BLUE ROBIN, THE GIRL PIONEER

CHAPTER I—THE NEST IN THE OLD CEDAR

Nathalie came running up the steps of the veranda her brown eyes alight with excitement as she cried, “Oh, Mother, what do you think? Down in the old cedar-tree on the lawn is a nest of tiny blue robins—they’re just the cutest things—do come and see them!”

“Blue robins?” quizzed her brother Dick from where he lay reading in the hammock. “Who ever heard of blue robins?”

“I think she means bluebirds,” ventured Mrs. Page, looking up from the morning paper and smiling at the earnest young face of her daughter. Then her eyes dimmed, but she winked her lashes quickly as if to restrain a sudden rush of tears, rose in answer to the note of appeal in the girl’s voice, and stepped to her side.

A moment later they were strolling across the new-grown grass of the lawn, the girl of sixteen supporting the slender, black-gowned figure of her mother, whose delicate, high-bred face with its impress of recent sorrow defined the youthful glow of the one that smiled upon her so tenderly.

“Now, Mumsie, look!” whispered the girl as she pointed to a dark cavity in the trunk of the cedar but a short distance from the ground; “see, are they not robins?”

Mrs. Page’s tired eyes brightened as she watched with keen interest the five bobbing heads with open bills, turweeing in hungry clamor, “Why no, Nathalie,” she replied laughingly, “they are bluebirds.”

At this instant they spied the mother bird as she flitted excitedly among the upper branches of the tree. Drawing her mother to one side, Nathalie whispered tensely, “Oh, there’s the mother bird—she wants to feed them! Let’s see what she will do!” Nathalie’s eyes sparkled expectantly.

It was quite evident what Mrs. Bluebird was going to do, for she immediately jumped to the edge of the nest and dropped a fat, squirming worm into an open bill. As she poised over her nestlings she caught sight of the two figures under the tree. In another instant she had set up such a vigorous scolding that the interlopers were quite disturbed. Seeing, however, that they did not offer to molest her little ones, Mrs. Birdie finally subsided, cocked her head perkily on one side, and watched them with eyes that shone like two fireflies.

Father bird now came flying up with another good-sized wriggler in his beak, which mother bird, with an eye to business, hastily snatched and dropped into a wide-open bill.

“Why, Mother,” commented Nathalie, “do you see that the father bird is much the handsomer of the two, for he is of a deep blue color, while mother bird’s feathers are grayish-blue.”

Her mother nodded as she answered, “Yes, and his beautiful coat is in striking contrast to his throat and breast, which are reddish-brown.”

“And the white feathers below,” continued Nathalie, with keen eyes, “look like a white apron.”

“But come, dear,” interposed her mother, “we must go back, for I hear Dick whistling—he is getting impatient—I promised to get him a sofa pillow for the hammock.”

As they stepped on the veranda, Dick inquired, with sarcastic inflection, balancing himself on the edge of the hammock and pushing it to and fro with his crutch, “Well, how many blue robins did you find?”

“We found five tiny bluebirds,” responded his mother with unwonted animation as she seated herself in a low rocker, and then she continued in lower tone as her daughter disappeared in quest of the pillow, “Oh, Dick! I am so glad to see some color in Nathalie’s cheeks again, for she has been looking very wan and pale. The poor child has not only suffered the loss of her father, but she has had to give up so many things—the very things, too, that a girl of her age longs for so much!” Mrs. Page sighed drearily.

“Giving up college was the hardest,” added her son, his face expressing the sympathy he hardly knew how to voice; “but she’s a corker, for she has faced every disappointment like a little hero. I didn’t know she had so much pluck in her.”

“She takes after her father, he was always so cheerful about facing the inevitable—” His mother’s lips quivered; she paused as if to gain control of her voice and then resumed brokenly, “Oh, Dick, to think he has gone—it seems as if it could not be true—”

“True enough,” retorted Dick gruffly; and then he added, in a softer voice, “but after all, Mother, every one has to have trouble. We’re having ours just now—that’s all—and we’ve got to bear it. Things might have been worse, I suppose—we’ve got enough left to live on—oh, if it wasn’t for this confounded knee of mine—to be helpless when—”

“Hush, Dick, don’t say that,” cried his mother in a pained voice; “just have patience, and you will be all right; have patience with me, too, dear, because I am such a coward to allow myself to get so depressed.” She made a brave attempt at a smile. “It will be as you say, all right soon.”

Hearing Nathalie’s step, she hastily hid her tear-stained face behind the paper; then, as that young woman threw the sofa pillow at Dick’s head, she exclaimed, “I am so glad, Nathalie, to see you take an interest in the new home. I think it is a lovely—”

“Doll’s house!” interposed the girl laughingly. “But, O dear, I must be careful, for when I called it a doll’s house while Mrs. Morton was here she looked rather queer, and then I remembered that her house is not much bigger. But do you know, Mother,” she rattled on girlishly, “I think we are going to be quite comfy in this little home—after a time of course,” she hastened to add, “when we have become used to the change—and all—” she stopped abruptly, for she, too, was thinking of the dear father who had gone so suddenly—without even saying good-by, as she had so often wailed in the darkness of night—leaving Mother with only a meager income, and with poor Dick to take care of, and her and Dorothy, who didn’t know enough to earn a penny!

A sudden slam of the door was heard, a “How are you, Auntie?” in a sweet, assured voice, and then with smiling eyes a tall, graceful, young woman, with shiny, fluffy hair came forward and kissed her aunt caressingly.

“Oh, Lucille, what do you think?” broke from Nathalie impetuously; “I found a nest of tiny bluebirds down in the old cedar-tree on the lawn!”

“Um-m, well, you are always finding something to enthuse over,” remarked her cousin with careless indifference, “but I wish you would make that all-round maid of yours do my room, I want to write a letter.” There was spoiled impatience in the girl’s voice.

Mrs. Page looked up with a startled expression as she murmured apologetically, “Oh, I forgot, Lucille. I will do it—I thought—”

“No, no, Mother,” came from Nathalie hurriedly, as with heightened color and gentle insistence she forced her mother back to her seat. “I will do it.”

Nathalie disappeared within the door. She had smiled sweetly for her mother’s sake, but as she went up the stairs there was an upward lift to her chin that showed that she had a will and a temper of some weight. “Why is Lucille so mean,” she questioned mutinously, “as not to make her own bed when she knows that now we shall have to get along with only one maid? Mother is not going to wait on her!” Her eyes gleamed with angry decision, and then the curves of her mouth softened as she struggled silently with her jarring thoughts.

Yes,