The Story Book Girls
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Title: The Story Book Girls
Creator: Christina Gowans Whyte
Release date: January 6, 2013 [eBook #41797]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/41797
Credits: Produced by Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY BOOK GIRLS ***
Produced by Al Haines.
[Illustration: Cover]
The STORY
BOOK
GIRLS
CHRISTINA
GOWANS
WHYTE
LONDON
HENRY FROWDE
HODDER & STOUGHTON
1906
*THE GIRLS' NEW 1/- NET. LIBRARY.*
(Crown 8vo. Cloth, with Coloured frontispiece.)
A Girl of the Northland . . . BY BESSIE MARCHANT
The Story Book Girls . . . . . BY CHRISTINA G. WHYTE
Dauntless Patty . . . . . . . BY E. L. HAVERFIELD
Tom Who Was Rachel . . . . . . BY J. M. WHITFELD
A Sage of Sixteen . . . . . . BY L. B. WALFORD
The Beauforts . . . . . . . . BY L. T. MEADE
HENRY FROWDE AND HODDER & STOUGHTON.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
ELMA LEIGHTON
CHAPTER II
MISS ANNIE
CHAPTER III
THE FLOWER SHOW TICKET
CHAPTER IV
CUTHBERT
CHAPTER V
"THE STORY BOOKS" CALL
CHAPTER VI
THE MAYONNAISE
CHAPTER VII
VISITORS AGAIN
CHAPTER VIII
THE PARTY
CHAPTER IX
AT MISS GRACE'S
CHAPTER X
COMPENSATIONS
CHAPTER XI
THE SPLIT INFINITIVE
CHAPTER XII
THE BURGLAR
CHAPTER XIII
A RECONCILIATION
CHAPTER XIV
THE FIRST PEAL
CHAPTER XV
THE ARRIVAL
CHAPTER XVI
THE THIN EDGE OF THE WEDGE
CHAPTER XVII
A REPRIEVE
CHAPTER XVIII
"LOVE OF OUR LIVES"
CHAPTER XIX
HERR SLAVSKA
CHAPTER XX
THE SHILLING SEATS
CHAPTER XXI
AT LADY EMILY'S
CHAPTER XXII
THE ENGAGEMENT
CHAPTER XXIII
HOLDING THE FORT
CHAPTER XXIV
THE HAM SANDWICH
CHAPTER XXV
THE WILD ANEMONE
CHAPTER XXVI
UNDER ROYAL PATRONAGE
CHAPTER XXVII
THE HOME-COMING
CHAPTER XXVIII
ADELAIDE MAUD
CHAPTER XXIX
MR. SYMINGTON
CHAPTER XXX
"NOW HERE THERE DAWNETH----"
CHAPTER I
Elma Leighton
In a pink and white bedroom where two beds, Elma's and Betty's, seemed
the only pink and white things unspotted by multitudinous photographs,
Elma Leighton sought sanctuary. Pursued by a tumultuous accusing
conscience, which at the same time gracefully extended the uncertain
friendliness of hope, for who could say--it might still be
"embarr*ass*ment," she opened her little own bright red dictionary.
She prayed a trifling prayer that her self-esteem might be saved, as she
turned shakingly the fine India paper of the 50,000 word compressed
edition of the most reliable friend she at that moment possessed in the
world. Parents commanded. Relations exaggerated. Chums could be
spiteful. But friends told the truth; and the dictionary--being
invariably just--was above all things a friend.
She wandered to "en," forgetting in the championship of her learning
that "m" held priority. She corrected herself with dignity, and at last
found the word she wanted.
It was emb*arr*assment.
Woe and desolation! A crimson shameful blush ran up the pink cheeks,
her constant anxiety being that they were always so pink, and made a
royal progress there. The hot mortification of despair lent it wings.
She watched the tide of red creep to the soft curls of her hair as she
viewed herself in her own little miniature cheval between creamy
curtains, and she saw her complexion die down at last to an unusual but
becoming paleness.
She had said "embarr*ass*ment."
Nothing could have been more fatal. It was like a disease with Elma,
that instead of using the everyday words regarding which no one could
make a mistake--such as "shyness" in this instance--she should
invariably plunge into others which she merely knew by sight and find
them unknown to herself as talking acquaintances. Cousin Dr. Harry
Vincent, Staff Surgeon in His Majesty's Navy, eyeglass in eye, merry
smile at his lips ("such a dashing cousin the Leightons have visiting
them" was the comment), the sort of person in short that impressed Elma
with the need of being very dashing herself, here was the particular of
all particulars before whom she had made this ridiculous mistake.
"Now," had said Dr. Harry in the drawing-room when visitors arrived,
"come and play something."
Any other girl overcome by Elma's habitual fright when asked to play,
would have said, "I'm too shy." Elma groaned as she thought how easy
that would have been.
But Dr. Harry's single eyeglass fascinated her as with a demand for
showing some kind of culture.
She blinked her eyelids nervously and answered, "My embarr*ass*ment
prevents me."
Dr. Harry never moved a muscle of his usually mobile and merry
countenance. But the flaming sword of fear cut further conversation
dead for Elma. She became subtly conscious that the word was wrong, and
fled to her room.
"While I'm here," she said dismally, "I may as well look up
'melodramic.'" This was a carking care left over from a conversation in
the morning.
It proved another tragedy.
Being really of a cheerful sunny nature, which never for long allowed
clouds to overshadow the bright horizon of her imagination, she
acquainted herself thoroughly with the right term.
"One consolation is, I shall never make that mistake again as long as I
live. Melodramatic," she repeated with the swagger of familiarity.
Then "emb, emb--Oh! dear, I've forgotten again."
Concluding that embarrassment was a treacherous acquaintance, she
decided to drop it altogether.
"After this I shall only be shy," she said with a certain amount of
refined pleasure in her own humour.
She regarded her figure dismally in the cheval. Her chubby face had
regained its undistinguished pink. She was sorry she could not remain
pale, it was so much more distinguished to be pale.
"How long I take to grow up--in every way." She sighed in a reflective
manner.
What she was thinking was how long she took to become like one of the
Story Book Girls.
It is probable that she would never have run to long words, had it not
been her dearest desire to grow up like one of the Story Book Girls. It
was the desire of every sister in the Leighton family. Each worked on
it differently however. Mabel, the eldest, now seventeen, in the
present delights of hair going up and skirts letting down, took her
ideas of fashion straight from "Adelaide Maud" the elegant one.
"Adelaide Maud" wore her hair in coils and sat under heliotrope
parasols. Mabel surreptitiously tried that effect as often as five
times a day with the family absent.
Jean threw all her ambitions on the sporting carriage of "Madeline" who
was a golfer.
Betty determined to wear bangles and play the violin because "Theodora,"
the youngest of the lot, did that. And Elma based her admiration of
"Hermione" on the fact that she had "gone in" for science. Long ago
they had christened their divinities. It did not do to recognize
latterly that the Dudgeons were known in society by other names
altogether. One can do these dreamy, inconsequent things with the most
superb pleasure while one's family remains between certain romantic
ages; in the case of the Leightons at the moment when Elma ran to her
bedroom--between the ages of ten and seventeen. Betty was ten, Elma
twelve, Jean fifteen and Mabel seventeen.
It was an axiom with the girls that their parents need not know how they
emulated the Story Book Girls. Yet the information leaked out
occasionally.
It was also considered bad form to breathe a word to the one elder
brother of the establishment. Yet even there one got into trouble.
"Why on earth do you call her Adelaide Maud when her name is Helen?"
asked Cuthbert one day bluntly. "Met her at a dance--and she nearly
slew me. I called her Miss Adelaide!"
"O--o--o--oh!"
It is impossible to explain the thrill that the four underwent.
Cuthbert had met Adelaide Maud!
"Did she talk about us?" asked Elma breathlessly.
"Doesn't know you kids exist," said Cuthbert.
Here was a tumbling pack of cards.
However the idylls of the Story Book Girls soon were built up again.
Four girls at the west end of a town dreamed dreams about four girls at
a still further west. They lived where the sun dropped down behind blue
mountains in the sunny brilliant summer time. The Story Book Girls were
grown up, of "county" reputation, and "sat in their own carriages." The
others invariably walked. This was enough to explain the fact that they
never met in the quiet society of the place. But one world was built
out of the two, and in it, the younger girls who did not ride in
carriages, created an existence for the Story Book Girls which would
have astonished them considerably had they known. As it was, they
sometimes noticed a string of large-eyed girls with a good-looking
brother, going to church on Sunday, but it never dawned on one of them
that the tallest carried a heliotrope parasol in a manner familiar to
them, nor that another exhibited a rather extraordinary and highly
developed golfing stride. Grown-up girls do not observe those in the
transition stages, and just at the fiercest apex of their admiration,
the Leightons were certainly at the transient stage. They reviewed their
own growing charms with the keenest anxiety. Everybody was hopeful of
Mabel who seemed daily to be shedding angularities and developing a
presence which might one day be compared with Adelaide Maud's. The time
of her seventeenth birthday had drawn near with the family palpitating
behind her. Mrs. Leighton remembered that delicious period of her own
youth, and was indulgently friendly, "just a perfect dear."
"We are going to make a very pretty little woman of Mabel," she informed
her husband. He was a tall man, with a fine intellectual forehead, and
handsome, clear-cut features. He stooped slightly, giving an impression
of gentleness and great amiability. He answered in some alarm.
"You don't mean that our little baby girl is growing up."
"Elma declares that Mabel reaches her 'frivolity' in May," said Mrs.
Leighton sedately. A quiet smile played gently over a face, lined
softly, yet cleared of care as one sees the mother face where happy
homes exist.
Mr. Leighton groaned sadly and rubbed his finger contemplatively along
the smoothed hair which made a gallant attempt at hiding more than a
hint of baldness.
"Why can't we keep them babies!"
"Betty thinks we do," said his wife.
"One boy at College, and one girl coming out! It's overwhelming. We
were only married yesterday, you know," said poor Mr. Leighton.
It troubled Mrs. Leighton that Mabel insisted on wearing heliotrope.
She had white of course for her coming out dress, and among other
costumes the choice of colours for a fine day gown. The blue eyes of
the Leightons were gifts handed down by a beneficent providence through
a long line of ancestors, and one wise mother after another had matched
the heavenly radiancy of these wide orbs as nearly as possible in sashes
and silks for the children. Therefore Mrs. Leighton begged Mabel to
have at least that one day gown in blue.
"I begin to be sorry I said you might have what you liked," she said
dismally. "Heliotrope will make you look like your grandmother."
"Oh no it won't," clamoured Jean. "It will only make her look like
Adelaide Maud."
"Traitor," was the expression on three faces.
Sporting Jean had really rather a dislike to the garden-party smartness
of Adelaide Maud, and occasionally prejudice did away with honour.
"I'm joking," she said penitently. "Do let her wear heliotrope, mummy."
Mrs. Leighton sighed amiably yet disappointedly, but at last gave Mabel
permission to wear heliotrope. They had patterns from Liberty's and
Peter Robinson's and Woolland's in London, and a solid week of rapture
ensued while Mabel saw herself gowned in a hundred gowns and fixed on
none.
They sat over the patterns one day with Mrs. Leighton in attendance.
Mabel's choice lay between fifteen different qualities of heliotrope.
"I shall have this," she said one minute, and "No, this" the next.
"Patterns not returned within ten days will be charged for," quoted
Jean.
Just then a certain rushing sound of light wheels could be heard. Each
girl glanced quickly out of the window. The clipity-clop of a pair of
horses might be clearly distinguished; and through the green trees
skirting the bottom of the garden, appeared patches of colour.
Two Story Book Girls drove past, Adelaide Maud and Theodora. Theodora
was sitting in any kind of costume--what did _her_ costume matter?
Adelaide Maud was in blue.
The girls gazed breathlessly at one another.
"I think you must really now make up your mind," said Mrs. Leighton
patiently, whose ears were not attuned so perfectly to distinction in
carriage wheels.
Mabel glanced round for support.
"Oh, mummy," said she very sweetly, "I do believe you were right. I
shall have blue after all."
That was a few weeks before the great day when Mabel attained her
"frivolity" and put up her hair. Cousin Harry's being with them gave an
air of festivity to the occurrence, and curiously enough, Mrs.
Leighton's drawing-room filled with visitors on that afternoon as though
to celebrate the great occasion.
Throughout her life Elma never forgot to link the delight of that day,
when for the first time they all seemed to grow up, with the despair of
her sallies in Cousin Harry's direction.
When she did trail back to the drawing-room, crushed yet educated, she
found Mabel with carefully coiled hair standing in a congratulatory
crowd of people, looking more like Adelaide Maud than one could have
considered possible.
"Such excitement," whispered Jean, "Mrs. Maclean has brought her nephew
and he knows the Story Books."
It put immediate thoughts of having to explain to Cousin Harry out of
Elma's mind.
"Oh, do you know," she said excitedly to him, "I want one thing most
awfully. I want to know Mr. Maclean so well in about five minutes as to
ask him a fearfully particular question."
Dr. Harry, who, as he always explained to people, was continually nine
hundred and ninety-nine days at sea without meeting a lady, could be
counted on doing anything for one once he had the chance of being
ashore. Even a half-grown lady of Elma's type.
"Mr. Maclean shall stand on his head inside of three minutes," he
promised her.
Elma noticed a new twinkle in his eye. It enabled her to take her
courage in both hands and confess to him.
"I'm always trying to use long words, Cousin Harry. It's like having
measles every three minutes. It was awfully nice of you not to laugh.
I went to look it up, you know."
Nothing pleased Elma so much as the naturalness with which she made this
confession. She felt more worldly and developed than she could have
considered possible.
Cousin Harry roared.
"Try it on the Maclean man," he said.
But Mr. Leighton had that guest in tow, and they talked art and politics
until tea appeared. Elma did all she could in connection with the
passing of cups to get near him, but Cuthbert and Harry and Mr. Maclean
were too diligent themselves. She saw Mr. Maclean's eyes fixed on Mabel
when she at last gained her opportunity. Mabel had gone in a very
careful manner, hair being her chief concern, to play a Ballade of
Chopin, and this provided an excellent moment for Elma to sidle into a
chair close to Mr. Maclean. It was pure politeness, she observed, which
allowed anyone to stare as much as one liked while a girl played the
piano. Mr. Maclean was quite polite.
Mabel had the supreme talent which already had made a name for the
Leighton girls. She could take herself out of trivial thoughts and
enter a magic world where one dreamed dreams. Into this new world she
could lift most people with the first touch of her fingers on the keys
of the piano.
Elma's thoughts soared with the others, and Mabel played till a little
rebellious lock of the newly arranged plaits fell timorously on her
neck. She closed with a low beautiful chord.
Mr. Maclean sighed gently.
Elma leant towards him.
"You know the--er--Dudgeons, don't you? Do you know the eldest?"
He nodded.
"Is Mabel like her?" she asked anxiously.
"Mabel," said Mr. Maclean.
"Yes, Mabel. Is she--almost--as pretty, do you think?"
"Mabel is a thousand times more pretty than Miss Dudgeon," said Mr.
Maclean.
"Oh, Mr. Maclean!" said Elma.
He could not have understood her sigh of rapture if he had tried to. At
that moment his thoughts were not on Elma.
She was quite content.
She sank back on the large easy chair which she had appropriated, and
she felt as though she had brought up a large family and just at that
moment seen them settled in life.
"Oh, I do feel heavenly," she whispered to herself. "Mabel is prettier
than Adelaide Maud."
"I beg your pardon?" asked Mr. Maclean.
"Oh, nothing--nothing," said Elma. "I don't even care about
emb--emb--Do you mind if I ask you?" she inquired. "Is it
embarr*ass*ment or emb*arr*assment?"
"Emb*arr*assment," said Mr. Maclean.
"Thank you," said Elma. "I don't care whether I'm embarrassed now or
not, thank you."
CHAPTER II
Miss Annie
Of course one had to go immediately and tell all this to Miss Annie.
Miss Annie lived with her sister in a charming verandahed house, hidden
in wisteria and clematis, and everything was delightful in connection
with the two sisters except the illness which made a prisoner of Miss
Annie. Miss Annie lay on a bed covered with beautiful drawn thread work
over pink satinette and wore rings that provoked a hopeless passion in
Elma.
Whenever she considered that one day she might marry a duke, Elma
pictured herself wearing Miss Annie's rings.
From the drawn thread work bed Miss Annie ruled her household, and
casually, her sister Grace. It never appeared that Miss Annie ruled
Miss Grace however; nothing being more affectionate than the demeanour
of the two sisters. But long ago, the terrifying nature of Miss Annie's
first illness made such a coward of poor, sympathetic Miss Grace, that
never had she lifted a finger, or formed a frown to reprove that dear
patient, or prevent her having her own way. The nature of Miss Annie's
illness had always been a source of great mystery to the Leighton girls.
It was discussed in a hidden kind of way in little unintelligible nods
from grown up to grown up, and usually resolved itself into the
important phrase of "something internal." Old Dr. Merryweather, years
ago, had landed himself into trouble concerning it. "A poor woman would
get on her feet and fight that tendency of yours," he had said to Miss
Annie. "Money simply encourages it. You will die on that bed if you
don't fight a little, Miss Annie." Miss Annie had replied that in any
case her bed was where she intended to die, and forthwith procured quite
sweetly and pathetically, yet quite determinedly, another doctor. That
was over twenty years ago; but Miss Grace still passed Dr. Merryweather
in the street with her head down in consequence. She did all she could
to provide the proper distraction for Miss Annie, by encouraging
visitors and sacrificing her own friends to the leadership of her
sister. Miss Annie had always shone in a social sense, and she let none
of her talents droop merely because she was bedridden. It was
considered a wonderful thing that she should manage the whole household,
to the laying down or taking up of a carpet in rooms which she never
saw. Gradually, on account of this wonderful energy of Miss Annie's,
Miss Grace acquired a reputation for ineptitude to which her sister
constantly but very gracefully alluded. "Poor Grace," she sighed.
"Grace takes no interest in having things nice."
It was Miss Grace however who, in her shy old-fashioned manner, showed
interest in the blue-eyed, fair-haired Leighton children, and introduced
them to her sister when they were practically babies. She decoyed them
into the house by biscuits covered with pink icing, which none of them
ever forgot, or allowed themselves to do without. Even Mabel, with her
hair up, accepted a pink biscuit at her first tea there after that great
occasion. They always felt very small delicious children when they went
to Miss Annie's. They had acquired, through Miss Annie, a pleasant easy
manner of taking the nervous fussy attentions of Miss Grace. It was
astonishing how soon they could show that in this establishment of
magnificence, Miss Grace did not count. She was immaterial to the
general grandeur of the verandahed palace belonging to Miss Annie. They
were always on their best behaviour in the house where not only a
footman, but an odd man were kept, and Elma, at the age of seven, had
been known to complain to Mrs. Leighton when a housemaid was at fault,
"We ought to have a man to do this!" Indeed there seemed only one
conclusion to it with Elma: that after knowing exactly what it was to
call on people who had men servants, in her youth, when she grew up she
should be obliged to marry a duke. The duke always met her when she
waited for Miss Grace in the drawing-room. He had a long curling
moustache, and wore his hair in waves on either side of a parting, very
clamped down and oily, like Mr. Lucas, the barber. It was years before
she sacrificed the curling moustache to a clean-shaven duke, and
shuddered at the suggestion of oil in his hair.
The despair of her life stood in the corner of the white and gold
drawing-room. It was an enormous Alexander harmonium. Once, in an easy
moment, on conversing affably with her duke in a whisper, she had
suggested to him that Miss Grace might let her play on this instrument.
Miss Grace, coming in then, was in time to see her lips moving, and
considered that the sweet child worked at her lessons. Elma was too
sincere to deceive her. "I was talking to myself and wondering if you
would let me play on the harmonium."
She should never forget the frightened hurt look on Miss Grace's face.
"Never ask me that again, dear child. It was hers--when she was able
to--to----" Miss Grace could go no further.
The blue eyes filling with frightened tears in front of her alarmed the
gentlest soul in the world.
"But, my pet," she said very simply, "there's my own piano."
Could one believe it? Off came all the photograph frames, and the large
Benares vases on China silk, brought years ago from the other side of
the world by Miss Grace's father, and Elma played at last on a
drawing-room grand piano. Mrs. Leighton's remained under lock and key
for any one below a certain age, and only the schoolroom upright
belonged to Elma. What joy to play on Miss Grace's long, shiny, dark,
ruddy rosewood! She must have the lid full up, and music on the desk.
Miss Grace made a perfect audience. Elma regretted sincerely the fact
that her legs stuck so far through her clothes, so that she could not
trail her skirts to the piano and arrange them as she screwed herself up
on the music stool. However, what did a small thing like that matter
while Miss Grace sat with that surprised happy look on her face, and let
her play "anything she liked"? Anything Elma liked, Miss Grace liked.
In fact, Miss Grace discovered in her gentle, amiable way, a wonderful
talent in the child. It formed a bond between the two which years never
broke. Miss Grace would sit with her knitting pins idle in her lap, and
a far-away expression in the thin grey colour of her eyes. Elma thought
it such a pity Miss Grace wore caps when she looked so nice as that.
She would think these things and forget about them and think of them
again, all the time her fingers caressed the creamy coloured keys, and
made music for Miss Grace to listen to. Then exactly at four o'clock,
Miss Grace seemed to creep back to her cap again, and say that tea would
be going in and they must "seek Miss Annie."
Miss Annie poured tea from the magnificent teapot, which the footman
carried in on a magnificent silver tray. She reclined gracefully in
bed, reaching out a slender arm covered with filmy lace to do the
honours of the tea table. Crumpets and scones might be passed about by
Miss Grace. In a very large silver cake basket, amongst very few pieces
of seed cake (Miss Annie took no other) Elma would find a pink biscuit.
After that the ceremony of tea was over. It was wonderful to see how
Miss Annie poured and talked and managed things generally. Elma could
play to Miss Grace, but politeness somehow demanded that she should talk
to Miss Annie.
