"'THIS LITTLE KNAVE MUST BE MY PARTNER.'""'THIS LITTLE KNAVE MUST BE MY PARTNER.'"
Magnolia did not know that she was second choice. Her cup of happiness was overflowing when Boy Blue turned away from Aladdin and Red Riding Hood, who were both trying to claim her, and said, "No, this little Knave must be my partner. He has stolen my heart as well as the queen's tarts."
In their corner near the piano Kitty and Katie sat stiffly against the wall, seemingly incapable of moving themselves. Several times some of the larger girls made an attempt to lift them, and in whatever position they fell when they were dropped, they lay with hands thrust out and heads lolling to one side. There was a laughing crowd around them continually.
"Oh, my country!" gasped Katie, as the first solemn chords of the Dead March struck her ear and all light in the room was suddenly extinguished except what gleamed from the eyes and mouths of the jack-o'-lanterns. "They've gone and dragged in old Sally, the skeleton. It's bad enough to hear her bones rattle in the physiology class in the daytime; but this is more than I bargained for."
"Now is the time for us to go," whispered Kitty. "They'll unmask soon. We've seen how they all look and set them to guessing, and we'd better miss the refreshments than run the risk of being discovered."
Katie eyed the table wishfully. "It seems a pity to miss all that spread. Couldn't we creep around the wall to the far side and slip something into our apron pockets? The cloth is so long it would hide us."
"What's to hinder our getting under the table and staying through the whole performance?" suggested Kitty. "The cloth comes nearly to the floor, and I don't believe anybody would think of looking under it. Then we could hear them wonder who we are and where we've disappeared to when they unmask and we are missing."
"Quick, then, while their backs are turned!" exclaimed Katie, not waiting to consider consequences or means of escape later in the evening. Slowly, solemnly, with measured tread, the long procession filed by, and, wheeling to the music, started back toward the other end of the long gymnasium.
Creeping on hands and knees, fearful lest some backward glance might discover them should they stand erect, the two girls, like wary mice, scuttledacross the room and disappeared under the sheltering table-cloth.
Grown bold with their successful venture, Kitty proposed that each time the procession turned away from them, they should reach out and grab something from the table. It was an exciting performance. Time after time, as the motley figures turned their backs, two ludicrous heads popped up above the table, and four white woollen gloves clawed hastily at different dishes. When the marauders dropped from sight the last time, there was a goodly store of provisions gathered up in each gingham apron.
"I wouldn't have missed this for anything," giggled Katie some time later, when the unmasking began, and the girls crowded around the table for nuts and apples with which to try their fortunes. In such a babel of voices there was no danger of being overheard.
"Listen! we can tell from the different remarks who every one represented," they whispered to each other.
"Oh, Evelyn Ward, I knew all the time that you were the court lady. I recognized your rings."
"That's what fooled me about Aladdin. Susie Figgs had changed rings with Ada."
"Well, I guessed nearly everybody the first half-hour, except those ridiculous rag dolls. Does anybody know where they have gone?"
That started the discussion the two under the table had been waiting for, and the various guesses, falling wide of the mark, were so amusing that their mirth nearly betrayed their hiding-place. Once they thought their discovery was certain. They had been feeding themselves from the store of provisions in their aprons as well as the size of their muslin mouths would allow. The mouths had been only small slits at first, but they had stretched and torn them with their fingers until they were large enough to allow them to take a good-sized bite of apple. As they sat there, munching nuts and pop-corn, Kitty whispered, "We're like the man in the verse:
"'There was a young man so benighted,He never knew when he was slighted.He went to a party,And ate just as heartyAs if he'd been really invited.'"
Katie tried hard not to laugh, but the effort ended in a snort, and she almost choked on a grain of pop-corn. If some one had not upset a jack-o'-lantern just then and started a wild scramble to put out the candle before it burned the cloth, theunbidden guests must certainly have been discovered.
Gradually the crowd around the table dwindled away, as little groups gathered in different parts of the room, intent on various ways of fortune-telling. Having eaten all they could, and not being able to hear anything more of interest, the girls under the table began to grow tired of their position. Moreover, the heat of their costumes seemed to grow more unbearable every minute.
