246CHAPTER NINETEENJOURNALISM

‘By all means use sometimes to be alone.Salute thyself: see what thy soul doth wear.’

“You needn’t scamper away up the tree so fast. I’m not going to stay round here long enough to interfere with your looking over your spiritual wardrobe. I wonder if your soul wears soft gray fur?” And the story-teller walked quickly on through the woods, chanting to herself: “Old world,229how beautiful thou art!” and planning for an unusually effective dénouement for the tale of the Three Little Pigs.

Hannah, traversing the blistering length of Main Street, had arrived at the gloomy brick building labelled Hotel, and had inquired for Mrs. Tracy of whom her prescription told her this much: “Travelling man’s wife, convalescent after long severe illness.”

Mrs. Tracy would receive her in her room, and Hannah followed the proprietor, who was also bell-boy and head waiter, up the shabby stairs, feeling decidedly foolish, but determined not to give up.

Once inside the room, she forgot her own feelings. It was a most doleful place, with ugly walls, cheap stained furniture and huge figured curtains; but she was met by a sweet-faced young woman in a soft blue négligée.

“Dr. Helen telephoned me that you were coming,” she said, taking Hannah’s hand and looking into her eyes with a bright look that made Hannah feel interested at once.

“Will you take the place of honor?” She indicated a stiff little settee, upholstered in magenta cotton velvet.

“It must be what theCourieradvertisement meant, when it spoke of furniture, ‘warranted upholstered,’” said Hannah seating herself, and230smiling her most merry smile at her attractive little hostess.

The thin face almost dimpled with pleasure.

“So you read theCourier, too! Mr. Tracy bought back numbers of it to amuse me, and I’ve collected the most delightful clippings. You see, I’m alone so much. The nurse wasn’t very entertaining, and my husband has to be away all the week, and I have to have some one to laugh with, or at least, something to laugh at!”

“What fun!” said Hannah. “Do show me your clippings.”

“I was just pasting in a birth notice when you came,” said Mrs. Tracy, lifting a small scrap-book from a table. “It’s about as good as anything. ‘Mr. and Mrs. Ezra Kling are the proud parents of a fine baby girl. Present indications are that the lovely lump intends to stay.’”

“O!” Hannah shrieked and leaned forward to look. Mrs. Tracy handed her the book.

“That’s why I cut them out and paste them. No one would believe them, otherwise. Here is a gem of music criticism: ‘As he stepped to the edge of the platform, the word Artist came to every lip. His natural pathos mingled with his baritone in such a manner that it was impossible to tell where one left off and the other began. And in his dramatic numbers, the writhings of his face showed the convulsive agonies of a soul in pain.’”

231“One of my friends told me about a singer coming to a little village, and they described her appearance and her dress, and wound up the paragraph by saying: ‘The soloist wore white shoes. No other stage decorations were necessary.’”

“Delightful–unless it was deliberate wit! As it was in a Kansas paper, which spoke of some one’s ‘blowing large chunks of melody out of a flute.’ But the charm of these Winsted gems is the entire unconsciousness of the writer. For instance, here: ‘The élite lingerie of Winsted invited their gentleman friends to a leap-year ball!’”

“O, see here!” cried Hannah, turning the pages joyfully. “‘The hall was decorated with syringe blossoms!’”

“Only a misprint, and I saw in a Chicago paper the other day that one of the fashionable ladies wore a gown with a gold-colored y-o-l-k. This is partly a misprint, too, ‘easyhairswere scattered about with a lavish hand.’ But I think it would take a hand that was powerful as well as lavish, to scatter easy chairs very generally! That was the same party where the hostess and her daughters ‘dispensed with the refreshments in the dining-room!’ But I am not going to keep you laughing over theCourierall the afternoon,” and Mrs. Tracy tried to take the book away from Hannah.

“Just one more,” she begged. “Listen! ‘Mrs. Gray’s speech was replete with wit, wisdom and232winsome ways.’ O dear, Mrs. Tracy! I never saw anything so funny as this book in all my life!”

“The trouble with it is that it gets one started on a certain line, and it is very hard to get away from it.”

“Like telling funny names you have heard,” suggested Hannah. “Alice and Catherine and Frieda and I got to telling those last night, and we laughed so long and so hard that Dr. Helen came up and put us to bed!”

“Did you have any funnier than Pearl Button?”

