Just David

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David found a new song in his violin the next morning. To be
sure, he could not play it--much of it--until four o'clock in the
afternoon came; for Mr. Holly did not like violins to be played
in the morning, even on days that were not especially the Lord's.
There was too much work to do. So David could only snatch a
strain or two very, very softly, while he was dressing; but that
was enough to show him what a beautiful song it was going to be.
He knew what it was, at once, too. It was the gold-pieces, and
what they would bring. All through the day it tripped through his
consciousness, and danced tantalizingly just out of reach. Yet he
was wonderfully happy, and the day seemed short in spite of the
heat and the weariness.

At four o'clock he hurried home and put his violin quickly in
tune. It came then--that dancing sprite of tantalization--and
joyously abandoned itself to the strings of the violin, so that
David knew, of a surety, what a beautiful song it was.

It was this song that sent him the next afternoon to see his Lady
of the Roses. He found her this time out of doors in her garden.
Unceremoniously, as usual, he rushed headlong into her presence.

"Oh, Lady--Lady of the Roses," he panted. "I've found out, and I
came quickly to tell you."

"Why, David, what--what do you mean?" Miss Holbrook looked
unmistakably startled.

"About the hours, you know,--the unclouded ones," explained David
eagerly. "You know you said they were ALL cloudy to you."

Miss Holbrook's face grew very white.

"You mean--you've found out WHY my hours are--are all cloudy
ones?" she stammered.

"No, oh, no. I can't imagine why they are," returned David, with
an emphatic shake of his head. "It's just that I've found a way
to make all my hours sunny ones, and you can do it, too. So I
came to tell you. You know you said yours were all cloudy."

"Oh," ejaculated Miss Holbrook, falling back into her old
listless attitude. Then, with some asperity: "Dear me, David! Did
n't I tell you not to be remembering that all the time?"

"Yes, I know, but I've LEARNED something," urged the boy;
"something that you ought to know. You see, I did think, once,
that because you had all these beautiful things around you, the
hours ought to be all sunny ones. But now I know it isn't
what's around you; it's what is IN you!"

"Oh, David, David, you curious boy!"

"No, but really! Let me tell you," pleaded David. "You know I
haven't liked them,--all those hours till four o'clock
came,--and I was so glad, after I saw the sundial, to find out
that they didn't count, anyhow. But to-day they HAVE
counted--they've all counted, Lady of the Roses; and it's just
because there was something inside of me that shone and shone,
and made them all sunny--those hours."

"Dear me! And what was this wonderful thing?"

David smiled, but he shook his head.

"I can't tell you that yet--in words; but I'll play it. You see,
I can't always play them twice alike,--those little songs that I
find,--but this one I can. It sang so long in my head, before my
violin had a chance to tell me what it really was, that I sort of
learned it. Now, listen!" And be began to play.

It was, indeed, a beautiful song, and Miss Holbrook said so with
promptness and enthusiasm; yet still David frowned.

"Yes, yes," he answered, "but don't you see? That was telling you
about something inside of me that made all my hours sunshiny
ones. Now, what you want is something inside of you to make yours
sunshiny, too. Don't you see?"

An odd look came into Miss Holbrook's eyes.

"That's all very well for you to say, David, but you haven't
told me yet, you know, just what it is that's made all this
brightness for you."

The boy changed his position, and puckered his forehead into a
deeper frown.

"I don't seem to explain so you can understand," he sighed. "It
isn't the SPECIAL thing. It's only that it's SOMETHING. And it's
thinking about it that does it. Now, mine wouldn't make yours
shine, but--still,"--he broke off, a happy relief in his
eyes,--"yours could be LIKE mine, in one way. Mine is something
that is going to happen to me--something just beautiful; and you
could have that, you know,--something that was going to happen to
you, to think about."

Miss Holbrook smiled, but only with her lips, Her eyes had grown
somber.

"But there isn't anything 'just beautiful' going to happen to
me, David," she demurred.

"There could, couldn't there?"

Miss Holbrook bit, her lip; then she gave an odd little laugh
that seemed, in some way, to go with the swift red that had come
to her cheeks.

"I used to think there could--once," she admitted; "but I've
given that up long ago. It--it didn't happen."

"But couldn't you just THINK it was going to?" persisted the
boy. "You see I found out yesterday that it's the THINKING that
does it. All day long I was thinking--only thinking. I wasn't
DOING it, at all. I was really raking behind the cart; but the
hours all were sunny."

