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THE SEVEN DARLINGS




[Illustration: She stood stock-still, in plain view if they had looked
her way]




THE
SEVEN DARLINGS

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BY GOUVERNEUR MORRIS

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[Illustration]


With Frontispiece
By HOWARD CHANDLER CHRISTY

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A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers
New York
Published by Arrangements with CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS




COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS




TO
HOPE DAVIS




THE SEVEN DARLINGS




I


Six of the Darlings were girls. The seventh was a young man who looked
like Galahad and took exquisite photographs. Their father had died
within the month, and Mr. Gilpin, the lawyer, had just faced them, in
family assembled, with the lamentable fact that they, who had been so
very, very rich, were now astonishingly poor.

"My dears," he said, "your poor father made a dreadful botch of his
affairs. I cannot understand how some men----"

"Please!" said Mary, who was the oldest. "It can't be any satisfaction
to know why we are poor. Tell us just how poor we are, and we'll make
the best of it. I understand that The Camp isn't involved in the general
wreck."

"It isn't," said Mr. Gilpin, "but you will have to sell it, or at least,
rent it. Outside The Camp, when all the estate debts are paid, there
will be thirty or forty thousand dollars to be divided among you."

"In other words--_nothing_," said Mary; "I have known my father to spend
more in a month."

"Income--" began Mr. Gilpin.

"_Dear_ Mr. Gilpin," said Gay, who was the youngest by twenty minutes;
"don't."

"Forty thousand dollars," said Mary, "at four per cent is sixteen
hundred. Sixteen hundred divided by seven is how much?"

"Nothing," said Gay promptly. And all the family laughed, except Arthur,
who was trying to balance a quill pen on his thumb.

"I might," said Mr. Gilpin helplessly, "be able to get you five per cent
or even five and a half."

"You forget," said Maud, the second in age, and by some thought the
first in beauty, "that we are father's children. Do you think _he_ ever
troubled his head about five and a half per cent, or even," she finished
mischievously, "six?"

Arthur, having succeeded in balancing the quill for a few moments, laid
it down and entered the discussion.

"What has been decided?" he asked. His voice was very gentle and
uninterested.

"It's an awful pity mamma isn't in a position to help us," said Eve.

Eve was the third. After her, Arthur had been born; and then, all on a
bright summer's morning, the triplets, Lee, Phyllis, and Gay.

"That old scalawag mamma married," said Lee, "spends all her money on
his old hunting trips."

"Where is the princess at the moment?" asked Mr. Gilpin.

"They're in Somaliland," said Lee. "They almost took me. If they had, I
shouldn't have called Oducalchi an old scalawag. You know the most
dismal thing, when mamma and papa separated and _she_ married _him_, was
his turning out to be a regular old-fashioned brick. He can throw a fly
yards further and lighter than any man _I_ ever saw."

"And if you are bored," said Phyllis, "you say to him, 'Say something
funny, Prince,' and he always can, instantly, without hesitation."

"All things considered," said Gay, "mamma's been a very lucky girl."

"Still," said Mary, "the fact remains that she's in no position to
support us in the lap of luxury."

"Our kid brother," said Gay, "the future Prince Oducalchi, will need all
she's got. When you realize that that child will have something like
fifty acres of slate roofs to keep in order, it sets you thinking."

"One thing I insist on," said Maud, "mamma shan't be bothered by a lot
of hard-luck stories----"

"Did it ever occur to you, Mr. Gilpin," said Arthur, in his gentle
voice, "that my sisters are the six sandiest and most beautiful girls in
the world? I've been watching them out of the corner of my eye, and
wishing to heaven that I were Romney or Gainsborough. I'd give a million
dollars