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CHAPTER X

NO. 13 PIUTE STREET

Clover did not see Clarence again for several days after this conversation, the remembrance of which was uncomfortable to her. She feared he was feeling hurt or "huffy," and would show it in his manner; and she disliked very much the idea that Phil might suspect the reason, or, worse still, Mr. Templestowe.

But when he finally appeared he seemed much the same as usual. After all, she reflected, it has only been a boyish impulse; he has already got over it, or not meant all he said.

In this she did Clarence an injustice. He had been very much in earnest when he spoke; and it showed the good stuff which was in him and his real regard for Clover that he should be making so manly a struggle with his disappointment and pain. His life had been a lonely one in Colorado; he could not afford to quarrel with his favorite cousin, and with him, as with other lovers, there may have been, besides, some lurking hope that she might yet change her mind. But perhaps Clover in a measure was right in her conviction that Clarence was still too young and undeveloped to have things go very deep with him. He seemed to her in many ways as boyish and as undisciplined as Phil.

With early September the summering of the Ute Park came to a close. The cold begins early at that elevation, and light frosts and red leaves warned the dwellers in tents and cabins to flee.

Clover made her preparations for departure with real reluctance. She had grown very fond of the place; but Phil was perfectly himself again, and there seemed no reason for their staying longer.

So back to St. Helen's they went and to Mrs. Marsh, who, in reply to Clover's letter, had written that she must make room for them somehow, though for the life of her she couldn't say how. It proved to be in two small back rooms. An irruption of Eastern invalids had filled the house to overflowing, and new faces met them at every turn. Two or three of the last summer's inmates had died during their stay,—one of them the very sick man whose room Mrs. Watson had coveted. His death took place "as if on purpose," she told Clover, the very week after her removal to the Shoshone.

Mrs. Watson herself was preparing for return to the East. "I've seen the West now," she said,—"all I want to see; and I'm quite ready to go back to my own part of the country. Ellen writes that she thinks I'd better start for home so as to get settled before the cold—And it's so cold here that I can't realize that they're still in the middle of peaches at home. Ellen always spices a great—They're better than preserves; and as for the canned ones, why, peaches and water is what I call them. Well—my dear—" (Distance lends enchantment, and Clover had become "My dear" again.) "I'm glad I could come out and help you along; and now that you know so many people here, you won't need me so much as you did at first. I shall tell Mrs. Perkins to write to Mrs. Hall to tell your father how well your brother is looking, and I know he'll be—And here's a little handkerchief for a keepsake."

It was a pretty handkerchief, of pale yellow silk with embroidered corners, and Clover kissed the old lady as she thanked her, and they parted good friends. But their intercourse had led her to make certain firm resolutions.

"I will try to keep my mind clear and my talk clear; to learn what I want and what I have a right to want and what I mean to say, so as not to puzzle and worry people when I grow old, by being vague and helpless and fussy," she reflected. "I suppose if I don't form the habit now, I sha'n't be able to then, and it would be dreadful to end by being like poor Mrs. Watson."

Altogether, Mrs. Marsh's house had lost its homelike character; and it was not strange that under the circumstances Phil should flag a little. He was not ill, but he was out of sorts and dismal, and disposed to consider the presence of so many strangers as a personal wrong. Clover felt that it was not a good atmosphere for him, and anxiously revolved in her mind what was best to do. The Shoshone was much too expensive; good boarding-houses in St. Helen's were few and far between, and all of them shared in a still greater degree the disadvantages which had made themselves felt at Mrs. Marsh's.

The solution to her puzzle came—as solutions often do—unexpectedly. She was walking down Piute Street on her way to call on Alice Blanchard, when her attention was attracted to a small, shut-up house, on which was a sign: "No. 13. To Let, Furnished." The sign was not printed, but written on a half-sheet of foolscap, which was what led Clover to notice it.

She studied the house a while, then opened the gate, and went in. Two or three steps led to a little piazza. She seated herself on the top step, and tried to peep in at the closed blinds of the nearest window.

While she was doing so, a woman with a shawl over her head came hastily down a narrow side street or alley, and approached her.

