“Dear Wide-Awake:“I have been taking you ever since I was a child. I will be fourteen my next birthday. I like you very much. I would like to correspond with any one who is about my age. I have no brothers and sisters, and get very lonely. I have read all Miss Alcott, but I wish she had let Jo marry Laurie. I like theWide-Awakestories. Please have a good long one about boarding-school36in the next number. I like Dickens, but I can’t bear Scott. I know John Gilpin and Baby Bell by heart, and I am in the eighth grade. I like skating and rowing. There is a fine pond near us.“Your loving reader,“Violet Ethelyn Eldred.“P. S. Nobody knows that I am writing this letter, so please print it soon to surprise them.”
“Dear Wide-Awake:
“I have been taking you ever since I was a child. I will be fourteen my next birthday. I like you very much. I would like to correspond with any one who is about my age. I have no brothers and sisters, and get very lonely. I have read all Miss Alcott, but I wish she had let Jo marry Laurie. I like theWide-Awakestories. Please have a good long one about boarding-school36in the next number. I like Dickens, but I can’t bear Scott. I know John Gilpin and Baby Bell by heart, and I am in the eighth grade. I like skating and rowing. There is a fine pond near us.
“Your loving reader,
“Violet Ethelyn Eldred.
“P. S. Nobody knows that I am writing this letter, so please print it soon to surprise them.”
Catherine kissed the page and closed the book. “Isn’t it too unbelievable that that queer little letter with that ridiculous fancy name at the end should have done so much? Violet Ethelyn Eldred! It hasn’t nearly so pleasant a sound to me now as Hannah. And the child thought no one would write to her if she signed her own name,–it was so ‘homely’! Ah me! I suppose I should be getting dressed instead of sitting about in the sunshine, mooning. I wonder if Inga will remember the muffins for breakfast.”
“Polly Osgood wants to see you, Catherine.”
Catherine, busily sorting linen in the up-stairs linen room a little later in the morning, leaned over the railing in answer to her mother’s announcement from the hall below.
“O, Polly, do come on up. I’ve a little more37to do and we might just as well talk while I’m at it. Have you called the Boat Club meeting?”
Polly Osgood came running up the stairs. She was a slender little girl with big blue eyes and yellow hair.
“Yes,” she answered brightly. “I’ve called it at ten. It’s almost that now. Tom can’t come, of course; he’s always so busy daytimes, but I think all the others will be there.”
“Hasn’t Bert something to keep him?”
“Not just now,” Polly laughed. “He substituted in the post-office last week, and the week before that in a hardware store, but just now he says nobody seems to need him, and he’s reading law in private.”
“He’s such a goose,” and Catherine put two mated pillow-cases together with a little pat. “Inga never knows enough to put things in pairs, and Mother wouldn’t dare begin to look them over. If she should do anything so domestic, half Winsted would break out with mumps or chickenpox. Where did you say we’d have the meeting?”
“At the boat house. We might as well use it, now we have it. But I didn’t know you broke out with mumps.”
“That’s only figurative. Polly, why have you gone back to braids and bows? You look very infantile for a real Wellesley sophomore.”
“I got tired of the bird-cages and puffs, and38decided I’d go back to nature. Besides, playing around with Peter and Perdita you need something stationary. They work dreadful havoc with a stylish coiffure.”
“I wonder if I’d have to put my hair down just to teach them on Sundays? Mrs. Henley is going away, you know, and I’ve been asked to take her class.”
“O, I do hope you will,” cried Polly. “You would have a civilising influence on Perdita, and she needs it. Peter keeps her in order so well she neverdoesanything very bad, but she is potentially a little terror.”
“She always seems very mild when I see her,” commented Catherine, patting her piles into straight lines. “But you can’t always tell about people by looking at them. I, for instance, have all my life been expected to be lady-like, just because when I was little I hadn’t strength enough to be naughty. And many and many a time I have felt like doing something wild and shocking!”
“Why, Catherine Smith!” exclaimed Polly in amazement. “You always seemed to me a sort of beautiful princess up here on the hill, and, good as any of the rest of us might try to be, we never could hope to be as good as you. Have you honestly ever wanted to be bad?”
Catherine laughed, a funny little gurgling laugh. “I honestly have–not wicked you know, but–well,39reckless! And I never had the courage to do anything very startling till last year at college.”
She stopped and laughed again.
“Tell me,” Polly insisted. “I’ll never tell. What did you do? Was it fun? Tell me!”
