CHAPTER VREINFORCEMENTS
Theinitiation of Babbie Hildreth, which had to be over in time for the participants to meet Eleanor Watson’s train, was the feature of the next B. C. A. tea-drinking, held two days ahead of time in honor of the double reinforcement to the ranks of 19—.
“I hope you’re all satisfied. I’ve come up here out of pure curiosity about this old cult,” announced Babbie, when they were settled cozily in Flying Hoof’s stall. “You all wrote the most maddening letters—it was arranged, I know, what each one should say, so that I’d keep getting crazier and crazier to be let into the secret.”
“Didn’t you rather want to see your elegant new tea-shop?” demanded Rachel innocently.
“Ye-es”—Babbie flushed,—“of course I did. It’s lovely, isn’t it? Nora must appreciate her splendid kitchen——”
“Why, you haven’t seen the kitchen yet, Babbie,” cried Helen Adams reproachfully. “I’ve been with you every minute since you came.”
“Well, I can guess what it’s like, can’t I?” Babbie defended herself.
“Babbie Hildreth,” demanded Madeline, sternly, “when were you up here last?”
“In August,” Babbie admitted sulkily, “if you must know. My Aunt Belinda brought me up in her car.” She brightened in spite of herself. “Aunt Belinda is so lovely and romantic. She thinks it’s all right for me to come up and see Robert, since he can’t come very often to see me. Mother doesn’t, exactly. But she was terribly amused at this B. C. A. cult. She told me to run along and satisfy my ‘satiable curiosity’ if I wanted to. I—oh, excuse me one minute, please!”
Having thoughtfully secured a seat at the end of the stall, Babbie had been the first to observe a dark object in the act of vaulting the Tally-ho’s back fence. She intercepted the dark object on the front walk, and accompanied it forthwith to Paradise, where the teaand marmalade that you hunger for and the curiosity that you feel about mysterious “cults” may both, under favorable circumstances, be forgotten as utterly as if they had never been.
So the B. C. A.’s amused themselves by inventing some stunning “features” for a formal initiation ceremony to be held later for Eleanor and Babbie together, ate Babbie’s share of the muffins and jam, congratulated themselves on the way they had “set Betty up in business,” as Mary Brooks modestly put it, and waited so long for their beloved “Object” to appear—it was an office-hours afternoon, and Betty had refused to desert her post even for a B. C. A. tea-drinking—that they had to run all the way to the station, only to discover, on arriving there breathless and disheveled, that the train was an hour late.
“So we might just as well have preserved the dignity of the Harding faculty and wives,” sighed Mary, straightening her new fall hat. “It’s all your fault, Betty Wales. You said you’d come in time to go to the train, and we kept thinking you’d arrive upon the sceneevery single minute. And the longer we waited the more we ate, and then the harder it was to run.”
“Some one came in to see me just at the last minute,” Betty explained. “I couldn’t say that I had an engagement when it was just larks.”
Betty let the cult and its friends get all the orders they would for skirt braids and gym suits, and all possible data about needy girls; but she never confided in them, in return—a conservative attitude which Madeline considered “distinctly snippy.”
“I just know you’re concealing all sorts of stunning short stories about your person,” she declared. “Now Bob tells me lovely things about her fresh-air kids. She isn’t such a clam.”
But Betty was equally impervious to being called a clam and to fulfilling her obligations toward Madeline’s Literary Career. The humor and the pathos that came into the secretary’s office she regarded as state secrets, to be never so much as hinted at, even to her dearest friends.
“But it sometimes seems as if I should justburst with it all,” she told Jim Watson, who poked his head in her door nearly every day, and rapidly withdrew it again if any one else was with her. “It isn’t only the girls who come on regular business that are so queer, but the ones that come just for advice. Eugenia Ford has the strangest ideas about my being able to straighten things out, and she’s told her crowd, and they’ve told their friends. Every day some girl walks in and says, ‘Are you the one who will answer questions?’ Then I say who I am, and suggest that maybe she wants her class officer. But she says no, she means me; and maybe she’s a freshman who has decided that she can’t live another day without her collie dog, and maybe she’s a senior, who has cut too much and is frightened silly about being sent home, and maybe she’s a pretty, muddle-headed little sophomore who’s in love with a Winsted man and doesn’t dare tell her father and mother, and is thinking of eloping. Oh, Jim, these are just possible cases, you understand, not real ones. But you mustn’t ever breathe a word of what I’ve said.”
“I’m as silent as a tomb,” Jim would assureher gravely each time that something too nearly “real” slipped out.