"Oh, did you want the key?" she said.

"The key?" replied Clover, surprised; "of this house, do you mean?"

"Yes. Mis Starkey left it with me when she went away, because, she said, it was handy, and I could give it to anybody who wished to look at the place. You're the first that has come; so when I see you setting here, I just ran over. Did Mr. Beloit send you?"

"No; nobody sent me. Is it Mr. Beloit who has the letting of the house?"

"Yes; but I can let folks in. I told Mis Starkey I'd air and dust a little now and then, if it wasn't took. Poor soul! she was anxious enough about it; and it all had to be done on a sudden, and she in such a heap of trouble that she didn't know which way to turn. It was just lock-up and go!"

"Tell me about her," said Clover, making room on the step for the woman to sit down.

"Well, she come out last year with her man, who had lung trouble, and he wasn't no better at first, and then he seemed to pick up for a while; and they took this house and fixed themselves to stay for a year, at least. They made it real nice, too, and slicked up considerable. Mis Starkey said, said she, 'I don't want to spend no more money on it than I can help, but Mr. Starkey must be made comfortable,' says she, them was her very words. He used to set out on this stoop all day long in the summer, and she alongside him, except when she had to be indoors doing the work. She didn't keep no regular help. I did the washing for her, and come in now and then for a day to clean; so she managed very well.

"Then,—Wednesday before last, it was,—he had a bleeding, and sank away like all in a minute, and was gone before the doctor could be had. Mis Starkey was all stunned like with the shock of it; and before she had got her mind cleared up so's to order about anything, come a telegraph to say her son was down with diphtheria, and his wife with a young baby, and both was very low. And between one and the other she was pretty near out of her wits. We packed her up as quick as we could, and he was sent off by express; and she says to me, 'Mis Kenny, you see how 't is. I've got this house on my hands till May. There's no time to see to anything, and I've got no heart to care; but if any one'll take it for the winter, well and good; and I'll leave the sheets and table-cloths and everything in it, because it may make a difference, and I don't mind about them nohow. And if no one does take it, I'll just have to bear the loss,' says she. Poor soul! she was in a world of trouble, surely."

"Do you know what rent she asks for the house?" said Clover, in whose mind a vague plan was beginning to take shape.

"Twenty-five a month was what she paid; and she said she'd throw the furniture in for the rest of the time, just to get rid of the rent."

Clover reflected. Twenty-five dollars a week was what they were paying at Mrs. Marsh's. Could they take this house and live on the same sum, after deducting the rent, and perhaps get this good-natured-looking woman to come in for a certain number of hours and help do the work? She almost fancied that they could if they kept no regular servant.

"I think I would like to see the house," she said at last, after a silent calculation and a scrutinizing look at Mrs. Kenny, who was a faded, wiry, but withal kindly-looking person, shrewd and clean,—a North of Ireland Protestant, as she afterward told Clover. In fact, her accent was rather Scotch than Irish.

They went in. The front door opened into a minute hall, from which another door led into a back hall with a staircase. There was a tiny sitting-room, an equally tiny dining-room, a small kitchen, and above, two bedrooms and a sort of unplastered space, which would answer to put trunks in. That was all, save a little woodshed. Everything was bare and scanty and rather particularly ugly. The sitting-room had a frightful paper of mingled mustard and molasses tint, and a matted floor; but there was a good-sized open fireplace for the burning of wood, in which two bricks did duty for andirons, three or four splint and cane bottomed chairs, a lounge, and a table, while the pipe of the large "Morning-glory" stove in the dining-room expanded into a sort of drum in the chamber above. This secured a warm sleeping place for Phil. Clover began to think that they could make it do.

Mrs. Kenny, who evidently considered the house as a wonder of luxury and convenience, opened various cupboards, and pointed admiringly to the glass and china, the kitchen tins and utensils, and the cotton sheets and pillow-cases which they respectively held.

"There's water laid on," she said; "you don't have to pump any. Here's the washtubs in the shed. That's a real nice tin boiler for the clothes,—I never see a nicer. Mis Starkey had that heater in the dining-room set the very week before she went away. 'Winter's coming on,' she says, 'and I must see about keeping my husband warm;' never thinking, poor thing, how 't was to be."

