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  Title: Keineth

  Author: Jane D. Abbott

  Release Date: November, 2004 [EBook #6860]

  [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]

  [This file was first posted on February 2, 2003]

  Edition: 10

  Language: English

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  *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KEINETH ***

  Produced by Brandon Sussman, Tom Allen, Charles Franks

  and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

  KEINETH

  BY

  JANE D. ABBOTT

  TO ALL THE LITTLE GIRLS I KNOW THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER

  I. KEINETH'S WORLD CHANGES

  II. KEINETH DECIDES

  III. OVERLOOK

  IV. KEINETH WRITES TO HER FATHER

  V. PILOT COMES TO OVERLOOK

  VI. THE MUSIC THE FAIRIES PUT IN HER FINGERS

  VII. ALICE RUNS AWAY

  VIII. A PAGE FROM HISTORY

  IX. THE CAPTIVE MAIDEN

  X. PILOT IN DISGRACE

  XI. PILOT WINS A HOME

  XII. A LETTER FROM DADDY

  XIII. CAMPING

  XIV. THE TENNIS TOURNAMENT

  XV. NOT ON THE PROGRAM

  XVI. AUNT JOSEPHINE

  XVII. SCHOOL DAYS

  XVIII. CHRISTMAS

  XIX. WHEN THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT WORKED OVERTIME.

  XX. SHADOWS

  XXI. PILOT GOES AWAY

  XXII. KEINBTH'S GIFT

  XXIII. SURPRISES

  XXIV. MR. PRESIDENT

  XXV. THE CASTLE OF DREAMS

  CHAPTER I

  KEINETH'S WORLD CHANGES

  Keineth Randolph's world seemed suddenly to be turning upside down!

  For the past three days there had been no lessons. Keineth had lessons

  instead of going to school. She had them sometimes with Madame Henri,

  or "Tante" as she called her, and sometimes with her father. If the sun

  was very inviting in the morning, lessons would wait until afternoon;

  or, if, sitting straight and still in the big room her father called

  his study, Keineth found it impossible to think of the book before her,

  Tante would say in her prim voice:

  "Dreaming, cherie?" and add, "the books will wait!"

  Or, if father was hearing the lessons, he would toss aside the book and

  beckon to Keineth to sit on his knee. Then he would tell a story. It

  would be, perhaps, something about India or they would travel together

  through Norway; or it would be Custer's fight with the Indians or the

  wanderings of the Acadians through the English Colonies in America, as

  portrayed in Longfellow's Evangeline.

  But for three days Keineth had had neither lessons nor stories--she had

  not even wanted to go out into the park to walk. For her dear Tante,

  with a very sad face, was packing her trunks and boxes, and Daddy had

  gone out of town.

  To-morrow the little woman was going to sail on a Norwegian boat for

  Europe. The trip seemed to Keineth to be particularly unusual because

  Tante and Daddy had talked so much about it and Tante had waited until

  Daddy had gotten her some papers which would take her safely into

  Europe. So much talk and the important papers made it seem as though

  she was going very far away. Perhaps she did not expect to come back to

  America--she stopped so often in her work to kiss Keineth!

  Keineth could not remember her own mother, she had died when Keineth

  was three years old; and as far back as she could remember Tante had

  always taken care of her. These three, the golden-haired delicate

  child, the serious-faced Belgian gentlewoman, who had given up a

  position in one of New York's schools to go into John Randolph's

  household, and the father himself, living for his work and his

  daughter, led what might seem to others a very strange life. The man

  had kept his home in the old brick house on Washington Square in lower

  New York even after the other houses in the square around it gradually

  changed from pleasant, neat homes to shabby boarding-houses or rooming

  houses with broken windows and railless steps; to dusty lofts; to

  cellars where Jews kept and sorted over their filthy rags; to dingy

  attic spaces where artists made their studios, turning queer,

  dilapidated corners into what they called their homes. The third story

  of the Randolph house had been let for "light housekeeping apartments";

  Keineth herself had helped tack the little black and gilt sign at the

  door. The tenants used the side door that let into the brick-paved

  alley. Keineth had always felt a great pride in their home--it was

  always neatly painted, their steps shone, and there were no papers

  collected behind their iron gratings. Even across the park she could

  see the bright geraniums blooming in the windows under Madame Henri's

  loving care.