“Well, you’re the only one I ever do burst out to,” Betty assured him, “except when I decide that it’s only right to ask Miss Ferris or Prexy or some responsible person like them for advice. I don’t know why I should talk so much more about it to you, except that you don’t know any of the girls and never will, whereas Madeline would be sure to write up anything funny that she heard, and Rachel and Christy and Helen are on the faculty and the girls who come to see me might be in their classes, and if Emily Davis knew she’d want terribly to tell the rest.”
“All girls are leaky,” Jim would announce sententiously at this point in the argument. “Besides, I’ve been a secretary myself. My job was exactly the same as yours in the matter of holding confidential information. Now when are you coming over to see about that linen closet?”
It was really not at all surprising, considering how highly Jasper J. Morton valued her opinion, that his architectural representative found it necessary to consult Betty Wales almostevery day on some problem growing out of the peculiar adaptabilities and arrangements of Morton Hall.
The B. C. A.’s paced the station platform till they were tired, and then they further outraged the dignity of the “faculty and wives” by sitting down to rest on a baggage truck, and swinging their feet off the edge. It was thus that Jim, who had taken the precaution to telephone the ticket agent before leaving home, found them a few minutes before Eleanor’s arrival.
“Do make yourselves as fascinating as you can,” he implored them all naïvely, “so she’ll stay. She’s been taking singing lessons lately at home, and her teacher had a New York teacher visiting her, and both of them got excited about Eleanor’s voice. So now she’s written about some crazy plan she has for a winter in New York, studying music. That’s all right after Christmas, maybe, but at present I want her right here, and the person who can make her see it that way wins my everlasting gratitude.”
“SITTING DOWN TO REST ON A BAGGAGE TRUCK”
SITTING DOWN TO REST ON A BAGGAGE TRUCK
“You’ll be likely to win your own everlastinggratitude, I should say,” Madeline told him. “Eleanor was always expatiating on the charms of her brother Jim.”
Jim blushed. “That’s all right, but I have a feeling that she’s keener about some other fellow’s charms by this time. Plenty of fellows are certainly keen about hers. But lately she doesn’t pay any attention to them—just goes in for slumming and improving her mind, and now her voice. So give her a good time, and get her excited about your mysterious club, and when she begins on the earnestness of life and the self-improvement business, ring in all Miss Betty’s philanthropies. And I’ll come in strong on the lonely brother act. I say, there she is this minute!”
Jim gave a running jump on to the platform of a passing car and had his innings while the girls, taken unaware, scrambled down from their truck and hurried after him.
It didn’t seem as if it would be hard to keep Eleanor. There was the little awkward moment at first, that even the best of friends experience when they haven’t seen each other for over a year; and then such a babel of talkand laughter, of questions asked all at once and never answered, of explanations interrupted by exclamations, and rendered wholly incoherent by hugs and kisses.
“You haven’t changed a bit,” they told her.
“Yes, you have! You’re prettier than ever.”
“When will you sing for us?”
“Have you done any writing lately?”
“Are you too tired to see the Tally-ho right away?”
“You’re to live in Rachel’s little white house, you know, and we’re all quarreling about when we can have you for dinner.”
“Picnics! I should think so. As many as you want.”
“Don’t those infants make the absurdest imitations of faculties?”
“How do you like little Mary’s new hat?”
They walked up Main Street chattering like magpies and forgetting to turn out for anybody, Jim bringing up the rear with Eleanor’s suit case in one hand and a book of Babbie’s and an untidy bundle of manuscript that Madelinehad dropped in her excitement tucked under the other arm.
Christy invited the whole party to dinner at the Tally-ho, and they decided that it was quite warm enough to eat in the top story of the Peter Pan annex. Jim had lighted all the Chinese lanterns and hauled up two baskets full of dinner, while the girls chattered merrily on as if they never meant to stop, when Babbie and Mr. Thayer appeared, sauntering slowly down the hill from the direction of Paradise. They didn’t seem at all ashamed of the way Babbie had been snatched away from her own initiation party, but shouted up that they were simply starved to death, and cheerfully assuming that there was dinner enough and room enough for all comers, they annexed themselves to Christy’s party.
“You’re lucky to have a sister to look after you,” Mr. Thayer told Jim. “I opened a big club-house for my mill people last winter, just to please these young ladies, and how do they pay me? By cold, cruel neglect.”
“Nonsense!” Madeline contradicted him cheerfully. “We gave you a splendid start. That’s all we do for anybody.”
“We’re all so busy,” Betty added quickly. “But we are just as interested as we ever were. Isn’t the girl I sent you managing well?”
