunt Crete, after all, and a country cousin for all you know; and, if it is, would you have wanted to go driving in the face of the whole hotel, with like as not some old shin-and-bones horse and a broken-down carriage?”
Luella was silenced for the time, and the room settled into gloomy meditation.
CHAPTER VI
AN EMBARRASSING MEETING
Meantime Aunt Crete in the whitest of her white was settling herself comfortably on the gray cushions of the fringed phaeton again, relief and joy mingled in her countenance. It was not that she was glad that Carrie’s ankle was so bad, but that she was to have another short reprieve before her pleasure was cut off. Soon enough, she thought, would she be destined to sit in the darkened room and minister to her fussy sister, while Luella took her place in the carriages and automobiles with her handsome young cousin, as young folks should do, of course; but O, it was good, good, that a tired old lady, who had worked hard all her life, could yet have had this bit of a glimpse of the brighter side of life before she died.
It would be something to sit and think over as she scraped potatoes for dinner, or picked over blackberries for jam, or patiently sewed on Val lace for Luella. It would be an event to date from, and she could fancy herself mildly saying to Mrs. Judge Waters, when she sat beside her some time at missionary meeting, if she ever