Miss Holbrook laughed now outright.

"What a persistent little mental-science preacher you are!" she
exclaimed. "And there's truth--more truth than you know--in it
all, too. But I can't do it, David,--not that--not that. 'T would
take more than THINKING--to bring that," she added, under her
breath, as if to herself.

"But thinking does bring things," maintained David earnestly.
"There's Joe--Joe Glaspell. His mother works out all day; and
he's blind."

"Blind? Oh-h!" shuddered Miss Holbrook.

"Yes; and he has to stay all alone, except for Betty, and she is
n't there much. He THINKS ALL his things. He has to. He can't SEE
anything with his outside eyes. But he sees everything with his
inside eyes--everything that I play. Why, Lady of the Roses, he's
even seen this--all this here. I told him about it, you know,
right away after I'd found you that first day: the big trees and
the long shadows across the grass, and the roses, and the shining
water, and the lovely marble people peeping through the green
leaves; and the sundial, and you so beautiful sitting here in the
middle of it all. Then I played it for him; and he said he could
see it all just as plain! And THAT was with his inside eyes! And
so, if Joe, shut up there in his dark little room, can make his
THINK bring him all that, I should think that YOU, here in this
beautiful, beautiful place, could make your think bring you
anything you wanted it to."

But Miss Holbrook sighed again and shook her head.

"Not that, David, not that," she murmured. "It would take more
than thinking to bring--that." Then, with a quick change of
manner, she cried: "Come, come, suppose we don't worry any more
about MY hours. Let's think of yours. Tell me, what have you been
doing since I saw you last? Perhaps you have been again to--to
see Mr. Jack, for instance."

"I have; but I saw Jill mostly, till the last." David hesitated,
then he blurted it out: "Lady of the Roses, do you know about the
gate and the footbridge?"

Miss Holbrook looked up quickly.

"Know--what, David?"

"Know about them--that they're there?"

"Why--yes, of course; at least, I suppose you mean the footbridge
that crosses the little stream at the foot of the hill over
there."

"That's the one." Again David hesitated, and again he blurted out
the burden of his thoughts. "Lady of the Roses, did you
ever--cross that bridge?"

Miss Holbrook stirred uneasily.

"Not--recently."

"But you don't MIND folks crossing it?"

"Certainly not--if they wish to."

"There! I knew 't wasn't your blame, " triumphed David.

"MY blame!"

"Yes; that Mr. Jack wouldn't let Jill come across, you know. He
called her back when she'd got halfway over once." Miss
Holbrook's face changed color.

"But I do object," she cried sharply, "to their crossing it when
they DON'T want to! Don't forget that, please."

"But Jill did want to."

"How about her brother--did he want her to?"

"N--no."

"Very well, then. I didn't, either."

David frowned. Never had he seen his beloved Lady of the Roses
look like this before. He was reminded of what Jill had said
about Jack: "His face was all stern and white, and his lips
snapped tight shut after every word." So, too, looked Miss
Holbrook's face; so, too, had her lips snapped tight shut after
her last words. David could not understand it. He said nothing
more, however; but, as was usually the case when he was
perplexed, he picked up his violin and began to play. And as he
played, there gradually came to Miss Holbrook's eyes a softer
light, and to her lips lines less tightly drawn. Neither the
footbridge nor Mr. Jack, however, was mentioned again that
afternoon.

CHAPTER XVII

"THE PRINCESS AND THE PAUPER"

It was in the early twilight that Mr. Jack told the story. He,
Jill, and David were on the veranda, as usual watching the towers
of Sunnycrest turn from gold to silver as the sun dropped behind
the hills. It was Jill who had asked for the story.

"About fairies and princesses, you know," she had ordered.

"But how will David like that?" Mr. Jack had demurred. "Maybe he
doesn't care for fairies and princesses."

"I read one once about a prince--'t was 'The Prince and the
Pauper,' and I liked that," averred David stoutly.

Mr. Jack smiled; then his brows drew together in a frown. His
eyes were moodily fixed on the towers.

"Hm-m; well," he said, "I might, I suppose, tell you a story
about a PRINCESS and--a Pauper. I--know one well enough."

"Good!--then tell it," cried both Jill and David. And Mr. Jack
began his story.

"She was not always a Princess, and he was not always a
Pauper,--and that's where the story came in, I suppose," sighed
the man. "She was just a girl, once, and he was a boy; and they
played together and--liked each other. He lived in a little house
on a hill."

