And the children will only be Sundays. I promised Alice I’d do some Bible study this summer, anyway, and it might as well be done for that. She thought I was something of a heathen because I knew Shakespeare better than the Bible.”

“That only means you know Shakespeare very well, however. By the way, would you like that little old set in the guest-room for your library? I put it there, because there wasn’t a shelf free anywhere else, and we are rather overstocked with the gentleman’s writings in the rest of the house. Clara Lyndesay laughed at finding them there. She says she is going to write an essay some day on guest-room literature, and its implications.”

Catherine laughed, too. “It would be delicious if she did. I wish she would write things, Mother, and not just paint pictures. Do you suppose there’s any hope of her coming back to this country this summer?”

“I shouldn’t be greatly surprised. She plans to spend some weeks on the Isle of Wight, and that is so near this side that perhaps we can lure her over. An aunt left her a place in New England, you know, which she means to fit up for a studio 27 sometime. Father should be coming home now. Let’s go down to the corner and see if we can see him. O, my daughter!” as Catherine sprang up and took her mother’s arm, “how you have grown beyond me!”

“It’s just my head that’s above you,” said Catherine, tucking her mother’s arm into her own. “It’s the fashion nowadays for girls to be taller than their mothers, but they don’t begin to come up to them in mind and manners. Miss Eliot told us so in History!”

“How about their hearts?” asked Dr. Helen.

“I don’t know about the other girls’, but my heart is just as high as my mother’s!” And Catherine bent her head the least little bit, and kissed her mother’s cheek, as Dr. Harlow, turning the corner, met them.

28CHAPTER THREE
ORGANIZATION

The “stub” train on the Central was due to leave Winsted at 7:30. Catherine, having reluctantly left the washing of the breakfast dishes to the reckless Inga, to whom their quaint blue pattern was as naught, hurried down the hill and reached the dingy little station as the train shambled in. Algernon, full of good cheer, because his mother had taken it into her head to approve his undertaking, gallantly helped her aboard, and began at once to show a list of questions he had ready to ask the Hampton librarian.

The train stood still a little longer while a few milk cans were put on, then whistled, puffed and pulled slowly out. Hampton was only a short distance from Winsted, and Catherine and Algernon soon got off the train, and made their way to the library where they were welcomed by the kindly librarian and her young assistant, who proved to be a Dexter graduate.

The “stub” train meanwhile jogged and jolted on its way, carrying with it, fast asleep, the little 29 “limb o’ Satan” known as Elsmere Swinburne. Elsmere could sleep anywhere on the slightest provocation. Deeming it unwise to make his presence known to his brother until the train was started beyond recall, he had curled up on a seat behind a large family, and while waiting his opportunity had fallen asleep. The conductor, taking him to be one of the overflow from the family in front, paid no attention to him until after they had left. Then he tried to rouse the child.

“Wake up, kid! Here, you’ve gone past your station. Wake up, I say! Gee! We’re running a sleeper on this train to-day, all right,” as Elsmere, lifted by the collar, only sank heavily back on the seat when released.

The conductor, goaded by the jests of the passengers, yelled in the boy’s ear, to no avail. Just as he was abandoning the task in wrath, the child suddenly popped up, wide awake and interested.

“I want zwieback,” he announced.

Mrs. Swinburne, having read in a child-study book that dry food was bone-building, had brought her youngest up on long crumbly strips of zwieback, and he was seldom seen without one.

“What you givin’ us?” asked the conductor.

“I want zwieback,” answered Elsmere cheerfully, in the persistent tone he had learned to value for its efficacy.

“Where was your ma goin’?” asked the conductor.

30“I want zwieback,” replied Elsmere.

“Let me try,” suggested a soft-voiced little lady. “I talked with his mother quite a bit while she was on. Want to find your mamma, little boy, and go to Grandma’s and play with all the pigs and chickies?”

“I want zwieback.”

“You talked with the woman, did you?” said the conductor. “Did you find out what her name was?”

“Let me see. Yes. It’s Peters. She was talking about going to his folks’, two miles out of Edgewater. She’ll be worried to death about this one.”

“I should think she might be,” remarked the conductor grimly, “for fear he’d come back. Here, you young Sweebock, you get off here.”

Elsmere obligingly followed to the platform and suffered himself to be given into the custody of the station agent, to whom he presented his petition for food.

“A little weak in the upper story,” explained the conductor. “His ma had about as many as she could manage and gettin’ off at Edgewater she forgot this one. Name’s Peters, stayin’ with old Mis’ Peters, two miles from Edgewater. You wire ’em to meet the express, and then you pass him back. Tell McWhire not to let him get to sleepin’. He ain’t an easy proposition, when he’s gone to 31 Bylow, now I tell you,” and the conductor of No. 5 swung himself aboard.

Elsmere had the time of his life in the two hours before the arrival of the noon express. The station agent was a sociable soul. He had a guinea-pig in a box, so delightful to observe that Elsmere forgot his desire for zwieback and became conversational. He told the agent the history of the polly-wogs he had raised “till they was all froggies, only one was deaded.” He showed the place where he had cut his finger in the mower-lawn. He explained how fond he was of back-horse-saddle-riding, and declared his intention of some day having “frickers,” caressing the agent’s own sandy growth with great admiration. He tried to perform on the telegraph instrument and cried “Boo” with all his strength at a lady, peering in at the ticket window. Altogether, Elsmere found traveling very much to his taste. The noon express stopped for a minute, he was thrust aboard the last car, and a few minutes later, according to instructions, the newsboy put him off at Edgewater, with a cheery:

“Here y’are, Bub, and there’s Ma and Gramma.”

Elsmere had taken a fancy to the newsboy and did not at all wish to stop at Edgewater. He ran down the track after the retreating train, howling miserably.

As for “Ma and Gramma,” they had been overtaken by the dispatch just as they were starting 32 to drive out to the farm, and had come in great perplexity to the station. The wailing baby running down the track suggested nothing to them, and the agent could give them no satisfaction. He was locking up his office. There was not another train to stop till No. 5 should return toward evening. So, still bewildered, Mrs. Peters and her mother-in-law gave up their fruitless errand and drove away, taking with them a problem for a lifetime’s pondering.

Elsmere, as the train vanished around a curve, sat down on the track for a while and listened to his own howls. Tiring of that amusement presently, he strolled back to the station. Outwardly it looked much like that hospitable one where