“Not really?” protested Hannah. “Alice swore she knew one girl called Dusk Delight Dinwiddie, because she was born at twilight and they thought she was delightful. That was what we were laughing over when Dr. Helen came in, and she stopped long enough to tell us of a college acquaintance of hers named Revelation Rasmussen, who married Will Kelly, and an Ella G. Gray whom they nick-named ‘Country Churchyard’!”

“What jolly times you girls must be having,” said Mrs. Tracy. “You see, I know all about you. Dr. Helen–I began calling her Dr. Smith, but I couldn’t keep it up–has told me all sorts of interesting stories, and those about you four are the most entertaining. I listen to all your doings as though you were characters in a serial story. You don’t mind, I hope?”

“Mind? Of course not. We aren’t story-book233girls at all, though, but very flesh-and-bloody! Why didn’t Dr. Helen tell us about you before, and let us come to see you?”

“It has only been a little while that I have felt like seeing people, and when she suggested sending her daughter, I told her not to, for I didn’t want your fun interrupted. And I remember when I was your age, I dreaded calling on sick people. I always felt as though I ought to carry them tracts or–”

“Wine jelly,” finished Hannah. “Yes, that’s the way I felt a little, to-day. I was afraid I’d not be able to think of anything to say, and I planned to offer to read to you.”

“That was very good of you, but I’ve read and been read to so much that I’m glad of other occupations. The nurse exhausted the library’s resources. Then I took up picture puzzles. Mr. Tracy brings them out to me every week, but we both get cross about them because they interest us so that we spend half his precious day over them! Just now I am trying to teach myself to knit, out of a book, and I’m in a dreadful tangle. I think the chamber-maid knows how, and I mean to ask her.”

“O, let me bring Frieda in to show you. She knows how to do all such things, and would dearly love to. And you ought to meet all your story characters and see if we are like what you imagined. I must go now, for Dr. Helen expressly said that234I wasn’t to stay long, and I know you are tired.”

“I’ll soon be rested, and it has been such fun to have you. Wait! Let me give you one of my roses!”

Hannah took the rose, and then put out her hand for good-by. There was something so sweet and winning about the white little face, where tired lines were showing in spite of the smile, that Hannah impulsively bent over and kissed it; and then, promising to come next day with Frieda, she flew down the corridor and out into the street, entirely recovered from her ennui of the morning.

Frieda, meanwhile, was following minute directions which led her at last to a tiny cottage by the riverside. She went up the walk and rapped on the door. No one answered. A second attempt was as unsuccessful, and Frieda turned away, half ready to give up this strange errand which she did not quite fancy. Dr. Helen had asked her to go to this house and buy flowers! It did not look like a florist’s. There was a garden behind the house, though. She decided to go back there before giving up. Dr. Helen usually was wise.

Behind the house was a neat, neat garden, with vegetables and berry bushes and gorgeous flowers of every kind. There were little trees whitewashed up to the branches, and whitewashed stones marked the corners of the paths. Frieda stood looking about with pleasure, when she saw coming down235the path a little old lady with a black knitted shawl over her head, and a little old man in carpet slippers, with a big pipe in his mouth. They met her shyly and she put her errand in her embarrassed English. The old lady shook her head and looked hopefully at the old man. He shook his and grunted. Frieda tried once more. She frequently had difficulty in making herself understood. This time she used gestures, and made such an earnest effort to be clear that the old people began to look worried. The old lady shook her head again and then, turning to her husband, asked him something in German. Then there was excitement! Frieda plunged into German with them, and the others, delighted to find she knew their language, talked fast and faster.

When she told them she was newly come from their beloved country, their eyes filled with tears and they asked question after question. Leading her to an arbor under the whitewashed trees, they made her sit down. The little old lady hurried into the house and brought outKuchenand beer. Frieda was blissful. They spoke good German, and had visited Berlin. They were full of respect when they learned that Frieda’s father was a Herr Professor, for they themselves had been simple tradespeople. In answer to her questions, they told her how their children had come to America, had prospered, and had sent for the old parents. With sad voices236they explained their entire inability to adjust themselves to the new country and the new ways. The language they had not even attempted to acquire. At last, their sons had built this little cottage for them, and, with a grandchild, who spoke both languages, to act as interpreter, they lived peacefully and quietly on.

“But we miss the old country sometimes,” said the grandfather. “Our neighbors and the pleasant evenings and the bands.”

“Don’t you know the other Germans here?” asked Frieda. “Dr. Harlow tells me there are many.”

“They are not from our part of Germany,” said the little grandmother gently. “And they are Methodists, while we are Lutherans.”