Elma had always, more than any of the Leighton children, amused Miss
Annie. The little poses, which Miss Grace, with wonderfully sympathetic
understanding, had translated into actual composition in music, the
poses which caused Elma to be the butt of a robustly humorous family,
crushing her to self-consciousness and numbness in their presence, Miss
Annie had the supreme wisdom never to remark upon. Had not Miss Grace
and she enjoyed secretly for years Elma's first delightful blunder?
"My father and mother are paying a visit to the necropolis. They are
having a lovely time. Oh! is that wrong? I'm sure it is. It's London
I mean."
They had known then not to laugh, and they never did laugh. The little
figure, with two fierce pigtails tied radiantly with pink bows, the blue
eyes, and very soft curling locks over the temples, how could they laugh
at these? Instead they took infinite pains over Elma's long words.
Miss Annie herself invariably either felt "revived" or "resuscitated" or
polished things of that description. It pleased her that such an
intensely modern child should be sensitive to refinement in language.
For a time Elma became famous as a conversationalist, and was known in
her very trying family circle as Jane Austen or "Sense and Sensibility."
The consequences of her position sent her so many times tearful to bed,
that at last she put a severe curb on herself, and never used words that
had not already been sampled and found worthy by her family. The
afternoons at Miss Annie's, however, where she could remove this curb,
became very valuable. The result was that while things might be
"scrumptious" or "awfully nice" or "beastly" at home, they suddenly
became "excellent" or "delightful" or "reprehensible," in that cultured
atmosphere. Only one in the world knew the two sides to Elma, and that
was her dear and wonderful father. She was never ashamed of either pose
when completely alone with that understanding person. Her mother could
not control the twitching at the lips which denotes that a grown-up
person is taking one in and making game of one. Elma's father laughed
with the loud laugh of enjoyment. It was the laughter Elma understood,
and whether or not a mistake of hers had caused it, she ran on to wilder
indiscretions merely that she might hear it again. Oh! there was nobody
quite so understanding as her father.
He invariably sent his compliments to Miss Annie, and one day, to
explain why she went there continually, she told him how she played on
Miss Grace's piano. He was greatly pleased, delighted in fact, and
immediately wanted her to do the same for him. Elma's sensitive soul
saw the whole house giggling at herself, and took fright as she always
did at the mere mention of the exhibition of her talents.
"I can't, when Miss Grace isn't there," she had exclaimed, and neither
she nor anybody else could explain why this should be, except Mr.
Leighton himself, who looked long and with a new earnestness at his
daughter, and never omitted afterwards in sending his compliments to the
two ladies to mention Miss Grace first.
Mabel was entirely different in the respect of playing before people.
She played as happily and easily to a roomful as she did alone. She
blossomed out with the warmth of applause and admiration as a rose does
at the rising of the sun.
"Mabel is prettier than Miss Dudgeon," said Elma to Miss Annie on the
day when she described the great "coming out" occasion.
Miss Annie arrested the handsome teapot before pouring further.
"What! anybody more pretty than Miss Dudgeon?" she asked. "That is
surely impossible."
"Mr. Maclean said so," said Elma.
"And who is Mr. Maclean?" asked Miss Annie.
"Oh--Mr. Maclean--Mr. Maclean is just Mrs. Maclean's nephew. But he
knows Miss Dudgeon, and he looked a long time at Mabel and said she was
prettier."
"You must not think so much of looks, Elma," said Miss Annie
reprovingly. "Mabel is highly gifted, that is of much more
consequence."
"Is it?" asked Elma. "Papa says so, though he won't believe any of _us_
can be gifted. He thinks there's a great deal for us to learn. It's
very de--demoralizing."
"Demoralizing?" asked Miss Annie.
"Yes, isn't it demora-lizing I mean, Miss Annie?" Elma begged in a
puzzled manner.
Miss Annie daintily separated half a slice of seed cake from the formal
pieces lying in the beautiful filigree cake basket.
"I do not think it is 'demoralizing' that you mean, dear.
'Demoralizing' would infer that your father, by telling you there was a
great deal to learn, kept you from learning anything at all, upset you
completely as it were."
Miss Annie was as exact as she could be on these occasions, when she
took the place of the little bright red dictionary.
This time her information seemed to please Elma immensely. Her eyes
immediately shone brilliantly.
"Oh, Miss Annie," she said, "it must be 'demoralizing' after all.
That's just how I feel. Papa tells me, and I see the great big things
to be done, and it doesn't seem to be any use to try the little things.
Like Mozart's Rondos! They _are_ so silly, you know. And when you see
people like Mr. Sturgis painting big e--e--elaborate pictures, I simply
can't draw at school at all."
Miss Grace leant forward on her chair, pulling little short breaths as
though not to lose, by breathing properly, one word of this. She
considered it marvellous that this young thing should invariably be
expressing the thoughts which had troubled her all her life, and never
even been properly recognized by herself, far less given voice to. It
enabled her on many occasions to see clearly at last, and to be able, by
the light of her own lost opportunities, to give counsel to Elma.
Miss Annie's eyes only looked calmly amused. It was an amusement to
which Elma never took exception, but to-day she wanted something more,
to prevent the foolishness which she was afraid of experiencing whenever
she made a speech of this nature. Miss Annie only toyed with a silver
spoon, however, looking sweet and very kindly at Elma, and it was Miss
Grace who finally spoke.
She had recovered the shy equanimity with which she always filled in
pauses for her sister.
"You must not allow the fine work of others to paralyze your young
activities," Miss Grace said gravely. "Mr. Sturgis was young himself
once, and no doubt at school studied freehand drawing very diligently to
be so great as he is now."
"Oh, no," said Elma, "that's one of the funny parts. Mr. Sturgis doesn't
approve of freehand drawing at all. He says it's anything but freehand,
he says it's--it's--oh! I mustn't say it."
"Say it," said Miss Annie cheerfully.
"He says it's rotten," said Elma.
There was something of a pause after this.
"And it's so funny with Mabel," said Elma. "Mabel never practises a
scale unless mamma goes right into the room and hears her do it. But
Mabel can read off and play Chopin. And papa takes me to hear Liszt
Concertos, and I can't play one of them."
"You can't stretch the chords yet, dearie," said Miss Grace.
"No, but it's very demor--what was it I said?" she asked Miss Annie
anxiously.
"Demoralizing," said Miss Annie.
"And there's paralyzing too," said Elma gratefully. "That's exactly how
I feel."
She sat nursing one of her knees in a hopeless manner, until it struck
her that neither Miss Annie nor Miss Grace liked to see her in this
attitude. Nothing was ever said on these occasions, but invariably one
knew that in order not to get on the nerves of Miss Annie, one must sit
straight and not fidget. Elma sat up therefore and resumed
conversation.
"Mabel says it is nothing to play a Liszt Concerto," said Elma
hopelessly.
"Is Mabel playing Liszt?" asked Miss Grace in astonishment.
"Mabel plays anything," sighed Elma.
"That is much better than being prettier than Miss Dudgeon," said Miss
Annie.
She took up a little book which lay near her. It was bound in white
vellum and had little gold lines tooled with red running into fine gold
clasps. Two angel heads on ivory were inserted in a sunk gold rim on
the cover. Miss Grace saw a likeness in the blue eyes there to the
round orbs fastened on it whenever Elma had to listen to the wisdom of
the white book. The title, _The Soul's Delineator_, fascinated her by
its vagueness. She had never cared to let Miss Annie know that in
growing from the days when she could not even spell, the word
"delineator" had remained unsatisfactory as a term to be applied to the
soul. There was The Delineator of fashions at home--a simple affair to
understand, but that it should be applied to the "ivory thoughts" of
Miss Annie seemed confusing. Miss Annie moved her white fingers,
sparkling with the future duchess's rings, in and out among the
gilt-edged pages. Then she read.
"The resources of the soul are quickened and enlivened, not so much by
the education of the senses, as by the encouragement of the
sensibilities, i.e. these elements which go to the making of the
character gentle, chivalrous, kind; in short, the elements which provoke
manners and good breeding."
Miss Annie paused. Her voice had sustained a rather high and different
tone, as it always did when she read from the white book.
"Mabel has very nice manners, hasn't she?" asked Elma anxiously.
"Do you know that you have said nothing at all about the Story Book
Girls to-day, and everything about Mabel," said Miss Annie. "I quite
miss my Story Books."
Elma's eyes glowed.
Miss Annie had marked the line where the dream life was becoming the
real life. Elma, in two days, had transferred her _mise en scene_ of
the drama of life from four far-away people to her own newly grown-up
sister. It was a devotion which lasted long after the days of dreaming
and imagining had passed for the imaginative Elma, this devotion and
admiration for her eldest sister.
In case she should not entertain Miss Annie properly, she ran back a
little, and told her how it was that Mabel had got a blue gown after
all. It was delightful to feel the appreciation of Miss Annie, and to
watch the wrinkles of laughter at her eyes.
Exactly at five o'clock however Miss Grace began to look anxiously at
Miss Annie, and Miss Annie's manner became correspondingly languid.
"You tire your dear self, you ought not to pour out tea," said Miss
Grace in the concerned tone with which she always said this sentence at
five o'clock in the afternoon.
Saunders came noiselessly in to remove, and Elma bade a mute good-bye.
"You tire yourself, dear," said Miss Grace to Miss Annie once more, as
she and Elma retired to the door.
"I must fulfil my obligations, dear," said Miss Annie.
She nodded languidly to Elma, and Elma thought once again how splendid
it was of Miss Annie to be brave like this, and wondered a trifle in her
enthusiastic soul why for once Miss Grace did not pour out tea for her
sister.
CHAPTER III
The Flower Show Ticket
"I call it mean of Mabel."
Jean sat in a crinkled heap on her bedroom floor, and pulled
bad-temperedly with a wire comb at straight unruly hair. It had always
annoyed Mabel that Jean should use a wire comb, when it set her "teeth
on edge even to look at it."
Mabel however was out of the way, well out of it, they decided, and Elma
and Betty had invaded the room belonging to the elder two in order to
condole with Jean.
"Mabel could easily have got another ticket--and said she didn't want
it! Didn't want it, when we're dying to go! And then off she goes,
looking very prim and grown-up, with Cousin Harry."
Jean threw her head back, and began to gather long heavy ends in order
for braiding.
"Just wait till I grow up! I shall soon take it out of Mabel," she
said.
"Oh, girls, girls!"
Mrs. Leighton's voice at the door was very accusing.
"Well, mummy, it was mean. We've always gone together before, and now
Mabel won't go with one of us."
"Not if you behave in this manner," said Mrs. Leighton. "I do not like
any of my girls to be spiteful, you know."
"Spiteful!" exclaimed Jean. She ran rapid fingers in and out the
lengthening braid of hair, till long ends were brought in front. She
put these energetically in her mouth, while she hunted for the ribbon
lying by her.
"Oh, Jean," said Mrs. Leighton, "I've asked you so often not to do
that."
"Sorry, mummy," said Jean, disengaging the ends abruptly.
Mrs. Leighton sat down rather heavily on a chair.
"You didn't say you were sorry for being spiteful," she remarked
gravely.
"Well, mummy, are we spiteful, that's the question?"
Elma sat on a bed, looking specially tragic.
"It's _awful_ to be left out of things now by Mabel," she said.
Betty looked as though she meant to cry.
"Well, I never," said Mrs. Leighton. "You must take your turn. You
don't come wherever your father and I go, or Cuthbert. You know you
don't."
"I think that Cuthbert might occasionally take us, however," said Jean.
"We all went to the flower show last year," wailed Elma.
"Yes, with the parasols papa brought us from London," said Betty. "And
Mabel said it was like carrying four bassinettes in a row, and snapped
hers down and wouldn't put it up till she got separated from us."
"She was growing up even then," said Jean in a melancholy manner.
"Come, come, girls," interrupted Mrs. Leighton. "You may be just the
same when you grow up. I won't allow you to be down on poor Mabel.
Especially when she isn't here to speak for herself."
"When we grow up there will always be one less to tyrannize over," said
Jean. "Honestly, mother, I never would have thought that Mabel could be
so priggish. Do you know why she wouldn't have us? I'm too big and
gawky, and Elma is always saying silly things, and Betty is just a baby.
There you are."
"Well, it isn't very nice of Mabel, but you mustn't believe she means
that," said Mrs. Leighton. "And after all, Mabel must have her little
day. She was very good, let me tell you, very sweet and nice when you
were babies and she just a little thing. She nursed you, Elma and
Betty, often and often, and put you to sleep when your own nurse
couldn't, and she has looked after you all more or less ever since. You
might let her grow up without being worried."
"It's hateful to be called a nuisance," said Jean, somewhat mollified.
"Why do you waste time over it, I wonder," said Mrs. Leighton. "Instead
of moping Jean might be golfing, and Elma and Betty having tea at Miss
Annie's; with nobody at all being nice to your poor old mother."
It dawned on them how selfish they might all be.
"Oh, mummy," cried three reproachful voices.
"Well, Elma likes Miss Grace much better than she does me, and Betty
likes her rabbits, and Jean despises me because I don't play golf. I
lead a very lonely life," said Mrs. Leighton.
"Oh, mummy!"
"My idea, when I came into your room," said Mrs. Leighton, "was to
propose that we might walk into town and get Jean's new hat, and take
tea at Crowther's, and drive home if my poor old leg won't hold out for
walking both ways. But we've wasted so much time in talking about
Mabel----"
"Oh, mummy--Your bonnet, your veil, and your gloves, and do be quick,
mummy," cried Elma. "We're very sorry about Mabel."
They flew in self-reproachful manner to getting her off to her room and
making their own things fly.
"After all, we are a beastly set of prigs," called out Jean to Elma.
"And I think I ought to have a biscuit-coloured straw, don't you?"
It was one of a series of encounters with which the new tactics of Mabel
invaded the family. Mrs. Leighton's gentle rule was sorely tried for
quite a long time in this way. Although she reasoned with the younger
girls on the side of Mabel, she took Mabel severely to task for her
behaviour over the flower show.
"It wasn't nice of you," she told her, "to cut off any little invitation
for your sisters. You must not begin by being selfish, you know. There
are few enough things happening here not to spread the opportunities.
Jean wouldn't have troubled you. She may be at the gawky stage, but she
makes plenty of friends."
Mrs. Leighton could be very impartial in her judgments.
But Mabel was hurt. She preserved a superior air, which became
extremely annoying to the girls.
The greatest crime that she committed was when Jean, amiably engaging
her in conversation in the old way, asked, "And how was Adelaide Maud
dressed?"
Mabel turned in a very studied manner and stared past Jean and every
one.
"I don't think I observed Adelaide Maud," she said.
This was more than human beings could stand.
"I think it's most ir--ir----"
"Oh, find the word first and talk afterwards," said Mabel grandly. "You
kids get on one's nerves."
"Kids--nerves," cried Jean faintly. "I think Mabel is taking brain
fever."
Elma left the room abruptly, much on the verge of tears, and she tried
to find solace in her dictionary. The word was "irrelevant"--yet did not
seem to fit the occasion at all. What would Miss Annie or Miss Grace
do, if a sister had turned old and strange in a few days like that?
What would mother have done? Mother's sisters always complimented each
other when they met. They never quarrelled. Of course they never could
have quarrelled. "Forgive and forget," Aunt Katharine once had said had
always been their motto. Forgiving seemed very easy--but forgetting with
Adelaide Maud in the question--what an impossibility! Miss Annie had an
axiom that when you felt worried about one matter the correct thing to
do was to think about another. Elma thought and thought, but everything
worked round to the traitorous remark of Mabel's about Adelaide Maud.
It seemed as though her head could hold nothing else but that one idea
about Adelaide Maud, until suddenly it dawned on her that it was really
rather fine and grand of Mabel that she should talk in this negligent
manner of any one so magnificent. This reflection gave her the greatest
possible comfort. To be condescending, even in a mere frame of mind, to
the Story Book Girls seemed like the swineherd becoming a prince. Elma
began to think how jolly it would be to hear Mabel saying, "You know, my
dear Helen, I don't think you ought to wear heliotrope, it hardly suits
you." There was something very delicious in having Mabel starchy and
proud after all. Elma heard her coming upstairs to her bedroom to dress
for dinner just then. The fall of the footsteps seemed to suggest that
some of the starchiness had departed from Mabel. Much of the quality of
sympathy which had produced such a person as Miss Grace, was to be found
in Elma. Jean and Betty had hardened their two little hearts to the
consistency of flint over the behaviour of Mabel, but the mere fact that
Elma thought her footsteps seemed to flag and become tired roused her to
chivalrous eagerness towards making it up. She went into Mabel's room
and sat on the window seat. It was a long, low, pleasant couch let into
a wide window looking on the lawn and gardens at the front of the house.
The sun poured in on Elma, who forgot the habits of upright behaviour
which she exhibited at Miss Annie's, and sprawled there with her fingers
on the cord of the blind.
Mabel drew her hatpins out of fair braids in an admiring yet
disconsolate manner. She took a hand glass and had first a side view,
then a back view of the new effect, patted little stray locks into
place, and ruffled out others.
"What's up, Mabs? You don't look en--thusiastic," asked Elma.
"It's papa. After my lovely day too. He wants me to play that Mozart
thing with Betty to-night. Mozart and Betty! Isn't it stale? I hate
Mozart, and I hate drumming away at silly things with Betty." A very
discontented sigh accompanied these remarks.
"I really don't see why I should always be tacked on to Betty or to Jean
or you. I haven't a minute to myself."
"Oh, Mabs, you've had a lovely day!"
The words broke out in an accusing manner. Elma had certainly intended
to comfort Mabel, yet immediately began by expostulating with her.
Mabel turned round, with her seventeenth birthday present, a fine
silver-backed brush, in her hand.
"_Have_ I had a lovely day, have I?" she asked. "I've had simply nothing
of the kind. Jean went on so about not going that Cousin Harry seemed
to think I had injured her. He made me feel like a criminal all
afternoon. These navy men like lots of girls round them. One or two
more don't make the difference to them that it makes to us. At least
it's a different kind of difference. A nice one. I think it was
abominable of him. My first chance--and to spoil it, all because of
Jean! It wasn't fair of her."
Elma began to feel her reason rocking with the sudden justice of this
new argument.
"A minute ago, I thought it wasn't fair of you," she said reflectively.
"I can see it will be awfully hard to get us all peacefully grown up.
Betty will have the best of it. I shall simply give in to her right
along the line. I can see that. I really couldn't stand the worry of
it."
"I suppose you wouldn't have gone to the flower show without Jean?"
asked Mabel in rather a scornful way.
"Good gracious, no," said Elma simply. "I should have presented her
with the one and only ticket, just for the sake of peace."
"That's a rotten, weak way to behave," said Mabel, with a touch of
Cuthbert's best manner.
"I know. I don't mean that you should have given her the ticket. You
weren't made to be bullied. I was. I feel it in my bones every time
any one is horrid to me."
"I'm getting tired of giving up to others," said Mabel, still on her
determined tack. "You can't think what it has been during these years.
I mustn't do this and that because of the children. It's always been
like that. And now when I'm longing to go to dances and balls, I've got
to go right off after dinner and play Mozart with Betty. It's all very
well for papa, he hasn't had the work I've had. If I play now, I want
to play something better than a tum-tum accompaniment."
"Mozart isn't tum-tum," said Elma, "and papa has been listening to us
all these years. It must have been very trying."
"Well, all I can say is that, at his time of life, he ought to be saved
from hearing Betty scrape on her fiddle every night as she does
nowadays. Instead, you would think he hadn't had one musical daughter,
he's so keen on the latest."
"Miss Annie says it never does to be selfish," said Elma gravely. "I
think that's being selfish, the way you talk."
Mabel stopped at the unclasping of her waist-belt.
"Miss Annie! Well, I like that! Don't you know there isn't so selfish
a person in the world as Miss Annie. I've heard people say it."
She nodded with two pins in her mouth, then released them as she went
on.
"Miss Annie made up her mind to lie on a nice bed and have Miss Grace
wait on her. And she's done it. There's nothing succeeds like success."
Mabel nodded her head with the wisdom of centuries.
"Oh, Mabs, how can you?" Elma was dreadfully shocked. A vision of poor
martyred Miss Annie, with "something internal," being supposed to like
what was invariably referred to in that household as "the bed of pain,"
to have conferred on herself this dreadful thing from choice and
wilfulness, this vision was an appalling one.
"How can you say such things of Miss Annie? Who would ever go to bed
for all these years for the pleasure of the thing?"
"I would," said Mabel. "Yes, at the present moment, I would. I should
like to have something very pathetic happen to me, so that I should be
obliged to lie in bed like Miss Annie, and have somebody nice and
sympathetic come in and stroke my hand! Cousin Harry, for instance. He
can look so kind and be so comforting when he likes. But, oh! Elma, he
was a beast to-day."
The truth was out at last. Mabel sat suddenly on the couch beside Elma,
and burst into tears.
"I think I hate being grown up," she said, "if people treat you in that
stiff severe way. Nobody ever did it before--ever."
Elma stroked and stroked her hand. "The Leighton lump," as they
interpreted the slightly hysterical quality which made each girl cry
when the other began, rose in riotous disobedience in her throat, and
strangled any further effort at consolation.
"Why don't you say something," wailed Mabel.
"I'm trying not to cry too," at last said Elma.
Then they both laughed.
"I should go right to Cousin Harry and tell him all about it," Elma
managed to counsel at last. "I thought you were a beast--but it's
awfully hard on you. It's awfully hard on all of us--having sisters."
"Yes, isn't it," groaned Mabel.
"Harry is very understanding. Almost as understanding as papa is."
"Papa! _Do_ you think papa understands?"
"Papa understands everything," said Elma. Then a very loyal
recollection of the afternoon they had spent in the cheery presence of
Mrs. Leighton beset her. "Also mamma, I think she's a duck," said Elma.