Mr. Thayer nodded. “Only she can’t seem to discover a genius who’s able to take hold of the prize class.”
“Is that the one my adorable Rafael is in?” demanded Madeline. “Because if it is, I might——”
“It is, but you can’t have it,” Babbie told her firmly. “They changed teachers four times last year, after you dropped them so unceremoniously. This time they’re to have some one who will stick, aren’t they, Robert?”
Mr. Thayer looked uncomfortable, not wishing either to contradict Babbie or to slight Madeline’s offer. “It’s better, of course, but perhaps Miss Madeline will stick this time.”
“Robert!” Babbie’s tone was very hopeless. “Can’t you understand that Madeline is about as likely to stick as Prexy is to dance a hornpipe at to-morrow’s chapel?” She sighed deeply. “It must be terrible to be a reformer; you have to be so hopeful about people’s turning over a new leaf—whether it’s Madeline sticking, or a dreadful oldFrenchman beating his wife, or the angelic-looking Rafael learning his alphabet.”
“Haven’t they learned that yet?” asked Madeline incredulously.
“Certainly not,” retorted Babbie. “You jabbered Italian all the time to them, and that spoiled them so that they never would study for the other teachers.”
“I regret my reprehensible familiarity with their mother tongue,” announced Madeline grandiloquently, “and I hereby make due reparation.” Her glance wandered around the table. “I elect Eleanor Watson to take the prize class.”
“Tell me about it,” Eleanor asked. “I don’t understand at all. I didn’t know there were any foreigners in Harding.”
So they told her about Factory Hill, about Young-Man-Over-the-Fence and his Twelfth-Night party that accidentally started the fund for the club-house, about the education clause in the new factory laws, the club organization, which was now so efficiently managed by the Student’s Aid’s prize beneficiary—a senior who had earned every bit of her college course—and finally about Rafael and Giuseppiand Pietro and the other Italian boys, who scorned their French and Polish, Portuguese and German comrades, and insisted upon their own little club—a concession in return for which they played truant, refused to study or pay attention, and quarreled violently on the slightest provocation. They would have to be dropped from the factory pay-roll, according to the new law, if they did not speedily mend their ways and learn to read and write.
“Why, I should be almost afraid to be left alone with them,” Eleanor exclaimed at the end of the recital. “Do they carry daggers?”
“No, they’re not quite so barbaric as that,” Mr. Thayer told her. “They are just lively boys, who’ve been brought up with strong race prejudices and no chance to have the jolly good times that would make them forget their feuds and revolts. They work hard because their fathers make them, and because it’s the regular way of living for them. But being forced to study they consider the most bitter tyranny. The factory inspectors have had their cases up twice now, and if I can’t make a good report on them at Christmas Ishall have to let them go. I hate to, because they can’t get other work here, and if they leave their homes and friends, nine out of the ten will probably go straight to the bad.”
“There’s your chance, Eleanor,” Jim told her eagerly.
“But, Jim, I can’t ‘stick,’ as Babbie calls it. I’m here only for a little visit. My music——”
“Go down every week for a lesson,” Jim ordered easily. “Don’t miss a chance at a ripping New England autumn with all this good society thrown in.”
“Even if you’re not staying long, do take them off my hands for a few weeks,” begged Mr. Thayer. “They’re afraid of me and sulk stupidly if I try to teach them, and they’ve been rather too much for any of the girls who’ve tried.”
“Then what makes you think——” began Eleanor.
“You’ve been elected, Eleanor,” Madeline broke in impatiently. “That settles it. You can manage them the way you managed that newsboys’ club in Denver. Oh, I’ve heard——” as Eleanor flushed and protested.“That’s why I elected you. Now we want some songs. Where’s her guitar, Monsieur Jacques? If Rafael won’t learn the alphabet any other way, you can sing it to him.”
So Eleanor laughingly consented to meet the Terrible Ten, as Babbie called them, the next night, and the Ten won her heart, as Jim had hoped they would.
Eleanor never mentioned the alphabet. She merely inquired of the circle of dark faces who had heard of Robin Hood, and receiving only sullen negatives, she began a story. One by one the sullen faces grew eager. At a most exciting point, where Robin and his band were on the point of playing a fine joke on the Sheriff of Nottingham, she stopped abruptly.
“I’m tired,” she said. “That’s all for to-night.”
“You tella more next day?” demanded the graceless Rafael. He had fairly drowned out the first part of the tale with muttered threats upon Pietro, who had hidden his cap.
Eleanor hesitated diplomatically. “Would you really like to hear the rest?” she asked finally.