“But our sons come often to see us, and we have the garden and each other,” said the grandfather cheerfully. “And sometimes we get hold of a German book or paper.”

“O!” cried Frieda delightedly. “There will be many German books for you soon,” and she told them eagerly about the library and the list of books Algernon had already ordered at her suggestion. They listened with intelligent interest, and exchanged looks of pleasure at the thought of such a storehouse to draw on in the long winter evenings, “when the garden takes its nap,” as the little Frau said lovingly.

237The sun was perceptibly lower when Frieda rose to go. Then she remembered Dr. Helen’s errand. The faces of her host and hostess shone at the name. “Heavenly kind! Yes! She had done much for them. They would send her flowers gladly, but sell them to her? Never!”

With big shears they cut great stalks of everything the garden contained, and, piling Frieda’s arms with blossoms, while she uttered protests and exclamations of delight, they escorted her to the gate. There, in spite of her boasted emancipation from childhood, she dropped a courtesy and left them, crying “Ade!” as long as they could see her.

At the supper table at Three Gables, Dr. Helen, with Bert on one side, and Archie on the other, called on each girl in turn for her story of the afternoon.

Alice’s turn came last.

“It was such a beautiful prescription!” she said. “I went to see Madam Kittredge. Her daughter took me up to her big room furnished with old mahogany heirlooms that made me feel as though I were in New England. And there in an arm-chair sat the most beautiful white-haired woman I ever saw. She is quite imposing and grand, but her smile saves her from being awesome. I loved her at first sight, and was not shy about staying alone with her. You would hardly know she is blind, would you? And she is perfectly delightful. She asked about Mrs. Langdon, and told me some droll238stories of her odd ways, even when she was a young girl. She and Mrs. Langdon and another girl were together a great deal when they were young, and now they live within a radius of a hundred miles, but she says they never travel, so it might almost as well be a thousand. One is blind and one is lame and the third is deaf! She laughed about it as though it were not sad at all. The deaf one has been quite ill recently, and Madam Kittredge is making the prettiest present for her. She says Mrs. Langdon writes regular letters to them both, but Madam Kittredge can reply only by dictation, or by sending little gifts, and she takes the greatest pleasure in doing that. She showed me what she was getting ready for ‘Matty,’ as she calls the one who lives in Milwaukee. It seemed so queer to hear her speak of Mrs. Langdon as ‘Sue’! If you should see her once,–” turning to Bert, who sat beside her,–“you would appreciate it. She is almost a fierce-looking old lady, and she says the most startlingly frank things if she chooses. I don’t believe any ordinary person could help being a little afraid of Mrs. Langdon, but Madam Kittredge seems to think her a delicious joke. But I started to tell about the present. You see, this Matty is all alone in the world. She never married and she hasn’t much money, and she just loves pretty things, especially pretty colors. And so Madam Kittredge is sending her a rainbow basket. It239ought to have seemed pathetic to see her handling the colored things and hear her telling about the pleasure she was sure her friend would take in them, when she couldn’t see them herself, but somehow it wasn’t. She doesn’t seem to think of herself at all, and so she doesn’t make other people. She said she made excellent use of her sight while she had it, and can picture everything clearly now. The basket itself was beautiful, a big green sweet-grass scrap basket, with a great green bow. And inside were six parcels, each tied with a bow of ribbon, so that all the rainbow shades are there. The friend is to draw one each day for a week. Mrs. Kittredge undid them and let me look. She says she likes the feel of the soft paper and ribbon. First was a little red rose bush in a pot–”

“Is she going to send the thing that way? How can she?”

“I asked, myself, and she smiled and said she allowed herself some extravagances, and one was to carry out her little ideas like that without minding if they did cost rather more doing it her way. She said her friend would enjoy the rose ten times as much coming that way as she would if it were ordered from a Milwaukee florist, so she’s sending it. I like her independent spirit!”

“It might take an independent fortune as well,” remarked Dr. Harlow, “but Madam Kittredge is fortunate enough to have that, or its equivalent,240and she uses a good proportion of it in conventional charities, so she is safe from criticism if she chooses to assist the express companies. Perhaps she’s a stockholder in one, for all I know! What did she have for orange, Alice?”

“A box of tangerines, with those tiny, tiny ones like doll oranges; I forget what you call them. They looked so pretty in a nest of green. The yellow parcel was a little sunset picture, only a little colored photograph, she said, but with a charming glow. The basket itself was for the green stripe in the rainbow, and there was a lovely pale blue knitted scarf, which Madam Kittredge made herself. The indigo bothered her, but she sent her daughter searching everywhere till she found a beautiful Persian pattern ribbon with an indigo ground, and she made that up into sachets with violet scent.”

