Ladybird (29 page)

Eagerly, carefully, the girl sought a paper knife that was a part of the outfitting of the beautiful desk that adorned her room. The pages were pasted together most carefully so that the torn edges fitted each other, and it hurt her to separate them because they kept tearing in little jagged fringes. But when she finally got them apart she found a letter within written by her mother on an old piece of paper bag. It was folded small and addressed to her.

As if she had heard a voice from another world, she laid her hand on her heart and looked at it, smiling through the sudden tears that came. A letter from her dear mother! And that it should come just now when she was particularly sorrowful and in great doubt! Perhaps God had sent it to help her to know what to do.

For a long time Fraley sat reading this letter over and over until she knew each line by heart. It seemed so wonderful to hear her mother’s words spoken out of the grave and to have the letter come just now when her soul was tried. It seemed to make all the things that had troubled her sink into insignificance. She was in the world being tested, and if anything that she desired was not the Father’s will she must not want it, that was all. It might seem to her that she could not live without it, but that would not be so, for the Lord knew best, and He was able to bring her through a thing of the Spirit as well as He had brought her through the perils of her pilgrimage.

She went to bed that night with her mother’s letter under her cheek and a more peaceful look upon her brow than she had worn for several days.

Violet Wentworth did not rise early, and it was understood that the mornings were Fraley’s to do with as she pleased, unless there were letters to be written.

Fraley had planned to go downtown this morning, so she started out early, intending to walk until she was tired and then take the bus.

As she came out to the pavement, she saw old Mr. MacPherson coming down the street with his stately tread, looking keenly at her, evidently recognizing her. The smile that lit his crabbed old face gave her a new view of what the man might have been.

Fraley smiled up at him and would have let him pass, but he halted and spoke to her.

“Good morning, little maid,” he said with a somewhat courtly manner. “Are you feeling any the worse for your sprint after my hat yesterday?”

“Oh no,” laughed Fraley. “I was glad to have a good run. There isn’t often so good an excuse for running in the city, you know, and I’m supposed to be grown up.”

“Are you, indeed!” smiled the old man, watching her sparking beauty with admiration. “And is this where you live?”

He glanced up sharply at the house.

Fraley said it was.

“And are you going out to walk? May I walk with you a little way? We are neighbors, we ought to be acquainted.”

Fraley said she was and would be glad of his company, and they fell into step along the pavement.

“I suppose I ought to know you,” said the old man, smiling down at her scrutinizingly. “But I’m not very good at remembering names and faces. Your face, however, is not hard to remember. Whose house is that where you came out, anyway? I declare I’m not quite sure.”

“Mrs. Wentworth lives there,” said Fraley.

“Oh!” said the old man and then,
“Oh,”
in quite a revealing tone. It was most evident that he did not approve of Mrs. Wentworth. “And—you
are—her—daughter?”
he asked, and Fraley fancied his tone was now less cordial.

“No,” said the girl. “I’m just staying there for a little while. I’m helping her. She calls it social secretary work.”

“I see,” said her companion more cordially. “Well, that’s good. You are a good little girl, I’m sure. Always keep yourself sweet and unspoiled the way you are now. I’m glad you don’t paint your lips. It’s ghastly the way the girls do that. You couldn’t smile the way you do if your lips were painted. You make me think of something sweet I lost once.”

“Oh,” said Fraley shyly. “I’m sorry! I wouldn’t want to trouble you.”

“You don’t trouble me,” he said gruffly.

They walked a long distance toward downtown until the old man said he would have to go back, that he was getting beyond his beat. So Fraley took the bus and went on down, wondering at the strange friendship she had picked up with this old man who bore the same name that she did. There seemed to be a wistfulness about him as if he were hungering for something he could not find.

Fraley’s errand that morning was to look up the addresses her mother had put in the old Bible. She felt that she wanted to know for a certainty about her mother’s people before she went with Alison. She wanted to be sure that Violet’s information was correct.

She had no trouble in locating the address of Robert Fraley, and as Violet had experienced before her, she was sent to an old crippled shoemaker across the street to gain information about the former occupants of the house.

“Yes, I been here thirty years,” he informed her, eyeing her curiously. “Yes, I knowed Robert Fraley all right; a right nice sort of feller he useta be afore he made his pile. Always had a pleasant word. I’ve mended many a shoe fer him in his younger days afore he got up in the world. He had a pretty little wife, an’ she useta wheel her kid up an’ down this street. I made the kid a pair o’ shoes outta pretty red leather once. Her name was Allie—fer a sister o’ hisn who married a poor stick an’ went out west—”

Fraley sank down on the wooden chair offered her and listened and questioned until she had no more doubt left in her mind that Alison Fraley was her own cousin.