CHAPTER IV
Cuthbert
There was a tremendous scurry after this to allow of the four getting
ready in time for dinner. Mabel and Elma regained high spirits after
their confidences, and everybody seemed in a better key.
Mrs. Leighton came in to inquire of Mabel why Cuthbert had not returned.
Cuthbert, by some years the eldest of the family, had attained great
brilliance as a medical student, and now worked at pathology in order to
qualify as a specialist. His studies kept him intermittently at home,
but to-day he had been down early from town and had gone out bicycling
with George Maclean.
"Cuthbert!" exclaimed Mabel. "Why, I can't think--why, where's
Cuthbert?"
"Why, yes, where's Cuthbert?" said Jean.
Their minute differences had engaged their minds so fully, that no one
had really begun to wonder about Cuthbert until that moment.
"He is always in such good time," said Mrs. Leighton in a puzzled way.
"Didn't he say to any one that he would be late?"
No one knew anything about him. They speculated, and collected at the
dinner-table still speculating. Even Cousin Harry knew nothing of him,
but that, of course, was because of the flower show. While the meal was
in progress, Mr. Maclean appeared quietly in the room. He had prepared
a little speech for Mrs. Leighton, but it died on his lips as he saw her
face. It was a curious thing, as they afterwards reflected, that Mr.
Maclean went on speaking to Mrs. Leighton as though she knew of
everything that had happened to Cuthbert.
"He is all right, Mrs. Leighton, but he wouldn't let me bring him in
until I told you that he was all right."
"Bring him in----"
It seemed to the Leightons that Mr. Maclean had been standing all his
life in their dining-room saying that Cuthbert was all right, but
wouldn't be "brought in."
Mr. Leighton put down his table napkin in a methodical manner.
"You'd better come with me and see him, Lucy," he said to his wife.
Nothing could have more alarmed the girls. On no occasion had Mr.
Leighton ever referred to his wife as Lucy.
"Oh, Cuthbert must be dead," cried Betty.
"Nonsense," said Mr. Leighton, with a white face. "Where is Harry?"
Harry had slipped out after a direct glance from Mr. Maclean, and was at
that moment assisting two doctors to lift Cuthbert from a carriage.
"Look here, you kids," sang out Cuthbert, "I've only broken a rib or
two. You needn't look scared. I shall allow you to nurse me. You won't
be dull, I can tell you."
Mrs. Leighton gave a sharp little gasp. Her face looked drawn and only
half its size.
"Oh, Cuthbert," she said.
"I won't move," said Cuthbert, "till you stop being anxious about me.
Maclean, you are a bit of an idiot--look how you've frightened her!"
Elma found Betty in partial hysterics in the dining-room with Jean
hanging over her in a corresponding condition.
"I say, you two," she said in a disgusted manner. "You'll frighten
mother more than ever. Get up, and don't be idiots."
"You're as pale as death yourself," cried Jean hotly.
"Oh--am I," said Elma in almost a pleased voice. She longed to go and
see the effect for herself, but the condition of Betty prevented her.
"Well, it's our first shock," she said in an important manner. "I never
felt _awful_ like this before."
"I'm sure Cuthbert will die," cried Betty.
"Oh, don't." Elma turned on her fiercely. "Why do you say such
dreadful things."
"If you think he will die, Betty, he will die," sobbed Jean.
"Oh, Jean, Jean, do brace up," said Elma. "I don't want to cry, and
every minute I'm getting nearer it. Harry says it's just a knock on the
ribs, and the navy men don't even go to bed for that."
"Liar," sobbed Betty, "Cuthbert isn't a softy."
"Well, of course, if you want him to be bad, I can't help it," said
Elma. "I'm off to see where Mabel is."
Mabel--well, this was just where the magnificence of Mabel asserted
itself. She had done a thing which not one of the people who were
arranging about getting Cuthbert upstairs and into bed had thought of.
At the first sight of his white face and some blankets with which he had
been padded into a carriage, after the accident which had thrown him
from his bicycle and broken three ribs, Mabel turned and went upstairs.
She put everything out of the way for his being carried across the room,
and finally tugged his bed into a convenient place for his being laid
there. She dragged back quilts and procured more pillows, so that when
Cuthbert finally reclined there he was eminently comfortable.
"You'll have to haul out my bed, it's in a corner," he had sung out as
they carried him in, and there was the bed already prepared for him, and
Mabel with an extra pillow in her arms.
"Good old Mabs," said Cuthbert. "I promote you to staff nurse on the
spot."
Mabel was more scared than any one, not knowing yet about the ribs or
Cousin Harry's tale of the navy men who went about with broken ones, and
rather enjoyed the experience. She was so scared that it seemed easy to
stand quiet and be perfectly dignified.
"Come, Mabs dear, and help me to look for bandages. The doctor wants one
good big one," said the recovered voice of Mrs. Leighton.
Mr. Leighton went about stirring up everybody to doing things. He was
very angry with Betty and Jean. "Any one can sit crying in a corner,"
he declared, "and we may be so glad it's no worse."
"It's our first shock," said Betty, who had rather admired the sentiment
of that speech of Elma's.
Mr. Leighton could not help smiling a trifle.
"Well," he exclaimed kindly, "we don't want to get accustomed to them.
I should really much rather you would behave properly this time. You
might take a lesson from Mabel."
Nobody knew till then what a brick Mabel had been. To have their father
commend them like that, the girls would stand on their heads. Lucky
Mabel! There was some merit after all in being the eldest. One knew
evidently what to do in an emergency. The truth was that Mabel's
temperament was so nicely balanced that she could act, as well as think,
with promptitude. She had always admired dignity and what Mr. Leighton
called "efficiency," whereas Jean and Betty believed most in the deep
feelings of people who squealed the loudest.
"Nobody knows the agony this is to me," Jean exclaimed in a tragic
voice. "Feel my heart, it's beating so."
"Go and feel Mabel's," said Elma. "I expect it's thumping as hard as
yours. And she got Cuthbert's bed ready. She really is the leader of
this family. There's something more in it than putting up one's hair."
The doctors came down much more merrily than they went up, and joined in
the dining-room in coffee and dessert while Harry stayed with the
patient.
Mr. Leighton seemed very deeply moved. The thing had hurt him more than
he ventured to say. A remembrance of the white look on his son's face,
the appearance of the huddled figure in the cab, and the anxiety of not
knowing for a few moments how bad the injury might be, had given him a
great shock. His children were so deeply a part of his life, their
welfare of so much more consequence than his own, that it seemed
dreadful to him that his splendid manly young son had been suddenly
hurt--perhaps beyond remedy. Mrs. Leighton used to remark that she had
always been very thankful that none of her children had ever been
dangerously ill, her husband suffered so acutely from even a trifling
illness undergone by one of them. Now she gazed at him rather
anxiously.
Mr. Maclean told them at last how it had happened. Cuthbert had done
something rather heroic. Mr. Maclean recounted it, it seemed to Elma,
in the tone of a man who thought very little of the reckless way in
which Cuthbert had risked his life, until she discovered afterwards that
he as well as Cuthbert had made a dash to the rescue.
It was a case of a runaway bicycle, with no brakes working, and a girl
on it, terror-stricken, trying to evade death on the Long Hill.
Cuthbert had rushed down to her. Cuthbert had gripped the saddle, and
was putting some strength into his brakes, and actually reaching nearly
a full stop, when the girl swayed and fainted. They were both thrown,
but the girl was quite unhurt. Something had hit Cuthbert on the side
and broken three ribs.
Mabel stared straight at Mr. Maclean.
"Where were you?" she asked.
Mr. Maclean looked gravely at her. "I was somewhere about," he said
with unnecessary vagueness.
"Then you tried to save the girl too," said Elma with immediate
conviction. She greatly admired Mr. Maclean, and resented the manner of
Mabel's question. "How beautiful of you both," she exclaimed
enthusiastically.
Mr. Maclean seemed a little annoyed.
"I nearly ran into them," he growled. "Cuthbert was the man who did the
clean neat thing."
Mabel stirred her coffee with a dainty air, and then she looked
provokingly at Mr. Maclean. In some way she made Elma believe that she
did not credit that he could be valorous like Cuthbert.
"I think it was most grand-iloquent of you," Elma said to Mr. Maclean by
way of recompense.
The word saved the situation. Where doctors' assurances had not cleared
anxiety from the brow of Mr. Leighton, nor restored the placidity which
with Mrs. Leighton was habitual, the genuine laugh which followed Elma's
effort accomplished everything.
"I shall go right up and tell Cuthbert," said Jean.
"No, you won't! Cuthbert mustn't laugh," said Mrs. Leighton hurriedly.
"Oh, mummy," said poor Elma.
Nobody laughed later, however, when all four girls were tucked in bed
and not one of them could sleep. Betty in particular was in a nervous
feverish condition which alarmed Elma. She would have gone to her
mother's room to ask advice, except for Mabel's great indication of
courage that afternoon, and the certainty that Mabel and Jean were both
sensibly fast asleep in the next room. She took Betty into her own bed
and petted her like a baby. On windy nights Betty never could sleep,
and had always gone to Elma like a chicken to its mother to hide her
head and shut out the shrieking and whistling which so unnerved her. But
to-night, nothing could shut out the fear which had suddenly assailed
her that everybody died sooner or later, and Cuthbert might have died
that day. She lay and wept on Elma's shoulder.
At last the door moved gently and Mrs. Leighton came in. The moon shone
on her white hair, and made her face seem particularly gentle and
lovely.
"I've been scolding Mabel and Jean for talking in bed," she said, "and
now I hear you two at it."
"Oh, mummy," replied Elma, "I'm so glad you've come. You don't know how
empty and dreadful we feel. We never thought before of Cuthbert's
dying. And Betty says you and papa might die--and none of us could
p--possibly bear to live."
She began to cry gently at last.
"I can't have four girls in one house all crying," said Mrs. Leighton;
"I really can't stand it, you know."
"What--are Mabel and Jean crying?" asked Elma tearfully, yet hopefully.
"Well, that's one comfort anyway."
Mrs. Leighton sat down by their bed. Long years afterwards Elma
remembered the tones of her mother's voice, and the quiet wonderful
peace that entered her own mind at the confident words which Mrs.
Leighton spoke to them then.
"I thought you might be feeling like that," she said; "I did once also,
long ago, when my father turned very ill, until I learned what I'm going
to tell you now. We aren't here just to enjoy ourselves, or that would
be an easy business, would it not? We are here to get what Cuthbert
calls a few kicks now and again, to suffer a little, above all to
remember that our father or our mother isn't the only loving parent we
possess. What is the use of being taught to be devoted to goodness and
truth, if one doesn't believe that goodness and truth are higher than
anything, higher than human trouble? If you lost Cuthbert or me or
papa, there is always that strong presence ready to hold you."
"Oh, mummy," sobbed Betty, "there seems nothing like holding your hand."
Mrs. Leighton stroked Betty's very softly.
"Would you like a little piece of news?" she asked.
"We would," said Elma.
"The only person who is asleep in this household--last asleep,
is--Cuthbert."
"O--oh!"
Elma could not help laughing.
"And another thing," said Mrs. Leighton. "Didn't you notice? Not one
of my girls asked a single question about the girl whom Cuthbert saved."
"How funny!"
Betty's sobs became much dimmer.
"Do you know who she was?" asked Mrs. Leighton.
"No," chimed both.
"Well, I don't know her name," said Mrs. Leighton. She rose and moved
towards the door. "But I know one thing." She opened the door softly.
Elma and Betty sat up dry-eyed in bed.
"Remember what I said to you to-night," Mrs. Leighton said, "and don't
be very ungrateful for all the happiness you've known, and little
cowards when the frightening time comes. Promise me."
They promised.
She prepared to draw the door quietly behind her.
"She is staying with the Story Books," whispered Mrs. Leighton. Then
she closed the door.
CHAPTER V
"The Story Books" Call
Mabel was sitting with Cuthbert when the Story Books called.
They really did call.
And nothing could have been more unpropitious.
First, they called very early in the afternoon, just when Betty, with
her arms full of matting for her rabbits, rushed out at the front door.
She nearly ran into them. The matting slipped from her arms, and she
stood spell-bound, gazing at the Story Books. Mrs. Dudgeon was there,
looking half a size larger than any ordinary person. An osprey waved
luxuriantly in a mauve toque, and her black dress bristled with
grandeur. She produced a lorgnette and looked through it severely at
Betty. Betty became half the size of an ordinary mortal.
Adelaide Maud was with Mrs. Dudgeon.
Adelaide Maud was in blue.
Adelaide Maud seemed stiff and bored.
"Is your mamma at home?" Mrs. Dudgeon asked.
Betty kicked the matting out of the way in a surreptitious manner.
"Oh, please come in," she said shyly.
It was tragic that of all moments in one's life the Dudgeons should have
come when Betty happened to be flying out, and they had not even had
time to ring for Bertha, who, as parlour-maid, had really irreproachable
showing in manners.
Betty tripped over a mat on her way to the drawing-room. Betty showed
them in without a word of warning. Jean was singing at the
piano--atrociously. Jean might know that she oughtn't to sing till her
voice was developed. Elma was dusting photographs.
Nothing could have been more tragic.
The girls melted from the room, and left Mrs. Dudgeon and Adelaide Maud
in the centre of it, stranded, staring.
"What an odd family," said Mrs. Dudgeon stiffly.
Adelaide Maud never answered.
The Leightons rushed frantically to other parts of the house.
The second tragedy occurred.
Mrs. Leighton utterly refused to change her quiet afternoon dress for
another in which to receive Mrs. Dudgeon. She went to the drawing-room
as she was.
They ran to Cuthbert's room to tell him about it. Cuthbert seemed rather
excited when he asked which "Story Book." Elma said, "Oh, you know,
_the_ one," and he concluded she meant Hermione, who did not interest
him at all.
"Why couldn't you stay and talk to them?" he asked. "They wouldn't eat
you. Who cares what you have on? The mater is quite right. She is
just as nice in a morning costume as old Dudgeon in her war paint. You
think too much of clothes, you kids."
"Yet you like to see us nicely dressed," wailed Jean.
"Of course I do. Mabel in that blue thing is a dream."
Mabel looked at him gratefully.
"Oh, if only Mabel had been sitting there embroidering, in her blue
gown, and Bertha had shown them ceremoniously in! How lovely it would
have been!" said Elma.
"I couldn't have worn my blue," said Mabel with a conscience-stricken
look. "You know why."
"Oh, Mabel--the rucking! How unfortunate!"
"It never dawned on us that we should ever know them."
Cuthbert looked from one to another.
"What on earth have you been up to now?" he asked suspiciously.
"Mabel got her dress made the same as Adelaide Maud's," said Betty
accusingly. She rather liked airing Mabel's mistakes just then, after
having been so sat upon for her own.
"Well, it's a good thing that Adelaide Maud, as you call her, won't ever
come near you," Cuthbert remarked in a savage voice.
"But it's Adelaide Maud who's in the drawing-room," said Elma.
Cuthbert drew in his breath sharply.
"Oh, Cuthbert, you aren't well."
"It's the bandage," he said. "Montgomery is a bit of an idiot about
bandaging. I told him so. Doesn't give a fellow room to breathe."
He became testy in his manner.
"You oughtn't to have all run away like that, like a lot of children.
Old Dudgeon will be sniffing round to see how much money there is in our
furniture, and cursing herself for having to call."
"Adelaide Maud was awfully stiff," sighed Elma.
"Our furniture can bear inspection," said Mabel with dignity. "The
Dudgeons may have money, but papa has taste."
"Yes, thank goodness," said Cuthbert. "They can't insult us on that
point. This beastly side of mine! Why can't we go downstairs, Mabel,
and tell them what we think of 'em?"
"I'm longing to, but terrified," said Mabel. "It's because we've
admired them so and talked about them so much."
"Adelaide Maud wouldn't know you from the furniture," said Jean. "You
may spare yourself the agony of wanting to see her. I think they might
be nice when we've been neighbours in a kind of way for so long."
"Well--they're having a good old chat with the mater at least," said
Cuthbert.
"I haven't confidence in mummy," said Jean. "I can hear her, can't you?
Instead of talking about the flower show or the boat races, or something
dashing of that sort, she will be saying----"
"Oh, I know," said Mabel. "When Elma was a baby--or was it when Betty
was a baby--yes, it was, and saying how cute Cuthbert was when he was
five years old----"
"If she does," shouted Cuthbert. "Oh, mother mine, if you do that!" He
shook his fist at the open door.
A sound of voices approaching a shut one downstairs came to their ears.
Each girl stole nimbly and silently out and took up a position where she
could see safely through the banisters. First came the mauve toque with
its white osprey quite graciously animated, then a blue and wide one in
turquoise, which from that foreshortened view completely hid the
shimmering gold of the hair of Adelaide Maud. Mrs. Leighton was weirdly
self-possessed, it seemed to the excited onlookers. She had rung for
Bertha, who held the door open now in quite the right attitude. Good
old Bertha. Mrs. Dudgeon was condescendingly remarking, "I'm so sorry
your little girls ran away!"
"Little girls!" breathed four stricken figures at the banisters.
Adelaide Maud said, "Yes, and I did so want to meet them. I hear they
are very musical."
"Musical!" groaned Mabel.
"She just said that to be polite--isn't it awful?" whispered Jean.
"Hush."
"Once more, our best thanks to your son."
Mrs. Leighton answered as though she hadn't minded a bit that Cuthbert
had been nearly killed the day before.
"So good of you to call," said she.
"Oh," cried Elma, with her head on the banister rail, after the door
shut, "I hate society; don't you, mummy?"
"I think you're very badly behaved, all of you, listening there like a
lot of babies," said Mrs. Leighton.
"Come and tell your little girls all about it," cried Jean
sarcastically.
Mrs. Leighton smiled as she toiled upstairs.
"It ought to be a lesson to you. Haven't I often told you that
listeners hear no good of themselves," she exclaimed.
"Oh, mummy, we are musical," reminded Mabel, softly. "Think of that
terrific compliment!"
Their mother seemed to have more on her mind than she would tell them.
She puffed gently into Cuthbert's room.
"These stairs are getting too much for me," she said.
"Well, mater?" asked Cuthbert in an interrogating way.
"Well, Cuthbert, they are very grateful to you," she said.
He lay back on his pillows.
"Don't I know that patronizing gratitude," he said. It seemed as though
they had all suddenly determined to be down on the Dudgeons. His face
appeared hard and very determined. He had the fine forehead which so
distinguished his father, with the same clear-cut features, and a chin
of which the outline was strong and yet frankly boyish. He had a
patient insistent way of looking out of his eyes. It had often the
effect of wresting remarks from people who imagined they had nothing to
say.
This time, Mrs. Leighton, noting that familiar appeal in his eyes, was
drawn to discussing the Dudgeons.
"Mrs. Dudgeon was very nice; she said several very nice things about you
and us. She says that Mr. Dudgeon had always a great respect for your
father. He knew what he had done in connection with the Antiquarian
Society and so on. Miss Dudgeon was very quiet."
"Stiff little thing," said Jean, with her head in the air.
"She was very nice," said Mrs. Leighton. There was a softness in her
voice which arrested the flippancy of the girls. "I don't know when I
have met a girl I liked so much."
"Good old Adelaide Maud," cried Jean.
A flush ran up Cuthbert's pale determined face. It took some of the
hardness out of it.
"Did she condescend to ask for me?" he asked abruptly. "Or pretend that
she knew me at all?"
"She never said a word about you," said his mother; "but----"
"But--what a lot there may be in a but," said Jean.
"She looked most sympathetic," said Mrs. Leighton lamely. Cuthbert
moved impatiently.
"What silly affairs afternoon calls must be," said he.
"Miss Steven--the girl you ran away with--isn't well to-day, and they
are rather anxious about her. She is very upset, but wanted to come and
tell you how much she thanked you."
"Oh, lor," said Cuthbert, "what a time I shall have when I'm well. I
shall go abroad, I think."
Elma gazed at him with superb devotion. He seemed such a man--to be
careless of so much appreciation, and from the Story Books too!
Cuthbert appeared very discontented.
"Oh, these people!" he exclaimed; "they call and thank one as they would
their gardener if he had happened to pull one of 'em out of a pond.
It's the same thing, mummy! They never intend to be really friendly,
you know."
Elma slipped downstairs and entered the drawing-room once more. A faint
perfume (was it "Ideal" or "Sweet Pea Blossom"?) might be discerned. A
Liberty cushion had been decidedly rumpled where Mrs. Leighton would be
bound to place Mrs. Dudgeon. Where had Adelaide Maud, the goddess of
smartness and good breeding, located herself? Elma gave a small scream
of rapture. On the bend of the couch, where the upholstering ran into a
convenient groove for hiding things, she found a little handkerchief.
It was of very delicate cambric, finely embroidered. Elma's first
terror, that it might be Mrs. Dudgeon's, was dispelled by the magic
letters of "Helen" sewn in heliotrope across a corner. It struck her as
doubtful taste in one so complete as Adelaide Maud that she should carry
heliotrope embroidery along with a blue gown. She held her prize in
front of her.
"Now," said she deliberately, "I shall find out whether it is 'Ideal' or
'Sweet Pea.'"
She sniffed at the handkerchief in an awe-stricken manner. The
enervating news was thus conveyed to her--Adelaide Maud put no scent on
her handkerchiefs.
This was disappointing, but a hint in smartness not to be disobeyed.
Mrs. Dudgeon must have been the "Ideal" person. Elma rather hoped that
Hermione used scent. This would provide a loophole for herself anyhow.
But Mabel would be obliged to deny herself that luxury.
Elma sat down on the couch with the handkerchief, and looked at the dear
old drawing-room with new eyes. She would not take that depressing view
of the people upstairs with regard to the Story Books. She was Adelaide
Maud, and was "reviewing the habitation" of "these Leighton children"
for the first time.
"Dear me," said Adelaide Maud, "who is that sweet thing in the silver
frame?"
"Oh," said Mrs. Leighton, "that's Mabel, my eldest."