“That finished off two at once,” said Hannah. “If I were Matty, I’d object. I thought you said there were six parcels.”

“One of the sachets was done up with dark blue ribbon and the other with violet. But there was still another parcel, a white one, the prettiest of all, for it held skeins of all the soft shades of embroidery silk you ever saw in a white silk case. I don’t see how any one could help liking to look at them. Madam Kittredge said that what suggested the whole idea to her was Matty’s writing about how she enjoyed having colored silk samples241to look at, as she lay in bed. She does embroidery, too, when she is well enough, so she will like the silks to use, by and by.”

“What a charming basket!” Catherine drew a deep breath of pleasure. “I should love to see it.”

“She said she shouldn’t send it for a day or two, so if you go in to-morrow, you can. I’m sure she’d love to have you. She wanted one more thing to make it complete. You see, without intending it, she had put in something for every sense but hearing. There was color and fragrance and touch and taste, and she said she wanted to get some music into it, and she couldn’t think how. Of course her friend is deaf, but that didn’t matter. She said her mind’s ear was as true as ever, and she wanted her tohearsomething out of that basket. And wasn’t it lovely! I happened to think of something which she said would do exactly!”

“What?” “Tell us!” “Think of having a hand in such a pretty present!” The other girls leaned forward eagerly, and the boys looked almost as interested. Alice went on a trifle shyly, as she came to tell her own part.

“I suggested some little poem full of color words, and that delighted her and she thought a minute. I didn’t know any, and I wished Catherine were there with her headful! But Madam Kittredge has a headful of her own. She had me get out two242or three books and look up some that she thought might do, but they didn’t just suit her; and then she had me open her clipping book and hunt for one calledIndian Summer. It was just the thing and I loved it the minute I read it. She let me copy it for her, and make an illuminated initial with her water-colors. She seems to have everything imaginable in that big roomy desk of hers. I was glad of the chance to copy it, for I could learn it and I want to keep it always.”

“Please recite it for us,” said Dr. Helen, and, the others all joining in her request with words or looks, Alice repeated the beautiful lines lovingly:

“Faint blue the distant hills before,Yellow the harvest lands behind;Wayfarers we upon the pathThe thistledown goes out to find.“On naked branch and empty nest,The woodland’s blended gold and red,Dim glory lies which autumn sharesWith faces of the newly dead.“Tender this moment of the yearTo eyes that seek and feet that roam;It is the lifting of the latch,A footstep on the flags of home.“Now may the peace of withered grassAnd goldenrod abide with you;Abide with me–for what is death?Pall of a leaf against the blue.”

243Feeling that a benediction had been pronounced, they all adjourned to the porch, Dr. Harlow sitting down by Archie and chatting with him in a friendly way about his own Andover experiences years before, while the girls talked quietly with Bert, who had dropped his nonsense for the time. Dr. Helen was sitting a little apart, but by and by Hannah slipped over to her chair.

“I’m not so very clever about things,” she said, “and I always like to have them explained. So won’t you tell me just what you meant by this afternoon? You know we all promised to use the prescription again, if we needed it.”

“Yes,” said Dr. Helen encouragingly, and waited.

“Well. You might have meant several things. You might just have meant that we needed a change. We had been sitting about and wishing it was cooler and talking nonsense and gossip–almost!–and we hadn’t been doing anything useful. Perhaps you wanted us to find out that we’d be happier if we did something for some one else, even if it looked disagreeable at first. I’ve always had that preached to me!”

“I didn’t preach!” objected Dr. Helen.

“No, you prescribed. That’s your way of preaching, though. You set us to preaching to ourselves, and it’s much more objectionable. I can shut my ears when other people preach to me, but I can’t get away from myself! But I was wondering if,244perhaps, besides all that, you didn’t want us to see how cheerful and happy some people manage to be without much to make them so. Even that little girl with the spine plays she is an enchanted princess, Catherine says, and has lovely times, winding balls of yarn and cutting paper chains. She has to get a certain number of them done before the enchantment will be broken. I know who suggested that idea to her,” said Hannah, looking searchingly into the doctor’s face. “I’ve found out a lot of things this afternoon about you, professionally. Perhapsthatwas what you were after! Just advertising!”

Dr. Helen’s laugh at this brought Dr. Harlow over to her; and Archie joined the other group.

“Go on, Hannah,” said Dr. Helen, seeing Hannah hesitate a little. “Dr. Harlow will be interested in your analysis of my prescription.”