"We're in a trap," groaned Katie. "How we are ever going to make our escape is—"
Kitty never heard the rest of the sentence, for half a dozen girls, who had ventured down the cellar steps with candle and looking-glass, came bursting into the room almost hysterical with fright. Breathless from their headlong race up three flights of stairs, they gasped out their news in broken sentences, each voice in a different key.
"Oh, a real ghost! None of your sheet and pillow-case affairs!"
"White hair and a face like marble and a long floating veil!"
"And it clutched Mary Phillips with fingers that were like the dead! Didn't it, Mary?"
"No, it didn't come out of the cellar. It justappeared!"
"The most awful wail as it vanished!"
"The cook saw it earlier in the evening, floating away toward the graveyard, not walking, you know, butfloating! About a foot above the ground!"
"Allison has evidently had as much fun as anybody," whispered Kitty. "Oh, will you listen! There goes Lloyd vowing it's the spirit of the veiled lady, and that she saw it twice this evening."
"And Betty, too! That will convince them if anything could. Betty is always so serious in the way she tells things."
"Now is the time to go, while they're all so excited and in the other end of the room," whispered Kitty. "Let's make a wild dash for the door nearest us, bang it behind us, and blow out the hall light. Then we can slide down the banister, put out the light in the lower hall, and be safe in the west wing before they come to their senses. Now, ready!"
It was a daring move, but it proved successful. Every one heard a scramble, and turned in time to see two crouching figures dash into the hall. They were too startled to know whether they were human or not. Somebody screamed when the door bangedviolently, and Mary Phillips, who had been in a tremble ever since her flight from the cellar, was nearly paralyzed with fright. She clutched her nearest neighbour, wailing, "Oh, what is it?"
By the time matches were brought and the lamps were relit, Katie and Kitty were safely locked in Lloyd's room, tearing off their disguises and wiping the perspiration from their flushed faces. For a few minutes they waited, half-expecting that a search would be made, but as time went on and no one ventured into that part of the house, they began to try the Hallowe'en charms that they could not take part in up-stairs. When Allison came in half an hour later, she found them whirling apple parings around their heads and flinging them over their shoulders, to see what initials they would form in falling.
By the time Allison had washed the powder from her face and picked the cotton from her hair, Lloyd and Betty came in. It seemed as if they could never settle down enough to think of sleep. There was so much to talk over. Allison curled up on the divan, announcing that it was not worth while to undress, as it would soon be time for them to start home. Kitty and Katie followed her example, appropriating Lloyd's single bed. Lloyd and Bettytook the other one, and they lay whispering until midnight.
Just as the clock struck twelve Lloyd got up and lighted a candle. Five eggs, which she had boiled in the chafing-dish earlier in the evening, lay on a plate on the table. The yolks had been removed and the space filled with salt. According to a previous agreement, each girl got up and took one of the eggs. Standing in the middle of the floor in solemn silence they ate them stoically, although the salt burned and choked them. Then without a drop of water afterward, they walked backward to bed. According to the charm, whatever they dreamed after that performance would come true, and unless they were to be old maids, some one would appear in their dreams bearing a cup of water. That one would be their "fate."
None of the five slept soundly that night. The salt made them thirsty, the crowded quarters restless. Allison wakened every time a rooster crowed or a dog barked, because she felt that the responsibility of getting home before Barbry wakened rested upon her. Once when she was about to sink into a delicious doze, the shrill whistle of a locomotive aroused her to the consciousness that the early freight-train was rumbling past the depot. Openingher eyes she saw that the gray dawn was beginning to steal over the Valley. With a groan she sat up and stumbled across the room to arouse the others.
She had to shake Kitty several times, and when she at last staggered to her feet she yawningly quoted old Aunt Cindy's expression, that she was "as tired as a thousand of dawgs," and vowed she could never get home unless she was dragged there. Katie complained of a headache and a miserable "after the ball" feeling. It was a sorry-looking little trio which finally stumbled down the back stairs and out into the frosty dawn. Not a word was spoken on the way home. In silence they slipped up the stairs at The Beeches; in silence they undressed and crept into bed, and three hours later, when Barbry came as usual to call them, she knocked half a dozen times before she succeeded in arousing them.
