The Story of the Big Front Door | Page 5

who was serenely busy with her paper dolls, replied, "Ikey's grandma won't let him come over, 'cause he took her fur rug and Sallie's clothes-pins."
"What did he want with the clothes-pins and rug?"
"We wanted them to play with, Aunt Zélie. You can do a great many things with clothes-pins," Bess explained.
"Aleck was to have been King Richard--the rug was for him at the banquet; and now he hasn't come and we can't do anything," said Louise mournfully.
Aunt Zélie sat down on the sofa and folded her hands in her lap.
"I should like to know how many of our things have been carried over to the Brown house garden," she said.
"We took some of the straw cushions and two or three cups that Mandy said we might play with," replied Bess, watching her aunt's face anxiously. There was another silence, during which Carl became absorbed in a book and Louise gave her attention to Helen's dolls. Then Aunt Zélie spoke:
"The more I think of this the more uncomfortable I feel about it."
"I can't see why," came from Carl.
"Because it seems to me such a lawless proceeding. Do you know that there are people who say that no children were ever so lawless as American children to-day?"
"That is poetry, auntie; you made a beautiful rhyme," laughed Louise. But her aunt refused to smile.
"It is not poetry, but sad fact, I'm afraid. You may not have done much actual harm, but you have shown no respect for other people's property. You went into the Brown house garden without leave, and you encouraged Ikey to carry off his grandmother's things without permission. I have trusted you all summer--I thought I could; but this makes me afraid that you ought to have someone with more experience to watch over you. You know when I came back to you two years ago I promised to stay so long as I could be a help to you, but--"
"Oh, Aunt Zélie! You do help us--don't go away!" cried Bess, clasping her around the waist; Louise seized one of her hands tightly in both her own, and Carl looked out the window with a flushed face.
"That is not fair, Aunt Zélie," was all he said.
He could never forget--nor could Bess--how she had come to them in their loneliness, and taken the motherless little flock into her arms, comforting them and wrapping them all about with her love and sympathy. How could they ever do without her?
"You aren't going away, are you?" Helen asked, leaving her dolls and coming to her side.
"I hope not, for I can't think what I should do without my children," she answered. And then they all snuggled around her on the old sofa and talked things over. It was astonishing what a difference it made--trying to look at the matter from all sides. Even Mrs. Ford's indignation did not seem so very unreasonable when you stopped to think how inconvenient it was to be without clothes-pins on Monday morning.
"I know it does not seem exactly right as you put it, Aunt Zélie," Carl acknowledged, "but it was such fun, we couldn't have had so good a time anywhere else."
"Suppose you found the Arnold children playing in our garden some day, would you think that because they had found that they couldn't have so good a time anywhere else, it was all right?"
"Why, auntie, those Arnold boys are not nice at all; we couldn't have them in our garden," cried Louise.
"No one was living in the Brown house--it is different," Carl began.
"I know what she means," said Bess. "Just because it is fun isn't a good excuse."
"That is it," answered her aunt. "I believe in fun if only you do not put it first, above thought for the feelings or property of others. I am sure you did not mean to do wrong, but it would not do for me to let you go on being thoughtless, would it?"
"Mrs. Ford isn't a bit like you, Aunt Zélie; she was dreadfully mad at Ikey, and said he must stay in his room all day," remarked Louise.
"I am sorry for Mrs. Ford. I rather think I should be dreadfully mad too, if I were in her place. She is an old lady and is used to having her household affairs move on smoothly, and one day she finds her servants upset and some of her property missing, all because certain naughty children cared more for a little fun than for her comfort."
Aunt Zélie spoke gravely, and her audience looked very much subdued.
In the course of the day Joanna, one of the maids, was sent over to the Brown house to inquire about the things left by the children in the garden. She returned with the missing articles, which had been carried into the house by the man who