“They don’t walk anymore,” went on the garrulous old man, “they
ride
, they do, an’ not in no trolley car neither. They has their limousines now, more’n one, an’ they resides on Riverside Drive when they ain’t abroad, which they are just now. I seen it in the paper the other day. ‘Mr. Robert Fraley and wife after a winter in Yorrup is sailin’ fer home, an’ booked to arrive in N’York about the twenty-fif ’.’ That’s the way they write it. But I ain’t seen him fer a matter of ten year now. He don’t never come down this way anymore. He’s got too high hat fer this street—at least his wife an’ kid have. He was a nice man, I will say that fer him. An’ ef he were to meet me now, allowin’ he knowed me after all these years, I wouldn’t put it past him to speak as pleasant as ever he done. But her, now, she’s another kind. An’ I’ve heard say the kid is more high steppin’ than them all.”

When Fraley left the dusty old shoe shop and went her way back to Riverside Drive, her heart was very heavy. She seemed to have come suddenly very close to her dear mother again and to feel with her; the great brother Robert was the last of the earth and would care for his niece. But Mother never knew of this rise in circumstance. Mother had not spoken much about her brother’s wife, and now Fraley felt as if she knew the reason why. The sister-in-law was of another kind. This crooked old cobbler had keen little discerning eyes. Fraley felt she understood the whole situation. She was sure beyond the shadow of a doubt that Alison Fraley was her own cousin, and she felt also very sure that she did not care to claim relationship, at least not until she knew her better. But she had completely forgotten to look up the MacPherson side of the house at all.

“What is the matter with you?’ asked Violet crossly at breakfast the next morning, watching the lovely, troubled face jealously. “I’ve asked you a question twice and you don’t seem to even hear me.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said Fraley, getting pink. “I’m sorry. I was just thinking.”

“Thinking about what?” asked Violet suspiciously. “Because if it’s about that young man you wrote to, you better cut it out. You’re much too young to be thinking about young men. You need to wait another year or two, anyway.”

Fraley’s face was flaming now.

“I was not thinking about any young man,” she said tremulously. “I don’t think you should talk to me that way. There is nothing wrong about that young man. He was just kind to me when he met me when I was lost and couldn’t find my way to anywhere. I had promised him that I would let him know when I found a place to stay.”

Violet still eyed her suspiciously. “Why should he want to know where you were? Was there anything between you? You know a young man like that doesn’t mean any good to a girl he picks up in the desert.”

Fraley rose, her face growing white with anger and her eyes darkening with feeling.

“You shall not say things like that about Mr. Seagrave!” she said. “He was wonderful to me. He took care of me as if he had been my own brother. He wanted me to write so he could be sure I was safe. He was just kind.”

“Oh, well, you needn’t cry about it,” said Violet contemptuously. “I was just warning you. You’ve got a lot to learn, and you may as well find it out first as last. Well, if you weren’t thinking about him, who were you thinking about?”

“I was thinking about Joseph.”

“Joseph who?”—with a new alarm in her voice.

“Joseph in the Bible,” said Fraley desperately. “I was reading about him this morning, how he was sold into Egypt. You don’t like me to talk about the Bible or I would have told you at once.”

“The Bible again,” said Violet in great annoyance. “I certainly am Bible-ed to death. I can’t teach you the things you need to know when your head is full of this Bible stuff. You know enough about that. It’s time you got some worldly wisdom. Now, run along and don’t bother me anymore, and for pity’s sake don’t look so glum! I didn’t ask you here to look like a tombstone!”

Sadly, Fraley went up to her room to dress for the golf game with her stranger cousin. Life certainly did not look very rosy just now to her. She could not anticipate the coming ordeal with anything but dread.

As she was going out to the car where Alison Fraley awaited her, the postman arrived and the butler stood in the hall with his hands full of letters.

“Here’s one for you, Miss Fraley,” he said as he sorted them over. “Will you have it now, or shall I put it up in your room?”

“Oh, I’ll take it now,” said Fraley, curious to know who could possibly have written to her. But a glance at the letter flooded her face with color. She had seen that handwriting only once, but she never would forget it, and it did not need the inscription in the left-hand corner, “Return to G.R. Seagrave,” to tell her that her friend of the wilderness had not forgotten her.

Tremulously, she hid the letter in her pocket and ran down the steps to the car.

All the morning she had a guilty feeling with that letter crackling whenever she turned, and she could not get away from the longing to run away somewhere and see what it contained. She tried her best to concentrate on what she was doing and play a good game, but her thoughts were far away.

Alison gossiped a great deal about the different people on the golf links. Also she told Fraley much about Violet Wentworth’s past, which she would rather not have known and which filled her with a new dismay. Was Violet really like that? And was all this mess the reason why Mr. MacPherson had lost his cordiality when he found out where she was living—when he thought she was a relative of Violet’s?