THE PRINCESS OF THE PENDULUM
Therewere literary exercises in the chapel the following Friday afternoon. It was the day for the reading of theSeminary Star, a monthly paper to which all the grades contributed. As a humourous account of the Hallowe'en celebrated was to be one of the chief features, spiced by many personal allusions, its appearance was looked for eagerly.
Little Magnolia Budine was the only one in the room impatient for the exercises to close. She sat near a front window looking out at every sound of approaching wheels, to see if the old carryall had stopped at the high green gate in front of the seminary. She had been hoping all afternoon that her father would come for her earlier than usual, and she half-expected that he would. The chill November days were short, and she knew that he would want to reach home before dark.
It was not that she failed to appreciate the interesting articles in theStar, but she was in a hurryfor the ten-mile drive to be over. The reason for her impatience was packed away in the old carpet-bag, waiting outside in the hall. Unless she reached home before dark, a certain pleasure she had in store would have to be delayed till morning. So intent was she on listening for the sound of wheels, that she failed to hear the title of a short poem, which one of the editors announced as written by E. L. L. When Elise nudged her, whispering, "That's about you, Maggie," she turned with a start and blush to find every one looking at her. She was so confused she heard only the last verse:
"Not only did he steal the tartsMade by the gracious queen,He captured all the schoolgirls' hearts—That little knave—on Hallowe'en."
The applause which followed was loud and long. Her heart gave a proud, glad throb at this public compliment, but her face felt as if it were on fire, and she longed to drop under her desk out of sight. It was just at this moment that Mrs. Clelling told her in a low tone that her father had come and she might be excused. How she ever got to the door with all those eyes fastened on her was more than she could tell. She felt as if each footweighed a ton, and that she was an hour travelling the short space.
Snatching her hat from the cloak-room and pinning a big gray shawl around her, she caught up the carpet-bag and ran down to the gate. An occasional snowflake, like a downy white feather, floated through the air. The wind was raw and damp, and she was glad to climb in behind the sheltering curtains of the old carryall and lean up against her father's rough, warm overcoat.
"Well, Puss, how goes it?" he asked, pulling an old bedquilt up over his knees and tucking it well around her.
"Fine, daddy!" she answered, squeezing his arm in both her mittened hands and snuggling up to him like a contented kitten. "I think now it's the nicest school in the world, and I like it better and better every day."
"Got a good report this week?"
"Yes, I haven't missed a single word in spelling. Mrs. Clelling had to show me nearly two hours about borrowing in subtraction, but I don't have any more trouble with it now, and I had a longer list of adjectives on my language-paper than anybody else in the class."
There was a look of pride in the old farmer'sweather-beaten face. He had had little education himself. He had barely learned to read and write in the few short terms he had been able to attend school when he was a boy. He couldn't have told an adjective from any other part of speech, and his wonder at her amount of learning was all the greater on that account. He patted her hand affectionately. "That's right! That's right!" he exclaimed. "The family's dependin' on you, Puss, to do us all credit." Then he began repeating what she had heard a hundred times before. He never failed to tell her the same story as they jogged homeward every Friday night and back again the following Monday morning. She had heard it so often that it sounded in her ears like the familiar refrain of an old song to which she need pay no heed. She only waited patiently until he had finished.
"The older children didn't have no chance when they was young like you. We were too far away from the public schools to send 'm except just a spell spring and fall, and we couldn't afford the pay schools, but after we moved up here and Marthy got married and Tom and Hilliard was big enough to do for 'emselves and getting good wages, times was easier. Ma says to me, 'We'll give the babya fair start in the world, anyhow,' and I says, 'She'll have the best diplomy that Lloydsboro Seminary can give if I have to carry her there and home again on my back every day till she gets it.'"
There was much more in the same strain to which Magnolia listened, waiting for her turn to speak, as one would wait for an alarm clock to run down when it was striking. The moment he paused she began, eagerly, "I've got something right now that mammy will be proud to see."
Diving under the quilt for the carpet-bag, she opened it and took out a book which lay on top of her clothes.
"Now put on your spectacles, daddy," she ordered, gaily, "or maybe you won't be able to tell who it is." She slipped a photograph from the book and held it up before him. Holding the reins between his knees, he pulled off one glove, felt in various pockets, and finally fished up a pair of steel-bowed spectacles, which he slowly adjusted.