“I wasn’t going to analyse it any more, but I was just thinking that whichever you meant, they were really all of them the same thing Miss Lyndesay meant when she talked to us about beinglaetus, I mean,laetae sorte mea, I meannostra!”

Dr. Harlow chuckled softly, but Dr. Helen put a kiss on the sweet mouth with the earnest curve.

“When you finish school, Hannah,” suggested Dr. Harlow, “you can come out here and help us in the office, making up prescriptions for spiritually245afflicted folk–we’ve all got to take up that line nowadays, you know–and handling the Latin end of the business. Helen never was strong on Latin. She translated ‘E pluribus unum’ as ‘One too many’ when she was young!”

The boys got up to leave, and the doctor’s raillery was checked, but Hannah pondered over it as she went up to bed. About midnight she heard him closing the doors for the night, and, slipping her bright kimono over her night-dress, she stole out into the hall and half-way down stairs.

“Dr. Harlow,” she called softly, and the doctor looked up to see her leaning over the banister, her curly brown braids falling forward.

“I know now why you laughed,” she said. “It should besortibus.Laetae sortibus nostra!O, dear no,nostris. I guess I’d rather do the surgery, and let you attend to the Latin!”

“Perhaps it would be wise!” said Dr. Harlow.

“I’m glad you’re all here. I’m in the deuce of a mess, and I want to be helped out.”

So speaking, Max seated himself upon a porch settee and waited for expressions of sympathy and curiosity from the girls before him. When he had received them, he deigned to give a few details.

“You know, I’m to be editor of the college paper next year, and Morse has promised me all summer that when he went away for two weeks’ vacation, he’d let me take his place. Well, he went last week and I got out the Courier. It was a good number, too. I don’t suppose any of you noticed the difference?”

“I remember hearing father say the editorial was especially good,” said Catherine.

“And I heard Mrs. Tracy bewailing the fact when I went in to see her yesterday, that the paper had lost all its spice, and there wasn’t a single ridiculous item in it, not even a funny typographical mistake, so I’m sure you ought to feel complimented,” said Hannah.

247“It’s true enough, but that’s just where my pickle comes in,” said Max gloomily. “I didn’t tell any one about it, because I wanted to carry it through without any one’s knowing. But the reporter has struck, because I blue-pencilled his notes. He says no college boy is going to tamper with his work, and he’s just calmly left; and what’s worse, his brother has withdrawn an ‘ad’ which means quite a loss for Morse. I see now why Morse let so many things go by!”

“That is a pity!” said Catherine sympathetically, while the others declared themselves in stronger terms. Max looked gratified. “Now what I want of you girls is to help me gather up news and make the next paper better than any issue has been since that young puppy came on it. And I’ll get ‘ads’ enough to offset the brother’s withdrawal, and a new subscription if I have to pay for it myself. I want to leave things in at least as good shape as I found them. Jenkins will come back again as soon as Morse does. He loves to write his wild stuff, and is only willing to stop for a week, because he feels important, acting insulted. Probably thought I’d eat humble pie and raise his salary, too. Why, he had the Ortmeyer-Rawlins wedding fixed out with a scare-head THE WAY OF ALL FLESH! And started it out with a quotation from Shakespeare or somebody about Love looking with the mind, not with the eyes! The bride and all her male248relatives would have been down at the office with sticks. She’s a pretty girl, you know!”

“It would have been worse, if she hadn’t been,” said Alice. “What else did you cut out? It sounds like my pupils’ work. I’ll help you blue-pencil. It’s just my line.”

“The other things weren’t funny, just poor constructions and general flatness, personals that were too personal, you know, and that sort of thing. But he had a rhapsody on Dawn all worked up that he wanted to run in, this week. It began: ‘When I arise at daybreak, a thousand quotations surge into my mind!’ The fellow is daft on quoting. He sits with his feet on the desk and reads Bartlett by the hour. Well, I’m rid of him, and I’m looking for substitutes.”

“I’d like nothing better than reporting,” said Hannah. “I’ll interview the prominent strangers who come to town and get their views on things. Imagine me strutting around the hotel lobby, getting acquainted!” And Hannah assumed the swaggering manner which she fancied characteristic of reporters.

“The only prominent stranger in town is Frieda,” laughed Max. “You’ll have to get her opinion of American education or the tariff.”

“That’s easy. I know all Frieda’s opinions. If they are favorable, she gives them out plainly, and if they aren’t she keeps still, so it’s no work249to guess at them. I wish I could do like she does!” she added, with a sudden earnest tone in her voice.