"Like this?" demanded Jill.

"Eh? Oh--er--yes, SOMETHING like this," returned Mr. Jack, with
an odd half-smile. "And she lived in another bit of a house in a
town far away from the boy."

"Then how could they play together?" questioned David.

"They couldn't, ALWAYS. It was only summers when she came to
visit in the boy's town. She was very near him then, for the old
aunt whom she visited lived in a big stone house with towers, on
another hill, in plain sight from the boy's home."

"Towers like those--where the Lady of the Roses lives?" asked
David.

"Eh? What? Oh--er--yes," murmured Mr. Jack. "We'll say the towers
were something like those over there." He paused, then went on
musingly: "The girl used to signal, sometimes, from one of the
tower windows. One wave of the handkerchief meant, 'I'm
coming, over'; two waves, with a little pause between, meant,
'You are to come over here.' So the boy used to wait always,
after that first wave to see if another followed; so that he
might know whether he were to be host or guest that day. The
waves always came at eight o'clock in the morning, and very
eagerly the boy used to watch for them all through the summer
when the girl was there."

"Did they always come, every morning?" Asked Jill.

"No; sometimes the girl had other things to do. Her aunt would
want her to go somewhere with her, or other cousins were expected
whom the girl must entertain; and she knew the boy did not like
other guests to be there when he was, so she never asked him to
come over at such times. On such occasions she did sometimes run
up to the tower at eight o'clock and wave three times, and that
meant, 'Dead Day.' So the boy, after all, never drew a real
breath of relief until he made sure that no dreaded third wave
was to follow the one or the two."

"Seems to me," observed David, "that all this was sort of
one-sided. Didn't the boy say anything?"

"Oh, yes," smiled Mr. Jack. "But the boy did not have any tower
to wave from, you must remember. He had only the little piazza on
his tiny bit of a house. But he rigged up a pole, and he asked
his mother to make him two little flags, a red and a blue one.
The red meant 'All right'; and the blue meant 'Got to work'; and
these he used to run up on his pole in answer to her waving 'I'm
coming over,' or 'You are to come over here.' So, you see,
occasionally it was the boy who had to bring the 'Dead Day,' as
there were times when he had to work. And, by the way, perhaps
you would be interested to know that after a while he thought up
a third flag to answer her three waves. He found an old black
silk handkerchief of his father's, and he made that into a flag.
He told the girl it meant 'I'm heartbroken,' and he said it was a
sign of the deepest mourning. The girl laughed and tipped her
head saucily to one side, and said, 'Pooh! as if you really
cared!' But the boy stoutly maintained his position, and it was
that, perhaps, which made her play the little joke one day.

"The boy was fourteen that summer, and the girl thirteen. They
had begun their signals years before, but they had not had the
black one so long. On this day that I tell you of, the girl waved
three waves, which meant, 'Dead Day,' you remember, and watched
until the boy had hoisted his black flag which said, 'I'm
heart-broken,' in response. Then, as fast as her mischievous
little feet could carry her, she raced down one hill and across
to the other. Very stealthily she advanced till she found the boy
bent over a puzzle on the back stoop, and--and he was whistling
merrily.

"How she teased him then! How she taunted him with 'Heart-broken,
indeed--and whistling like that!' In vain he blushed and
stammered, and protested that his whistling was only to keep up
his spirits. The girl only laughed and tossed her yellow curls;
then she hunted till she found some little jingling bells, and
these she tied to the black badge of mourning and pulled it high
up on the flagpole. The next instant she was off with a run and a
skip, and a saucy wave of her hand; and the boy was left all
alone with an hour's work ahead of him to untie the knots from
his desecrated badge of mourning.

"And yet they were wonderfully good friends--this boy and girl.
From the very first, when they were seven and eight, they had
said that they would marry each other when they grew up, and
always they spoke of it as the expected thing, and laid many
happy plans for the time when it should come. To be sure, as they
grew older, it was not mentioned quite so often, perhaps; but the
boy at least thought--if he thought of it all--that that was only
because it was already so well understood."

"What did the girl think?" It was Jill who asked the question.

"Eh? The girl? Oh," answered Mr. Jack, a little bitterly, "I'm
afraid I don't know exactly what the girl did think, but--it was
n't that, anyhow--that is, judging from what followed."

"What did follow?"

