As might have been expected Cara went into ecstasies over the old sampler.
“You ought to bring it right in,” she counselled Babs. “They’ll have a real honest-to-goodness opening this afternoon with speeches and all, and you should have the Nelson sampler there for folks to inspect. Besides, Babs,” she pointed out, “it was so wonderful of your father to unearth it. He’s a perfect peach,” she went on, without once taking her brown eyes off the little framed sampler she was holding.
“And I feel like a criminal not to have gone in the old show with him,” Babs confessed. “Oh, Cara,” she exclaimed impatiently, “haven’t I been an idiot?”
“Well, maybe,” agreed her chum laughingly, “but you’re a different sort of idiot from the common garden variety. Let’s go. Where to? Want to peek in and see if the old Davis twin is still breathing?”
“I think I had better,” demurred Babs. “Surely she’ll believe Nicky is innocent. But suppose she shouldn’t?”
“Well, if you ask me,” remarked Cara, in that funny way she had of saying slangy things prettily, “I’d say she surely will believe him guilty. She’s got to have somebody guilty because the boat is gone, you know,” Cara finished, sagely.
“Oh, yes; I know that,” agreed Babs, “but it isn’t Nicky.”
“I hope not,” Cara answered her briefly.
They drove along the sea-shore road, both silent for a few moments. This was unusual for these two girls, who always had so much to say to each other, but both were very busy thinking.
Presently they sighted the little house which made a home for the Davis twins. It was quaint, and had a row of latticed rose-bushes in front where every body else kept their porch, and the porch was a side “stoop,” square and comfy looking. The Misses Davis were known for their good taste, and the inherited boat model may have favorably influenced it.
Babs jumped out of the car. “Doesn’t seem to be any one around,” she remarked as she left Cara.
No one was at home, they soon found out, and after vain attempts to get a response for her knocks, Babs returned to the car.
“I hope she isn’t dead in there all alone,” she remarked facetiously. She was anxious about the worried little woman, but not to the point so carelessly expressed.
“No danger. Only the good die of lost boat models,” Cara said, keeping up the feeble joke. “We can go right over to the Community House now, can’t we?”
“I suppose so,” sighed Barbara. “But I wish I could get a word in with Miss Davis. She may go talking around, and you see, she couldn’t mention Nicky’s name without mentioning mine.”
“That is a nuisance,” her friend agreed. “Did you tell your father?” Cara asked suddenly.
“No.”
“You didn’t?”
“No. It is about the first thing of importance that I have ever kept from him, too. Makes me feel guilty,” Babs confessed. “Let’s go down to the old show and I’ll deliver the grandmother fancy work. That ought to help,” she tried to joke, but there was little mirth in the effort.
A line of cars blackened the edge of the road as the girls came upon the scene.
“Folks getting here early,” said Cara. “You better hurry in with the sampler, Babs, or you won’t find a spare nail left to hang it on. Oh, there are the girls!” she exclaimed, for the other girls were waiting outside the strip of land that was too near the ocean to grow good grass, so it really could not be called a lawn. “Hello there!” she called to them.
They waved in answer and still waited. They were Louise, Esther and Lida; Ruth was not with them.
Both Cara and Barbara noticed how they waited; that they did not run towards the car as they usually did. Neither remarked this, but they both understood. Then, as Barbara was almost up to the group, and Cara was a few steps back of her, she saw what the girls meant.
They were not very keen on greeting her!
They were actually holding back from speaking to her, slighting her and ignoring her.
Cara must have seen this also, for she sprang into the embarrassing gap as she was sure to do.
“Think we were not coming?” she asked cheerfully.
“No, we weren’t worrying,” Louise said very, very evenly. “We are not going to be on the girls’ committee any more, so we just waited to tell you.” She said this to Barbara but was too constrained to use Barbara’s name. Every word seemed icy cold.
“Why, what’s the matter?” Barbara asked, naturally.
“Oh, nothing much,” evaded Louise, “but I for one don’t care to serve on the committee.” Her lip was curled in unmistakable scorn, and the other girls, while saying nothing, were looking just as Louise looked, disdainful.