  Keineth and Tante had two big sleeping rooms facing the square and

  Daddy had a smaller room in the back. Dora, the colored maid who kept

  the house in order and cooked breakfast and lunch, went away at night.

  The rooms were very large, with high ceilings. The windows were long

  and narrow and hung with heavy, dusty curtains. The furniture was very

  old and very dull and dark, but Keineth loved the great chairs into

  which she could curl herself and read for hours at a time.

  There were few children in the square for her to play with. Next door

  was an Italian family with eight girls and boys, and Keineth sometimes

  joined them in the park. Their father kept a fruit stall in the

  basement on one of the streets running off from the square. Francesca,

  one of the girls, sang very sweetly, often standing on the corner of

  the square and singing Italian folk-songs until she had gathered quite

  a crowd around her and had collected considerable money. Keineth loved

  to listen to her. But Daddy had asked Keineth never to go alone outside

  of the square nor out of sight of the windows of their own home, and

  Keineth, all her life, had always wanted to do exactly as her father

  asked
her.

  The evenings to Keineth were the happiest, for, after his work was

  finished, Daddy always took her out somewhere for dinner. Sometimes

  they would go into queer, small places; rooms lighted by gas-jets,

  where they ate on bare tables from off thick white plates. She would

  sit very quietly listening while her father talked to the people he

  met. It seemed to her that her father knew everybody. Other times they

  would go up town on the bus, Keineth clinging tightly to her father's

  hand all the way, and they would find a corner in a brightly lighted

  hotel dining-room, where the silver and glass sparkled before Keineth's

  eyes, where an orchestra, hidden behind big palms, played wonderful

  music as they ate, where the air was sweet with the fragrance of

  flowers like Joe Massey's stall on the square, and where all the women

  were pretty and wore soft furs over shimmering dresses of lovely

  colors. Sometimes Tante went with them, looking very prim in her

  tailor-made suit of gray woolen cloth and her small gray hat. On these

  picnic dinners, as Daddy called them, Daddy was always in rollicking

  spirits, keeping up such a torrent of nonsense that Keineth was often

  quite exhausted from laughing. Then, when they were back in the old

  house, Daddy would pull his big chair close to the lamp, Tante would

  take her knitting from the basket in which it was always neatly laid,

  and Keineth would sit down at the piano to play for her father "what

  the fairies put in her fingers." This had been a little game between

  them for a long time--ever since her music lessons with Madame Henri

  had begun.

  Now--as the child sat balanced on the edge of an old rocker watching

  Tante tenderly and carefully placing her books into a heavy box--she

  felt that this beloved order of things was changing before her eyes.

  For, with Tante gone, who was to take care of her? And heavy on the

  child's heart lay the fear that it might be Aunt Josephine.

  Aunt Josephine was her very own aunt, her father's sister, and lived in

  a very pretentious home at the other end of the city, overlooking the

  Hudson River. At a very early age Keineth had guessed that Aunt

  Josephine did not approve of the way her Daddy lived; of the tenants on

  the third floor; of the sign at the door; of Tante and the

  happy-go-lucky lessons; and most of all, her intimacy with the Italian

  children. Twice a year Keineth and her Daddy spent a Sunday with Aunt

  Josephine, and Keineth could always tell by the way Daddy clasped her

  hand and ran down the steps that he was very glad when the day was over

  and they could go home. However, Aunt Josephine was pretty and wore

  lovely clothes like the women in the big hotels uptown and was really

  fond of Daddy, so that Keineth loved her--but she did not want to live

  with her!

  "Why do you go away from us?" Keineth asked Madame Henri for the

  hundredth time.

  The little woman dropped a book to kiss the child--also for the

  hundredth time.

  "I have an old mother, and a sister, and six nephews and nieces over

  there--they need me now, more than you do, cherie!"