Rafael’s brown eyes met hers, clouded with supreme indifference, and his expressive shoulders shrugged coldly.
“Oh, maybe,” he admitted.
“Then what will you do for me? You can’t expect me to amuse you big boys the whole evening, while you do nothing to amuse me in return. This is a club, you know. In a club everybody does something for everybody else.”
“What you like?” demanded Rafael, with suppressed eagerness.
“Yes, what you like?” echoed Pietro, the quarrel between them quite forgotten.
“I’m very fond of pictures,” announced Eleanor gravely. “If you’d each draw a picture of Robin Hood on the blackboard over there—here are a lot of colored chalks—and put his name under it—Robin, we’ll call him for short—why, I should think you’d done your full share.”
The Terrible Ten exchanged bewildered glances, and one after another slouched nonchalantly to the chalk box. The colored crayons were a novelty, nine of the Terrible Ten were born artists, and the tenth—Rafael,whose crushed hand was still stiff and awkward—was pathetically anxious to satisfy the new teacher’s strange demands. His Robin Hood looked like a many colored smutch, with a sprawling green frame around it—that was Sherwood forest, thrown in for good measure.
“Don’t forget the name,” Eleanor reminded them calmly, when, the pictures finished, the artists began to exchange furtive glances again in regard to the next requirement.
“You make lil’ sample on mine,” suggested Rafael craftily.
“No, I’ll make one up here,” Eleanor amended, “where everybody can see it.”
And to her surprise the Terrible Ten, with many sighs and grimaces, and much smutting out of mistakes with wetted fingers, toilsomely accomplished the writing.
“Now,” Eleanor said, “let’s talk for a while before we go home. There’s a bag of peanuts under my coat. Will you bring it, please, Pietro?” She took the bag and grouped the boys around the long table. “Now let’s play a game while we eat. I’ll ask questions, and the one that answers quickest gets some peanuts. Listen now: if I give Pietro sixpeanuts and Giovanni five, how many will that be?”
Dazed looks on the faces of the Ten, followed by anxious finger-counting.
“Fifteen,” hazarded Pietro.
“Nix, nine,” shrieked Rafael.
Giuseppi got it right, and to make sure they counted at the top of their lungs, while Eleanor passed him, one by one, the eleven peanuts.
“Now, if he gives Pietro two——” began Eleanor.
“Aw, come off. You say you gif to me,” interrupted Giuseppi. “I wish to keep my peanuts.”
Eleanor gravely accepted the amendment. “All right.” She counted out eleven peanuts, and held them up in her hand. “Now I have eleven peanuts. If I give Pietro two”—she suited the action to the word—“how many have I left?”
More frantic finger-counting, and this time Giovanni got the prize.
Then Rafael and his six unfed comrades burst into angry protests. “You give Pietro two for nix. He never guess right.”
“No fair that he gets some for nix.”
Eleanor met the crisis calmly. “They’re my peanuts, so I can give him two if I like. But wait a minute. See what I do now. I give Rafael two, you two, you two, and you, and you, and you, and you. How many is that? The one that guesses right gets as many as all you boys have together. Quick now.”
Efforts to eat the peanuts and count them at the same time resulted in absolute pandemonium.
“Let’s have paper,” Eleanor suggested. “That’s easier than doing it all in your head.”
Before the evening was over the passing out of peanuts two by two had accomplished the learning of the “two-times” table, as far as two times ten.
“Who promises to come next time?” asked Eleanor, while they waited awkwardly for her to gather up her wraps.
“Me.”
“Me.”
“Me.”
“You bet I do.”
“Dis club is O.K.”
“You doan fergit the story?”
“Not if you’ll all try to remember the ‘two-times’ table,” Eleanor promised, shaking hands gravely all around.
“She’s de peach fer sure. Gotta all dem oder teachers beat,” announced Pietro on the steps.
“Don’t you call her no peach. She’s a lovely lady,” corrected Rafael, aiming a deft blow with his left hand.
“Ain’t a lada a peach?” challenged Pietro, dancing out of reach.
“All right for Italian girl, not good enough for lika her,” Rafael answered fiercely.
“Wonder if she bring more dem peanuts next week,” speculated Nicolo.
“She ain’t no millionaire, maybe.” Rafael turned upon him scowling. “But doan you dare fergit the two-times, ’cause den she’ll fergit Robin. I killa de kid dat fergits.”
Rafael was evidently the Ten’s leader. They received his dire threat in awed silence, and tramped off, chanting the two-times table with a vigor that reached Eleanor, reporting her evening’s experiences to Mr. Thayer, and clinched her wavering determination into a promise to stay for at least a month in Harding.