Catherine’s eyes twinkled. “I made up my mind that it was my one chance, for no one there belonged to me, and my tiresome reputation for propriety hadn’t had time to get started. So one day I got up late, and was late to breakfast, and cut a class, and–” She laughed so hard that Polly wanted to shake her. “O, Polly it was such a ridiculous thing to do! I talked slang and chewed gum!”
Polly gasped. “Did you like it? What made you stop?”
“People. They were so astonished. And, besides, I hated the gum. Inez Dolliver used to chew it with such gusto that I thought it must be rather good. And the slang sounded so easy and,–O! lighthearted, you know, and friendly. When you and Hannah Eldred use it, it never seems offensive, just pleasant and gay. But everyone looked so worried and puzzled all day at me, that I decided to stop. And next day they seemed so relieved. I told Dy-the Allen later about it (she’s the dearest thing!) and she was very philosophical. She told me it wasn’t becoming to my general character, just as pink wasn’t becoming to my hair. I told40her I had always loved pink, and wanted to wear it, and she suggested that I wear it at night. It wouldn’t show in the dark and it was an innocent desire; and perhaps if I did that, I’d not want to use slang or chew gum. I didn’t, after I had tried once, anyhow! Polly Osgood, here we are sitting around and I’m telling you foolish stories about myself, when we ought to be discussing library matters.”
“The other was more interesting,” sighed Polly. “I’m going to give up slang myself soon. I never did chew gum! But I’ve been terribly bored lately by some rather flip young creatures I’ve had to see more or less, and I decided to cut it out and talk plain English. What are you smiling at?”
Then, as her own earnest sentences came back to her, she reddened a little, and joined Catherine in smiling. “Isn’t that a fright? I mean, isn’t that startling? I didn’t know I used it so much. Do you suppose I can cure myself and still have time and attention to give to starting the library? It’s time we were down there now.”
“All right. I’m ready, as soon as I get my hat. Do you ever wear them at college?”
“Never. Now while we go along, tell me just what your idea is. What did the Hampton ladies say?”
Catherine thrust her hatpins in, as she hurried down the steps.
41“They advised having some club take it up, for a time at least, and they thought it would be nice to have it be the Boat Club instead of a literary one, because the literary ones often have a spirit of competition, and if one of them started the library the others might not feel inclined to use it.”
“I see, and the Boat Club, besides being unsectarian and interdenominational and non-partisan, has a lot of waste enthusiasm and energy that might just as well be put to work. Father says he is sure that when the thing is really running, the council will vote a tax and take it off our hands. You are sure Algernon can run it? I thought it took years of special training.”
“It does,” Catherine answered gravely, “but we could not afford a trained librarian, and Algernon is intelligent and will study. Miss Adams gave him hints as to books to get, and she will help him. He can go over there when he gets into difficulties. She seemed to like him. They talked about all sorts of technical things,–Algernon had a lot of information stowed away in his head, of course,–and she didn’t seem bored at all.”
“I’ve often thought I shouldn’t be, if I knew anything about the subjects he talks about,” confessed Polly. “There are Bertha and Agnes.” She trilled to the two girls ahead, who turned and waited.
On the flat roof of the boat house half a dozen42members of the club were assembled. Polly hastened to take her seat and call the meeting to order.
“Max Penfield will act as secretary, and we shall expect the minutes done in the most approved University style. Archie Bradly, will you please state the object of the meeting?”
“Fo’ de lan’s sake, no!” ejaculated Archie, sitting up and shutting his knife. “That’s the very thing I came to find out!”
“Very well,” said Polly, twinkling. “Then, of course, you will pay close attention. It will do you more good than carving Andover on the benches. There’s not much space left on them, now, and it’s still early in the season. Catherine, will you tell us the object of the meeting? Ouch!” for Archie had reached lazily behind her and given one of her yellow braids a gentle yank.
“You all know, already,” began Catherine, “except perhaps Archie! We’ve talked it over with the older people, and they think it’s perfectly practical, only some one or some organization has to take it in charge.”
“What’s ‘it’?” asked Archie innocently.
“Why, the library. The Boat Club is going to see that Winsted has a public library.”
“Turn into Carnegies?” inquired Max, doing a sketch of Geraldine Winthrop on the margin of the secretary’s book.
“Not exactly. We haven’t got our own dock43built yet, and I don’t think we are in a position to endow libraries. But I mean we can work and talk–”
“Talking’s work,” complained Archie. “That’s redundancy.”
“It is, when you keep interrupting,” cried Bertha Davis. “Go on, Catherine. Don’t mind him. Just how can we work?”
“Well, the room will have to be cleaned thoroughly, and we girls can do most of that if the boys will help a little. And there will have to be some plain shelves put up for the books.”