"Miss Katherine Marks took it," she explained, "and she painted it afterward, so you can tell exactly how I looked at the masquerade-party."
"If it ain't my little magnolia blossom!" exclaimed the old man, proudly, holding the beautifullytinted photograph off at arm's length for a better view. "Wherever did you get all those fine gew-gaws? Why, Puss, you're prettier than a posy. Sort of fanciful and trimmed up, but that's your little face natural as life. I should say your mammy will be proud!"
It took all the time while they were driving the next six miles for Magnolia to tell of that memorable afternoon and night. How Lloyd Sherman had taken her over to Clovercroft, and all the Marks family had helped to make her costume. How beautiful it was, and how the girls had praised it, and even published a poem about her in theSeminary Star; and next day Miss Katherine had taken her picture, and the day after that had sent for her to come over to her studio, and had given her a copy of it to take home.
"Seems to me as if we ought to do something nice for those people who have been so kind to you," said her father, musingly, when she had told him the whole story. "You say if it hadn't been for Miss Katherine you'd have had to miss the party. If you'd have missed that you wouldn't have had that poetry about you in the paper. I'm proud of that, Puss. Seems as if my little girl is mighty popular—a sort of celebrity, to get intothe paper. I'd like to show that young lady that I appreciate what she's done to make you happy. I wonder how she'd like a crock of your mammy's apple butter. There ain't no better apple butter in all Oldham County, and I should think she'd be glad to get it. I'll speak about it when we get home, and if your mammy's willing, I'll carry a crock of it to the young lady when I take you back to school Monday morning."
Magnolia was not sure of the propriety of such a gift, and he turned the matter over in his slow mind all the rest of the way home. They jogged along in silence, for she also was busy with her thoughts. She was thinking of another picture in the library book which she had not showed her father. It was an unmounted photograph of Lloyd Sherman which Miss Katherine had taken the year before.
She had photographed all the children who took part in the play of the "Rescue of the Princess Winsome," and they were arranged on a panel on her studio wall. There were several of Lloyd; one at the spinning-wheel, one with her arms around Hero's neck, and one with the knight kneeling to take her hand from the old king's. But the most beautiful one of all was the one of the Dove Song. Thatpicture hung by itself. It was just a little medallion, showing the head of the Princess with the white dove nestled against her shoulder. The fair hair with its coronet of pearls made a halo around the sweet little face, and Magnolia stood gazing at it as if it had been the picture of an angel. She had no eyes for anything else in the studio, and Miss Flora, seeing her gaze of rapt admiration, looked across at her sister and smiled significantly.
"Haven't you a copy of that you could give her, Katherine?" she asked, in a low tone. "I never saw a child's face express such wistful longing. It makes me think of some of the little waifs I have seen at Christmas time, gazing hungrily into the shop windows at the toys and bon-bons they know can never be for them."
Miss Katherine opened a table drawer, and, after searching a few minutes among the unmounted photographs it contained, took out one, regarding it critically.
"This was a trifle too light to suit me," she said, "but too good to destroy." She crossed the room and held it out to Magnolia, who still stood gazing at its duplicate on the wall.
Such a look of rapture came into the child's face when it was finally made clear to her that she wasto have the picture to keep that no one noticed the omission of spoken thanks. She was too embarrassed to say anything, but she took it as if it were something sacred.
"I suppose because Lloyd happens to be the goddess just now to whom she burns incense," said Miss Katherine when she had gone. "These little schoolgirl affairs are very amusing sometimes. They're so intense while they last."
Maggie could not have told why she did not show the picture of the Princess to her father. In an undefined sort of way she felt that he would look at it as he would look at the picture of any little girl, and that he would not understand that she was so much finer and better and more beautiful and different in every way from all the other girls in the world. But Corono would understand. For two days Magnolia had looked forward to the pleasure of showing it to her.
"Can't you get old Dixie out of a walk, daddy?" she exclaimed at last. "I'm mighty anxious to get home before sundown. I want to stop at Roney's with this library book, and show her the picture, too."
Aroused from his reverie the old farmer cluckedto his horse, and they went bumping down the stony pike at a gait which satisfied even Maggie's impatient desire for speed.