"Does this chimney draw?" asked the practical Clover; "and does the kitchen stove bake well?"

"First-rate. I've seen Mis Starkey take her biscuits out many a time,—as nice a brown as ever you'd want; and the chimney don't smoke a mite. They kep' a wood fire here in May most all the time, so I know."

Clover thought the matter over for a day or two, consulted with Dr. Hope, and finally decided to try the experiment. No. 13 was taken, and Mrs. Kenny engaged for two days' work each week, with such other occasional assistance as Clover might require. She was a widow, it seemed, with one son, who, being employed on the railroad, only came home for the nights. She was glad of a regular engagement, and proved an excellent stand-by and a great help to Clover, to whom she had taken a fancy from the start; and many were the good turns which she did for love rather than hire for "my little Miss," as she called her.

To Phil the plan seemed altogether delightful. This was natural, as all the fun fell to his share and none of the trouble; a fact of which Mrs. Hope occasionally reminded him. Clover persisted, however, that it was all fair, and that she got lots of fun out of it too, and didn't mind the trouble. The house was so absurdly small that it seemed to strike every one as a good joke; and Clover's friends set themselves to help in the preparations, as if the establishment in Piute Street were a kind of baby-house about which they could amuse themselves at will.

It is a temptation always to make a house pretty, but Clover felt herself on honor to spend no more than was necessary. Papa had trusted her, and she was resolved to justify his trust. So she bravely withstood her desire for several things which would have been great improvements so far as looks went, and confined her purchases to articles of clear necessity,—extra blankets, a bedside carpet for Phil's room, and a chafing-dish over which she could prepare little impromptu dishes, and so save fuel and fatigue. She allowed herself some cheap Madras curtains for the parlor, and a few yards of deep-red flannel to cover sundry shelves and corner brackets which Geoffrey Templestowe, who had a turn for carpentry, put up for her. Various loans and gifts, too, appeared from friendly attics and store-rooms to help out. Mrs. Hope hunted up some old iron firedogs and a pair of bellows, Poppy contributed a pair of brass-knobbed tongs, and Mrs. Marsh lent her a lamp. No. 13 began to look attractive.

They were nearly ready, but not yet moved in, when one day as Clover stood in the queer little parlor, contemplating the effect of Geoff's last effort,—an extra pine shelf above the narrow mantel-shelf,—a pair of arms stole round her waist, and a cheek which had a sweet familiarity about it was pressed against hers. She turned, and gave a great shriek of amazement and joy, for it was her sister Katy's arms that held her. Beyond, in the doorway, were Mrs. Ashe and Amy, with Phil between them.

"Is it you; is it really you?" cried Clover, laughing and sobbing all at once in her happy excitement. "How did it happen? I never knew that you were coming."

"Neither did we; it all happened suddenly," explained Katy. "The ship was ordered to New York on three days' notice, and as soon as Ned sailed, Polly and I made haste to follow. There would have been just time to get a letter here if we had written at once, but I had the fancy to give you a surprise."

"Oh, it is such a nice surprise! But when did you come, and where are you?"

"At the Shoshone House,—at least our bags are there; but we only stayed a minute, we were in such a hurry to get to you. We went to Mrs. Marsh's and found Phil, who brought us here. Have you really taken this funny little house, as Phil tells us?"

"We really have. Oh, what a comfort it will be to tell you all about it, and have you say if I have done right! Dear, dear Katy, I feel as if home had just arrived by train. And Polly, too! You all look so well, and as if California had agreed with you. Amy has grown so that I should scarcely have known her."

Four delightful days followed. Katy flung herself into all Clover's plans with the full warmth of sisterly interest; and though the Hopes and other kind friends made many hospitable overtures, and would gladly have turned her short visit into a continuous fête, she persisted in keeping the main part of her time free. She must see a little of St. Helen's, she declared, so as to be able to tell her father about it, and she must help Clover to get to housekeeping,—these were the important things, and nothing else must interfere with them.