“I’ll blue-pencil all your reportings, if you use such grammar as ‘like she does!’” said Alice sternly.

“Then I’ll get mad and resign as Jenkins did!” answered Hannah. “I guess I know the privileges of a reporter!”

“Do you think you could get the news?” asked Max. “I suppose I could manage alone, but I’d like to have the paper fuller and better than ever, and I thought if you girls would go in, we could have a lark out of it, and not tell the rest.”

“Indeed we can get news!” cried Catherine. “If you let us tell Mother and Father, they can give us news which will be perfectly legitimate, and Hannah and I have some calls to make. Frieda doesn’t want to go, and Alice wasn’t here when these girls called. They are some of the gossippy kind, and we’ll let them talk and report as much as seems fair. And the Three B’s meet here this week, and we can make a good society column thing of that.”

“Why not have Algernon give you library notes?” suggested Alice.

“He does, always, but he would be glad to do something extra, I’m sure,” said Max. “I don’t know but it would be a good plan to take him in on this. He’s in a position to gather news easily.”

250“I don’t see how I can help,” said Frieda, sadly.

“If you’ll tell me something interesting about German schools,” said Alice, “I’ll write it up, and that will go in as our contribution. You could make room for it, couldn’t you, Mr. Editor?”

“Indeed, I could. I’d be mighty glad to get it. It would be better than filling up with poetry, the way they often do. By the way, I did cut out a poem of the reporter’s. I forgot all about that. Wonder where it is,” and he began searching in his pockets.

“That’s what made him angry,” cried Catherine. “Anybody would be angry at that. Was it a very bad poem?”

“I can’t remember much of it. Only it had a refrain every two inches of ‘My woe! My woe!’

‘I cannot tell the world my woe,’

was the way it began, and then he went straight ahead to try to do that very thing. Here! I’ve got a scrap of it.

‘Things are seldom what they seem,Nor is Life what its livers dream,My woe, my woe!’”

The audience shouted with laughter, but Catherine looked sympathetic.

“Poor boy!” she said. “He probably loved his quotations and his poetry, and had looked forward to Mr. Morse’s being away to have a beautiful time251with the paper. I don’t blame him for resigning and eating his heart out. Not a poem of mine will I send you, Mr. Penfield, or any of your hard-hearted staff. I’ll confine myself to finding out what’s happening in Winsted, and leave the head-lines to your own inventive genius.”

Two days later, the editorial staff of the Courier had an impromptu meeting in the library. Max had come in to ask Algernon for notes, and Catherine and Hannah were waiting for Frieda and Alice to join them to go to a tea at Dot’s.

“We’ve called on the biggest gossips we could find,” called Hannah cheerfully, as Max came in, “and I’ve got at least ten items.” She showed a note-book which slipped inside her card-case.

“She was dreadful!” said Catherine. “She would stop and make notes before we had got a block away from the house, for fear she would forget, and asked questions that made me hold my breath.”

“Well,” Hannah defended herself. “I wanted details. I don’t want just little bare sentences. And Catherine was just as bad. She took such an interest in the new people who had moved in next door to the Galleghers’, that I know the Gallegher girls were almost scandalized.”

Max ran his eye over Hannah’s list of news items approvingly. “That’s a fine start. Can’t you do some more calls?”

Catherine shook her head. “No, we don’t know252any more of the very gossippy kind, but we are going to a tea at Dot’s, and we’ll make a society note of that. How are the editorials coming?”

Max made a wry face. “I declare, I’m pretty nearly stumped. At college there always seemed to be a lot of vital matters to discuss. But here there isn’t anything after a little spiel on the crops and a paragraph on politics. I don’t dare go in heavy there, for I’m not sure just what Morse’s position is, and don’t want to commit him. I can’t think of any public enterprise to work up, or any nuisance to be suppressed.”

“I wish you’d suppress mosquitoes and flies,” said Hannah, brushing away one of the latter insects, and petting a swollen place on her wrist.

“Why not write an editorial on it?” suggested Catherine. “You can give him material to read, can’t you, Algernon?”

Algernon came over to the corner where the three were talking in tones fitting a library.

“What’s that? O, indeed, yes,” and the boy’s face lightened with pleasure as he found some one really desiring information of a worthy nature. “I’ll get you something right away. There was an article in a last month’s magazine.”

“I could do elegant head-lines,” said Max:

“KEROSENE THE KONQUEROR!MOSQUITOES MASSACRED!THE FLIGHT OF THE FLY!”