"I reckon Roney will be mighty glad to see you," he remarked, as he stopped the horse in front of an old cabin a short distance from his own home. "She's been worse this week. You'll have half an hour yet before sundown," he added, as he turned the wheel for her to climb out of the carryall.
"I'll stay till supper-time," she called back over her shoulder, "for I have so much to tell her this week."
With the library book tucked away under the old gray shawl, she ran down the straggling path to the little whitewashed cabin.
Roney would understand. Roney had always understood things from the time they had first been neighbours on a lonely farm near Loretta. That was when Magnolia was a baby, and Corono, six years older, without a playmate and without a toy, had daily borrowed her and played with her as if she had been a great doll. It was Corono who had discovered her first tooth, and who had coaxed her to take her first step, and had taught her nearly everything she knew, from threading a needle and tying a knot, to spelling out the words on the tombstonesin the nuns' graveyard. Corono could often tell what she was thinking about, even before she said a word. She was the only one at home to whom Magnolia ever mentioned the Princess.
Several years before the two families had moved away together from the old place. In that time Corono's mother had died, and her father had become so crippled with rheumatism that he could no longer manage to do the heavy work on the farm he had rented. They were glad to accept their old neighbour's offer of an empty cabin on his place. After that, when Corono was not at the farmhouse helping Mrs. Budine with her cleaning or sewing or pickle-making, Magnolia was at the cabin, following at the little housekeeper's very heels, as she went about her daily tasks. But now for several months Corono had been barely able to drag from one room to another. Whether it was a fall she had had in the early summer which injured her back, or whether it was some disease of the spine past his skill to discover, the doctor from the crossroads could not decide.
Her father had to be housekeeper now, and they would have had meagre fare oftentimes, had not a generous share of every pie and pudding baked in the Budine kitchen found its way to their table.
The weeks would have been almost unbearably monotonous to Corono after Magnolia started to school had she not looked forward to the Fridays, when her return meant the bringing of a new library book, and another delightfully interesting chapter of her life at the seminary.
These glimpses into a world so different from her own gave her something to think about all week, as she dragged wearily about, trying to help her father in his awkward struggles with the cooking and cleaning. She thought about them at night, too, when the pain in her back kept her awake. Betty and Lloyd and Allison, Kitty and Elise and Katie Mallard, were as real to her as they were to Maggie. They would have stared in astonishment could they have known that every week a sixteen-year-old girl, whom they had never seen, and of whom they had barely heard, was waiting to ask a dozen eager questions about them.
Maggie ran in without knocking, bringing such a breath of fresh air and fresh interest with her that Corono's face brightened instantly. She was lying on the bed with a shawl thrown over her.
"I've been listening for you for more than an hour," said Corono, propping herself up on her elbow. "I thought the time never would pass.I counted the ticking of the clock, and then I tried to see how much of Betty's play I could repeat. I've read it so many times this week that I know it nearly all by heart."
She picked up the book which lay beside her on the bed. It was the library copy of "The Rescue of the Princess Winsome," which Maggie had brought to her the previous Friday. It had been in such constant demand since the opening of school that she had been unable to obtain it earlier.
Maggie, about to plunge into an account of her Hallowe'en experiences, checked herself as Corono winced with pain and her face grew suddenly white. "What's the matter?" she asked, sympathetically. "Do you feel very bad?"
To her astonishment Corono buried her face in her pillow to hide the tears that were trickling down her cheeks, and began to sob.
"I'll run get mammy," said the frightened child, who had never seen Corono give way to her feelings in such fashion before.
"No, don't!" she sobbed. "I'll be all right—in a minute. I'm just nervous—from the pain—I haven't slept much—lately!"
Maggie sat motionless, afraid to make any attemptat consolation, even so much as patting her cheek with her plump little hand. Roney was the one who had always comfortedher. She did not know what to do, now that their positions were suddenly reversed. She was relieved when Roney presently wiped her eyes and said, with an attempt at cheerfulness, "There! You never saw me make a baby of myself before! Did you! But I couldn't help it. Sometimes when it gets this way I wish I could die. But I've justgotto keep on living for daddy's sake. I don't suppose any one ever told you, and you couldn't understand unless you knew.