Most effectual assistance did she render in the way of unpacking and arranging. More than that, one day, when Clover, rather to her own disgust, had been made to go with Polly and Amy to Denver while Katy stayed behind, lo! on her return, a transformation had taken place, and the ugly paper in the parlor of No. 13 was found replaced with one of warm, sunny gold-brown.

"Oh, why did you?" cried Clover. "It's only for a few months, and the other would have answered perfectly well. Why did you, Katy?"

"I suppose it was foolish," Katy admitted; "but somehow I couldn't bear to have you sitting opposite that deplorable mustard-colored thing all winter long. And really and truly it hardly cost anything. It was a remnant reduced to ten cents a roll,—the whole thing was less than four dollars. You can call it your Christmas present from me, if you like, and I shall 'play' besides that the other paper had arsenic in it; I'm sure it looked as if it had, and corrosive sublimate, too."

Clover laughed outright. It was so funny to hear Katy's fertility of excuse.

"You dear, ridiculous darling!" she said, giving her sister a good hug; "it was just like you, and though I scold I am perfectly delighted. I did hate that paper with all my heart, and this is lovely. It makes the room look like a different thing."

Other benefactions followed. Polly, it appeared, had bought more Indian curiosities in Denver than she knew what to do with, and begged permission to leave a big bear-skin and two wolf-skins with Clover for the winter, and a splendid striped Navajo blanket as a portière to keep off draughts from the entry. Katy had set herself up in California blankets while they were in San Francisco, and she now insisted on leaving a pair behind, and loaning Clover besides one of two beautiful Japanese silk pictures which Ned had given her, and which made a fine spot of color on the pretty new wall. There were presents in her trunks for all at home, and Ned had sent Clover a beautiful lacquered box.

Somehow Clover seemed like a new and doubly-interesting Clover to Katy. She was struck by the self-reliance which had grown upon her, by her bright ways and the capacity and judgment which all her arrangements exhibited; and she listened with delight to Mrs. Hope's praises of her sister.

"She really is a wonderful little creature; so wise and judgmatical, and yet so pretty and full of fun. People are quite cracked about her out here. I don't think you'll ever get her back at the East again, Mrs. Worthington. There seems a strong determination on the part of several persons to keep her here."

"What do you mean?"

But Mrs. Hope, who believed in the old proverb about not addling eggs by meddling with them prematurely, refused to say another word. Clover, when questioned, "could not imagine what Mrs. Hope meant;" and Katy had to go away with her curiosity unsatisfied. Clarence came in once while she was there, but she did not see Mr. Templestowe.

Katy's last gift to Clover was a pretty tea-pot of Japanese ware. "I meant it for Cecy," she explained. "But as you have none I'll give it to you instead, and take her the fan I meant for you. It seems more appropriate."

Phil and Clover moved into No. 13 the day before the Eastern party left, so as to be able to celebrate the occasion by having them all to an impromptu house-warming. There was not much to eat, and things were still a little unsettled; but Clover scrambled some eggs on her little blazer for them, the newly-lit fire burned cheerfully, and a good deal of quiet fun went on about it. Amy was so charmed with the minute establishment that she declared she meant to have one exactly like it for Mabel whenever she got married.

"And a spirit-lamp, too, just like Clover's, and a cunning, teeny-weeny kitchen and a stove to boil things on. Mamma, when shall I be old enough to have a house all of my own?"

"Not till you are tired of playing with dolls, I am afraid."

"Well, that will be never. If I thought I ever could be tired of Mabel, I should be so ashamed of myself that I should not know what to do. You oughtn't to say such things, Mamma; she might hear you, too, and have her feelings hurt. And please don't call her that," said Amy, who had as strong an objection to the word "doll" as mice are said to have to the word "cat."

Next morning the dear home people proceeded on their way, and Clover fell to work resolutely on her housekeeping, glad to keep busy, for she had a little fear of being homesick for Katy. Every small odd and end that she had brought with her from Burnet came into play now. The photographs were pinned on the wall, the few books and ornaments took their places on the extemporized shelves and on the table, which, thanks to Mrs. Hope, was no longer bare, but hidden by a big square of red canton flannel. There was almost always a little bunch of flowers from the Wade greenhouses, which were supposed to come from Mrs. Wade; and altogether the effect was cosey, and the little interior looked absolutely pretty, though the result was attained by such very simple means.