253As Algernon brought the magazine and a book, Alice and Frieda arrived in their party raiment, and, bidding the boys good-by, the four girls drifted out and down the street looking like pretty butterflies.

Max lingered for a few minutes’ chat with Algernon about the paper, telling him some of his difficulties and desires. Algernon’s store of information proved of value here, too, and Max accepted gratefully a hint or two about the mechanical part of the work.

“I say, Swinburne,” he said suddenly, as he got up to go, taking fly and mosquito literature with him, “couldn’t you get off and run up to Madison for a few days this fall? I’d like to show you around and have you meet some of the fellows. If I were you, I’d try to pass off a few subjects. You could, without half trying, and perhaps you’d be able to get up and take your degree some time.”

“Thanks,” said Algernon, “I’ll think about it,” and Max went whistling away; but Algernon, as he selected a fairy tale for the little Hamilton girl, felt his heart light and his courage high. “I’ll get to college yet, as true as I’m alive,” he said aloud, and the little Hamilton girl looked up at him. “What did you say?” she asked. “I don’t want true stories, but fairy ones.”

The meeting of the Three R’s the next evening was one of particular importance. Not only to the eager reporters, who found that even Dot’s party would not spread out sufficiently to use up the space they had allotted to social events, but to the club members themselves. It was Judge Arthur’s fiftieth birthday, and as he was a childless man, quite alone in the world, his friendly neighbors were determined to make the day memorable for him. The meeting was to be at Three Gables, so the journalists were behind the scenes from the start. The only difficulty in the way of their writing it up was that they were so busy all day that there was not time to take a pen in hand.

“I always see to the refreshments when they meet here,” said Catherine to her three helpers, as she appeared, wearing by Hannah’s request, her brown smock. “You can crack the nuts for the salad if you will, Frieda; and Hannah, if you and Alice will get the dishes out of the way, that would be the most help. Mother wants Inga to sweep255the living-room, and we can have a jolly time out here.”

“You ought to see the kitchen at Frieda’s house,” said Hannah, as she made a fine suds in the rinsing pan and poured it over the glasses. “What did you think of our black stoves and things, Frieda?”

“I saw one in the American church first, you know.”

Hannah smiled at the diplomatic evasion. “You are the nicest thing I ever saw, Frieda. You don’t say anything unfavorable of anything any more. When I was at your house I kept criticising the whole country. But you are so polite,–as polite as Karl!”

Frieda looked pleased, but she only said sedately: “We were children when you were in Berlin, Hannah. Now it is proper for us to act like grown-ups.”

“You were awfully grown-up in that pillow fight last night!”

Instantly the mask of primness vanished from Frieda’s face, and roguish twinkles showed themselves.

“Don’t let me ever catch you turning prig, Frieda Lange,” advised Hannah. “And now don’t ask me what a prig is, for I don’t know in German, and there’s no way here to find out. What else are you going to have for eats, Catherine?”

Catherine shuddered. “I suppose you’d think I was a prig if I told you how I hate that word256‘eats,’ so I won’t tell you! The chief thing to-night is the birthday cake, of course. And Inga is going to make grape-fruit sherbet. It’s so nice with a little tang of tartness to it, you know. And we’ll have olive sandwiches with the salad and coffee. You can all help with those!”

“It’s such fun to help,” said Alice. “At home there are so many of us, and no maid at all, you know, and we have awfully jolly times, really. Mother is cook and she has a different scullery-maid for each meal. And the rest of us divide up the rooms, and so on. The boys are great workers, too. Even little Jack brings in kindlings and wipes the silver. He plays the knives are men, and the forks their wives and the spoons the little children.”

“O, so did I, always,” cried Catherine. “And it used to worry me dreadfully not to know positively that the proper couples were together. Once I tied them all neatly with different colored silks, but Mother didn’t approve. Through with the nuts so soon, Frieda? Then you can begin on the sandwiches.”

“Ach! The butter is too difficult!”

“Cream it, then. So!” and Alice illustrated. “I’ll go to work on these, too, while Hannah puts away the dishes, for I don’t know where they belong.”

“All right,” said Catherine. “But please don’t talk, any of you, for a few minutes. I don’t want257to lose a word that any of you say, and I’m afraid the cake may suffer.”

Dr. Helen stopped at the door and looked in at the group of silent workers. They all threw her kisses, and she went smiling on her way.