"It's this way. My mother's family never wanted her to marry daddy, and they disowned her when she did, because he wasn't educated and rich and all that, as they were. They never spoke to her afterward, but when my grandfather came to die, I reckon he was sorry for the way he'd done, for he wanted to send for her. It was too late, though. She had died that spring. Then he tried to make it up in a way, by being good to me, and he left me an annuity. I can't explain to you just what that is, but every year as long as I live his lawyer is to pay me some money. It isn't much, but it is all that daddy and I have had to live on sincehe hasn't been able to work. When I die the money will stop coming, so I feel that Imustkeep on living even when every breath is agony, as it is sometimes. I don't think I can stand it much longer. There are days when I just have to grit my teeth and say Iwon'tgive up! I will hang on for poor daddy's sake. Sometimes I believe that is all that keeps me alive."
She stopped abruptly, seeing the tears of distress in Maggie's eyes, and made an attempt to laugh.
"There!" she exclaimed. "Now that I've poured out all my troubles and eased my mind, I feel better. Tell me about the girls. What have they been doing this week?"
Much relieved, Maggie produced the photograph of herself, and began an enthusiastic account of her Hallowe'en experiences. She began with the visit to Clovercroft, and as she described the handsomely furnished music-room, with its luxurious rugs and grand piano, and the priceless pictures that had been brought from over the sea, its lace curtains and white tiled hearth and andirons that shone like gold, it seemed to her that the little cabin had never looked so bare. Its chinked walls and puncheon floor stood out in pitiful contrast. Theonly picture in the room was an unframed chromo tacked above the mantel.
As she described the masquerade frolic, she contrasted Roney's lonely shut-in life with her own and the other girls' at the seminary. A realization of its meagreness and emptiness stole over her till she could hardly keep the tears back. A great longing sprang up in her warm little heart to do something that would compensate as far as possible for all that she had missed. Acting on that impulse, as she reached the climax of her story and drew out the cherished photograph of the Princess, she thrust it into Roney's hand, saying, hurriedly, "Here, you can have it, Roney. I'd rather you would have it than me."
Corono held the picture eagerly, studying every detail of the beautiful little medallion. The fair hair with its coronet of pearls, the white dove nestled against her shoulder, as she had held it when she sang "Flutter and fly, flutter and fly, bear him my heart of gold,"—all seemed doubly attractive now with the play fresh in her mind. Besides, it was the most beautiful picture she had ever seen in all the sixteen years of her lonely, unsatisfied life.
The intuition that always helped her to understandher little friend made her understand now in a way that the gift meant a sacrifice, and she exclaimed, impulsively, "Oh, Maggie! I don't feel as if I ought to take it from you. You keep it, and just lend it to me once in awhile."
"No, I want you to have it," said Maggie, drawing the old shawl up around her. "Goodness me! It's getting dark. I'll have to run," and before Corono could make another protest she rushed away.
As she ran along the path that crossed the pasture between the cabin and the farmhouse, there was a tremulous smile on her face, but the faint twilight also showed tears in her eyes. The smile was for the joy she knew she had given Roney, but the tears were for herself. Nobody knew how much of a sacrifice she had made in giving up the picture of the Princess. Even Roney had not guessed how great it was. But she had no regret next morning when she came back to the cabin. Roney greeted her eagerly.
"Look!" she cried, pointing to the old wooden clock which stood on the mantel. "I didn't have a frame to put the picture in, and I was afraid it would get spoiled without glass over it. While I was looking around the room wondering whatto do, I happened to notice that it was the same size as the pendulum. Daddy lifted it down for me, and I fastened the picture on that. So there it is all safe and sound behind the glass door, and I can see it from any part of the room.
"And, oh, Maggie, you don't know how it helped me last night. It made the play seem so real to me. As I lay here watching the pendulum, it stopped saying 'Tick tock, tick tock.' It seemed to me that the Princess was looking straight at me, saying, instead, 'For love—will find—a way!' Then I knew that she meant me. That love would help me bear the pain for daddy's sake; that my living along as bravely as I could was like spinning the golden thread, and that I mustn't think about the great skein that the weeks and months were piling up ahead for me to do; I must just spin a minute at a time. I can stand the pain when I count it with the pendulum. Even when the fire died down and I couldn't see her any longer, I could hear her saying it over and over, 'For love—will find—a way.' And I lay there in the dark and pretended that I was a princess, too, spinning love's golden thread, and that my dove was a little white prayer that I could send fluttering up to God, asking him to help mefind the way to be brave and patient, and to hang on to life as long as I possibly can for daddy's sake."