Then Adelaide Maud would be sure to say with a refined amount of
rapture, "Oh, is that Mabel? I have heard how pretty she is from Mr.
Maclean."
Then mother--oh, no; one must leave mother out of this conversation.
She would have been so certain to explain that Mabel was not pretty at
all.
Elma sat with her elbows out and her hands presumably resting on air.
"Never lean your elbows on your hips, girls," Miss Stanton, head of
deportment, informed them in school. "Get your shoulder muscles into
order for holding yourself gracefully." One could only imagine Adelaide
Maud with a faultless deportment.
Elma carried the little handkerchief distractedly to her lips, then was
appalled at the desecration.
Oh--and yet how lovely! It was really Adelaide Maud's!
She tenderly folded it.
How distinguished the drawing-room appeared! How delightful to have had
a father who made no mistakes in the choice of furniture! Cuthbert had
said so. She could almost imagine that the mauve toque must have bowed
before the Louis Seize clock and acknowledged the Cardinal Wolseley
chair. It did not occur to her to think that Mrs. Dudgeon might size up
the whole appearance of that charming room in a request for pillars and
Georgian mirrors, and beaded-work cushions. It is not given to every
one to see so far as this, however, and Elma--as Miss Dudgeon for the
afternoon--complimented her imaginary hosts on everything. As a wind-up
Miss Dudgeon asked Mrs. Leighton particularly if her third daughter
might come to take tea with Hermione.
"So sweet of you to think of it," said the imaginary Mrs. Leighton, once
more in working order.
Out of these dreams emerged Elma. Some one was calling her abruptly.
"Coming," she shrieked wildly, and clutched the handkerchief.
She kept it till she got to Cuthbert. It seemed to her that he, as an
invalid, might be allowed a bit of a treat and a secret all to himself.
"Adelaide Maud left her handkerchief," she said. "We shall have to call
to return it."
He gazed at the bit of cambric.
"Good gracious, is that what you girls dry your eyes on?"
He took it, and looked at it very coldly and critically.
"Thank you," he said calmly.
"Oh, Cuthbert," she exclaimed with round eyes, "you won't keep it, will
you?"
"I shall return it to the owner some day, when she deserves it," said
the hero of yesterday, with a number of pauses between each phrase.
"Don't say a word, chucky, will you not?"
"I won't," said Elma honourably, yet deeply puzzled.
Imaginary people were the best companions after all. They did exactly
what one expected them to do.
It seemed rather selfish that Cuthbert should hang on to the
handkerchief. But of course they would never have even seen it had it
not been for the accident.
She surrendered all ownership at the thought, and then gladly poured tea
for the domineering Cuthbert.
"You are a decent little soul, Elma," said he.
"And you are very extraasperating," said Elma.
CHAPTER VI
The Mayonnaise
The girls gave a party to celebrate the recovery of Cuthbert. They were
allowed to do this on one condition, that they made everything for it
themselves.
This was Mr. Leighton's idea, and it found rapturous approval in the
ranks of the family, and immediate rebellion in the heart of Mrs.
Leighton. It was her one obstinacy that she should retain full hold of
the reins of housekeeping. Once let a lot of girls into the kitchen,
and where are you?
"Once let a lot of girls grow up with no kind of responsibility in life,
and where are you then?" asked Mr. Leighton. "I don't want my girls to
drift. No man is really healthy unless he is striving after something,
if it's only after finding a new kind of beetle. I don't see how a girl
can be healthy without a definite occupation."
"They make their beds, and they have their music," sighed Mrs. Leighton.
"Girls in my day didn't interfere with the housekeeping."
"I've thought about their music," said Mr. Leighton. "I'm glad they have
it. But it isn't life, you know. A drawing-room accomplishment isn't
life. I want them to be equipped all round. Not just by taking classes
either. Classes end by making people willing to be taught, but the
experiences of life make them very swift to learn. We can't have them
sitting dreaming about husbands for ever. Dreams and ideals are all
very well, but one scamps the realities if one goes on at them too long.
Elma means to marry a duke, you know. Isn't it much better that in the
meantime she should learn to make a salad?"
"The servants will be so cross," said Mrs. Leighton. She invariably saw
readily enough where she must give in, but on these occasions she never
gave in except with outward great unwillingness.
"Oh, perhaps not," said Mr. Leighton. "They have dull enough lives
themselves. I'm sure it will be rather fun for them to see Mabel making
cakes."
"Mabel can't make cakes," exclaimed Mrs. Leighton. Her professional
talents were really being questioned here. Throughout the length and
breadth of the country, nobody made cakes like Mrs. Leighton.
Mr. Leighton grew a little bit testy.
"You know, my dear, if this house were a business concern it would be
your duty to take your eldest daughter into partnership at this stage.
As it is, you seem to want to keep her out for ever."
Mrs. Leighton sighed heavily.
"That's just it, John," said she; "I want to keep her out for ever. I
want them all to remain little children, and myself being mother to
them. Since Mabel got her hair up--already it's different. I feel in
an underhand sort of way that I'm being run by my own daughter--I really
do."
"More like by your own son," said Mr. Leighton. "The way you give in to
that boy is a disgrace."
"Oh, Cuthbert's different," said Mrs. Leighton brightly.
"Poor Mabel," smiled Mr. Leighton.
It was an old subject with them, thrashed out again and again, ever
since Cuthbert as a rather spoiled child of seven had had his little
nose put out of joint by the first arrival of girls in the imperious
person of Mabel. Mrs. Leighton had always felt a little grieved with the
absurdly rapid manner in which Mr. Leighton's affections had gone over
to Mabel.
"In any case, try them with the party," said he. "The only thing that
can happen is for the cook to give notice."
"And I shall have to get another one, of course." Mrs. Leighton's voice
dwelt in a suspiciously marked manner on the pronoun.
"Now there's another opportunity for making use of Mabel," said her
husband.
Mrs. Leighton let her hands fall.
"Engage my own servants! What next?" she asked.
"Oh, I don't know," said he. "Cuthbert does heaps of things for me.
You women are the true conservatives. If we had you in power there
would be no chance for the country."
"Well, you might have persuaded Cuthbert to succeed you as Chairman of
your Company, with a steady income and all that sort of thing," she
exclaimed, "instead of rushing him into a profession which keeps him
tied night and day, and gives him no return as yet for all his work."
"I should never stand in the way of enthusiasm," said her husband.
"Cuthbert has a real genius for his profession."
"Then why not find a profession for Mabel?"
"I have thought of that. It seems right, however, that a man ought to
be equipped for one profession, and a girl for several. I can always
leave my girls enough money to keep the wolf from the door at least. I
have an objection to any girl being obliged to work entirely for her
living. Men ought to relieve them of that at least. But we must give
them occupation; work that develops. Come, come, my dear; you must let
them have their head a little, even although they ruin the cakes. A
good mother makes useless daughters, you know."
"Well, it's a wrench, John."
"There, there," he smiled at her.
"And the servants are sure to give notice."
She regretted much of her pessimism, however, when she gave the news to
the girls. Not for a long time had they been so animated. Each took
her one department in the supper menu prepared under the guidance of
Mrs. Leighton.
First, chicken salad inserted into a tomato, cut into water-lily shape,
reposing on lettuce leaves--one on each little plate, mayonnaise
dressing on top.
The mayonnaise captured Mabel.
"But you can't make it, it's a most trying thing to do--better let cook
make it," interjected Mrs. Leighton.
"What about our party?" asked Mabel.
"Very well," said an abject mother.
So that was settled.
Then fruit salad, immediately claimed by Jean, who knew everything there
was to be known of fruit, inside and out, as she explained volubly.
Mrs. Leighton's quiet face twitched a trifle and then resolved itself
into business lines once more.
Meringues! they must have meringues! Nobody seemed to rise to that.
Elma felt it was her turn.
"They look awfully difficult," said she, "but I could try a day or two
before. I'll do the meringues."
This cost her a great effort. Mother didn't appear at all encouraging,
She snipped her lips together in rather a grim way, and it had the
effect of sending a cold streak of fear up and down the back of the
meringue volunteer.
"Are they very difficult, mummy?" she asked apologetically.
"Oh, no," said Mrs. Leighton airily. "After mayonnaise, one may do
anything."
"I can whip cream--beautifully," explained Elma. "It's that queer crusty
thing I'm afraid of."
"I shall be ruined in eggs, I see that very distinctly," said Mrs.
Leighton.
After this, there seemed to be no proper opportunity for Betty.
"Couldn't I make a trifle?" she asked modestly. "A trifle at ten." Mrs.
Leighton looked her over. "Oh! very well--Betty will make trifle."
Betty looked as though she would drop into tears. Elma put her hand
through her arm and whispered while the others debated about cakes, "I
can find out all about trifles. Miss Grace knows. She made them
cen--centuries ago, and Miss Annie never lets the new cooks try."
Betty turned on her a happy face.
"Oh, Elma, you're most reviving," she said gratefully.
Then they had cakes to consider. Now and again they had been allowed to
bake cakes, and they felt that here they were on their own ground.
Betty revived in a wonderful manner, and immediately insisted on baking
a gingerbread one.
"Nobody eats gingerbread at parties," said Mabel in a disgusted voice.
"This isn't a picnic we're arranging, or a school-room tea. It's a
grown-up party, and we just aren't going to have gingerbread."
"Yet I've sometimes thought that gingerbread at a party tasted very
well," remarked Mrs. Leighton.
"Oh, mummy!" Mabel seemed very sorry for her mother.
But Betty had regained her confidence.
"I shall bake gingerbread," she exclaimed in her most dogged manner.
"There are always the rabbits, of course," said Jean, with her nose in
the air.
"Girls, girls," said Mrs. Leighton.
"Gingerbread one, walnut cream cake another. What will you bake, Jean?"
"Orange icing," quoth Jean.
"And sponge cake cream for Elma," she added in a thoughtful way.
"I do like the way you fling all the uninteresting things at me,"
exclaimed Elma. "I think sponge cake cream is the moistest, flabbiest,
silliest cake I know. We're putting cream in everything. Everybody
will be sick of cream. Why can't I bake a coffee cake?"
"Why can't she?" asked Mrs. Leighton severely.
"Coffee cake, Elma," said Mabel. She had taken to paper and pencil. "I
only hope we shall know what it is when it appears!"
"And you'd better all begin as soon as you can," said Mrs. Leighton; "so
that we find out where we are a few days before the party occurs."
She still looked with foreboding on the whole arrangement.
Cook preserved a hauteur on the subject of the invasion, through which
the girls found it very hard to break.
"Never seed such a picnic," she informed the housemaid. "My, you should
have been here when Miss Betty burned her gingerbread!"
That was a sad occasion, and after all, there was nothing for it but the
rabbits. Betty moaned over the lost raisins, the "ginger didn't count."
"I stoned every one of them," she sighed. Mr. Leighton found some brown
lumps in the rabbit hutches. "That's not the thing for these beasts,"
he said; "what is it?" And Betty explained that it would be quite safe
for them, for (once more) hadn't she stoned every raisin herself?
"I'm glad you're a millionaire, John," said Mrs. Leighton grimly when
she heard about it.
Elma made Betty try again. Elma's heart was in her mouth about her own
performances, but she hung over Betty till a success was secured to the
gingerbread. Then she couldn't get the kitchen for her coffee cake,
because Mabs, in a neat white apron and sleeves, was ornamenting a
ragged-looking structure of white icing with little dabs of pink, and
trying to write "Cuthbert" in neat letters across the top. She had
prepared a small cake--"just to taste it." They all tasted. It seemed
rather crumply.
"Isn't there a good deal of walnut in it?" asked Mrs. Leighton humbly.
"It's nearly all walnut," said Mabel. "I like walnut."
Jean worried along with her piece.
"Nobody will survive this party," said she.
At last Elma's coffee cake got its innings. She was so nervous after
the gingerbread fiasco that only the ultimate good humour of Cook saved
her.
"Don't hurry over it, Miss Elma; it's coming nicely. I'll tell you when
to stop beating."
Nothing else would have guaranteed the existence of the cake. Cook also
saw to the firing. This gave Elma such a delightful feeling of
gratitude that she opened out her heart on the subject of meringues.
Cook said that of course it was easy for them "as had never tried" just
to rush in and make meringues the first thing. The likes of herself
found them "kittlish" things. You may make meringues all your life, and
then they'll go wrong for no reason at all. It was "knack" that was
wanted principally.
"Do you think I've got knack, Cook?" asked Elma humbly.
Cook gave her a clear night in the kitchen for the meringues, as a
reward for her humility. It was marvellous that nearly all of them came
fairly decently. Cook found the shapes "a bit queer," but "them as knew"
who was providing the party wouldn't think they were "either here or
there."
"I'll make it up with the cream," quoth Elma happily. A great load was
off her mind.
She now devoted herself to Betty's trifle. As a great triumph they
decided to provide a better trifle than even Cook knew how to prepare.
Miss Grace entered heartily into the plan. They were allowed to call
one morning when she was ensconced in the parlour. Saunders brought in
solemnly, first, several sheets of white paper. These were laid very
seriously on the bare finely-polished table. Then came a plate of
sponge cake in neat slices, a thin custard in a glass jug, several
little dishes, one of blanched almonds cut in long strips, another of
halved cherries, one of tiny macaroon biscuits, and so on. Miss Grace
set herself in a high chair, and proceedings began. Elma wondered to
the end of her days what kind of a cook Miss Grace would have made if
she had been paid for her work. Everything was prepared for Miss Grace,
but she took an hour and a quarter to finish the trifle. She added
custard in silver spoonfuls as though each one had a definite effect of
its own, and she several times measured the half glassful of cordial
which was apportioned to each layer of sponge cake. The ceremony seemed
interminable. Elma saw how true it was what her father often said, that
one ought always to have a big enough object in life to keep one from
paying too much importance to trifles. She immediately afterwards
apologized to herself for the pun, which, she explained in that half
world of dreaming to which she so often resorted, she hadn't at all
intended.
Elma and Betty, however, to the end of their days, never forgot how to
make trifle.
Betty's trifle was a magnificent success.
Jean engaged a whole fruiterer's shop, as it seemed, for her salad, and
found she made enough for forty people out of a fourth of what she had
ordered. This put Mrs. Leighton back into her old prophetic position.
Had she not told Jean a quarter of that fruit would be enough?
Mabel arranged everything in good order for her chicken concoction, and
at last had only the mayonnaise to make. That occurred on the afternoon
of the party. Cuthbert and Harry and Mr. Maclean were all
about--supposed to be helping. May Turberville, Betty's great friend,
and her brother Lance, a boy of fourteen, brought round various loans in
the way of cups and cream and sugar "things." The table in the
dining-room was laid for supper with a most dainty centre-piece decked
with roses and candelabra. Most of their labours being over, the
company retreated to the smoke-room, where "high jinks" were soon in
process. Lance capered about, balancing chairs on his nose, and doing
the wild things which only take place in a smoke-room.
In the midst of it appeared Mabel, wide-eyed and distressed, at the
door. The white apron of a few days ago was smeared with little
elongated drops of oily stuff. She held a fork wildly dripping in her
hand.
"Oh--oh, isn't it awful," she cried, "the mayonnaise won't may."
It was the last anxiety, and, in the matter of the pints of the Leighton
girls, quite the last straw. Just when they had begun to be confident
of their party, the real backbone of the thing had given out.
Dr. Harry removed a cigarette from his lips.
"Hey--what's that?" he asked. "Mayonnaise--ripping! I knew an American
Johnnie who made it. Bring it here, and we'll put it right."
Mabel spread her hands mutely. "In this atmosphere?" she asked.
Oh! They had soon the windows open. Harry insisted he could make
mayonnaise. "You don't meet American men for nothing, let me tell you,"
he said. It was fun to see him supplied with plate, fork and bottles.
He looked at Mabel's attempt at dressing.
"Good gracious!" he said, "where's the egg?"
Mabel turned rather faint. "I put in the white," said she.
Dr. Harry roared. Then he explained carefully and kindly.
"Mayonnaise is an interesting affair--apart from the joys of eating it.
A chemical action takes place between the yoke of an egg and the oil and
vinegar. You could hardly expect the white to play up."
"It was Cook," exclaimed Mabel. "She said something about yokes for a
custard and whites for--for----"
"Meringues, you donkey," said Jean.
Dr. Harry made the mayonnaise.
Lance Turberville cut the most shameful capers throughout. He decorated
Harry with paper aprons and the cap of a chef, and stuck his eyeglass in
the wrong eye while Harry worked patiently with a fork in semicircles.
He was sent off with Betty and May, only to reappear later dressed out
as a maid-servant. Nobody except Dr. Harry could take the mayonnaise
seriously while Lance was about. At that moment the outdoor bell rang.
With the inspiration born of mischief, and before any one could stop
him, Lance rushed off and opened it.
Three ladies stood on the doorstep.
He showed them solemnly into the drawing-room, tripping over his skirt
merely a trifle, and nearly giving Bertha, who had primly come to attend
to the door, hysterics. He advanced to the smoke-room, where the
mayonnaise was nearly completed.
"Mrs. and Miss Dudgeon and Miss Steven are in the drawing-room," said
Lance.
CHAPTER VII
Visitors Again
By itself an occurrence like this would have been unnerving enough.
Visitors on the afternoon of a party, and such visitors! But that the
Leightons should all be more or less in a pickle in regard to the
mayonnaise and Lance's foolery seemed to take things altogether over the
barrier of ordinary life, and land everybody in a perfect fizzle. The
Dudgeons must have called to see Cuthbert, who had never been down yet
on these occasions when Mrs. Leighton and Mabel and Jean with perfect
propriety had received them. Mabel had had her innings as the eldest of
the house, but had retained an enormous reserve when speaking to Miss
Dudgeon. Not so Jean, who believed in getting to know people at once.
Elma and Betty had never ventured near them since that dreadful day when
they all did the wrong thing at the wrong moment.
"Anyhow, the drawing-room is a perfect dream with flowers. They can
look at that for a bit," said Jean, as they began to remove the regiment
of bottles. Dr. Harry's mayonnaise was creamy and perfect, and Mabel was
in high fettle correspondingly.
"Do you know," she said, "I don't care tuppence for the Dudgeons just
now. Let's go in and give them a decent reception for once." It
reflected the feeling of all, that nothing could disturb their gaiety on
this day.
Elma was reminded again how right her father was in declaring that once
one had an absorbing object in front of one, trifles dwindled down to
their proper level. Why should any of them be afraid of the Story
Books? Certainly not at all, on a day when they were about to have a
ripping party, and the mayonnaise at last had "mayed." Cuthbert gave a
big jolly laugh at Mabel's speech.
"Come along, all of you," he said. "What about those oily fingers of
yours, Harry? What a jewel of a husband you'll be! You, Lance, get off
these togs and behave yourself."
Lance promised abjectly to be an ornament to the household for the rest
of the afternoon. Something in his look as he went off reminded Mabel
of other promises of Lance.
"Be good," she called out to him.
"Yes, mother," exclaimed Lance, evidently at work already tearing off
the skirt, and looking demure and mournful. He seemed very ridiculous
still, and they went off merrily to the drawing-room.
"Cuthbert," whispered Elma, "I'm so frightened. Take me in."
"I'm frightened too," whispered Cuthbert.
This made her laugh, so that as she held on to his arm she approached
Adelaide Maud in admirable spirits. The party invaded the drawing-room
as a flood would invade it--or so it seemed to the Dudgeons, who were
talking quietly to Mrs. Leighton. The whole room sprouted Leightons.
Mrs. Dudgeon resorted entirely to her lorgnette, especially when she
shook hands with Cuthbert. He stood that ordeal bravely, also the
ordeal of the speech that followed.
"You see the two very shy members of the family," he said, bowing
gravely and disregarding some sarcastic laughter from the background.
"May I introduce my young sister Elma."
Here was honour for Elma. She shook hands with crimson cheeks. Then
came Adelaide Maud. She gave her hand to Cuthbert without a word, but
when Elma's turn came she said with rather sweet gravity, "This is the
little lady, isn't it, who plays to Miss Grace?"
Elma was thunderstruck; but Cuthbert, the magnificent, seemed very
pleased.
"Oh--Miss Grace didn't tell you?" asked Elma.
"No, I heard you one day, and Miss Annie told me it was you."
Adelaide Maud sat down on a low chair, and drew Elma on to the arm.
"What was it you were playing?" she asked.
"One is called 'Anything you like,' and one is 'A little thing of my
own,' and the others are just anything," said Elma.
Adelaide Maud laughed.
The room was filled with chattering voices, and Mrs. Dudgeon had claimed
Cuthbert, so that it became a very easy thing for them to be
confidential without any one's noticing.
"It's quite stup--stup----" Elma stopped.
"Stupid?" asked Adelaide Maud.
"No, stup-endous," said Elma thankfully, "for me to be talking all alone
with you." Her fright had run away, as it always did whenever any one
looked kindly at her. The sweet eyes of Adelaide Maud disarmed her, and
she worshipped on the spot. "I've always been so afraid of you," she
said simply. "It ought to be Hermione, but I know it will always be
you."
"Who is Hermione?" asked Adelaide Maud.
Elma suddenly woke up.
"Oh, I daren't tell you," said she.
Adelaide Maud looked about her in a constrained way.
"I wish you would play to me, dear," she said.
Was this really to be believed!
"I could in the schoolroom," said Elma, "but not here."
"Take me to the schoolroom," said Adelaide Maud.
Elma placed her hand in that of the other delicately gloved one without
a tremor.
"Don't let them see us go," she begged.
Three people did, however: Cuthbert with a bounding heart, Mabel with
thankfulness that the house was really in exhibition order, and Jean
with blank amazement. Elma had walked off in ten minutes intimately
with the flower that Jean had, as it were, been tending carefully for
weeks, and had not dared to pluck. There was something of the dark
horse about Elma.