“Did anything happen?” Cara asked, for once unable to laugh off trouble.
“Well, yes there did,” Esther condescended to reply. “Miss Davis came around here just as we came. She said lots of mean things about the girls’ committee not watching things, and we’re not going to take any of that stuff,” scoffed Esther. “We don’t have to.”
“Watching things? What’s gone?” Barbara asked, she had to find out whether or not the girls knew about the boat model; of course, she feared they did.
“Miss Davis wouldn’t say just what,” Louise answered. “But something has been stolen. The idea! Just as if we could have or should have been around here early in the morning. Come on girls, I’m going,” she finished crisply, and with an unmistakable look towards Barbara. She did achieve a little smile when Cara looked her way, however. They always favored Cara.
“Of course, go if you want to,” flared back Babs. “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t. But if anything is stolen I can’t see why it would be blamed on—us,” she declared. She was going to say “blamed on you” but she changed it to include herself.
“Well, she did blame us and you’re chairman so I suppose you’ll have to fight it out with her.” Again Louise avoided using Babs’ name as she said this.
“Of course it’s that little Italian that tags around after you,” Esther put in. “And Miss Davis says she’ll clap him in a reform school if she lays her eyes on him,” was the way Esther wound that up. Just as if the reform school should include Babs, if justice were really doled out according to Esther’s ideas.
Babs was too indignant to answer. She stood there, digging her slippers into the sand and biting her lip. Her face was white and set in strained lines, and she knew, herself, that if she spoke just then she would say something that she might regret.
So she swung around sharply and left the girls, Cara standing there with them.
Crowds were coming in now, and she, Barbara Hale, who had been chosen to head the girls’ work was being left alone, to her own resources and misery, and the women, and even the mayor, perhaps, would talk to her about all they had done, praise their work. How absurd!
She hoped her father wasn’t there. That would add to her humiliation. And even more than this, she hoped Miss Davis was nowhere about.
“The Italian boy who always tags after me,” she thought bitterly. “Yes, that’s it. Those girls won’t have anything to do with me or anyone else unless we keep away from——”
She couldn’t say the word that was already upon her lips. She couldn’t call the poor “scum.” That would have been beneath her. But in her anger she could not help blaming the girls for their narrowness.
Why could they not have stuck together and proved to Miss Davis that harmony was always reliable?
Her white face burned now and her eyes felt sightless, as she entered the house. How devastating anger can be? How it poisons, and how it hurts!
“Those snobs!” she was thinking. “Cutting me like that. They were glad of a chance, of course. As if I cared.”
But she did care, a lot. She was so indignant she could not direct her thoughts. She just couldn’t think straight.
Entering the room she immediately espied her father.
“Daddy!” she called out. “I’ve brought our heirloom. Come along while I give it to the chairman.”
Her father clutched her arm contentedly. And Babs was, as always, immensely proud of him. He did not “mix up much” according to popular opinion, but he was always to be depended upon when anything educational was astir.
Babs was dragging him along through the crowd. Folks were smiling and bowing to them, for everybody knew, or knew of, Dr. Winthrop Hale.
“Here, over here, Dad,” marshalled Barbara, as gaily as she could manage to be.
She gave one vigorous push through a close tangle in the crowd, and emerged in front of the chairman; she had been going after the hat she recognized as belonging to Mrs. Frederick Winters.
And standing with Mrs. Winters was little Miss Davis. She was so short Barbara could not have seen her until she was right alongside of her.
For a moment Babs felt too panicky to speak. And what could she say with her father standing there smiling? His hat in his hand made him look quite professional, Babs knew, for it was a soft gray hat and he carried it like the gentleman he was.
But Miss Davis!
“Oh, Miss Davis!” burst out Babs without knowing she was going to. “Just see what we have brought. Daddy found it in the attic.” She was chattering like a squirrel. “Isn’t it wonderful? My great-great-grandmother Nelson’s!”
