The Four Corners. Blanchard Amy Ella

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СКАЧАТЬ You know mother would give you your every heart's desire if she could."

      "I know," said Nan weakly as she turned again from the room. A sudden inspiration had seized her, and her heart beat very fast as she made her way back to the retreat in the pines and from there to the hollow and on to the very threshold of the house at Uplands, the old Corner place. She tried the door but it did not yield to her efforts. From window to window she went making an effort to open each. To the side door, the back door and around to the porch on the north side. There were side lights to the door here, and, shading her eyes, Nan tried to peer through into the dimness.

      Nan thought she heard sounds within and felt a little scared, then all at once she saw a form in black garments flit across the hall, and with a suppressed scream she turned and fled, crashing through the weeds and underbrush, leaping across the brook and reaching her retreat frightened and wondering. There could be no mistake; some one was certainly there. Was it flesh and blood presence or some ghostly visitor? Uplands had the reputation of being haunted and Nan really believed she had seen the ghost of her great-great-grandmother.

      She sat quaking and yet half trying to make up her mind to return for further investigation when a shadow fell across the spot where she sat, and, looking up, she saw a strange little lady standing before her, looking down at her wistfully. The lady was all in black and though her face was young, and her cheeks showed softly pink, her hair was very white. Nan had not seen her approach, and it appeared almost as if she had dropped from the skies. "Who are you?" inquired the little lady.

      "One of the four Corners," returned Nan with a sudden smile.

      "Which one?"

      "Nan."

      "I was sure of it. And why were you trying to get into that house?" The little lady nodded toward Uplands.

      "Because it is my grandmother's and – and – " She glanced up shyly at the stranger.

      "Go on, please," said the lady, taking a seat on an end of Nan's pretended piano. "Did you want anything in particular?"

      There was something compelling in the lady's manner, and Nan replied, "Yes, I did. I know I really ought not to have gone, for mother doesn't like us even to cross the brook. She never actually forbids it, but she looks distressed if she finds out that any of us have been over, but I wanted awfully to see if I could get in and try to open the piano. It seems so perfectly dreadful for it to stand there month after month and year after year, no good to anybody, when I'd give my right hand to have it."

      "If you gave your right hand for it," said the lady, suddenly dimpling, "you could only play bass, you know, and I don't believe you would care for that."

      Nan laughed. "No, I wouldn't. I like the fine high notes, though sometimes I think the growling bass of the organ at church is beautiful. It makes me think of what it says in the Psalter: 'The noise of the seas, the noise of the waves, and the tumult of the people.'"

      The lady nodded understandingly and was silently thoughtful for some moments, then she said, "This is a nice little spot." She put her hand upon Nan's improvised music-rack. "What is this for?" she asked.

      Nan blushed. "It's just to hold up the music, you know. That's my piano where you are sitting."

      "Goodness!" cried the lady, jumping up. "How undignified of me to sit on a piano. Please pardon me; I didn't know."

      "Of course not." Nan's eyes grew starlike. It was not only very delightful but very exciting to meet one who so perfectly understood. "You see," she went on, "all I have at home is a dreadful old melodeon that skips notes and wheezes like our old Pete; he has the heaves, you know."

      "Poor old Pete," said the lady, with a tender retrospective look in her eyes. "You have the melodeon, yes, and then?"

      "Aunt Sarah always wants to take a nap the minute I begin to play, and to-day," her voice dropped and she went nearer to her visitor, "I had made a new tune and I did so want to write it down. I came out here first and tried it; it sounded very well, I thought, but I had written only a little of it when I had to shut the melodeon. Aunt Sarah always does have such inconvenient times for taking naps," she sighed.

      "Won't you let me hear your song, or your tune?" said the lady, politely seating herself with an expectant air upon a stump further off.

      Nan's cheeks grew redder. She did not like to seem ungracious to this stranger who showed such an unusual interest in her performances and yet her only audience heretofore had been the creatures of the field and the air. "No one has ever heard it but the crows," she said hesitatingly, then impulsively: "You won't laugh?"

      "Indeed no, of course not," returned the lady with some real indignation at such a suspicion.

      Nan sat still long enough to screw up her courage to the active point, and then drawing from her blouse a bit of paper, she seated herself before her log-piano and began her song. The lady, with cheek in hand, leaned forward and listened intently. Once there was a slight flicker of amusement in her eyes, but for the most part her face was tenderly serious. At the close of the song she said gently: "Thank you, dear. I think that is a very sweet little air for one so young as you to think of. May I see?" She extended her hand for Nan's half-written song. "How will you finish it?" she asked.

      "I don't know. I'll have to wait till Aunt Sarah goes out or goes away. I hope I shall not forget it before then. I'll sing it over every day and then maybe I won't forget."

      The lady looked at her thoughtfully for a minute. "Can you keep a secret?" she asked suddenly.

      "Oh, yes. Why, nobody, not even Mary Lee, has an idea about this." She waved her hand to include her music-room retreat.

      "Then promise not to tell a soul."

      "I promise." Nan's eyes grew eager.

      "I am your fairy godmother, and if you will meet me under the sunset tree to-morrow morning at ten o'clock, I will conduct you to a place where you can finish your song undisturbed, for I guarantee Aunt Sarah will not be caught napping within hearing of you and the melodeon."

      "Oh, how perfectly delicious," cried Nan, her imagination all afire. "I'd love that. Where is the sunset tree? It is such a lovely name for it."

      The lady pointed to a huge oak just across the brook. "It is called that because one can see the sunset so finely from there. Have you never been up to look at the sun go down behind the hills? There is one little notch between the mountains over there and at a certain season of the year the sun drops right down into it."

      "I have never seen it," said Nan, regretfully. "I wonder why no one ever told me about it. I think sunset tree is such a lovely name and it is just the spot for a trysting place. It would be a lovely secret, but I never had a real important one from mother before. I shall have to tell her about going up there; not right away, but some day. It always comes out sooner or later and I would rather tell just mother, if you don't mind."

      "So you may. I'm glad you feel that way about it. Little girls should never have secrets they cannot tell their mothers. In three days you may tell her, if you think it would be right to keep silence that long."

      "Oh, that will not be very long. I could keep the secret longer if you said so."

      "That will be long enough. Now, shut your eyes while you count one hundred slowly or the queen of the fairies will not let me appear again. The spell will be broken if you so much as peep, or if you do not count aloud."

      Nan closed her eyes very tight and began to count. She gave a little interrupting gasp as she СКАЧАТЬ