They were much taken up with Miss Steven however. She was very fair and
petite, and had pretty ways of curving herself and throwing back her
head, and of spreading her hands when she talked. She seemed to like to
have the eyes of the room fixed on her. Quite different from the
Dudgeons, who in about two ticks stared one out of looking at them at
all. Mr. Leighton came in also, and what might be called her last thaw
was undergone by Mrs. Dudgeon in the pleasure of meeting him. If she
had her ideas on beaded cushions, she had certainly no objections to Mr.
Leighton. In five minutes he was explaining to her that sea trout are
to be discovered in fresh water lakes at certain seasons of the year.
Unfortunately, just then Mrs. Dudgeon happened to look out of the
windows. There were three long ones, and each opened out on that sunny
day to the lawn at the side of the house. If Mrs. Dudgeon had kept her
eye on the Louis Seize clock or the famous Monticelli, all might have
gone well, but she preferred to look out of the window. In spite of the
general hilarity of the party around her, her action in looking out
seemed to impress them all. Everybody except Mr. Leighton looked out
also, and then came an ominous silence.
Mr. Maclean giggled.
This formed a link to a burst of conversation. Jean turned to Miss
Steven and engaged her in a whirlwind of talk. Cuthbert vainly
endeavoured to move the stony glance of Mrs. Dudgeon once more in the
direction of his father. Dr. Harry wildly asked Mabel to play
something.
Mabel never forgave him.
Mrs. Dudgeon immediately became preternaturally polite, said she had
often heard of the musical proclivities of the Misses Leighton, and
Mabel had really to play.
"Oh, Harry," she exclaimed, "I never played with a burden like this on
my mind, never in all my life. The party to-night--and that mayonnaise
(it will keep maying, won't it?)--and Elma goodness knows where with
Adelaide Maud, and those kids in the garden--couldn't Cuthbert go and
slay them?"
She dashed into a Chopin polonaise.
The kids in the garden were what had upset Mrs. Dudgeon. There were
two--evidently playing "catch me if you can" with one of the
maid-servants--the one who had shown them in. She rushed about in a
manner which looked very mad. This exhibition on the drawing-room side
of the house! Really--these middle class people!
Mrs. Dudgeon extended the lorgnette to looking at them once more.
A horizontal bar was erected in a corner of the lawn. Towards this the
eccentric maid-servant seemed to be making determined passes,
frantically prevented every now and again by the two young girls. The
chords of the "railway polonaise" hammered out a violent accompaniment.
Mabel could play magnificently when in a rage. Little Miss Steven was
enchanted.
Nearer came the maid-servant to the horizontal bar. At last she reached
it. May and Betty sat down plump on the lawn in silent despair. Lance
pulled himself gently and gracefully up. Not content with getting
there, he kissed his hand to the unresponsive drawing-room windows. To
do him justice, there was little sign for him that any one saw him, and
Mabel's piano playing seemed to envelop everything. He did some
graceful things towards the end of the polonaise, but with the last
chords became violently mischievous again. With a wild whirl he turned
a partial somersault. Mrs. Dudgeon shrieked. "Oh, that woman," said
she. Just then Lance stopped his whirlings and sent his feet straight
into the air. His skirts fell gracefully over his face. Dr. Harry
laughed a loud laugh, and at last Mr. Leighton asked what was the
matter.
"It's Lance," said Jean. "He has been playing tricks all the
afternoon."
Everything might have been forgiven except that Mrs. Dudgeon had been
taken in. She had screamed, "That woman."
She began to look about for Adelaide Maud.
"Will you be so kind as to tell my daughter that we must be going," she
said to Mr. Leighton.
Cuthbert volunteered to look for her.
Dr. Harry really did the neat thing. He went out for Lance and brought
him in with Betty and May. He hauled Lance by the ear to Mrs. Dudgeon.
"Here you see a culprit of the deepest dye."
Lance looked very rosy and mischievous, and Miss Steven, who had been
immersed in hysterical laughter since his exploit on the bar, was
delighted with him.
"I am so sorry," said Lance gravely, encouraged by this appreciation,
"but I promised mother that I should be an ornament to the company this
afternoon."
"Oh, Lance," said May, "how can you!"
"By 'mother,' of course I mean Mabel," said Lance to Mrs. Dudgeon in an
explanatory fashion. "She has grown so cocky since she put her hair
up."
Mrs. Dudgeon determined to give up trying to unravel the middle classes.
Mr. Maclean broke in. "Everybody spoils Lance, Mrs. Dudgeon. It isn't
quite his own fault; look at Miss Steven."
Miss Steven, always prompt to appreciate a person's wickedest mood, had
made an immediate friend of Lance.
"They are a great trial to us, these young people," said Mr. Leighton
gently.
The speech wafted her back to her gracious mood, and for a little while
longer she forgot that she had sent for Adelaide Maud.
Meanwhile Cuthbert endeavoured to discover what had happened to that
"delicious" person.
With swishing skirts, and gleam of golden hair under a white hat, Elma
had seen herself escort Adelaide Maud from the drawing-room to the
schoolroom. Adelaide Maud sat on a hassock in the room where "You don't
mean to say you were all babies," and Elma played "Anything you like" to
her.
Adelaide Maud's face became of the dreamy far-away consistency of Miss
Grace's--without the cap, and Elma felt her cup of happiness run over.
"Does your sister play like that?" asked Adelaide Maud.
"Far better," said Elma simply.
They heard the bars of the railway polonaise, and the schoolroom, being
just over the drawing-room, they had also the full benefit of Lance's
exploit.
Adelaide Maud laughed and laughed.
"Oh, what will Mrs. Dudgeon say?" asked Elma.
She told Adelaide Maud about the party, a frightful "breach of
etiquette," as Mabel informed her later. Adelaide Maud's face grew
serious and rather sad.
"What a pity you live in another ph--phrase of society," sighed Elma,
"or you would be coming too, wouldn't you?"
"Would you really ask me?" asked Adelaide Maud.
Ask her?
Did Adelaide Maud think that if the world were made of gold and one
could help one's self to it, one wouldn't have a little piece now and
again! She was just about to explain that they would do anything in the
world to ask her, when Cuthbert came into the room. Adelaide Maud got
so stiff at that moment, that immediately Elma understood that it would
never do to ask her to the party.
Cuthbert explained that Mrs. Dudgeon had sent him to fetch Miss Dudgeon.
"Oh," said Adelaide Maud.
She did not make the slightest move towards leaving, however.
She looked straight at Cuthbert, and Elma could have sworn she saw her
lip quiver.
"I believe I have to apologize to you," she said in a very cold voice.
"I cut out a dance, didn't I--at the Calthorps'!"
"Did you?" asked Cuthbert.
Elma wondered that he could be so negligent in speaking to Adelaide
Maud. She never could bear to see Cuthbert severe, and it had the
effect of terrifying her a trifle and making her take the hand of
Adelaide Maud in a defensive sort of manner.
Adelaide Maud held her hand quite tightly, as though Elma were really a
friend of some standing.
"I didn't intend to, but I know it seemed like it," said Adelaide Maud
in perfectly freezing tones.
Cuthbert looked at her very directly, and seemed to answer the freezing
side more than the apologizing one.
"Oh--a small thing of that sort, what does it matter"? he said grandly.
Adelaide Maud turned quite pale.
"Thank you," said she. "It's quite sweet of you to take it like that,"
and she marched out of the schoolroom with her skirts swishing and her
head high. No--it would never do to invite Adelaide Maud to the party.
Elma however had seen another side to this very dignified lady, and so
ran after her and took her hand again.
"You aren't vexed with me, are you?" she whispered.
Adelaide Maud at the turn of the stairs, and just at the point where
Cuthbert, coming savagely behind, could not see, bent and kissed Elma.
"What day do you go to Miss Grace's?" she asked.
"To-morrow at three," whispered Elma, with her plans quite suddenly
arranged.
"Don't tell," said Adelaide Maud, "I shall be there."
Mrs. Dudgeon departed with appropriate graciousness. The irrepressible
gaiety of the company round her had merely served to make her more
unapproachable. She greeted Adelaide Maud with a stare, and strove to
make her immediate adieus. Mr. Maclean, always ready to notice a
deficiency, remembered that Mr. Leighton had never met Adelaide Maud,
and forthwith introduced her. Adelaide Maud took this introduction
shyly, and Mr. Leighton was charmed with her. With an unfaltering
estimate of character he appraised her then as being one in a hundred
amongst girls. Adelaide Maud, on her part, showed him gentle little
asides to her nature which one could not have believed existed. Mrs.
Dudgeon grew really impatient at the constant interruptions which
impeded her exit.
"Mr. Leighton has just been telling me," she said by way of getting out
of the drawing-room, "that a little party is to be celebrated here
to-night. I fear we detain you all." Nothing could have been more
gracious--and yet! Mabel flushed. It seemed so like a children's
affair--that they should be having a party, and that the really
important people were actually clearing out in order to allow it to
occur.
Miss Steven said farewell with real regret.
"I don't know when I have had such a jolly afternoon," she said. "I
think I must get knocked over oftener. Though I don't want Mr. Leighton
to break his ribs every time. Do you know," she said in a most
heart-breaking manner, "I've been hardly able to breathe for thinking of
it. You can't think how nice it is to see you all so jolly after all."
When they had got into the Dudgeons' carriage, and were rolling swiftly
homewards, she yawned a trifle.
"What cures they are," she said airily.
Adelaide Maud, in her silent corner of the carriage, felt her third pang
of that memorable afternoon.
CHAPTER VIII
The Party
Nobody knew how anybody got dressed for the party, and certainly nobody
took any dinner to speak of. It was laid in the morning-room, and Mr.
Leighton said throughout that roystering meal that never again, no
matter how many ribs Cuthbert broke or how much sympathy he excited,
would he allow them to have a party.
The occasion became memorable, not only because of Cuthbert or the
mayonnaise, or the Dudgeons, but because on that night Robin Meredith
appeared. Mabel and Jean lately had already in quite a practical manner
begun to wonder whom Mabel would be obliged to marry. Jean was getting
very tall, and showed signs of being so near the grown-up stage herself,
that she was anxious to see Mabel disposed of, so as to leave the way
clear.
"The eldest of four ought to look sharp," she declared; "we can't allow
any trifling."
This seemed rather overwhelming treatment of Mabel, who was only
seventeen. But viewed from that age, even a girl of twenty-one is
sometimes voted an old maid, and Mabel was quite determined not to
become an old maid.
"There seems to be only George Maclean," she had sighed in a dismal way.
She was quite different from Elma, who continually dreamed of a duke.
George Maclean would do very well for Mabel, only, as Jean complained,
"George Maclean is a gentleman and all that kind of thing, but he has no
prospects." So they rather disposed of George Maclean, for immediate
purposes at least. Then came Mr. Meredith. After that, in the language
of the Leightons, it was all up with Mabel. She would simply have to
get engaged and married to Mr. Meredith.
Mr. Meredith was of middle height, with rather a square, fair face, and
a short cut-away dark moustache. He spoke in a bright concise sort of
way, and darted very quick glances at people when addressing them. He
came in with the Gardiners, and after shaking hands with Mrs. Leighton
he darted several quick glances round the room, and then asked abruptly
of Lucy Gardiner "Who was the tall girl in white?"
Here was the point where the fortunes of the Leighton girls became at
last crystallized, concrete. It is all very well to dream, but it is
much pleasanter to be sure that something is really about to happen.
None of this undercurrent was noticeable, however, in the general
behaviour of that imaginative four. They began the evening in a
dignified way with music. Every one either sang or played. Jean in her
usual hearty fashion dashed through a "party piece." Even Elma was
obliged to play the Boccherini Minuet, which she did with the usual
nervous blunders.
As Dr. Harry placed the music ready for her, she whispered to him,
"Whenever I lift my heels off the floor, my knees knock against each
other."
"Keep your heels down," said Dr. Harry with the immobile air of a
commanding officer.
Elma found the piano pedals, and in the fine desire to follow out Dr.
Harry's instructions played Boccherini with both pedals down throughout.
"How you do improve, Elma!" said May Turberville politely.
And Elma looked at her with a mute despair in her eyes of which hours of
laughter could not rid them. If only they knew, those people in that
room, if only they knew what she wanted to play, the melodies that came
singing in her heart when she was happy, the minor things when she was
sad! All she could do when people were collected to stare at her was to
play the Boccherini Minuet exceedingly badly. The weight of "evenings"
had begun already to rest on Elma. Her undoubted gifts at learning and
understanding music brought her into sharp prominence with her teachers
and family, but never enabled Elma to exhibit herself with advantage on
any real occasion.
It was all the more inexplicable that Mabel could at once dash into
anything with abandon and perfect correctness. Technique and
understanding seemed born in her. In the same way could she,
light-heartedly and gracefully, take the new homage of Mr. Meredith, who
made no secret of his interest in her from the first moment of entering
the drawing-room. Mabel received him as she received a Sonata by
Beethoven. With fleet fingers she could read the one as though she had
practised it all her life; with dainty manners she seemed to comprehend
Mr. Meredith from the start, as though she had been accustomed to
refusing and accepting desirable husbands from time immemorial. It put
her on a new footing with the rest of the girls. They felt in quite a
decided way, within a few days even, that the old, rather childish
fashion of talking about husbands was to be dropped, and that no jokes
were to be perpetrated in regard to Mr. Meredith. It began to be no fun
at all having an eligible sister in the house.
On this night, however, they were still children. About forty young
people, school friends of themselves and Cuthbert, sustained that gaiety
with which they had begun the afternoon. Even the musical part, where
Mr. Leighton presided and encouraged young girls with no musical talents
whatever to play and sing, passed with a certain amount of lightness.
Before an interlude of charades, a strange girl was shown in. She
giggled behind an enormous fan, and made a great show of canary-coloured
curls in the process. She seemed to have on rather skimpy skirts, and
she showed in a lumbering way rather large shiny patent shoes with flat
boys' bows on them.
There was a moment of indecision before Betty broke out with the remark,
"You might have had the sense to hide your feet, Lance."
The canary-coloured curls enabled Lance to look becomingly foolish. In
any case, Mr. Leighton could not prevent the intellectual part of the
evening from falling to bits. They had no more real music. Instead,
they fell on Lance and borrowed his curls, and made some good charades
till supper time.
"I can't help feeling very rocky about that supper," whispered Jean to
Mabel. "Yet we've everything--sandwiches, cake, fruit and lemonade, tea
and coffee. What can go wrong now?"
"Oh! the thing's all right," said Mabel, who was in a severely exalted
mood by this time.
They trooped into the dining-room, where girls were provided in a crushy
way with seats round the room, and boys ran about and handed them
things. Mrs. Leighton gave the head of the table to Mabel, who sat in
an elderly way and poured coffee. The salad was magnificent. Aunt
Katharine had come in "to look on." Mrs. Leighton told her how Mabel
had arranged forty-two plates that morning, with water-lily tomatoes cut
ready and chopped chicken in the centres, and had nearly driven Cook
silly with the shelves she used for storing these things in cool places.
"Wherever you looked--miles and miles of little plates with red water
lilies," said Mrs. Leighton. "It was most distracting for Cook. I
wonder the woman stays."
"What a mess," said Aunt Katharine. "You spoil these girls, you know,
Lucy."
"Oh--it's Mr. Leighton," said she sadly.
"I don't think mayonnaise is a very suitable thing for young people's
parties," said Aunt Katharine dingily.
By this time the white cake with "Cuthbert" in pink was handed solemnly
round. Every person had a large piece, it looked so good.
Every one said, "Walnut, how lovely," when they took the first bite.
Every one stopped at the second bite.
"Cuthbert," called out Mrs. Leighton after she had investigated her own
piece, "I notice that your father has none of the cake. Please take him
a slice and see that he eats it."
Mr. Leighton waved it away.
"I do not eat walnuts," said he.
Mrs. Leighton went to him.
"John, this is not fair, this is your idea of a party," she said. "You
ought to eat Cuthbert's cake."
"He can't," cried Jean; "nobody can. It's only Mabel who likes iced
marbles."
"You will all have to eat gingerbread," said the voice of Betty
hopefully.
Jean started up in great indignation with a large battered-looking
"orange iced cake" ready to cut.
"Betty always gets herself advertized first," she complained. "Please
try my orange icing."
They did--they tried anything in order to escape Mabel's walnuts. It
occurred to the girls that Mabel would be quite broken up at the
wretched failure of her wonderful cake--the Cuthbert cake too. It was
such a drop from their high pedestal of perfection. Even mummy, who had
been so much on her own high horse at all their successes, now became
quite feelingly sorry about the cake. She gave directions for having
the loose pieces collected and surreptitiously put out of sight, but the
large dish had to remain in front of Mabel. Mabel was still charmingly
occupied over her coffee cups. She poured in a pretty direct way and
yet managed to talk interestedly to Mr. Meredith. He was invaluable as
a helper.
"And now, at last," said she in a most winning manner, "you must have a
slice of my cake. I baked it myself, and it's full of walnuts. Don't
you love walnuts?"
"I do," said Mr. Meredith.
May Turberville nudged Betty, and Lance stared open-mouthed at the
courage of Mabel. He would do a good deal for the Leighton girls, but
he barred that particular cake. An electric feeling of comprehension
ran round the company. They seemed to know that Mabel was about to
taste her own cake and give a large slice to Mr. Meredith. They made
little airy remarks to one another in order to keep the conversation
going, so that Mabel might not detect by some sudden pause that every
one was watching her. One heard Julia Gardiner say in an intense manner
to Harry Somerton that the begonias at Mrs. Somerton's were a "perfect
dream." And Harry answered that for his part he liked football better.
Even Mr. Leighton noticed the trend of things, and stopped discussing
higher morality with Aunt Katharine.
Mabel seemed to take an interminable time. She gave Mr. Meredith a
large piece, and insisted besides on serving him with an unwieldy lump
of pink icing containing a large scrawly "e" from the last syllable of
Cuthbert's name.
"E--aw," brayed Lance gently, and Betty exploded into a long series of
helpless giggles.
"What a baby you are, Lance," said Mabel, amiably laughing. She bit
daintily at the walnut cake.
Mr. Meredith bit largely.
There was an enormous pause while they waited to see what he would do.
Cuthbert and Ronald Martin were near, aimlessly handing trifle and fruit
salad. Mr. Meredith helped with one hand to pass a cup.
"You know, Leighton," he said, "I have a great friend, he was one of
your year--Vincent Hope--do you remember him?"
Cuthbert stared. One mouthful was gone and Mr. Meredith was cheerfully
gulping another.
"What a digestion the man has," he thought, and next was plunged
politely in reminiscent conversation regarding his College days.
Mabel sat crunching quite happily at the despised walnut cake.
Lance approached her timidly.
"For Heaven's sake," he said, "give me a large cup of coffee for the
ostrich. The man will die if he isn't helped."
"Who on earth do you mean, Lance?" asked Mabel innocently.
"Meredith. Don't you see he has eaten the cake."
Mabel looked conscience-stricken. Her own slice had not dwindled much.
"It is rather chucky-stoney, isn't it?" she asked anxiously.
"It's terrific," said Lance sagely.
Mabel looked quite crushed for a moment, so crushed that even Lance's
mischievous heart relented.
"Never mind, Mabel," he comforted her. "If Meredith can do that much
for you without a shudder, he will do anything. It's a splendid test."
A golden maxim of Mrs. Leighton's flashed into Mabel's mind, "You never
know a man till he has been tried." It made her smile to think that
already they might be supposed to be getting to know Mr. Meredith
because of her villainous cake.
"The piece we tested wasn't so bad," she explained to Lance, quite
forgetting that she had skimmed that quantity in order to get plenty of
chopped walnuts into the "real" cake.
A few people in the room seemed fearfully amused, and poor Mabel in an
undefined manner began to feel decidedly out of it. Lance went about
like a conspirator, commenting on the appearance of "the ostrich." He
approached Cuthbert, asking him in an anxious manner how long the signs
of rapid poisoning might be expected to take to declare themselves after
a quadruple dose of walnut cake. Mr. Meredith unruffled, still handed
about cups for Mabel.
Jean was in a corner with her dearest friend Maud Hartley.
"Isn't it wonderful what love can do?" she remarked quite seriously. It
was a curious thing that Elma, who dreamed silly dreams about far-away
things, and was despised for this accordingly by the robust Jean, did
not become romantic over Mr. Meredith at all. She merely thought that
he must be fearfully fond of walnuts.
The supper was hardly a pleasure to her--or to Betty. Every dish was an
anxiety. They could almost count the plates for the different courses
in their desire to know whether each had been successfully disposed of.
There was no doubt about the trifle.
"What a pity Mabel didn't make it," sighed Jean. After all, Mabel had
only inspired the chicken salad, and even there Dr. Harry had made the
mayonnaise.
"It isn't much of a start for her with Mr. Meredith," she sighed
dismally, "if only we hadn't told anybody which was which."
Mr. Meredith took a large amount of trifle, praising it considerably.
This alarmed Lance more than ever.
"One good thing does not destroy a bad thing," he exclaimed. "The first
axiom to be learned in chemistry is that one smell does not kill
another. It is a popular delusion that it does. Meredith seems to have
been brought up on popular lines."
He posed in front of Cuthbert with his hands in his pockets.
"We are running a great risk," said he. "To-morrow morning Meredith may
be saying things about your sisters which may prevent us men from being
friends with him--for ever."
Above the general flood of conversation, Aunt Katharine's treble voice
might now be heard.
"Mabel," she said in a kind manner, "I must compliment you. When your
mother told me about this ridiculous party, I told her she was spoiling
you as she always does. In my young days we weren't allowed to be
extravagant and experiment in cooking whenever a party occurred. We
began with the 'common round, the daily task.'" Aunt Katharine sighed
heavily. "But I never knew you could make a trifle like this."
Mabel had been sitting like the others, trying to subdue the merriment
which Aunt Katharine's long speeches usually aroused. The wind-up to
this tirade alarmed her however. She would have to tell them all, with
Mr. Meredith standing there, that the trifle was not her trifle. She
would have to say that it was Betty's.
