Chance of a Lifetime (15 page)

“Oh, Alan! And I scolded you for not coming to help,” said Sherrill penitently.

“Oh, that’s all right!” said the boy. “Does one good to be scolded. I’m glad you like it, if it
is
only beads. Just put it on when your aunt brings around that other guy she expects you to land, and perhaps you won’t forget old friends entirely.”

He finished with a laugh, but there was a huskiness in his voice, and Sherrill’s eyes were misty with feeling as she gave him a look that comforted him.

After they had gone into the parlor to try over some of the songs that were to be sung at the Thanksgiving dinner, and Keith had gone out to see a man on business, Grandma looked up with a gleam in her old eye.

“That was a nice pretty thing for that boy to do,” she said, with a keen look at her daughter.

“Yes, wasn’t it,” said Mary quickly. “He’s a dear boy.”

“In my day we wouldn’t have thought we could accept anything valuable like that, unless we were engaged.”

“Nonsense, Mother! They’re only beads,” said Mary Washburn sharply. “And he’s only a boy. Don’t, for pity’s sake, put anything like that into Sherrill’s head.”

“Well, I’m not quite a fool, Mary, though you seem to think I am sometimes,” replied the old lady smartly. “But I don’t see that that’s any worse than talking about Sherrill’s going to New York to make a clever marriage.”

“Oh, Mother,” said Mary, and her voice had a note of anguish in it, “that wasn’t serious. We were only joking about what Eloise had said. Sherrill doesn’t take anything but fun out of that.”

“ Well, I can tell you who did,” said Grandma wisely, nodding toward the parlor door. “That boy in there did!”

“Oh, Mother, no he didn’t,” said Mary. “He knew we were just joking.”

“He’s a nice boy, Mary, and Sherrill oughtn’t to hurt him.”

“Mother, please don’t talk that way. Sherrill isn’t going to hurt anybody. They will hear you. I wouldn’t have any notions put in their heads just now for anything. They are just children, I tell you.”

“Well, Mary, I can tell you one thing,” said her mother after a pause, “they won’t be children when Sherrill gets back. They’ll have grown up! If you want to keep Sherrill a child a little longer, you’d better keep her at home.”

“I wish I could,” said Mary fervently, with a sudden pang that her child was to go away, “but I guess it’s right that she should go.”

Sherrill was in the parlor singing Thanksgiving songs with Alan, and their voices blended sweetly, the soprano and the tenor.

“We worship Thee, we bless Thee—” they sang, and their earnest faces bent over the book together, heads almost touching. Mary peered into the dusk of the room lighted only by the piano lamp, saw the good, sweet wholesome look on both faces, and took heart with hope. Yes, they were still children. Her mother might be right about their soon growing up, but it hadn’t come yet, thanks be! She felt a panic at the thought of the untried way that lay ahead of her girl. Oh, if she only dared hold her back and guard her. Yet Sherrill had good blood, a strong foundation of character, and an abiding faith in Jesus Christ. Was that not enough to keep her through the perils of city life for a few short months? Oh, was she right in sending her out, when she did not have to do so?

The day before Thanksgiving, Keith came home with a great, brown, shiny box, long and narrow, and very distinctive looking.

“What’s that, Keith?” asked Grandma, looking as excited as a girl.

“It’s something for Sherrill,” said Keith, eagerly. “Where is she?”

“She went upstairs to get my apron,” said Mary Washburn. “She’ll be down in a minute.”

“Call her!” said Grandma impatiently, two pink spots blooming out on her old cheeks.

“I’m coming, Grand, what is it?” asked Sherrill, hearing the discussion as she came down the stairs.

“Keith has got something for you, Sherrill, I want to see what it is. Hurry and open it, child!”

“For me?” said Sherrill, eagerness flashing into her eyes at once, followed by a troubled look. “Keith! You know I told you you mustn’t get me anything else,” she said, in quite a determined tone. “I have everything, just everything I need. Since I got that new fur collar for my coat, I’m just fixed fine now in every particular.”

“This isn’t from me,” said Keith triumphantly, “it’s from Father and Mother.”

Mary Washburn gave a startled look at her son, and then a light broke into her face, and she instantly flashed her joy in a signal for Keith that whatever it was that he had done, he had given it in a beautiful way:
From Father—and Mother.

