Clara Burnham - The Key Note

"It's the name of a saint," remarked Philip.

"Well, I hope she's enough of one to come and help me out. I'm goin' to ask her."

"Better get Miss Wilbur to write her about the rosy dawn and the jeweled denizens. I'm afraid you'll be too truthful and tell about the leaks. With an 'old master' and a saint, you ought to get on swimmingly."

"Well, will you stay with me a few days?" said Miss Priscilla coaxingly. "If I had a rapscallion to add to the menagerie – "

"Do you mean ménage, Miss Burridge?"

"I'll call it anything in the world you like, if you'll only stand by me, Phil."

"All right." The young fellow tossed the second cleaned fish on to the plate. "Let me wash my hands and I'll go and throw out a line for the plumber."

"You're a good boy," returned Miss Burridge, relieved. "I do think, Philip, that in the main you are a good boy! Who's that comin' over?" Miss Burridge craned her neck and narrowed her eyes the better to observe a bicycle which appeared across the field.

The apparition of any human being was exciting to one responsible for the comfort of others in this Arcadia, where modern conveniences could only be obtained by effort both spasmodic and continuous.

"Oh, it's Marley Hughes from the post-office."

A youngster of fourteen came wheeling nonchalantly over the bumps of the field, and finally jumped off his machine and came leisurely up the rise among the trees.

"I hoped you might be Matt Blake," said Miss Priscilla. "He's got as far as to have the shingles here."

"Well, I ain't," remarked Marley in the pleasant, drawling, leisurely, island voice.

"What you got for me?" inquired Miss Burridge.

"Telegram." The boy brought the store envelope from his pocket.

"Oh, I hate 'em," said Miss Burridge apprehensively.

Marley held it aggravatingly away from Philip's extended hand. "Take it back if you want me ter," he said with a grin. "It's ten cents anyway, whether you take it or not."

"Oh, yes, I've got the money right here." Miss Priscilla turned to a shelf over the sink and took a dime from a purse which lay there.

"Here." She gave it to Marley, who without more ado jumped on his wheel and coasted down among the trees and off over the soft grass.

"You open it, Phil. My spectacles ain't here anyway," said Miss Priscilla anxiously.

So Philip tore open the envelope. The look of amazement which overspread his face as the message greeted him caused Miss Burridge to exclaim fearfully: "Speak out, speak out, Phil."

"They must have taken this down wrong at the store," he said. Then he read the scrawled words slowly. "'Look in broiler oven for legs.'"

The cryptic sentence appeared to have a magical effect upon Miss Priscilla. Her face beamed and she threw up her hands in thanksgiving.

"Glory be!" she exclaimed devoutly.

"What am I stumbling on?" said Philip. "Have you taken to wiring in cipher?"

"You see " said Miss Priscilla excitedly, reaching for the telegram which Philip yielded, "it came without any legs . Mr. Buell himself looked it over on the wharf and said he couldn't find 'em anywhere; and, of course, it was a terrible anxiety to me and I wrote to them right off, and I was goin' to get Mr. Buell to set it up without the legs if necessary and stick somethin' else under. Come and help me look, Phil."

Miss Burridge seized the young fellow's arm and dragged him into the kitchen, where in one corner reposed the new stove in its shining newness, its parts piled ignominiously lop-sided. Talking all the time, its owner pulled open one door after another, as Philip disengaged them, and at last she laid hands on the missing treasure.

"Now I'll give you as good a dinner as ever comes off this stove if you'll go and get those men and bring 'em up here," she said. "Don't leave me till I'm whole-footed, Phil."

"Want feet as well as legs, do you?" he chuckled. "All right. See you later if I can get Blake and Buell. If I can't, I suppose I'd better drown myself."

"No, no, don't do that, Phil. You're better than nothing, yourself."

For the next few days the right moment for Philip to desert Miss Burridge never seemed to arrive, and by that time the new establishment had come to be in very good running order, which was fortunate, as the expected boarders' dates were drawing near.

Diana approached Philip one morning with a pleased countenance. He was encouraging the hopeful little sweet peas that stood in a green row below the porch. She came and sat on the rail above and watched him.

"Miss Burridge is going to allow me to name our domicile," she announced.

"Brave woman!" said Philip, coaxing the brown earth up against the line of green with his trowel.

"Which of us is brave?" asked Diana, smiling, – "Miss Priscilla or myself?"

"What are you going to call it? Olympus?"

"Why should I?" Diana gave a soft, gurgling laugh.

"I thought perhaps it might bring happy memories and prove a palliation of nostalgia."

"I always have a feeling that you are amusing yourself with me, Mr. Barrison."

"Have you any objection to my seeing that you are a goddess? What have you done with Apollo, by the way? Couldn't you persuade him to leave the gallery?"

"To what gallery do you refer? I do not particularly care for handsome men," was Miss Wilbur's thoughtful response.

"I'm sorry I'm so beautiful, then," said Philip, extending his little earth barricade.

Diana looked down from her balcony on his tumbling blond hair.

"You have a very good presence for your purpose," she said.

"What is my purpose?"

"The concert stage, is it not? Perhaps even opera, later?"

"Yes, divine huntress, if I ever succeed in making it."

"You will make it unless you are unpardonably dilatory and neglectful. Every time you utter a musical tone it sends a vibration coursing through my nerves with a pleasant thrill."

Philip looked up at the speaker with his sea-blue, curious gaze, which she received serenely.

"Bully for you, Miss Wilbur. That's all I can say. Bully for you."

"I am glad if that encourages you," she said kindly. "It is quite outside my own volition."

"Then I don't need to thank you, eh?"

"Oh, not in the least."

Philip laughed and stooped again to his job.

"Let me see, Apollo – he struck liars and knew how to prescribe for the croup, didn't he, besides being a looker beyond all comers?"

Diana smiled. "You think of everything in terms of humor, do you not?" she rejoined.

"Perhaps – of most things, but not of you."

"Oh, I think of me most of all."

"Far from it," said Philip. "I wouldn't dare. If my voice gives you a thrill, yours gives me a chill."

"I can't believe that really," said Diana equably, watching Philip's expert handling of the trowel. "You are always laughing at me. I don't in the least understand why, but it doesn't matter at all. I think it is a quite laudable mission to make people laugh. What a good gardener you are, Mr. Barrison."

"Oh, isn't he, though!" exclaimed Miss Priscilla, emerging from the house. "Think of my luck that Phil really likes to fuss with flowers. Ox-chains couldn't drag him to do it if he didn't like to."

"Really?" returned Diana. "Is she not maligning you, Mr. Barrison? Are you really the slave of caprice?"

"I deny it," said Philip. "It doesn't sound nice."

"It would be a dire thing for you," declared the girl. "But you do not ask me what I am naming the Inn."

"Oh, it is an Inn, is it?"

"Yes," put in Miss Priscilla. "Since the leaks are mended, both pipes and roof, and the stove's up and the chimney draws, I think we can call it that."

"What is it, then? 'The Dew Drop'?" inquired Philip.