Phil thought it heavenly to be by themselves and out of the reach of strangers. Everything tasted delicious; all the arrangements pleased him; never was boy so easily suited as he for those first few weeks at No. 13.

"You're awfully good to me, Clover," he said one night rather suddenly, from the depths of his rocking-chair.

The remark was so little in Phil's line that it quite made her jump.

"Why, Phil, what made you say that?" she asked.

"Oh, I don't know. I was thinking about it. We used to call Katy the nicest, but you're just as good as she is. [This Clover justly considered a tremendous compliment.] You always make a fellow feel like home, as Geoff Templestowe says."

"Did Geoff say that?" with a warm sense of gladness at her heart. "How nice of him! What made him say it?"

"Oh, I don't know; it was up in the canyon one day when we got to talking," replied Phil. "There are no flies on you, he considers. I asked him once if he didn't think Miss Chase pretty, and he said not half so pretty as you were."

"Really! You seem to have been very confidential. And what is that about flies? Phil, Phil, you really mustn't use such slang."

"I suppose it is slang; but it's an awfully nice expression anyway."

"But what does it mean?"

"Oh, you must see just by the sound of it what it means,—that there's no nonsense sticking out all over you like some of the girls. It's a great compliment!"

"Is it? Well, I'm glad to know. But Mr. Templestowe never used such a phrase, I'm sure."

"No, he didn't," admitted Phil; "but that's what he meant."

So the winter drew on,—the strange, beautiful Colorado winter,—with weeks of golden sunshine broken by occasional storms of wind and sand, or by skurries of snow which made the plains white for a few hours and then vanished, leaving them dry and firm as before. The nights were often cold,—so cold that comfortables and blankets seemed all too few, and Clover roused with a shiver to think that presently it would be her duty to get up and start the fires so that Phil might find a warm house when he came downstairs. Then, before she knew it, fires would seem oppressive; first one window and then another would be thrown up, and Phil would be sitting on the piazza in the balmy sunshine as comfortable as on a June morning at home. It was a wonderful climate; and as Clover wrote her father, the winter was better even than the summer, and was certainly doing Phil more good. He was able to spend hours every day in the open air, walking, or riding Dr. Hope's horse, and improved steadily. Clover felt very happy about him.

This early rising and fire-making were the hardest things she had to encounter, though all the housekeeping proved more onerous than, in her inexperience, she had expected it to be. After the first week or two, however, she managed very well, and gradually learned the little labor-saving ways which can only be learned by actual experiment. Getting breakfast and tea she enjoyed, for they could be chiefly managed by the use of the chafing-dish. Dinners were more difficult, till she hit on the happy idea of having Mrs. Kenny roast a big piece of beef or mutton, or a pair of fowls every Monday. These pièces de résistance in their different stages of hot, cold, and warmed over, carried them well along through the week, and, supplemented with an occasional chop or steak, served very well. Fairly good soups could be bought in tins, which needed only to be seasoned and heated for use on table. Oysters were easily procurable there, as everywhere in the West; good brown-bread and rolls came from the bakery; and Clover developed a hitherto dormant talent for cookery and the making of Graham gems, corn-dodgers, hoe-cakes baked on a barrel head before the parlor fire, and wonderful little flaky biscuits raised all in a minute with Royal Baking Powder.

She also became expert in that other fine art of condensing work, and making it move in easy grooves. Her tea things she washed with her breakfast things, just setting the cups and plates in the sink for the night, pouring a dipper full of boiling water over them. There was no silver to care for, no delicate glass or valuable china; the very simplicity of apparatus made the house an easy one to keep. Clover was kept busy, for simplify as you will, providing for the daily needs of two persons does take time; but she liked her cares and rarely felt tired. The elastic and vigorous air seemed to build up her forces from moment to moment, and each day's fatigues were more than repaired by each night's rest, which is the balance of true health in living.