Before she could open her mouth however, the whole loyal regiment of
Leightons had forestalled her.
"Isn't it a jolly trifle!" they exclaimed. Mabel could even hear
Betty's little pipe joining in.
"Oh, but I must tell you," she began.
Cuthbert appeared at the doorway.
"Drawing-room cleared for dancing," said he. "Come along."
That finished it, and the girls were delighted with themselves. But one
little melancholy thing, for all her partisanship, disturbed Jean
considerably. Mr. Meredith, on giving his arm to Mabel for the first
dance, was heard distinctly to remark, "You make all these delicious
things as well as play piano! How clever of you."
And Mabel looking perfectly possessed floated round to the first waltz
as though she had not made a complete muddle of the walnut cake.
Jean did not regret their generosity, but she was saddened by it.
"It all comes of being the eldest," she confided to Maud, "We may stand
on our heads now if we like, but if anything distinguished happens in
the family, Mabel will get the credit of it."
CHAPTER IX
At Miss Grace's
Miss Grace sat crocheting in her white and gold drawing-room and Elma
played to her. Then the front door bell rang.
"Oh please, Miss Grace," said Elma with crimson cheeks, "that is
Adelaide Maud."
"She isn't coming, I hope, to disturb our afternoons, and your playing,"
asked Miss Grace anxiously.
"Oh, Miss Grace, she has eyes like yours and listens most
interrogatively," said Elma in the greatest alarm. The fear that Miss
Grace might be offended only now assailed her.
"Intelligently, dear," corrected Miss Grace.
"I never did truly think she would come," said Elma.
"Then, dear, it was not very polite to invite her." Miss Grace could
not bear that Elma should miss any point in her own gentle code of
etiquette.
"In justice to little Elma, I invited myself." The full-throated tones
of Miss Dudgeon's voice came to them from the door. "And what is more,
I said to Saunders, 'Let me surprise Miss Grace, I do not want to
disturb the music.'"
"And then of course the music stopped," said Miss Grace.
She kissed Adelaide Maud in a very friendly way.
"Oh, but it will go on again at once, if neither of you are offended,"
said Elma. She was much relieved.
"You must not be so afraid of offending people," said Miss Grace. "It
is a great fault of yours, dear."
As Adelaide Maud bent to kiss her, Elma was struck with the justice of
this criticism.
"I believe I might be as fascinating as Mabel if only I weren't afraid,"
she thought to herself. The reflection made her play in a minor key.
"Just let me say a few words to Miss Grace," had said Adelaide Maud.
"Play on and don't mind us for a bit."
Adelaide Maud spoke to Miss Grace in an undertone. Elma thought they did
it to let her feel at ease, and correspondingly played quite happily.
"I have seen Dr. Merryweather," said Adelaide Maud to Miss Grace. "He
says you must go off for a change at once."
"Dr. Merryweather!"
Miss Grace turned very pale.
"Exactly. I did it on my own responsibility. He was most concerned
about you. He said that what Dr. Smith had ordered you ought to carry
out."
"He was always very hard on Annie," said Miss Grace, who saw only one
side to such a proposal.
Adelaide Maud bent her head a trifle.
"You ought not to think of Miss Annie, at present," said she. "It isn't
right. It isn't fair to her either, supposing you turn really ill, what
would become of her?"
Neither noticed the lagging notes on the piano. Instead, in the
earnestness of their conversation, they entirely forgot Elma.
Miss Grace shook her head.
"I can't help it," she said. "Whatever happens to me, I must stay by my
bed-ridden sister. Who would look after her if I deserted her? What is
my poor well-being compared to hers!"
The notes on the piano fell completely away. Elma sat with the tears
raining down her face.
"Oh, Miss Grace," she said brokenly, "are you ill? Don't say you are
ill."
The sky had fallen indeed, if such a thing could be true, as Miss Grace
in a trouble of her own--and such a trouble--ill health--when Miss Annie
required her so much.
Adelaide Maud looked greatly discouraged.
"Now, Elma," she exclaimed abruptly, "Miss Grace is only a little bit
ill, and it's to keep her from getting worse that I'm talking to her.
We didn't intend you to listen. Miss Annie will wonder why the piano
has stopped. Be cheerful now and play a bit--something merrier than
what you've been at."
She pretended not to see that Miss Grace wiped her eyes a trifle.
"I make you an offer, Miss Grace. I shall come here every day and stay
and be sweet to every one. I shall take Miss Annie her flowers and her
books and her work, and I shall bark away all nasty intruders like a
good sheep dog. I shall keep the servants in a good temper--including
Saunders who is a love, and I promise you, you will never regret it--if
only you go away for a holiday--now--before you have time to be ill,
because you didn't take the thing at the start!"
(Could this be Adelaide Maud!)
Elma flung herself off the music stool, and rushed to Miss Grace.
"And oh, please, please, Miss Grace, let me go with you to see that you
get better. You never will unless some one makes you. You will just
try to get back to Miss Annie." Thus Elma sounded the first note of
that great quality she possessed which distinguished the thing other
people required and made her anxious to see it given to them.
A break in Miss Grace's calm determination occurred.
"Oh that, my love, my dear little love, that would be very pleasant."
She patted Elma's hand with anxious affection.
Adelaide Maud looked hopeful.
"Won't you leave it to us?" she asked, "to Dr. Smith to break it to Miss
Annie, as a kind of command, and to me to break it to Mr. Leighton as an
abject request? Because I believe this idea of Elma's is about as
valuable as any of mine. You must have some one with you who knows how
self-denying you are, Miss Grace. You ought to have Dr. Merryweather
with you in fact, to keep you in order."
"My dear, how can you suggest such a thing," said Miss Grace. She was
quite horrified.
"Dr. Smith," she turned to Elma, "has ordered me off to Buxton, to a
nasty crowded hotel where they drink nasty waters all day long."
"They don't drink the waters in the hotel, and the hotels are very
nice," corrected Miss Dudgeon.
"It will be very hot and crowded and dull," wailed Miss Grace. It was
astonishing how obstinate Miss Grace could be on a point where her own
welfare was concerned.
Elma clasped and unclasped her hands.
"A hotel! Oh, Miss Grace, how perfectly lovely!"
"There, you see," said Miss Dudgeon, wonderfully quick to notice where
her advantage came in, "you see what a delightful time you will confer
on whoever goes with you. Some of us love hotels."
Perhaps nobody ever knew what a golden picture the very suggestion
opened out to Elma. Already she was in a gorgeous erection with gilt
cornices and red silk curtains, like one she had seen in town. People
whom she had never met were coming and going and looking at her as
though they would like to speak to her. She would not know who their
aunts or cousins or parents were, and she shouldn't have to be
introduced. They would simply come to Miss Grace and, noticing how
distinguished she looked, they would say, "May I do this or that for
you," and the thing was done. She herself would be able to behave to
them as she always behaved in her daydreams, very correctly and
properly. She would never do the silly blundering thing which one
always did when other people were well aware of the reputation one was
supposed to bear. Didn't every one at home know, before she sat down to
play piano for instance, that she invariably made mistakes. Jean would
say, "Oh, Elma gets so rattled, you know," and immediately it seemed as
though she ought to get rattled. Nobody in the hotel would know this.
She saw herself playing to an immense audience without making a single
mistake. Then the applause--it became necessary to remember that Miss
Grace was still speaking.
Miss Grace sat with her hands folded nervously. She was quite erect in a
way, but there was invariably a pathetic little droop to her head and
shoulders which gave her a delicate appearance. A very costly piece of
creamy lace was introduced into the bodice of her grey gown, and on it
the locket which contained Miss Annie's portrait and hair rose and fell
in little agitated jerks. Miss Annie wore a corresponding locket
containing Miss Grace's portrait and hair, but these always lay
languorously on her white throat undisturbed by such palpitation as now
excited Miss Grace.
"Oh, my dear," she said to Miss Dudgeon, "you don't understand. The
gaiety of the place is nothing to me. It's like being here--where my
friends say to me how nice it is to have windows opening on to the high
road, where so many people pass. I tell them that it isn't those who
pass, it is those who come in who count. You passed for so long, my
dear."
She put her hand mutely on that of Adelaide Maud.
It was true then. Miss Grace hadn't known her all these years when the
Leighton girls talked about the Story Books so much, but only recently!
The Dudgeons must really be coming out of their shell.
Elma's eyes grew round with conjecture.
Why was Adelaide Maud so friendly now?
"It was really Dr. Merryweather," said Adelaide Maud.
A faint flush invaded Miss Grace's pallor.
"It is most kind of Dr. Merryweather. Years ago, I am afraid we rather
slighted him."
"Oh well, he keeps a very friendly eye on you, Miss Grace, and he says
you are to go to Buxton."
It became the first real trouble of Miss Grace's own life, that she
should have to go to Buxton. Adelaide Maud arranged it for her,
otherwise the thing would never have occurred. It was she who persuaded
Dr. Smith to put it this way to Miss Annie that it would be dangerous
for her to have the anxiety of Miss Grace's being ill at home, and most
upsetting to the household. It was better that the excursion should be
looked upon as a holiday graciously granted by Miss Annie, the donor of
it, than an imperative measure ordered by the doctor for the saving of
Miss Grace.
Miss Grace wondered at the ready acquiescence of Miss Annie. She seemed
almost pleased to let her sister go. In a rather sad way, Miss Grace
began to wonder whether, after all, she might not have released herself
years ago. Would Annie have minded? The progress of this malady which
now asserted itself, she had quietly ignored for so long, that only a
darting pain, which might attack her in the presence of Miss Annie, had
compelled her to consult Dr. Smith. He was astonished at what she had
suffered.
"You do not deserve to have me tell you how fortunate it is that after
all we have nothing malignant to discover," he told her. "But you will
become really ill, helpless occasionally, if you do not take this in
hand now." Just after he had gone, Adelaide Maud called. She came to
ask for money in connection with the church, but she stayed to talk over
Miss Grace's symptoms. The grey shadow on Miss Grace's face had alarmed
her.
"Aren't you well, Miss Grace?" she asked sympathetically. Then for the
first time since Miss Annie had gone to bed, Miss Grace had given way
and confessed what the trouble was to Adelaide Maud.
It became astonishing to think how rapidly things could happen in so
tiny and so slow a place.
Here they were now, in a happy confidential trio, the moving inspirator
that smart, garden-party person, Adelaide Maud.
The Leighton girls could not believe it. They had, with the exception
of Elma, reached a hopeless condition with regard to the Story Books.
The Dudgeons had so palpably shown themselves, even although graciously
polite throughout, to be of so entirely different a set to the
Leightons. None of the girls except Adelaide Maud had called. And
after what Cuthbert had done! Elma certainly felt the difference that
might occur where Miss Grace and Miss Annie were concerned. "Why
haven't we a footman and an odd man?" asked Jean viciously. "Then it
would be all right."
Now came the invitation for Elma to go with Miss Grace.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Leighton were greatly touched. Mr. Leighton put his
hand on Elma's shoulder.
"When you can make yourself indispensable to your best friends, that is
almost as great a thing as playing the Moonlight Sonata without a
mistake," said he.
But both Mrs. Leighton and he refused to let Elma go. They called on
Miss Grace to explain. The fact that they had left Elma in a state of
despair that bordered on rebellion made them more firm.
"Elma is so young," said Mrs. Leighton, "and so highly strung and
sensitive, I can't let her go with an easy mind. She has visited so
seldom, and then invariably lain awake at nights with the excitement. It
wouldn't be good for you, Miss Grace. I should have you both very much
on my mind."
Adelaide Maud was there.
"I see your point, Mrs. Leighton," she said brightly. "But Elma knows
Miss Grace so well, wouldn't it be just like going with you or Mr.
Leighton."
Mr. Leighton interposed.
"It's more for the sake of Miss Grace. She must have some one regarding
whom she does not require to be anxious. Elma is a dreamy little being,
and might turn home-sick in an hour, or frightened if Miss Grace were a
little ill--anything might occur in that way."
"But she is nearly thirteen. Some day she must be cured of
home-sickness, and Miss Grace will take her maid," said Adelaide Maud.
"Oh, Mr. Leighton, don't hold in your daughters too much! It's so hard
on them later."
Adelaide Maud looked quite pathetic.
"It isn't so with all of them," said Mrs. Leighton. "Jean is quite
different. Jean can go anywhere."
Underneath Mrs. Leighton's kind, loving ways lay a superb respect for
the domineering manners of her second daughter.
"I should never be afraid of Jean's lying awake at night, or turning
home-sick. She is much too sensible."
Miss Grace became impressed with the virtues of Jean.
"Then Jean might come," she proposed apologetically.
Adelaide Maud could not forgive her. After having awakened that radiant
look in Elma's eyes, to weakly propose that she might take the robust
Jean!
Mrs. Leighton's eyes wandered to her husband.
"Jean grows so fast. Perhaps a change would do her good," she suggested
vaguely.
"I should feel much more confident of Jean," said he.
So it was arranged.
Elma never forgot it. She wept silently in her room, and accepted
comfort from no one, not even her mother.
"There is one thing, Jean oughtn't to have said to mother she would go.
She put that in her mind before mother went out. I knew it was all up
then. Jean will always get what she wants, all her life, and I shall
have to back out. Just because I can't play sonatas without mistakes
they think I cannot do anything."
Elma found Betty's shoulder very comforting.
A remark of Adelaide Maud's rankled in Mr. Leighton's mind. He was not
altogether happy at having to act the dragon to Elma in any case.
Adelaide Maud had got him quietly by herself.
"Don't let little Elma begin giving up things to those sisters of hers
too soon, Mr. Leighton. Unselfishness is all very well. But look at the
helpless thing it has made of Miss Grace."
Then she relented at sight of his face.
"I'm almost as disappointed as Elma, you see," she said radiantly.
Mr. Leighton tried to put it out of his mind, but Elma, sobbing in her
bedroom, had at last reached a stage where she couldn't pretend that
nothing had hurt her, a stage where the feelings of other people might
be reckoned not to count at all. It was an unusual condition for her to
be in. She generally fought out her disappointments in secret. Her
father came to her finally, and began smoothing her hair in a sad sort
of way.
"You aren't looking on your own father as your worst enemy?" he asked
her kindly.
Elma's sobs stopped abruptly.
"I was," she said abjectly.
It was part of the sincerity of her nature that she immediately
recognized where the case against herself came in.
"I'm sorry about Jean," said Mr. Leighton. "It didn't strike me at the
time that it would be such a treat to either of you, you see. And we
chose the one who seemed most fitted for going with Miss Grace."
"Mabel might have gone," wailed Elma.
Mabel! Not for a moment had the claims of Mabel been mentioned. Mr.
Leighton was completely puzzled.
Elma in an honourable manner felt that probably she might be giving away
Mabel to an unseeing parent. Mabel wanted, oh very much, to stay at
home just then.
"But of course Jean wanted to go," she said hurriedly. "more than Mabel
did."
"Some day you will all have your turn," said Mr. Leighton consolingly.
"I know it's very dull being at home with your parents! Isn't it?"
Elma laughed a little.
"It isn't that," she said, "but it would be lovely--in a hotel--with a
maid, you know--of your own! Such fun--seeing the people. And Miss
Grace wanted me."
Mr. Leighton stroked her hair.
"I liked her wanting you. I shall never forget that," said he.
"Oh!" Elma gave a little gulp of pleasure. This was worth a great
deal. There was really nothing on earth like being complimented by
one's father. She sidled on Mr. Leighton's knee and put her arms round
his neck. He still stroked her hair.
"You must remember that it isn't only in hotels that you see life," he
said, "or on battle-fields that you fight battles. It's here at home,
where one apparently is only sheltered and dull. It's always easy to
get on for a day or two with new, or outside friends. But it's your own
people who count. Don't make it disagreeable for Jean to go with Miss
Grace." His voice came in the nature of a swift command. After all,
her mother and father had arranged it, and the consciousness came down
on her of how she slighted those two, dearer than any, in being so
rebellious.
"I won't," said Elma. Quite a determined little line settled at her
quivering lips, "But I never felt so bad in my life."
"Oh well, we shall see what can be done about that," said Mr. Leighton.
And it pleased him more than a battle-field of victories could have done
to see Elma come into her own again.
"Do you think you could try the Moonlight Sonata now?" he asked
abruptly, looking at his watch.
It was his hobby that he must keep at least one girl at the piano in the
evenings.
"Not without a lot of mistakes," said Elma.
But she played better that night than she had ever done.
CHAPTER X
Compensations
Miss Grace brought home a delicate silver purse and a silver chain set
with torquoise matrix from Buxton for Elma.
Mr. Leighton shook his head over the pretty gift.
"Bribery and corruption," said he.
But by that time Elma's soul had soared far above the heights or depths
of triumph or pettiness in connection with the sojourn of Miss Grace.
Life had been moving swiftly and wonderfully. Jean indeed came home
from hotel life, full of stories of its inimitable attractions; and
nobody, although longing to be, had really been much impressed. Jean
served to mark the milestone of their own development, that was all.
She had left at one stage and come back at another. Where she had
imagined their standing quite still, they had been travelling new roads,
looking back on their childish selves with interest.
Mabel and Elma had been thrown much together, and Mabel had grown to
depend on the silent loyalty with which Elma invariably supported her in
the trying time now experienced in connection with Mr. Meredith. Where
Jean, bolt outright, complained that already Mabel had known him for a
month or two, and yet no hint of an engagement could be discovered, Elma
sympathized with Mabel's horror of any engagement whatever.
"It would be lovely to have a ring, and all that kind of thing," Mabel
had confided. "But fancy having to talk to papa and mamma about it!"
It did not impede her friendship with Mr. Meredith however. He had
found a flower which he intended to pluck, and he guarded it to all
intents and purposes as one from which he would warn off intruders. But
the reserve which made Mabel sensitive in regard to anything definite,
her extreme youth, above all the constant espionage of her parents and
sisters, led him to a tacit understanding of his privileges, a situation
appalling to the business-like Jean.
"If I had had my hair up, I should have had two proposals at Buxton,"
said she, and the remark became historic.
Cuthbert put it in his notebook. Whenever he wanted to overcome the
authority of Jean he produced and read it. She found her family a
trifle trying on her arrival. She wanted to be able to inform them how
they should dress, and had a score of other things ready to retail to
them. Yet most of them fell quite flat, just as though she had had no
special advantages in being at Buxton.
Mr. and Mrs. Leighton talked this over together.
"It makes me think," said Mrs. Leighton, "that you are not altogether
wrong in crowding them up at home here. Jean got variety, but she seems
to have lost a little in balance."
"Still, that is just where experience teaches its lesson," said Mr.
Leighton. "To get balance, one must have the experience. Yet Mabel, in
an unaccountable manner, seems to be perfectly balanced before she has
received any experience at all."
"Ah! I expect she will still have her experiences," said Mrs. Leighton
in her pessimistic way. "No girl gets along without some unpleasant
surprise. Betty is longing for one. Betty complains that in story
books something tragic or something wonderful happens to girls whenever
they begin to grow up, but that nothing happens in this place. Nobody
loses money--if you please--and nobody gets thrown out on the world in a
pathetic manner to work for a living, for instance."
"Do they want to work for their living?"
"They do want to be sensational," said Mrs. Leighton with a sigh, "and
as Elma says, 'We are neither rich enough nor poor enough for that.'"
"Thank providence," said Mr. Leighton.
His girls were much more of a problem to him than the direct Cuthbert,
who had shown a capacity for going his own way rather magnificently from
the moment he had left school. Mr. Leighton was determined to give his
girls an object in life, besides the ordinary one of getting married.
"There is great solace in the arts," he had often affirmed, making it
seem impossible that a girl should look on the arts as ends in
themselves, as a man would. "A girl must be trained to interruptions,"
he used to declare. He made rather a drudge of their music in
consequence of these theories in connection with a career, but the hard
taskmaster in that direction opened a willing indulgence in almost any
other. It alarmed him when Mr. Meredith appeared so conspicuously on
the scene, when Mr. Meredith's sister called and invited Mabel to dine,
when invitations crossed, until the Merediths and themselves became very
very intimate. Elma had the wonderful pleasure of being allowed to
accompany Mabel. In the absence of Jean, she fulfilled that sisterly
position in a loyal way, loving the exaltation of going out with Mabel,
becoming very fond of the Merediths in the process. They had only
recently come from town to live near the Gardiners, and the whole place
did its duty in calling on them. There were only Mr. Meredith and his
sister, and both were of the intensely interesting order rather than of
the frank and lively nature of the like of the Leightons. Mr. Meredith
sang, and Miss Meredith's first words to Mabel were to the effect that
he no longer wanted his sister to play for him after having had the
experience of Mabel as an accompanist.
"Aren't you glad papa made us musical?" asked Betty of Mabel after that
compliment.
Mabel was glad in more ways than one. But it seemed a little hard that
just then Mr. Leighton should insist on her going in for a trying
examination in the spring.
"When she ought to be getting the 'bottom drawer' ready," complained
poor Jean.
Nothing moved for Jean in the family just as she expected. She began to
wonder whether she shouldn't go out as a governess. _Jane Eyre_ had
always enthralled her. It was one way of seeing life, to be very
down-trodden, and then marry the magnificent over-bearing hero.
As a companion to Miss Grace, she had been a great success. Indeed,
even Adelaide Maud was bound to confess that Jean had been just the
person to go with Miss Grace. Jean, in spite of her Jane Eyre theories,
was so down on self-effacement. Her frank direct ways were the best
tonic for a lady who had never at any time been courageous. Miss Grace
wrote continually to Elma, "Jean has been very good in doing this--or
that," until Elma, swallowing hard lumps of mortification, had at last
to believe that she never could have done these determined, cool-hearted
things for Miss Grace in the same capable manner. She often wondered
besides whether, even to have had the delight of being at Buxton, she
could have dropped the glamour of finding a new sister in Mabel, and of
being the daily companion of Adelaide Maud. For the time had now come,
when, on being shown into Miss Annie's drawing-room, her duke,
clean-shaven and of modern manners, had ceased to be really diverting,
and in fact often forgot to attend to her in the pause when she awaited
the coming of Adelaide Maud.