Sherrill turned from her brother to her mother with startled eye and then said, “Oh! How
lovely
!” in a little sound with a sob of pleasure.

“Yes,” said Keith. “I knew Father would have done it if he were here. He would have wanted his daughter to have everything she ought to have for such a visit to his brother’s family. So, when there came in a check today for the sale of that old land that we all have thought worthless so long, and Father left in my care to do what I thought best about, I just turned some of it into this for you, sister. Mother gets the rest for something equally nice that she needs.

Keith lifted the shiny, big brown cover and picked back a corner of the tissue-paper wrappings awkwardly.

“Lift it out, Sherry, and see if it fits,” he commanded.

Sherrill, breathless, too filled with emotion to speak, bent forward with awed face, and plunged in her hand.

“Oh!” she cried. “Oh, Keith! Not a real fur coat! Not for me. Oh, Keith, a squirrel coat! And I’ve always wanted one!” She dropped the sleeve she had touched, and turning, flung her arms about her mother’s neck and buried her face in her shoulder, weeping.

“Mother, I can’t go away. Not from you all when you have done all these wonderful things for me.”

Mary Washburn held her child and kissed the top of her head. That was the only place she could reach.

“But, Sherrill, it’s Keith you should thank, dear. He says the present is from your father and me, but he never told me anything about it. It all came out of his own thought. He’s right, dear, Father would have done it if he had been here, but it was really Keith who did it, because Father gave that land to him.”

And then Sherrill wept upon her brother’s neck, and clung there.

“But I can’t take it all. I can’t even try it on, Keith,” she managed to murmur at last, “not unless you promise up and down to get yourself that new suit and overcoat you need.”

“Oh, sure, little sister, I’ll get some clothes. Sure, I’ll get them right away. Have them all ready to meet you at the train when you get back. Dress up so fine and fancy you won’t know this old hecker when you come riding in from New York town, expecting to be ashamed of your old country family! Come, kid, cut this sob stuff and try on that coat! If it doesn’t fit I’ll have to exchange it before tomorrow morning, for my man leaves on the early train and I want you to have a coat for your journey.”

So Sherrill was prevailed upon, at last, to open the papers and try on the coat.

She looked like a young princess, enveloped in the rich fur of dyed brown squirrel. Its ample proportions and lovely lines showed at once that Keith had not taken up some poor bargain coat. He had found a little gem of a coat, and Mary Washburn’s heart was happy about her girl. With a coat like that she would be warm and comfortable, and look right wherever she went.

But Sherrill stood before the long mirror in the parlor and looked at herself in dismay.

“Mother, it isn’t right for me to have a coat like this. You never had a fur coat in your life, and you ought to have one first. I can’t take it, really I can’t. Not when you never had one,” she said, coming back to her mother’s side and looking first at her mother and then at her brother.

“Well, she’s going to have one now, kid, so you don’t have to be a little martyr. I’ve been planning for it ever since last winter. I knew she was cold in that old black coat every time she went to church. And when this money came, I knew it was an answer to my prayers. So stop trying to refuse it, and see if it fits. You see, I got it from a buyer of one of the big New York houses. He happened to be here visiting his sister, Glen Howard’s wife, and Glen introduced me and mentioned about his being a buyer of furs in New York and we got to talking. I suppose Glen must have said something pretty nice about you, for he offered to get me a bargain and cut his commission, and it just arrived tonight. I’ve been in hot water for a week lest it wouldn’t come in time. And I’ve been dead afraid it wouldn’t turn out to be the right thing and would have to be sent back. Hurry up, kid, and look at it carefully. Are you sure it fits? It seems to be a good quality of fur, doesn’t it? I had Hastings Moore look at it, and he said it was wonderful. You know he bought a squirrel coat up in Canada for his wife last winter, and he knows about furs. He says I only paid three quarters the amount he paid for hers, and he thinks it’s a better value than hers. Look at the lining, kid, do you like that, or would you rather have had some kind of bright flowers on it? They had flowered linings. But I picked this, it seemed more like you.”

He talked as eagerly as any of them, and so fast they couldn’t answer his questions.

When Alan dropped in to see if Sherrill wanted him to go on any more errands, there they were in the middle of the floor, smiles and tears, half-finished sentences and answers all jumbled up together.