Little did the Shadow Club dream that day how far their shadow-selves were reaching. But Betty's song brought comfort and courage for many an hour into Roney's lonely life, and the greatest solace in her keenest suffering was the smiling face of the Princess, swaying back and forth upon the pendulum.
ONE RAINY AFTERNOON
Thatsame Saturday afternoon following the Hallowe'en frolic, while Maggie rehearsed the whole affair once more in the cabin, the Shadow Club discussed it at the seminary. They had met early, for Lloyd and Betty had asked permission to make candy in their room, and in order to finish the amount of work they had planned to do at each meeting, it was necessary for them to begin immediately after dinner.
It was a dull November day, cloudy and damp, and while they were settling themselves to work, the rain began to patter against the window-panes.
"How cosy and shut-in it makes you feel!" exclaimed Katie, looking around on the bright, comfortable room.
"We are shut in," answered Lloyd. "The Clark girls and Magnolia have gone home to stay ovah Sunday, and we have this whole wing to ourselves. Nobody can heah us, no mattah how loud we talk."
"Let's put up the sign, 'No admittance. Busy,' on the corridor door leading into our hall," suggested Ida. "On a rainy afternoon like this, when the girls can't get out-doors, they're more apt to go visiting, and we don't want to be interrupted."
"That's so," agreed Lloyd. Hastily scribbling the notice on an envelope, she ran out and fastened it on the door with a pin.
"Now we're safe," she announced on her return, and settled herself comfortably among the cushions of the window-seat. For half an hour their needles and brushes were plied rapidly, as they chattered and laughed over the various remarks they had heard about the mysterious Hallowe'en guests. Who they were still remained an unsolved riddle in the school.
Presently Ida dropped her embroidery-hoops and leaned back in her chair yawning. "Oh, I'm in no mood for work of this kind! My silks snarl, my needle keeps coming unthreaded, and I stick myself nearly every time I take a stitch. I'm making such a mess of it I'd stop only I don't want to shirk my part when you are all working so faithfully. When my embroidery acts this way it makes me so nervous I could scream."
"Why don't you do some more burnt-work instead?" suggested Katie.
"I'm out of leather. The last lot I sent for hasn't come."
"You might read to us while we work," suggested Betty. "There's a newSt. Nicholason the table."
"Yes, do," insisted Allison. "Mother said this morning that she thought it would be a fine plan for us to take up some good book and read it in turn while we work."
As all the girls agreed, Ida picked up the magazine and began turning the leaves.
"What will you have?" she asked. "This scientific article doesn't look very entertaining, and this football story wouldn't interest anybody but boys. We can't plunge into the middle of this serial without having read the first chapters, and, judging from the illustrations and the name of this girl's story, it is anything but wildly exciting."
She glanced hastily over the remaining pages, and then laid the magazine aside. "I wonder," she said, hesitatingly, "if any of you have ever read a book I have in my room, called 'The Fortunes of Daisy Dale.' It's the sweetest thing; I nearly cried my eyes out over part of it. Of course it'sa novel, and some people object to them unless they're by some great writer like Thackeray or Scott. I know my aunt does. But I don't see how this could hurt anybody. It's about a dear little English girl whose guardian kept her almost like a prisoner, so that he could use her money. She had such a hard time that she ran away and got a place as a governess when she was only sixteen. She had all sorts of trouble and misunderstandings, but it ends happily. All the way through she has such a beautiful influence on young Lord Rokeby and Guy Wolvering, the squire's son, who is so wild that his father threatens to disinherit him. It is his love for her that finally reforms him. Her influence over him is a living illustration of the motto of our club."
"Then let's read it," proposed Allison, eagerly.
"Oh, yes, go get it, Ida," called Lloyd and Kitty in the same breath.
"That is, if you don't mind reading it twice yourself," added Betty.
"No, indeed!" answered Ida, rising. "I could read it a dozen times and never tire of it."