“I wish I had four of my own,” she thought to herself. “How the other mothers must be missing them! Four more interesting and delightful girls I never have known. Hannah has grown more mature since I saw her last, and Frieda is distinctly unique. Alice is the kind you can tie to. But I really think, without prejudice, my Catherine is a shade sweeter and steadier and more responsible than all the rest!”

By five o’clock the house was all ready. The decorations were great masses of goldenrod which Bert and Polly had gathered. Frieda had suggested tying them with bows of red ribbon, whereat the others had shrieked with horror and tried to Americanize her color sense a little. She approved of the birthday cake, and was interested in the big tin circle which held fifty candle-sockets, and would slip over the cake as it rested on a tray. Winding this circle with smilax proved a task just to Frieda’s mind, and she worked at it with Hannah’s help, while Alice and Catherine planned the “recreation” for the evening.

“I’m so glad,” said Catherine, stretching a little, “that we don’t have to get the Rest ready for them.258Refreshments and Recreation are enough to provide!”

“You need the Rest yourself,” said Hannah. “I think it was a shame that out-of-town call had to come for your mother this afternoon. She would have enjoyed these things, and she looked so tired.”

“I know. But I’m so glad she could go away and feel sure I’d carry things through. You don’t know what a comfort that is to me! Whenever I feel discouraged about things, I always pluck up spirit by remembering that I’m really useful to her. I couldn’t practise medicine myself, you know, but there have been lots of things Mother couldn’t have done, if I hadn’t been here to help at home. I wish she could be here this afternoon, though, for she is so clever at foolishnesses like this.”

“You’re clever enough at it, yourself,” growled Hannah. “I don’t see how you can do it. You and Alice make me sick with envy. You can cook and manage and tutor and make rhymes and everything, and I can’t do much of anything!”

“How about playing the violin?” suggested Alice.

“I can’t do that,” said Frieda suddenly. “I cannot do one thing. O, there comes Dr. Helen, after all! We were wishing you were here,” and Frieda sprang up and ran to meet the doctor. The others followed her and in an instant Dr. Helen found her arms full of welcoming girls.

259“I met a messenger on the way, telling me that I need not come, and I’ll admit it was a relief. I knew you’d get on all right, but I did want a finger in the pie. There! You may put my hat and coat away, Hannah, if you will, and I’ll get right to work. How prettily you are putting that smilax on, Frieda!”

“That’s right to cheer Frieda up, Mother,” said Catherine. “She was just saying that she couldn’t do anything.”

“Frieda was saying that? I thought you embroidered that wonderful apron yourself?”

“O, of course, but that is onlyHandarbeit,” said Frieda.

“Hand work is highly valued these days,” remarked the doctor. “If you could teach Catherine to sew so well, Frieda, I should be even prouder of her than I am now. But it must not distress you when you find that there is some one thing you can’t do. No one does everything well. It’s one of my pet theories that for every talent one has, there is some other he hasn’t. It’s part of the balancing of the world. Think how very disagreeable it would be if there were one person who could do everything, and some one else who could do nothing at all.”

“Don’t you think there are some people who can’t do anything?” asked Alice.

“Not really. Some people never seem to find260their special line. I’ve known people so perverse they wouldn’t do what they could, simply because they would have preferred something else. But I’m a firm believer that every one has a gift.”

“IsHandarbeita gift?” asked Frieda, looking with respect at the graceful vine twining over the shoulder of her blue apron.

“Indeed it is,” said Dr. Helen. “And it is a gift more widely distributed than everybody knows. If you can, do help Catherine to discover that it is one of hers!”

“She helped me find out that I liked to sew,” said Hannah. “I hated the sight of a needle before I went to Germany. But I didn’t know you hated sewing, Catherine.”

“I don’t,” Catherine answered tranquilly. “But there are always so many other things to do, and there is so much to read. It makes me shiver to think that I have only three years more at Dexter, and I haven’t begun to read all I want to. I’d like to move over to the library and stay there.”

“That’s a serious criticism of your college life, Catherine,” said Dr. Helen.

Hannah giggled. “I suppose there is a library at Dexter, but I was there a whole term, and never went inside it once!”

Everybody laughed. “Well,” said Dr. Helen, “that was the other extreme. But I suppose if you young people were all-wise and learned, there’d261be no point in sending you to college at all. And the world would be much more monotonous if it were filled with grown-ups! What a conflagration those red candles will make, Frieda!”

Catherine had left her seat and gone across the room to the poetry section of the bookcase, and was now turning the pages of a small green book.

“Listen to this Singing Leaf, Mother!

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