Cloudy Jewel (Romance Classic). Grace Livingston Hill
do first. But they did not wait for her initiative. Allison was off with his car and his man, munching cookies as he went, and promising to return in fifteen minutes hungry as a bear.
“Now let’s go up-stairs, you dear Cloudy Jewel, and I’ll smooth my hair for dinner. I’m crazy to see if I remember things. There was a little red chair that I used to sit in–––”
“It’s here, in your room, dear, and the old rag doll, Betsey; do you remember her?”
“Well, I should say I did! Is Betsey alive yet? Dear old Betsey! How ducky of you to have kept her for me all these years! Oh, isn’t it perfectly peachy that we could come? That we’re really here at last, and you want us? You do, don’t you, Cloudy, dear? You’re sure you do?” Lesley’s tone was anxious, and her bright brown eyes studied the older woman’s face eagerly; but what she saw there was fully satisfactory, for she smiled, and rattled joyfully on in the old babbling-brook voice that reminded one so of years ago.
“I’m not to tell you what we’ve really come for till Allison comes, because I’ve promised; and anyway he’s the man, and he wants to tell you himself; but it’s the dandiest reason, perfectly peachy! It’s really a plan. And say, Cloudy, dear, won’t you promise me right here and now that you will say ‘Yes’ to what he asks you if you possibly, possibly can?”
Julia Cloud promised in a maze of delight.
She stood in hovering wonder, and watched the mass of curls come down and go up again with the swift manipulation of the slim white fingers, remembering how she used to comb those tangled curls with the plump little body leaning sturdily against her knee. It seemed to be the first time since she was a child that youth and beauty had come to linger before her. All her experience had been of sickness and suffering and death, not life and happiness.
There was stewed chicken and little biscuits with gravy for supper. It was a dish the children used to love. It was all dished up and everything ready when Allison came back. He reported that the car was housed but a block away, and the man had gone to his train, tickled to death with his cookies. Allison was so glad to be back that he had to take his aunt in his arms again and give her a regular bear-hug till she pleaded for mercy, but there was a happy light in her eyes and a bright color in her cheeks when he released her that made her a very good-looking aunt indeed to sit down at the table with two such handsome children.
Just at that moment Ellen Robinson in her own home was pouring her husband’s second cup of coffee.
“Don’t you think I’d better take the car and run down for Julia before dark?” she said. “I think she’ll be about ready to come back with me by this time, and I need her early in the morning if I’m going to begin cleaning house.”
“Better wait one more night,” said Herbert stolidly. “Let her get her fill of staying alone nights. It’ll do her good. We don’t want her to be high and mighty when she gets here. I’m boss here, and she’s got to understand that. She’s so mighty independent, you know, it’s important she should find that out right at the start. I’m not going to have her get bossy with these children, either. They aren’t her children.”
Four pairs of keen little Robinson eyes took in this saying with quick intelligence, and four stolid sets of shoulders straightened up importantly with four uplifted saucy chins. They would store these remarks away for future reference when the aunt in question arrived on the scene. They would come in well, they knew, for they had had experience with her in times past.
“Aunt Jule ain’t goin’ to boss me,” swaggered the youngest.
“Ner me, neither!”
“Ner me!”
“I guess she wouldn’t dast try it on me!” boasted the eldest.
CHAPTER III
“You haven’t asked us what we came for,” opened up Allison as soon as everybody was served with chicken, mashed potato, succotash, stewed tomatoes, biscuits, pickles, and apple-sauce.
“I thought you came for cookies,” said Julia Cloud, with a mischievous twinkle in her gray eyes.
“Hung one on me, didn’t you?” said Allison, laughing. “But that wasn’t all. Guess again.”
“Perhaps you came to see me,” she suggested shyly.
“Right you are! But that’s not all, either. That wouldn’t last much longer than the cookies. Guess again.”
“Oh, I couldn’t!” said Julia Cloud, growing suddenly stricken with the thought of their going. “I give it up.”
“Well, then I’ll tell you. You see we’ve come East to college, both of us. Of course I’ve had my freshman year, but the Kid’s just entering. We haven’t decided which college it’s to be yet, but it’s to be co-ed, we know that much, because we’re tired of being separated. When one hasn’t but two in the family and has been apart for five years, one appreciates a home, I tell you that. And so we’ve decided we want a home. We’re not just going to college to live there in the usual way; we’re going to take a house, live like real folks, and go to school every day. We want a fireplace and a cooky-jar of our own; a place to bring our friends and have good times. But most of all we want a mother, and we’ve come all this way to coax you to come and live with us, play house, you know, as you used to do down on the mossy rocks with broken bits of china for dishes and acorns for cups and saucers. Play house and you be mother. Will you do it, Cloudy Jewel? It means a whole lot to us, and we’ll try to play fair and make you have a good time.”
Julia Cloud put her hand on her heart, and lifted her bewildered eyes to the boy’s eager face.
“Me!” she said wonderingly. “You want me!”
“We sure do!” said Allison.
“Indeed we do, Cloudy, dear! That’s just what we do want!” cried Leslie, jumping up and running around to her aunt’s chair to embrace her excitedly. “And you promised, you know, that you would do what we wanted if you possibly, possibly could.”
“You see, we put it up to our guardian about the house,” went on Allison, “and he said the difficulty would be to get the right kind of a housekeeper that he could trust us with. Of course he’s way off in California, and he has to be fussy. He’s built that way. But we told him we didn’t want any housekeeper at all, we wanted a mother. He said you couldn’t pick mothers off trees, but we told him we knew where there was one if we could only get her. So he let us come and ask; and, if you say you’ll do it, he’s coming down to see you and fix it up about the money part. He said you’d have to have a regular salary or he wouldn’t consider it, because there were things he’d have to insist upon that he had promised mother; and, if there wasn’t a business arrangement about it, he wouldn’t know what to do. Besides, he said it was worth a lot to run a couple of rough-necks like Les and me, and he’d make the salary all right so you could afford to leave whatever you were doing and just give your time to mothering us. Now it’s up to you, Cloudy Jewel, to help us out with our proposition or spoil everything, because we simply won’t have a housekeeper, and we don’t know another real mother in the whole world that hasn’t a family of her own.”
They both left their delicious dinner, and got around her, coaxing and wheedling exactly as if she had already declined, when the truth was she was too dazed with joy to open her lips, even if they had given her opportunity to speak.
It was some time before the excitement quieted down and they gave her a chance to say she would go. Even then she spoke the words with fear and trembling as one might step off a commonplace threshold into a fairy palace, not sure but it might be stepping into space.
Outside the sky was still flooded with after-sunset glory, but there was so much glory in the hearts of the three inside the dining-room