In a moment she was back from her room, carrying the book in one hand and dragging a rocking-chair behind her with the other. She drew it upto one of the windows, and pushing the curtains farther aside, sat down and began to read, to the pattering accompaniment of the rain-drops on the pane. She was a good reader, the best in the seminary, and her well modulated voice would have lent a charm to any story; but the expression she threw into this made it seem as if she were recounting her own personal troubles.
She had not read half a chapter before Lloyd understood why it seemed so. Ida was putting herself in Daisy Dale's place. Instead of the unjust guardian there was the unreasonable aunt. Instead of the squire's son, Edwardo; and the stolen meetings and the smuggled letters and the pearl Daisy wore in secret recalled the confidences of the night in the orchard, and many that had been whispered to her since.
The Shadow Club forgot where they were presently. They ceased to notice that the cold rain drove faster and faster against the windows. They were treading a winding path across a sunny English meadow with Daisy and her lover. It was June-time where they wandered. The hawthorn hedges were budding white, and even the crevices of the old stone wall flaunted its bloom wherever a cluster of "London pride" could find a foothold.
In a little while Katie's crochet-work slipped into her lap unheeded. With chin in hands and elbows on her knees, she leaned forward, listening with rapt attention. Betty laid down her embroidery-hoops, and Kitty and Allison stopped painting. It was a wild, stormy night now, and they were suffering with Daisy, as with clasped hands and streaming eyes she turned her back on her old home, driven out to seek her own living by her guardian's unbearable tyranny.
Lloyd's cheeks burned redder and redder as the story went on, and Daisy Dale, established as governess at Cameron Hall, again met Guy Wolvering and listened to his vows of deathless devotion. She wondered how Ida could read on so calmly when some of those scenes had been her own experience. She wondered what the girls would say if they knew all that she knew. Then she wondered how it would feel to be the heroine in such scenes, and be the idol of some one's whole existence, as Daisy Dale was of Guy Wolvering's, as Ida was of Edwardo's.
"Oh, don't stop!" begged five eager voices, when Ida finally laid down the book.
"I must. It's nearly dark, and my throat is tired. Do you realize I have been reading all afternoon?"
"Oh, it didn't seem more than five minutes!"exclaimed Katie. "I never was so interested in anything in my life. I am wild to hear the end."
"Girls!" cried Allison, tragically, starting up from her chair. "I wish you'd look at that clock! We haven't made the candy, and we've scarcely worked at all this whole afternoon, and now it's time to go home."
"But how can we?" queried Kitty. "It's simply pouring. Look at those windows. The rain is coming in torrents."
"We'll have to stay all night," laughed Katie. "Wouldn't it be fun if we could?"
"You can," cried Lloyd, seizing the suggestion eagerly. "I'm sure that the matron would be willing. There's plenty of extra rooms on Satahday night; there's two right heah in this wing. All you have to do is to telephone home and ask yoah mothahs. I'm suah they'll let you, because it's such dreadful weathah. Come on, let's go and ask now. Then we can make the candy befoah suppah, and finish the book befoah bedtime."
With the pouring rain as an excuse, it was easy to obtain the matron's permission for them to stay, and she herself telephoned to Mrs. Walton and Mrs. Mallard, explaining the situation and assuring them that the girls would be well taken care of.
Both mothers gave consent so thankfully that the matron turned away from the telephone feeling that her hospitable insistence had made these ladies her friends for life; and she bustled away well pleased with herself, to put fresh sheets on the beds in the empty rooms in the west wing.
The Clark sisters' room, next to Lloyd and Betty's, had a closet built opposite theirs into the same partition-wall, in the deep space beside the chimney. When both doors were closed no sound penetrated from one room to the other, but if either were left ajar, any one happening to step into either closet could hear quite distinctly what was said on the other side.
The matron, opening the closet door on her side of the wall to fold away some blankets that she had just taken from the beds, heard Lloyd on the other side hunting for the bottle of alcohol for the chafing-dish. Then Katie's voice came piping through high and shrill:
"Wasn't it sweet of Mrs. Bond to telephone herself and insist on our being allowed to stay? If I had been at the telephone mamma would have said that she would send the carriage and I needn't get wet, and could come home just as well as not. But she was willing to accept an invitation fromheadquarters. I'm going to save Mrs. Bond some of my fudge. She's just the dearest thing that ever was."