Adelaide Maud kept her word. She reigned as vice-queen over Miss
Annie's household, indulging that lady in all her little whims, for Miss
Grace's sake, and never omitted a single day for calling and seeing that
Miss Annie was comfortable. Adelaide Maud had theories of her own. She
said that every one in Ridgetown attended to the poor, but that she
believed in attending to the rich.
"Now who would ever have looked after Miss Grace if we hadn't?" she
asked Elma.
Mrs. Dudgeon imagined she had other reasons for being so devoted to Miss
Annie, and considered that Helen wasted her time in applying so much of
it to a bedridden invalid.
"Whom do you see there?" she asked stonily.
"Principally Saunders," said Helen, whose good temper was unassailable.
"Saunders is a duck."
The "duck," however, was a trifle worried with these changes, "not
having been accustomed to sich for nigh on twenty-five years, mum," as
he explained to Mrs. Leighton.
But the great boon lay in the restored health of Miss Grace. She came
home shyly as ever, but with a fresh bloom on her face. What withered
hopes that trip recalled to life, what memories of sacrificial days gone
by, what fears laid past--who knows! She was very gentle with Miss
Annie, and boasted of none of her late advantages as Jean did. Indeed,
one might have thought that the events of the world had as usual taken
place in Miss Annie's bedroom. But, with a courage born of new health
and better spirits. Miss Grace called one day on Dr. Merryweather. In
a graceful manner, as though the event had only occurred, she apologized
to him for the slight offered by Miss Annie.
"I hope you know that you still have our supreme confidence," she said.
"It was your kind interest which persuaded me to go to Buxton."
Dr. Merryweather seemed much affected. He shook her hand several times,
but his voice remained gruff as she had always remembered and slightly
feared it.
"You must be exceedingly careful of yourself, Miss Grace," he said
bluntly, "Miss Annie has had too much of you."
Too much of her. Ah, well, she could never reproach herself for having
spared an inch of her patience, an atom of her slender strength.
"Remember," said Dr. Merryweather, "courage does not all lie in
self-sacrifice, though"--and he looked long at the kind beautiful eyes
of Miss Grace--"a great deal of it is invested there."
He held her hand warmly for a second again, and that was the end of it.
Miss Grace went home fortified to a second edition of her life with Miss
Annie.
Adelaide Maud gave up her semi-suzerainty over the masterful Saunders
with some real regret. It was fun for her to be engaged in anything
which did not entail mere social engagements. Miss Annie liked her
thoroughly, liked the swirl of her tweed skirts, the daintiness of her
silk blouses, the gleam of her golden hair. Adelaide Maud had straight
fine features, pretty mauve eyes ("They are mauve, my dear, no other
word describes them," she declared), very clearly arched eyebrows, and
"far too determined a chin." "Where did you get your chin?" asked Miss
Annie continually.
"My father had the face of an angel. It wasn't from him," said Adelaide
Maud. "I have my mother to thank for my chin."
"Well, Heaven help the man who tries to cross you, my dear," said Miss
Annie, who had a very capable chin of her own, as it happened. The
tired petulant look of the invalid only showed at the droop to the
corners of her mouth.
Elma could no longer interest Adelaide Maud in Cuthbert. It seemed as
though he had no further existence. Until one day when she told her
that Cuthbert had an appointment which would last throughout the summer,
and keep him tied to town. Then the chin of Adelaide Maud seemed to
resolve itself into less chilly lines.
"Oh, won't you miss him?" she suddenly asked.
Adelaide Maud was the most comprehending person. She pulled Elma to her
and kissed her when Elma said that it wasn't "missing," it simply wasn't
"living" without Cuthbert.
"I'm so sorry you quarrelled with him," she said to Adelaide Maud.
Adelaide Maud grew stonily angry.
"Quarrel with him?" she asked.
It reminded Elma of the Dudgeon's first call
"Oh, please don't," she cried in alarm.
"Then I won't," said Adelaide Maud, "but will you kindly inform me when
I quarrelled with your brother Cuthbert."
It was exactly in the tone of one who would never think of quarrelling
with the Leighton set. Elma grew quite pale, then her courage rose.
"He thinks such a lot of you, and you don't think anything of him. Just
as though we weren't good enough!"
"Oh, Elma," said Adelaide Maud.
"And he likes you, and keeps things you drop, and you won't even speak
to him."
"Keeps things I drop!"
The murder was out.
"Oh, I promised not to tell, how awful."
Adelaide Maud grew very dignified.
"What did I drop? Oh! I think I remember--my handkerchief!"
Mrs. Dudgeon had reflected openly on the fact that it had never been
returned to Helen.
"I wanted to keep it till we saw you again, but he said he would give it
to you when you were nice to him, or something like that."
"Till I was nice to him!" The chin dimpled a trifle.
"Somehow, I would rather he kept it," said Adelaide Maud dreamily.
"Shall I tell him that?" asked Elma anxiously.
"Tell him--what nonsense! You mustn't tell him a syllable. You mustn't
say you've told me. It would be so ignominious for him to hear that I
knew he had been thieving! Thieving is the word," said Adelaide Maud.
Although she talked in a very accusing manner, her voice seemed kind.
"Mayn't I tell him you didn't mean to quarrel?" asked Elma anxiously.
"You don't know what you are to all of us."
Here she sighed deeply.
"No," said Adelaide Maud, "you mustn't tell him anything. I think he
must just wait as he suggested, until I am nice to him."
"Until you deserved it, he said," cried Elma, triumphantly, remembering
properly at last. "I knew it was something like that."
"Then he may wait until he is a hundred," said Adelaide Maud with her
face in a flame.
It was difficult after this ever to talk to Adelaide Maud about Cuthbert
with any kind of freedom or pleasure.
Elma went home that evening in the bewilderment of an early sunset.
Bright rays turned the earth golden, the leaves on the trees laid
themselves flat in heavy blobs of green in yellow sunlight, the sky
faded to a glimmering blue in the furthermost east. A shower of rain
fell from a drifting cloud and the drops hit in large splotches, first
on Elma's hat, on her hand, and then in an indefinite manner stopped.
As she turned into her own garden, the White House seemed flooded in a
golden glow of colour.
Then at last they heard thunder in the distance.
Elma never forgot that shining picture, nor the thunder in the distance.
It seemed the picture of what life might be, beautiful and safe in one's
own home, thunder only in the distance. The threatening did not alarm
her, but the remembrance of it always remained with her. When thunder
really began to peal for the Leighton family, she tried to be thankful
for the picture of gold.
CHAPTER XI
The Split Infinitive
Guests at the Leightons' were divided into two classes. There were those
who were friends of Mr. Leighton, and who therefore were interested in
art, or literature, or science, or public enterprise, but were not
expected to go further; and there were those who came in a general way
and who might be expected to be interested in anything from a game of
tennis to a tea party. Of the first might be reckoned the like of Mr.
Sturgis, who painted pictures in a magnificent manner, and who, at the
end of a large cigar, would breathe the heresies on the teaching of art
which for ever paralyzed the artistic abilities of Elma. Mr. Sturgis
was quite young enough for an Aunt Katharine public to quote his
eligibility on all occasions.
"You don't understand, Aunt Katharine," Mabel told her once. "Nobody
seems to understand that a man, even a young man, may adore papa without
having to adore us at the same time. Mr. Sturgis is quite different
from your kind of young man."
"Different from Robin, I suppose," sighed Aunt Katharine.
"Yes, quite different from Robin," said Mabel sedately. Robin had
certainly from the first put Mr. Leighton into the position of being his
daughter's father. Mr. Sturgis, on the other hand, found his first
friend in Mr. Leighton because he had such a nice discriminating and
most sympathetic enthusiasm for Art. Besides which Mr. Leighton had the
attributes of an exceptional man in various respects.
The girls put Mr. Sturgis on the same high plane as their father and
admired him openly accordingly. But there were others whom they put on
this plane by reason of their accomplishments and yet did not admire at
all.
Amongst these was the "Split Infinitive."
The first call on the part of Professor Theo. Clutterbuck was one never
to be forgotten. He found a roomful of people who, so far as his own
attitude to them was concerned, might have been so many pieces of
furniture. Mr. Sturgis had at least the artist's discrimination which
made him observe one's appearance, and he also allowed one to converse
occasionally; but Dr. Clutterbuck rushed his one subject at Mr. Leighton
from the moment of his entrance, and after that no one else existed.
"What more or less could you expect from the father of the Serpent?"
asked Betty.
Lance was responsible for the nickname.
The Serpent, the elf-like daughter of the Professor, staying next to the
Turbervilles, had introduced herself in a violent manner long ago to
Betty and Elma. Sitting one day, hidden high in the maple tree, she
cajoled her cat silently over the Turberville wall and from a wide
branch sent him sprawling on a tea table. From the moment that the black
cat drew a white paw from the cream jug, and a withering giggle from the
maple tree disclosed the wicked little visage of the Serpent, war had
been declared between the Clutterbucks and the Turbervilles. Lance
occasionally removed the barrier and met the Professor in company with
his own father.
"An awful crew," his verdict ran. "The Past Participle (Mrs.
Clutterbuck) can't open her poor little timid mouth but the Split
Infinitive is roaring at her. Consequently she keeps as silent as the
grave."
"Will you kindly explain?" said Mrs. Leighton patiently. "It's a long
time since I studied grammar in that intimate way. What is the Split
Infinitive and why the Past Participle?"
"It's like this, Mrs. Leighton, simple when you know--or when you are
married to a brute like Clutterbuck," said Lance mischievously. "I beg
your pardon. I know I ought to say that he is a genius and all that sort
of thing. But 'brute' seems more explicit."
"Go on with your story," said Mrs. Leighton.
"Well--Clutterbuck married Mrs. Clutterbuck."
"That's generally the end of a story, isn't it?" asked Jean.
Lance was not to be interrupted.
"Trust a boy for gossip," exclaimed Betty. "Fire away, Lance."
"My aunt knew them," said Lance. "She, Mrs. C., was a little dear,
awfully pink and pretty you know, and Clutterbuck, a big raw thin thing
with wild sort of hair and dreamy manners. Well, they were awfully
proud and pleased with themselves, and started off for their honeymoon
like two happy babies."
"Will you kindly tell me how you knew this?" asked Mrs. Leighton
helplessly.
"I heard my aunt telling my mother," said Lance.
"There's a gleam in your eye which I don't quite trust," Elma remarked
sedately. "Go on."
"Everything went well," exclaimed Lance, "until one morning when Mrs.
C., all rosy and chiffony you know, said 'My dear Theo, I don't remember
to ever have been so happy.' Clutterbuck rose from the table, as pale
as death. She cried, 'Theo, Theo, tell me, what is wrong?' 'Wrong,'
cried Professor Clutterbuck, 'you have used the Split Infinitive!'
Gospel, Mrs. Leighton," said Lance as a wind-up. "She's been the Past
Participle ever since."
There was this amount of truth in Lance's story: that Dr. Clutterbuck
was distinguished in his own career as Professor of Geology, that his
English was irreproachable; and that Mrs. Clutterbuck had practically no
English, since she was hardly ever known to speak at all. She shunned
society; and the same introspective gaze of the Professor, which had
skimmed the Leighton drawing-room and found there only the striking
personality of Mr. Leighton, skimmed his own home in a like abstracted
manner, and took no notice of the most striking personality in
Ridgetown--Elsie, his daughter.
It was the black cat episode which precipitated the nickname of "The
Serpent." Lance had always declared that this girl had an understanding
with animals which was nothing short of uncanny. He happened to read
_Elsie Venner_, and the names being alike, and temperament on similar
lines, he immediately christened her the Serpent. He caught her out at
numberless pranks which were never reported to the diligent ears of
Betty and May. One was that she had climbed to his bedroom and
purloined a suit of clothes.
There was no end to what might be expected of this lonely little person.
Years ago, Betty and May had turned their backs on her in the cruel
haphazard manner of two friends who might easily dispose of an outsider.
Betty and May despised the Serpent because she "had a cheap governess,"
"couldn't afford to go to school," and "wore her hair in one plait."
The lonely little Serpent never properly forgave these insults.
Mrs. Leighton did not wholly encourage Lance in his tale.
"I do not think I approve of your being so down on these people," she
said: "and if there is any truth in what you say, it is very tragic
about poor Mrs. Clutterbuck, though she does not strike me as being a
very capable person."
"Capable," asked Lance. "Who could remain capable, Mrs. Leighton, with
a cold tap continually running freezing remarks down one's back. Don't
you think it's a miracle she's alive?"
Mrs. Leighton preferred to remain on her smooth course of counsel.
"It never does to judge people like that," she exclaimed. "You do not
know. To put it in a selfish manner, one day you may find the
Clutterbucks being of more service to you than any one on earth."
She pulled at her knitting ball.
"You girls talk a great deal of romance and nonsense about people like
the Dudgeons. Why don't you think something nice about that poor little
Serpent for a change?"
The girls remembered not very long afterwards the prophetic nature of
these remarks. That they should cultivate the Clutterbucks for any
reason at all, however, seemed at that moment impossible.
Dr. Merryweather called the same afternoon.
It was one of the coincidences of life that he should immediately talk
of the Clutterbucks.
"Know them?" he asked. "I think your husband does, doesn't he? Do you
call on the wife at all?"
"No," answered Mrs. Leighton. "I never feel that I could get on with
her very well either. Mr. Leighton meets the Professor and they talk a
lot together, but it's quite away from domestic matters."
"It would be a bit of a kindness, I think," said the old Doctor, "your
calling, I mean. There's too little public spirit amongst women, don't
you think?"
"Oh, wouldn't it be a little impertinent perhaps to call, in that
spirit?" asked Mrs. Leighton.
"Well, I don't know. The child is running wild. The parents are a pair
of babies where healthy education is concerned. Result, the child has
no friends, and expends her affection, she has stores of it, on her
animals. A dog gets run over and dies. What do you get then? She
never squeaks. Not a moan, you observe. But she sits up in that tree
of hers with a cat to do any comforting she may want--and her hair
begins to come out in patches."
Mrs. Leighton's knitting fell to her lap.
"Her hair is coming out in patches?" she asked in a horrified voice.
"Yes. What else would you have when a child is allowed to mope.
Something is bound to happen. Clergymen are of use when a child's
naughty. But when it mopes itself ill, we are called in. Yet it's a
clergyman's task after all. This child, on the way to being a woman,
has never had one friend. Her mother is too timid to be really friendly
with any one, and the husband is wrapped in his dry-as-dust
philosophy--and where are you with a tender child like that?"
"But if Mrs. Clutterbuck can't be friendly with any one, why should I
call?" asked Mrs. Leighton hopelessly.
"Your girls might become friendly with the child," said he. "I'm afraid
I don't make a very good clergyman."
"They call her the Serpent, you know," said Mrs. Leighton, "very naughty
of them. I shall do my best, Doctor. I didn't know her hair was coming
out in patches."
Dr. Merryweather might be complimented on his new profession after all.
It had been a master stroke to refer to the patches. Mrs. Leighton had
known of its happening after illness or great worry. That a child
should suffer in this quiet moping manner seemed pathetic.
"Yet, I don't think I'm the person to do a thing of this sort," Mrs.
Leighton said hopelessly to Miss Meredith later in the day. "I do so
object to intrude on people. I should imagine it indelicate of any one
else to do the same to myself, you know."
"Very awkward, certainly," replied Miss Meredith primly.
"Oh, mummy," said Elma, "you know how kind Miss Grace is or Miss Annie.
They say 'Isn't Betty a little pale at present?' and you get her a
tonic. You think nothing of that. It's just the same with the
Clutterbucks. Betty ought to behave herself and go and call with you,
and get the Serpent to come. I think she looks a jolly little thing."
Elma was quite alone in that opinion.
"Jolly!" said Jean, "you might as well talk of a toadstool's being
jolly. Still, Betty isn't a child. She shouldn't be squabbling. Betty
ought to call."
"You know Dr. Clutterbuck, wouldn't you call on his wife?" asked Mrs.
Leighton of Miss Meredith.
"Oh, I'm afraid I don't know him well enough. Robin rather dislikes
him--and, well, we have no young people, you see."
Miss Meredith was lame but definite.
"Then the sooner the better. Betty and I call to-morrow," said Mrs.
Leighton.
They did, and to their astonishment found Mrs. Clutterbuck dimly but
surely pleased. Nobody remained timid very long in Mrs. Leighton's kind
presence, and the mutual subject of days long ago when it was no crime
to talk of babies, broke the ice of years of reserve in Ridgetown with
Mrs. Clutterbuck. The Serpent, after many pilgrimages on the part of
the one maid to the garden, finally appeared. Mrs. Clutterbuck's
restraint returned with the evident unwillingness of Elsie's attitude.
Both retreated to the dumb condition so trying to onlookers.
The Serpent indeed paid Betty out for many months of torture. Her calm,
disconcerting gaze never wavered, as she watched every movement of that
ready enemy. Mrs. Leighton made her only mistake in showing definitely
that she wanted to be kind to Elsie. That little lady's pale visage
looked fiercely out at her and chilled the words that were intended to
come.
It was as Betty described it a most "terrifying interview."
In the midst of it came a telegram to Mrs. Clutterbuck.
"Oh, you will excuse me," said she nervously. "We are expecting a
friend."
During the interval of opening the envelope Elsie disappeared. It had
the effect of warming Mrs. Clutterbuck to confidences once more.
"It is a great pleasure to me," said she. "My young cousin is coming.
He is quite a distinguished, man. All Dr. Clutterbuck's people are
distinguished, but my family are different. Except Arthur, whom Dr.
Clutterbuck is quite pleased to meet. He is coming to-night."
She called the maid.
"Tell Miss Elsie it is the 5.40 train. Mr. Symington comes then."
She had a halting, staccato way of picking her small sentences, as
though insecure of their effect.
"People enjoy coming to Ridgetown," said Mrs. Leighton lamely, in the
endeavour to keep the wheels of conversation oiled more securely.
"Do they," asked the Professor's wife. Then she stammered a trifle.
"A--a--that is--I have never had a visitor in Ridgetown till now. Dr.
Clutterbuck does not care for visitors. Arthur is different from what
others have been, I hope."
She seemed full of anxiety.
"Oh, I gave up long ago trying to please Mr. Leighton with my visitors,"
said Mrs. Leighton heartily and quite untruthfully. "Husbands must take
their chance of that, you know." She rose to go.
"Please tell Dr. Clutterbuck he is never again to come to see us without
you," she said, "and won't Elsie come to tea one day?"
On their departure Mrs. Clutterbuck turned to find a blazing little fury
in the doorway.
"Mother," cried Elsie, "Mother! How could you! I shall never go to tea
with Betty Leighton."
Her mother turned two eyes full of light on her. The light slowly died
to dull patience again.
"We shall go down together to meet cousin Arthur," she said quietly. It
seemed as though her bright thoughts must turn to drab colour
automatically where either her husband or child was concerned.
It was characteristic of Elsie that, although blazing with wild anger
and wicked little intentions, she should be unable to give voice to them
at that moment. The inevitable obstinacy of her mother where the
routine of the house was concerned, the drab colour of the one day which
was invariably like the other, the cruel, cruel sameness of it all! It
was impossible that Cousin Arthur should not be drab colour also.
"I'd rather remain here," she said at last. There was even some
pleading in her tone.
"Your father said we had better meet Cousin Arthur," said her mother.
That was the remorseless end and beginning to everything. "Your father
said" meant days and weeks and years of drab colour.
"Oh, let us go then," said Elsie. There was a drowning hopelessness in
her voice, so great an emptiness that it was hard to believe she had
merely used the words--"Let us go then."
Her mother accepted the answer without the sigh which burned in her
heart because it had no outlet.
They proceeded to get ready to go out.
Mrs. Leighton and Betty by this time were chatting easily enough at the
Merediths'. Mrs. Leighton had the feeling of an inexperienced general
after a very indefinite victory.
"I do not possess the talent of inflicting myself gracefully on people,"
she said, "and the child is quite extraordinary. However, I liked the
mother; she is a dear little woman."
Miss Meredith was only partially interested.
She arranged to walk home with them, and they set out in rather a slow
manner.
"I can quite believe the child would be different in other
surroundings," said Mrs. Leighton. "What a fine-looking man!" The one
remark ran into the other automatically. In later days it seemed
prophetic that the two people should be mentioned in one breath.
Mrs. Leighton was passing the station where arrivals from the train
occurred. A cab was drawn up, and into this a sunburned,
athletic-looking young man put some traps. Then he handed in Mrs.
Clutterbuck and Elsie.
Betty was greatly impressed.
"It must be Mr. Symington," said she.
"Well, for a timid lady, she has a very man-like cousin," exclaimed Mrs.
Leighton. "I don't wonder she was allowed that one visitor at least."
Miss Meredith turned her head carefully to a more slanting angle, when
she clearly saw the carriage drive past.
"Do you know, Mrs. Leighton," she said quite nimbly and happily, "it
seems very hard that she should not have all the visitors she wants.
Dr. Merryweather is quite right. None of us have any public spirit. I
think I shall call on her to-morrow."
So Miss Meredith also called on Mrs. Clutterbuck.
CHAPTER XII
The Burglar
That Miss Meredith should turn in a moment from being freezingly
uninterested in the Professor's wife, to being more friendly than any
one else, seemed from one point of view very noble and distinguished,
from another puzzling and peculiar.
"It's a little dis-disconcerting," said Elma at Miss Grace's. "We were
so pleased at first when Miss Meredith pointed out our talents to us.
Now she is pointing out Mrs. Clutterbuck's. And you know, last week, we
didn't think Mrs. Clutterbuck had any talents at all."
"Ah--that is one of our little tragedies," said Miss Grace simply.
"That we are obliged to outlive the extravagance of new friends."