Even Grandma had hobbled up from her chair, in spite of rheumatism, and come over to lay reverent hands on the lovely fur garment.

And then Alan had to see the coat, inside and out, to notice the pretty scalloped cuffs on the sleeves, the trick of a pocket, the beauty of the skins, the shimmer of the lining, and, above all, how Sherrill looked as she walked across the room with it buttoned up about her chin, and completely eclipsing her ears and most of her hair.

“And this is the way I will wear it, when I go out in the evening to a symphony concert,” said Sherrill suddenly, unfastening the coat, flinging the great scalloped cape-collar back over her shoulders and gathering the garment close about her waist. She held her head high and swung across the room haughtily. “That is the way they wear them for evening. I’ve seen them in the fur catalogs that come in the mail, and in the fashion magazines.”

“Yes,” said Alan gravely, “I see now how you’ll go about making that clever marriage you talked about. But won’t you remember always to keep my pearls about your neck when you walk like that?”

Sherrill laughed, putting her hand to her throat where the pearls were, and the pretty color flushed into her checks.

“Why, of course,” she said. “Pearls and fur like this always go together, don’t they?”

Then she went and sat down and looked so serious that Keith asked her anxiously, “Don’t you like it, kid? Tell me the truth. I suppose I was a fool to think I could pick out a thing like this for you, but I’d rather know if there is something else you would rather have. It isn’t too late to change, really, little sister.”

“Oh, Keith,” said Sherrill, lifting shining eyes, “there is nothing in this world I would rather have than this beautiful coat. But I was thinking how almost dreadful it is for me, just little me, to have a grand thing like this. I don’t deserve it. And there are so many people who haven’t even got warm things. I don’t believe it’s right for me to have all this.”

“Nonsense, Sherrill,” said her mother quickly. “That’s not for you to consider. You didn’t ask for it, did you? You didn’t even buy it for yourself. It was a gift. You’ve nothing to do with that. Besides, it is a sensible, warm thing that will last for years if you take reasonable care of it and save buying other coats, and it is just the thing for you to wear on your trip. It is cold up in New York. You would need a fur coat with those thin evening dresses. It will last a lifetime almost!”

“No,” said Keith quickly, “it won’t last a lifetime, but by the time it gets shabby, I shall be in shape to get another one—”

“Or someone else will”—put in Alan in a low tone, so that only Grandma heard him.

Sherrill settled down at last to enjoy her lovely coat, and they had a beautiful evening all together, talking about it and enjoying one another. It was the last night they were to spend together before Sherrill went to New York, for the next day was Thanksgiving, and the barn dinner was to come off then.

Every little while they made Sherrill get up and put on her coat and walk around the room. And once she went upstairs and got one of her new hats that Harriet Masters had helped her buy, and paraded around like a lady of fashion.

“Grandma has been afraid I would come back utterly spoiled,” said Sherrill when she had taken off her hat and coat for the fifth time and folded her coat away in its shiny brown box, “but she miscalculated the time.
I’m going away spoiled!
I couldn’t be worse spoiled than I am, so why bother? Pearls and furs and velvets! My cousin Carol won’t be in it at all with me. Really, Mother, I’m ashamed. A quiet Christian girl like me looking like a fashion plate. What would those girls from the Flats say to me, if they knew I could dress like this? What would Mary Morse say? You know I’ve had a terrible time to make her promise to come tomorrow night, and I had to tell her I would wear this old blue dress before she would say yes, because she said she hadn’t a new dress to wear.”

“Well, dearie,” said her mother with a tender look, “you’re wearing the old blue dress for Mary Morse’s sake tomorrow, and next week you’ll wear the blue taffeta for cousin Carol’s sake. Life, after all, is a comparative thing, and clothes suit certain places. Clothes are a means to an end, not an end in themselves. If God hadn’t sent these lovely things for you to wear, without any attempt on your part to bring it about, why then, my girl would have gone happily off in the next best thing she could have got. I know you, Sherrill. But the pretty things have come and you may just be thankful for them. There have been times when you couldn’t have them, couldn’t even have a lot of things you needed, and you have always been sweet and cheerful about it. So we all like to have you have this beautiful surprise.”