  Keineth knew that she was very unhappy and refrained from asking her

  more questions. Daddy had read to her of the suffering in Europe as a

  result of the great war, but it seemed hard to picture prim Tante in

  the midst of it--perhaps working in the fields and factories, as Daddy

  said some of the women and children were doing. Tante had read them

  parts of a letter telling of the wounding of her sister's husband at

  the battle front and of his death in an English 'hospital, but that had

  seemed so very far away that Keineth had not thought much about it. Now

  it seemed nearer as she pictured the six little nephews and nieces, the

  poor old grandmother--perhaps all hungry and homeless! Keineth suddenly

  thought how good it was of Tante to leave their comfortable home and

  their jolly dinners and Dora's steaming pancakes to go back to Belgium

  to help!

  Then--as if the whole day was not queer and different enough, Keineth

  suddenly heard her father's quick step on the stairway. He had said he

  would not be home until that night! She sprang to the door in time to

  rush into his arms as he came down the hallway. He kissed her, on her

  nose and eyes, as was his way, but when he lifted his face Keineth saw

  that it was very serious, which was not at all like Daddy.

  "Run out in the park for a little while, dear. I must talk to Madame

  Henri!"

  The sun was shining very brightly on the pavements of the streets. The

  little leaves on the trees were quivering with new life and the birds

  were chirping loudly and busily in the branches, fussing over their

  housekeeping. But Keineth's heart was too heavy to respond! She walked

  around and around the square, staring miserably at the people who

  passed her and always keeping in sight of the long windows where the

  pink geraniums shone in the spring sunlight.

  Suddenly her heart dropped to her very toes and she had a great deal of

  trouble keeping the tears back from her eyes, for a very bright yellow

  motor car had stopped at their door, and Keineth knew that it was Aunt

  Josephine!

  CHAPTER II

  KEINETH DECIDES

  Keineth waited what seemed to her hours; then retraced her steps to the

  house and walked very quietly into the hall. Daddy heard the door close

  behind her and called to her from the study. He was sitting at his

  desk, tapping the pad before him with the point of a pencil Aunt

  Josephine sat on the old horse-hair sofa, looking very excited, and

  Tante, a pile of books still clasped in her arm and a smudge of dust

  across her straight features, stood near the window.

  "I think it's high time you used a little sense in the way you bring up

  that child, John. You'll ruin her!"

  Keineth's father smiled across at Keineth as much as to say: "Never

  mind, dear," but he listened gravely as his sister went on:

  "I think it's the best thing that could happen--Madame Henri going away

  and you called on this trip--"

  "Wait a moment, Josephine; Keineth does not know yet--"

  "Daddy!" cried the child, running to him.

  "Just a moment, dear," he whispered, as he drew her between his knees

  and laid his cheek against her hair.

  Aunt Josephine looked very much in earnest. Keineth could not remember

  a time when she had seemed more concerned over hers and Daddy's

  welfare!

  "Now I can take Keineth with me until July. Then when I go on that

  yachting cruise she can go to some camp in the mountains--there are

  ever so many good ones. And next fall I can put her into a school.

  She's too old to go on living as you are living."

  Now the world had turned upside down! Keineth pressed suddenly close to

  her father. He tightened the clasp of her arm.

  "Wait a moment, sister. We have two or three days to talk this over. I

  must get Madame Henri safely started and then Keineth and I will make

  our plans." As he said this he squeezed the child's hand. "You're

  awfully good to offer to take my li
ttle girl and I know you'd try your

  best to make her happy." He stepped toward the door. Aunt Josephine

  rose, too.

  "Well, you'd better follow my advice," she said crisply. She almost

  always concluded their interviews in this manner when they had to do

  with Daddy's household. This time she stopped on her way to the door to

  place her hands on Keineth's shoulders and let her eyes sweep Keineth's

  little face.

  "I'd make an up-to-date child of her, John. She's got her mother's eyes

  but the Randolph features. With a little grooming she'd make a beauty.

  And the first thing I'd do would be to put a decent frock on her!"

  Keineth knew that Aunt Josephine meant to be kind but, hurt at her

  criticism, she drew away from her aunt's clasp. As her aunt and father

  went out she looked down wonderingly at the simple blue serge she wore.

  Tante had always had her dresses made at a little shop on lower Fifth

  Avenue and Keineth had always thought them very nice.

  Madame Henri, muttering to herself, went out of the room. Keineth stood

  very still until her father came back. He shut the door and went to his

  desk. She ran to him and hid her face on his shoulder.

  "Daddy--are you--going away?"

  "Yes, child--I must."

  "For all summer? For all winter?"