"Well, to begin with, the old aunt died. The girl was sixteen
then. It was in the winter that this happened, and the girl was
far away at school. She came to the funeral, however, but the boy
did not see her, save in the distance; and then he hardly knew
her, so strange did she look in her black dress and hat. She was
there only two days, and though he gazed wistfully up at the gray
tower, he knew well enough that of course she could not wave to
him at such a time as that. Yet he had hoped--almost believed
that she would wave two waves that last day, and let him go over
to see her.

"But she didn't wave, and he didn't go over. She went away. And
then the town learned a wonderful thing. The old lady, her aunt,
who had been considered just fairly rich, turned out to be the
possessor of almost fabulous wealth, owing to her great holdings
of stock in a Western gold mine which had suddenly struck it
rich. And to the girl she willed it all. It was then, of course,
that the girl became the Princess, but the boy did not realize
that--just then. To him she was still 'the girl.'

"For three years he did not see her. She was at school, or
traveling abroad, he heard. He, too, had been away to school, and
was, indeed, just ready to enter college. Then, that summer,
he heard that she was coming to the old home, and his heart sang
within him. Remember, to him she was still the girl. He knew, of
course, that she was not the LITTLE girl who had promised to
marry him. But he was sure she was the merry comrade, the
true-hearted young girl who used to smile frankly into his eyes,
and whom he was now to win for his wife. You see he had
forgotten--quite forgotten about the Princess and the money. Such
a foolish, foolish boy as he was!

"So he got out his flags gleefully, and one day, when his mother
wasn't in the kitchen, he ironed out the wrinkles and smoothed
them all ready to be raised on the pole. He would be ready when
the girl waved--for of course she would wave; he would show her
that he had not forgotten. He could see just how the sparkle
would come to her eyes, and just how the little fine lines of
mischief would crinkle around her nose when she was ready to give
that first wave. He could imagine that she would like to find him
napping; that she would like to take him by surprise, and make
him scurry around for his flags to answer her.

"But he would show her! As if she, a girl, were to beat him at
their old game! He wondered which it would be: 'I'm coming over,'
or, 'You are to come over here.' Whichever it was, he would
answer, of course, with the red 'All right.' Still, it WOULD be a
joke to run up the blue 'Got to work,' and then slip across to
see her, just as she, so long ago, had played the joke on him! On
the whole, however, he thought the red flag would be better. And
it was that one which he laid uppermost ready to his hand, when
he arranged them.

"At last she came. He heard of it at once. It was already past
four o'clock, but he could not forbear, even then, to look toward
the tower. It would be like her, after all, to wave then, that
very night, just so as to catch him napping, he thought. She did
not wave, however. The boy was sure of that, for he watched the
tower till dark.

"In the morning, long before eight o'clock, the boy was ready. He
debated for some time whether to stand out of doors on the
piazza, or to hide behind the screened window, where he could
still watch the tower. He decided at last that it would be better
not to let her see him when she looked toward the house; then his
triumph would be all the more complete when he dashed out to run
up his answer.

"Eight o'clock came and passed. The boy waited until nine, but
there was no sign of life from the tower. The boy was angry then,
at himself. He called himself, indeed, a fool, to hide as he did.
Of course she wouldn't wave when he was nowhere in sight--when
he had apparently forgotten! And here was a whole precious day
wasted!

"The next morning, long before eight, the boy stood in plain
sight on the piazza. As before he waited until nine; and as
before there was no sign of life at the tower window. The next
morning he was there again, and the next, and the next. It took
just five days, indeed, to convince the boy--as he was convinced
at last--that the girl did not intend to wave at all."

"But how unkind of her!" exclaimed David.

"She couldn't have been nice one bit!" decided Jill.

"You forget," said Mr. Jack. "She was the Princess."

"Huh!" grunted Jill and David in unison.

"The boy remembered it then," went on Mr. Jack, after a
pause,--"about the money, and that she was a Princess. And of
course he knew--when he thought of it--that he could not expect
that a Princess would wave like a girl--just a girl. Besides,
very likely she did not care particularly about seeing him.
Princesses did forget, he fancied,--they had so much, so very
much to fill their lives. It was this thought that kept him from
going to see her--this, and the recollection that, after all, if
she really HAD wanted to see him, she could have waved.