“Nelson’s!” exclaimed Miss Davis. “Nelson of Massachusetts! Why Dr. Hale! You don’t tell me you are related to Mary Nelson?”
“My great-grandmother, Madam,” said the doctor proudly, bringing the gray hat in and out suavely.
“And my great-grandmother’s first cousin! There! I knew there was some bond between us, Barbara!” Miss Davis declared excitedly, getting hold of Barbara’s arm and squeezing it with more vigor than might have been expected, even after Babs had felt the first decided squeeze.
“Oh, how wonderful!” trilled the girl. Her exclamation had a twofold meaning, and one fold applied to her relief that the other matter was not being brought up before her father.
“Now let those girls cut,” she was thinking. “I guess I can have some friends of my own, and relations even. Think of it! An enemy, one to be feared, to turn out some precious relation. All through a faded old sampler!”
The relief was like the snapping of a string somewhere in Babs’ make-up, for she would have danced around if there had been room. As it was, she couldn’t budge without stepping on somebody’s feet.
Her father and the chairman, Mrs. Winters, were quickly engaged in conversation, and the sampler was in the chairman’s hands when Babs managed to drag Miss Davis away.
“I must speak to you,” she whispered, timidly.
“Did you get it?” breathed Miss Davis hopefully.
“No; but I know something about it.”
“Oh, do you!”
Instantly Barbara regretted the way she had said that. Miss Davis thought “knowing something about it” would mean much more than it did.
They finally reached a spot where they could speak privately, without being overheard.
“What is it?” begged Miss Davis.
“He, Nicky, didn’t take it,” Babs answered quickly.
“Then who did?”
“I don’t know. He says in a note he wrote me that he couldn’t tell just then. Of course he will when I see him.”
Miss Davis’s face dropped like a faded flower falling from its stem.
“My dear child,” she murmured, “this is awful. I felt sure you had recovered it, you were so cheerful.”
“But I am sure now that you will get it,” insisted Barbara. “I know I can depend upon Nicky, and if it hadn’t been for Father wanting to fetch in the sampler this afternoon I might have found him. But you see,” she pointed out affectionately, “I really couldn’t disappoint Dad. He so seldom takes an interest in things like this.”
“Yes, you couldn’t disappoint a man like your father, Barbara. He’s one of Nature’s noblemen,” Miss Davis declared fervently. “And I’m simply delighted to find that we can claim a relationship.” Her faded eyes sought Barbara’s and they tried to smile, but her lips, her mouth merely twitched. She was suffering in her anxiety.
Instinctively Barbara put out her hand and pressed the slender fingers, that seemed so nervously restless upon the silken cord gathering in the little lady’s bag.
“I’m so sorry about it, Miss Davis,” Barbara murmured, “but I’m perfectly sure it will be all right. There’s something we can’t even guess, some reason why we can’t find it. But I’m sure it’s safe or Nicky would never have written the note the way he did.”
“What did he say?” asked Miss Davis in a very tiny voice.
Babs told her. She dwelled upon the especial significance of every meager word.
“And you see, Miss Davis,” she pointed out, “Nicky is really very wise. He has had to learn such a lot in those few years of his, that he’s as wise as a boy much older.”
“Yes; I can understand that,” assented the other. “But—he may be wayward.”
“Oh, he isn’t really.” Barbara was thinking of the girls and their hateful gossip about a reform school. “He just does everything for his mother,” she said jerkily. “And he’s the best boy——”
“I was speaking to Mr. Thornton confidentially this morning,” Miss Davis said. “You know he has charge of wayward children——”
“But Nicky isn’t wayward, not a bit,” defended Babs, nervously.
“Well, I hope not. But Mr. Thornton said it was best for such children to be where they would have to learn right from wrong——”
“Oh, Miss Davis! But Nicky knows!” Babs gasped a little too loud, for folks around her turned sharply to see why any one would be so excited.
“The mayor is speaking,” said a voice like vinegar right into Barbara’s surprised right ear.
Her silence then was resolute.