"Do you think Miss Meredith won't keep it up where we are concerned?"
asked Elma anxiously. "It would be a little sad if she didn't, wouldn't
it? Like deceiving us to begin with; and now she may be deceiving Mrs.
Clutterbuck."
"Oh, I don't know. She may work wonders with the Professor. It must be
pure goodness that prompts her, dear."
"She must be used to being taken coldly," said Elma. "The Professor
glares at her, and Elsie charges straight out to the back garden every
time she calls."
"Is Mr. Symington there now?" asked Miss Grace.
"No, he left in two days. Papa was charmed with him. He and the
Professor and papa had an evening together when we were all at the
Gardiners, and Mrs. Clutterbuck came too. Papa says Mr. Symington will
make a name for himself one day. He is coming back to Ridgetown for a
summer, some time soon, he liked it so much."
If only for the sudden interest taken by the Merediths in the
Clutterbucks, it seemed necessary that they should become very much a
part of the Leightons' life just then. But nothing could thaw the
demeanour of Elsie. Dr. Merryweather found her improved slightly, but
there were signs that she fretted inordinately. Nothing she did was what
other girls did, and she was quite beyond the abstracted influences of
her parents.
Adelaide Maud met the Professor.
"I hear you have a perfect little duck of a daughter," said she airily.
"Ha, hm," exclaimed the Professor, quite irresponsible in the matter of
English for the moment. He had no real words for such a situation.
"Aren't you awfully proud of her?" asked Adelaide Maud.
The Professor recovered. That word "awfully!" It made him forget this
new version of his daughter.
"So you are also in this conspiracy," whispered Lance afterwards to
Adelaide Maud. "It's no good. A bomb under that fanatic is all that
will move him."
But in the meantime Elsie made some moves for herself.
The Leightons were interested in their own affairs. Cuthbert was away,
and Mr. Leighton had to make a run to London. He took Mabel with him
and that occurrence was exciting enough in itself. As though to show up
the helplessness of a family left without a man in the house, however,
one night the maids roused every one in alarm. A burglar, it seems, was
trying to get in at the pantry window. The girls, who were getting
ready for bed, went quaking to their mother's room. Very frightened and
most carefully they made their way to the vicinity of the pantry. There
was certainly to be heard a faint shuffling.
"See'd him as plain as day, Miss, leaning up against the window. He
moved some flower pots, and stood on 'em."
"Lock the kitchen door, telephone for the police, and light the gas,"
said Jean in a strained whisper.
She immediately obeyed her own orders by telephoning herself in a quick
deep undertone, "Man at the pantry window trying to get in."
Then she took the taper from the shaking hands of Betty.
"I've read in _Home Notes_ or somewhere that when burglars appear, if
you light up they get frightened and go away."
They had roused Aunt Katharine who had come as company for a night or
two and had gone to bed at half-past nine.
"What's the good of frightening them if you've sent for the police?"
asked Aunt Katharine. "Better let them get caught red-handed." She
invariably objected to being roused from her first sleep.
"Oh goodness," wailed Betty. "It sounds like murder." She felt quite
thrilled.
The maids cowered shivering in the passage.
"I heard them flower pots again, Miss. 'E's either got in or--'e's----"
They distinctly heard the pantry window move.
"Well, the door between is locked," said the quiet voice of Mrs.
Leighton, "and the police ought to be here very soon now."
Jean took the curlers out of her hair.
"I wish they would hurry up," said she.
Elma got under Aunt Katharine's eiderdown.
"I may as well die warm," she remarked with her teeth chattering.
There was not much inclination to jokes however, and Elma's speech was
touched with a certain abandonment of fear. The situation was very
trying. When the police did arrive and ran at a quick, stealthy run to
the pantry window, they waited in terror for the expected shuffle and
outcry.
"It's really awful," whispered Betty, clinging in despair to her mother.
"I can't think why they are so quiet," said Mrs. Leighton. "I think I
must open the kitchen door."
"Oh, ma'am, please, ma'am." Cook at last became hysterical. "Don't
move that door, ma'am; we've had scare enough. Let 'em catch 'em
themselves."
Betty sat down on the stairs and leant her head on her hands.
"They must be arresting them," she said, "with handcuffs. And papa said
they always have to read over the charge. They must be reading over the
charge now, I think."
"In the dark!" said Aunt Katharine with a certain eloquent sniff.
"They have lanterns, dark lanterns. Isn't it beautiful?" said Betty.
She rose in her white dressing-gown.
"Listen," said she.
The door-bell suddenly clanged. Every one screamed except Mrs.
Leighton.
"I do wish you would keep quiet," said she. "The police will think we
are being murdered." She moved to the door. But again she was arrested
by piercing directions.
"Talk to them at the window, mummy. They might be the burglars
themselves. How are we to know? Do talk at the window."
"I'm extremely cold," said Mrs. Leighton, "and I'd rather ask them in
whoever they are, than talk to them at an open window."
By the time she had finished, however, Jean, the valiant, had the window
open and had discovered a policeman. They had "scoured the premises,"
he said, and no thief was to be found. Mrs. Leighton wrapped herself in
an eiderdown quilt.
"Will you come in, please, and open my kitchen door? Cook thinks they
may be there," she said.
With deep thankfulness they let in the policeman. A sergeant appeared.
He was very sympathetic and reassuring. "Best not to proceed too
quickly," he said in a fat, slow way. "I have a man still outside
watching. So if 'e's 'ere, Miss, we'll catch 'im either way. A grand
thing the telephone."
He unlocked the door, and thoroughly investigated the kitchen.
"No signs," said he, "no signs."
The Leightons recovered some of their lost dignity and crowded in. Only
Jean however had the satisfaction of hair in order and curlers
discarded. How brave of Jean to remember at that dreadful moment of
burglars in the house!
The sergeant had gas lighted and looked extremely puzzled.
"'E 's been 'ere right enough," said he. "Window open right enough.
Was it fastened?"
He turned about, but the chief evidence had departed. With the advent of
the policeman, cook and retinue had suddenly remembered their costumes.
Like rabbits they had scuttled, first into the larder for cover, then
into their own rooms, where they donned costumes more suitable for such
impressive visitors. Mrs. Leighton's eye twinkled when she found cook
appear in hastily found dress.
"Did you leave the window unfastened, cook?" she asked.
Cook was sure. "It was a thing as 'ow I never forgot, ma'am, but this
one night----"
Well, there seemed to be some uncertainty.
Elma's eyes during this were straying continually to a piece of
notepaper lying on a table. First she thought, "It is some letter
belonging to the maids." Then an impelling idea that the white paper
had some other meaning forced her to pick it up. Every other person was
engaged in watching the search of the sergeant and listening to his
words.
"Some one has been right in this 'ere kitchen. It's the doors and
windows unlatched that do it. Many a time since I've been here as
sergeant, I've said to myself, 'We'll 'ave trouble yet over these
unlatched windows.'"
"We have been so safe," complained Mrs. Leighton. "The poor people here
too--so respectable and hard-working!"
"Drink, ma'am, drink," said the sergeant dismally, "you never know what
it will do to a man."
He turned his lantern in his fat fingers.
"Oh," said Aunt Katharine with a sudden gasp, "I could stand a plain
thief, hungry, may be, but master of himself. But a drunk man--it's
dreadful."
She shivered and looked into corners as though one of the thieves might
be asleep there. The sergeant and his companion made a thorough search
of the house.
None of them noticed Elma who sat as though cast in an eternal shiver
and who surreptitiously read the scrap of notepaper.
"The Trail." That was all that was written in words but nimbly drawn on
a turned back corner was a snaky, sinuous serpent. It had the eyes and
the accusing glare of the expression of Elsie.
Elma wondered how far she might be right in keeping that document while
the fat sergeant followed up his cues, and described the burglar. He
was six feet at least it seemed, to have got in at the window where he
did. "Flower pots or no flower pots, no smaller man could have done
it." "Fool," thought Elma. "Elsie, who can climb a drain pipe, drop
from a balcony, skim walls. Elsie had a way of which he doesn't know."
One thought that ran through her mind was the wickedness of any one's
having called Elsie by such a name as the Serpent, and the tragedy of
her having found it out. There was some excuse for this latest
wickedest prank of all. The daring of Elsie confused her. What girl
would be so devoid of fear as to move out at eleven at night and act the
burglar? None of their set had the pluck for it, to put it in the
baldest way. The idea that she might have been caught by the fat
sergeant appalled Elma. She saw the scornful, wilful eyes of the
Serpent dancing. Would she care? Yet she was the girl who had moped
for the death of her dog till "her hair came out in patches."
She was still staring at the trail of the Serpent when the sergeant had
finished his "tour of safety." After all, it might not have been a
prank of Elsie's. It might have been a six-foot burglar. This accusing
serpent--well, one couldn't go on a thing of that sort. It would be so
amusing too that they were had practically out of bed in such a panic.
Aunt Katharine looked very worn and disturbed. She would never forgive
a practical joke. Elma held the paper tight, and down in her
sympathetic, plaintive little soul felt she could never accuse a fly,
far less a sensitive wicked little mischief like Elsie Clutterbuck.
She could not help laughing at themselves. But after all, who was
looking after that wild child now? She nearly asked the sergeant to make
his way home by the side lane by which she now knew Elsie had come. Then
the certainty that this self-satisfied person with his six-foot burglar
would never make anything of this slippery fearless little elf burglar
kept her silent.
The sergeant finished his tour with great impressiveness. They were
informed they might safely go to bed. A man or two would be about to see
that no one was hanging round at all. It was very ridiculous to Elma.
"After all," remarked the sergeant, "you are very early people. It is
only eleven o'clock now. Hardly the dead of night, ma'am!"
"We are generally less early of course," said Mrs. Leighton, "but we
were alone to-night. Mr. Leighton and my son are away."
"Ah, bad," remarked the sergeant. "It looks as though our friend had an
inkling to that effect."
Elma thought the interview would never be over.
It was best to say nothing, or Mrs. Leighton would have had the town
searched for Elsie. It was best in every way to crumple tight that
incriminating paper and wonder why in the wide world Elsie had done it.
She met the Serpent the following day. There was an impish, happy look
of mischief on that usually savage little face. Miss Meredith had been
retailing to her mamma the terrific alarm which the Leightons had
experienced on the previous evening. She met Elma full face and the
smile on her lips died.
"Why did you do it?" asked Elma bluntly as though she had known the
Serpent all her life. The Serpent glared blandly at Elma, then fiercely
resumed her ordinary pose.
"You came to my house, or your mother did, to take me out of
myself--charity-child sort of visit, you know. I heard of that, never
mind how. I came to you to take you out of yourselves. I rather fancy
I did it--didn't I?"
The ice of reserve had been broken at last and the Serpent was stinging
in earnest.
Elma could only gaze at her.
"You think I'm a kind of 'case,' I suppose. Some one to feel good and
generous over. Just because my hair is coming out in patches. Well,
it's stopped coming out in patches but I still have a few calls to pay."
"Weren't you afraid last night?" asked Elma in complete wonder.
They had moved into a shadow against the wall.
"Afraid," blazed the Serpent, and then she trembled as though she would
fall.
"Don't," cried Elma sharply, "don't faint."
"I nearly did--last night. I nearly did. It was dreadful going home.
Who knows that it was I who was there?"
"I do," said Elma, "that's all."
"Don't tell a soul," wailed the burglar. "You won't, will you? I know
it was awful of me, but such fun up to the moment, when--when I heard
them moving inside. Then my legs grew so weak and it was like a dream
where you can't get away. You shouldn't have called me the Serpent."
"We didn't," said Elma. "Not in the way you mean. But because you
seemed to know about animals in a queer way--like Elsie Venner. Lance
said she was half a snake, but just because she knew about snakes. It's
difficult to explain."
"Lance?" asked the Serpent.
"Yes, why don't you speak to Lance now and then?"
"I pay him a higher compliment," said the queer little Serpent. "I wore
his clothes last night."
"Oh," said Elma. "Oh! yet you could faint to-day--or nearly so."
"Isn't it wicked," said the Serpent. "A boy wouldn't have given in.
They do much worse, and don't give way at the knees, you know. I only
opened the window and threw in the note. It was nothing. I meant you
just to be puzzled. I was there early and couldn't find a suitable
window or a door, so I waited till the maids went to bed. They left a
little window half open."
"Mamma ought to dismiss cook," said Elma primly.
It was a streak of the sunlight of confidence which did not illuminate
the Serpent again for many days to come. Elma, however, at the time,
and until she once more met the scornful glare of reserve habitual to
that person, felt as though she had found a friend. They said good-bye
in fairly jocular spirits, and Elma rushed home to give at least her
"all-to-be-depended-upon" mother the news.
When she entered the drawing-room, however, Jean was describing the
burglary to a company of people. Little shrieks and "Ohs" and "Oh,
however did you do it?" "I should have died, really I should," were to
be heard.
Jean's burglar was six feet two by this time and he had an "accomplice."
Elma thought she would choose another occasion on which to give her news
to Mrs. Leighton.
CHAPTER XIII
A Reconciliation
Mr. Leighton was very sympathetic over the burglar. He heard of the
occurrence in two ways, first in the fiery excited recital of Jean, and
then in confidence from Elma. Mrs. Leighton was there also.
"Well, I never!" she said. "That poor little lonely soul stealing about
at night! it's dreadful." She never thought for a moment of how foolish
it made the rest of them seem.
"She isn't at all afraid of the dark, or the woods, or storms, or
anything of that kind," said Elma. "She loves being out with her black
cat when it's pitch dark. But she's terrified now of policemen, and I
don't think she will ever call properly on us all her life. She's
perfectly savage with us."
Mr. Leighton stroked his hair in a preoccupied manner.
"One has to beware of what I should call professional goodness," he said
mildly. "It's pleasant, of course, to feel that one does a nice action
in being kind to the like of that stormy little person. But when she
detects the effort at kindliness! Well, one ought sometimes to think
that it must be humiliating to the needy to be palpably helped by the
prosperous. There are various kinds of wealth, not all of them meaning
money. This child has had no affection. Naturally she scorns a
charitable gift of it. It's almost a slight on her own parents, you
know."
"There," said Mrs. Leighton in a dismal way, "I told Dr. Merryweather I
disliked intruding. It was an intrusion."
"Oh, it will be all right," replied Mr. Leighton. "Don't plague the
child over this romp of being a burglar, that's all. And don't
patronize her," he said to Elma. "Give her a chance of conferring
something herself. It's sometimes a more dignified way of finding a
friend."
Elma felt some of her high ideas of reclaiming the serpent topple. Miss
Grace had advised differently. "Be kind and helpful," she had declared.
Now her father seemed to think that it was the serpent's task to be the
generous supporting figure. It made Elma just a little wild with that
blazing little serpent Elsie.
For a year and a half their friendship with the serpent existed over
crossed swords. She recovered in health, but the routine of her life
never wavered. The force of habit in connection with her mother, that
the Professor's tempestuous irritable habits should rule the house and
that she should be kept quaking in a silence which must not be broken,
could not be dispelled even by the diligent visits of Miss Meredith.
Adelaide Maud drew off after the first encounter with the Professor.
"I'm afraid that there will just have to be a tragic outburst every time
Mrs. Clutterbuck says 'a new pair of shoes' instead of 'a pair of new
shoes,'" said she, "nothing can save her now."
Soon the efforts of Dr. Merryweather were forgotten in the impenetrable
attitude of the whole family.
At the end of eighteen months, most of Ridgetown was collected one day
for a river regatta at a reach a few miles up from the town. Every one
of any consequence except Lance, as Betty put it, was present. They
rowed in boats and watched the races, picnicked and walked on the banks.
One wonderful occurrence was the presence of Mrs. Clutterbuck and the
Serpent. Mr. Symington had appeared once more and done something this
time to penetrate the aloofness of their existence. He had come once or
twice to the Leightons' with the Professor.
The girls put this friend of their father's on a new plane.
He could be engrossed in talk with their father and the Professor, and
yet not gaze past the rest of the family as though they were "guinea
pigs."
They now knew Mr. Sturgis well enough to tell him that he thought
nothing more of them than that they were a land of decorative guinea
pig. Mr. Symington, however, who had not seen them grow out of the
childish stage, but had come on them one memorable evening when the
picture of them, for a new person, was really something rather
delightful to remember--Mr. Symington was immediately put on a pedestal
of a new order. The difference was explained to Robin, who growled
darkly. "It's perfectly charming to be received with deference by the
man who is splendid enough to be received with deference by our own
father," explained Jean. "Don't you see?"
Robin saw in a savage manner. He had never been on this particular
pedestal. With all his sister's enthusiasm for Mr. Symington, he could
see little to like in that person.
Mr. Symington studied in lonely parts of the world the wild life an
ordinary sportsman would bring down with his gun. He was manly, yet
learned. Delightfully young, yet stamped with the dignity of
experience. Robin in his presence felt a middle-aged oppression in
himself, which could not be explained by years.
He was particularly galled by his sister's persistence in keeping near
the Clutterbuck party on the Saturday of the river regatta.
There were exciting moments of boat races, duck races, swimming
competitions, and so forth. Then came the afternoon when everybody
picnicked.
The Leightons had a crowd of friends with them, and took tea near the
pool by the weir.
May undertook to teach Betty how to scull in an outrigger, which one of
the racers had left in their care for the moment. Betty was daring and
rather skilful to begin with. It seemed lamentable that with so many
looking on, she should suddenly catch a real crab. May, standing on the
bank, screamed to her, as Betty's frail little boat went swinging rather
wildly under the trees of an island.
"Look here," cried Jean to May sharply. "What made you two begin
playing in such a dangerous part? Sit still," she shouted wildly to
Betty.
It seemed as if no one had understood that there was any danger in these
little pranks of Betty's, till her boat was swept into mid-stream, and
ran hard into certain collision on the island. Jean called for some one
to take a boat out to Betty. Then the full danger of the situation
flashed on them. Just a few minutes before, a detachment had gone up to
the starting point, and no boat was left in which one might reach Betty.
"Sit still," shouted Jean again, "hold on to the trees or something."
It had occurred in a flash. Betty in the quiet water was all very well,
but Betty, the timid, out alone on a swirling river with a weir in the
very near distance, this Betty lost her head.
Jean's scream, "Sit still," had the effect of frightening her more than
anything. "It was what one was advised to do when horses were running
off, or something particularly dreadful was about to happen," thought
Betty.
She first lost an oar, then splashed herself wildly in the attempt to
recover it. The sudden rocking of her "shining little cockle shell," as
she had called it only a minute before, alarmed her more than anything.
She was being swept on the island, deep water everywhere around it.
With a gasp of fear she rose to catch the tree branches, missed, upset
the cockle shell at last, and fell into the river.
Those on the bank, for a swift moment, "or was it for centuries," stood
paralysed.
"Oh!" cried Jean, "oh!"
There was a swift sudden rush behind them, "like a swallow diving
through a cornfield," said May later. A tense, victorious little figure,
flinging off hat and a garment of sorts; a splash; a dark head driving
in an incredibly swift way through water impatiently almost trodden upon
by two little wildly skimming hands, then a voice when Betty rose: "Lie
on your back, I'll be with you in a minute," and the valiant little
Serpent was off to the saving of Betty. It was sufficiently terrifying
on account of the weir. If Elsie reached Betty, would she have the
strength to bring her back. If Elsie did not reach Betty, Betty could
not swim. It was dreadful. Jean, second-rate swimmer as she was, would
have been in herself by this time, but that Elma held her.
"She's got her," she whispered with a grey face. They shouted when the
Serpent turned slightly with Betty. She was like a fierce little
schoolmistress. "Don't interfere with me, he on your back. Keep lying
on your back," and Betty obeyed. At the supreme moment the Serpent had
come into her own, and displayed at last the talent which till then had
only been expended on her cats and dogs. "Lie still," she growled, and
obediently, almost trustingly, Betty lay like a little white-faced
drowned Ophelia. Then "Come along with that boat," sang out the Serpent
cheerily.
Round the bend of the river above, at sound of their cries had come
"Hereward the Wake, oh how magnificent," sobbed Jean. It was Mr.
Symington.
The Serpent, with hard serviceable little strokes, piloted Betty lightly
out of the strength of the current. Mr. Symington was past and gently
back to them before a minute had elapsed.
"Grip the gunwale," he said cheerily to Elsie. It was the tone of a man
addressing his compatriot.
(Oh! how magnificent of the Serpent.)
"Now," he said. "Keep a tight hold on her still. I must get you into
quiet water." He pulled hard. Immediately he had them into the
backwater. It was rather splendid to see him get hold of a tree, tie
the boat, and be at the side of the Serpent before one could breathe.
He had rowed in with the full strength of a strong man, and in a minute
he was as tenderly raising Betty. He had never properly removed his
eyes from her face. "She was just faulting. You held on well," he said
approvingly. "Don't let her sisters see her at present." He lifted
Betty to the bank.
"Quick, open your eyes," he said commandingly.
"Look here," called the Serpent. She had scrambled neatly out by
herself, "Betty, Betty Leighton, oh! Betty, open your eyes." There was
an answering quiver. "Quick, Betty, before your sisters come. Don't
frighten them. Open your eyes, Betty."
Mr. Symington rubbed Betty's hands smoothly in a quick experienced
manner.
Betty opened her eyes and looked at the Serpent.
"Oh, Elsie," she said, "Elsie, you sweet little Serpent!" It was an end
to the crossed swords feud. Elsie took her in her arms and cried.
When the girls arrived panic-stricken they found Mr. Symington trying to
get a coherent answer to his orders from two bedraggled girls, who could
do nothing but weep over each other. The brave little Serpent had lost
her nerve once more.
"Oh!" she said, "it's very wicked to be a girl. Boys wouldn't give way
like this."
Jean looked at her narrowly, "Do you always go about in gymnasium dress,
ready to save people?" she asked, with the remains of fear in her voice.
The brave little Serpent looked down on her costume, and the red which
glowed in her cheeks only from m
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