"There came a day, however, when another youth, who did not dare
to go alone, persuaded him, and together they paid her a call.
The boy understood, then, many things. He found the Princess;
there was no sign of the girl. The Princess was tall and
dignified, with a cold little hand and a smooth, sweet voice.
There was no frank smile in her eyes, neither were there any
mischievous crinkles about her nose and lips. There was no
mention of towers or flags; no reference to wavings or to
childhood's days. There was only a stiffly polite little
conversation about colleges and travels, with a word or two about
books and plays. Then the callers went home. On the way the boy
smiled scornfully to himself. He was trying to picture the
beauteous vision he had seen, this unapproachable Princess in her
filmy lace gown,--standing in the tower window and waving--waving
to a bit of a house on the opposite hill. As if that could
happen!

"The boy, during those last three years, had known only books. He
knew little of girls--only one girl--and he knew still less of
Princesses. So when, three days after the call, there came a
chance to join a summer camp with a man who loved books even
better than did the boy himself, he went gladly. Once he had
refused to go on this very trip; but then there had been the
girl. Now there was only the Princess--and the Princess didn't
count."

"Like the hours that aren't sunshiny," interpreted David.

"Yes," corroborated Mr. Jack. "Like the hours when the sun does
n't shine."

"And then?" prompted Jill.

"Well, then,--there wasn't much worth telling," rejoined Mr.
Jack gloomily. "Two more years passed, and the Princess grew to
be twenty-one. She came into full control of her property then,
and after a while she came back to the old stone house with the
towers and turned it into a fairyland of beauty. She spent money
like water. All manner of artists, from the man who painted her
ceilings to the man who planted her seeds, came and bowed to her
will. From the four corners of the earth she brought her
treasures and lavished them through the house and grounds. Then,
every summer, she came herself, and lived among them, a very
Princess indeed."

"And the boy?--what became of the boy?" demanded David. "Didn't
he see her--ever?"

Mr. Jack shook his head.

"Not often, David; and when he did, it did not make him
any--happier. You see, the boy had become the Pauper; you must
n't forget that."

"But he wasn't a Pauper when you left him last."

"Wasn't he? Well, then, I'll tell you about that. You see, the
boy, even though he did go away, soon found out that in his heart
the Princess was still the girl, just the same. He loved her, and
he wanted her to be his wife; so for a little--for a very
little--he was wild enough to think that he might work and study
and do great things in the world until he was even a Prince
himself, and then he could marry the Princess."

"Well, couldn't he? "

"No. To begin with, he lost his health. Then, away back in the
little house on the hill something happened--a something that
left a very precious charge for him to keep; and he had to go
back and keep it, and to try to see if he couldn't find that
lost health, as well. And that is all."

"All! You don't mean that that is the end!" exclaimed Jill.

"That's the end."

"But that isn't a mite of a nice end," complained David. "They
always get married and live happy ever after--in stories."

"Do they?" Mr. Jack smiled a little sadly. "Perhaps they do,
David,--in stories."

"Well, can't they in this one?"

"I don't see how."

"Why can't he go to her and ask her to marry him?"

Mr. Jack drew himself up proudly.

"The Pauper and the Princess? Never! Paupers don't go to
Princesses, David, and say, 'I love you.'"

David frowned.

"Why not? I don't see why--if they want to do it. Seems as if
somehow it might be fixed."

"It can't be," returned Mr. Jack, his gaze on the towers that
crowned the opposite hill; "not so long as always before the
Pauper's eyes there are those gray walls behind which he pictures
the Princess in the midst of her golden luxury."

To neither David nor Jill did the change to the present tense
seem strange. The story was much too real to them for that.

"Well, anyhow, I think it ought to be fixed," declared David, as
he rose to his feet.

"So do I--but we can't fix it," laughed Jill. "And I'm hungry.
Let's see what there is to eat!"

CHAPTER XVIII

DAVID TO THE RESCUE

It was a beautiful moonlight night, but for once David was not
thinking of the moon. All the way to the Holly farmhouse he was
thinking of Mr. Jack's story, "The Princess and the Pauper." It
held him strangely. He felt that he never could forget it. For
some reason that he could not have explained, it made him sad,
too, and his step was very quiet as he went up the walk toward
the kitchen door.

It was after eight o'clock. David had taken supper with Mr. Jack
and Jill, and not for some hours had he been at the farmhouse. In
the doorway now he stopped short; then instinctively he stepped
back into the shadow. In the kitchen a kerosene light was
burning. It showed Mrs.Holly crying at the table, and Mr. Holly,
white-faced and stern-lipped, staring at nothing. Then Mrs. Holly
raised her face, drawn and tear-stained, and asked a trembling
question.

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