Little pleasures came from time to time. Christmas Day they spent with the Hopes, who from first to last proved the kindest and most helpful of friends to them. The young men from the High Valley were there also, and the day was brightly kept,—from the home letters by the early mail to the grand merry-making and dance with which it wound up. Everybody had some little present for everybody else. Mrs. Wade sent Clover a tall india-rubber plant in a china pot, which made a spire of green in the south window for the rest of the winter; and Clover had spent many odd moments and stitches in the fabrication of a gorgeous Mexican-worked sideboard cloth for the Hopes.

But of all Clover's offerings the one which pleased her most, as showing a close observation of her needs, came from Geoff Templestowe. It was a prosaic gift, being a wagon-load of piñon wood for the fire; but the gnarled, oddly twisted sticks were heaped high with pine boughs and long trails of red-fruited kinnikinnick to serve as a Christmas dressing, and somehow the gift gave Clover a peculiar pleasure.

"How dear of him!" she thought, lifting one of the big piñon logs with a gentle touch; "and how like him to think of it! I wonder what makes him so different from other people. He never says fine flourishing things like Thurber Wade, or abrupt, rather rude things like Clarence, or inconsiderate things like Phil, or satirical, funny things like the doctor; but he's always doing something kind. He's a little bit like papa, I think; and yet I don't know. I wish Katy could have seen him."

Life at St. Helen's in the winter season is never dull; but the gayest fortnight of all was when, late in January, the High Valley partners deserted their duties and came in for a visit to the Hopes. All sorts of small festivities had been saved for this special fortnight, and among the rest, Clover and Phil gave a party.

"If you can squeeze into the dining-room, and if you can do with just cream-toast for tea," she explained, "it would be such fun to have you come. I can't give you anything to eat to speak of, because I haven't any cook, you know; but you can all eat a great deal of dinner, and then you won't starve."

Thurber Wade, the Hopes, Clarence, Geoff, Marian, and Alice made a party of nine, and it was hard work indeed to squeeze so many into the tiny dining-room of No. 13. The very difficulties, however, made it all the jollier. Clover's cream-toast,—which she prepared before their eyes on the blazer,—her little tarts made of crackers split, buttered, and toasted brown with a spoonful of raspberry jam in each, and the big loaf of hot ginger-bread to be eaten with thick cream from the High Valley, were pronounced each in its way to be absolute perfection. Clarence and Phil kindly volunteered to "shunt the dishes" into the kitchen after the repast was concluded; and they gathered round the fire to play "twenty questions" and "stage-coach," and all manner of what Clover called "lead-pencil games,"—"crambo" and "criticism" and "anagrams" and "consequences." There was immense laughter over some of these, as, for instance, when Dr. Hope was reported as having met Mrs. Watson in the North Cheyenne Canyon, and he said that knowledge is power; and she, that when larks flew round ready roasted poor folks could stick a fork in; and the consequence was that they eloped together to a Cannibal Island where each suffered a process of disillusionation, and the world said it was the natural result of osculation. This last sentence was Phil's, and I fear he had peeped a little, or his context would not have been so apropos; but altogether the "cream-toast swarry," as he called it, was a pronounced success.

It was not long after this that a mysterious little cloud of difference seemed to fall on Thurber Wade. He ceased to call at No. 13, or to bring flowers from his mother; and by-and-by it was learned that he had started for a visit to the East. No one knew what had caused these phenomena, though some people may have suspected. Later it was announced that he was in Chicago and very attentive to a pretty Miss Somebody whose father had made a great deal of money in Standard oil. Poppy arched her brows and made great amused eyes at Clover, trying to entangle her into admissions as to this or that, and Clarence experimented in the same direction; but Clover was innocently impervious to these efforts, and no one ever knew what had happened between her and Thurber,—if, indeed, anything had happened.

So May came to St. Helen's in due course, of time. The sand-storms and the snow-storms were things of the past, the tawny yellow of the plains began to flush with green, and every day the sun grew more warm and beautiful. Phil seemed perfectly well and sound now; their occupancy of No. 13 was drawing to a close; and Clover, as she reflected that Colorado would soon be a thing of the past, and must be left behind, was sensible of a little sinking of the heart even though she and Phil were going home.