“Me for the carpenter job!” cried a long-legged youth who had lain thus far in the shade of his own hat, in entire silence and apparent unconsciousness. “It’s just what I want to cure my brain fever.”
“Overstudy? Or overwork reading postals last week?” asked Agnes, smiling into Bert’s half-shut eyes.
“It’s more likely fatty degeneration of the brain, if it’s Bert Wyman that has it,” said an emphatic voice, and a spruce energetic maiden joined the group. “I just got in on the 10:10, and Mother said you were all over here. What’s before the house?”
“Nothing. We’re all on the house,” explained Archie dryly, but Polly answered the question with careful courtesy. Dorcas listened.
44“Very well,” she said, when Polly finished. “If it is in order, I move you, Madam President, that we proceed to clean the library at once.”
“O, Dorcas, not to-day!” groaned two or three, while Max remarked in an aside to no one that if it was in order it shouldn’t need cleaning.
“Why not to-day?” asked Dorcas briskly. “How you-all can loaf around the way you do is more than I can comprehend. Dot, your hair is coming down.”
Dot, who was called Dot, because she was a dot, though her parents had intended her to go through life as Geraldine, lifted her eyebrows slightly, and removing her four hairpins, shook down her hair and did it up again. The process took four seconds.
“I’d rather have Dot’s curls than Dorcas’ brains,” growled Bert to Agnes, who reproached him with a look.
While Dorcas’ motion was waiting for a second, there came down the road two pretty girls, in fluffy gowns, their white sunshades tilted charmingly. Max slammed the secretary’s book shut.
“Hurry up and let’s adjourn,” he said, and Archie, suddenly energetic, seconded the motion and carried it, so far as it concerned himself, by going out to meet the newcomers and invite them to go canoeing at once. Max followed suit, and the meeting broke up unceremoniously, but with a sense of valuable achievement.
45Dorcas, uttering harsh judgments upon the parliamentary methods of Polly Osgood, and, by inference, of all Wellesley College, attached herself to Bertha and Agnes for the homeward walk.
“See here, Dorcas Morehouse,” said Bertha so suddenly that her sister and Dorcas jumped. “If you think that just because you have been to Chicago University for a quarter, you are going to run us all, this summer, you are mightily mistaken. Agnes and Dot and I never went away to school, and neither did Bess nor Winifred, but we aren’t stupid, and we won’t have you patronizing us. Catherine Smith is intellectual enough for any one, and she never snubs or patronizes; and as for Polly Osgood, you wouldn’t darehinta criticism of Wellesley if she were within hearing, and you know it. So there! If this library scheme is good enough for them, it is for the rest of us, and if you don’t like it, you can just stay out of it!”
Whereupon, Bertha, having delivered herself, even more to her own astonishment than to any one else’s, turned at the first corner and walked rapidly away, leaving her embarrassed sister to placate the wrathful Dorcas in any way her gentle heart suggested.
“Please forscuse me. Here’s the key,” and Elsmere held out to Catherine the aforesaid article, his honeyed voice and polite words matched by a cherubic smile.
“The key?” asked Catherine. “O, the key to the library. How did you get it?”
“Algy give it to me. I Algy’s little help-boy,” smiled the cherub.
Catherine tried to take the key, but it refused to come.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. “It seems to be caught.”
Elsmere squirmed a little. “Tieded,” he murmured, and Catherine, bending closer to investigate, discovered that the key was so secured to the child’s apparel that sharp steel was necessary to sever the connection.
“Algy hasn’t too much confidence in his little help-boy, after all,” she thought. “Thank you, Elsmere. Now run along home like a good boy.”
“No, Elsmere go, too, like a good boy. I help.”
47Catherine sighed. The library was to be cleaned that morning as soon as the girls could be spared by their respective mothers. She had been waiting for Algernon to bring the key, and had counted on his muscular assistance in the labor before her. Now, instead, she had only the key, and that almost as hopelessly affixed to Elsmere as it had been before she cut it loose. She took up her bundle of rags, scrubbing-brush and soap resignedly, and calling “Good-by” to Dr. Helen started off down the hill. On the way she stopped for Agnes, who came out with a broom. Polly, bearing a pail, met them at the corner. At the library they found Bertha, mop-laden, pressing her nose against the pane to see inside.
“Hello!” she called to them. “How can we get hot water?”
“Let’s go over to Henderson’s and borrow a little oil stove for a few hours, and we’ll heat the water in this pail. One of you might go to the pump in the park and get it full now. Whose broom?” touching one, leaning by the window.
“Dot’s. She came and went off again. Bert passed, driving a ten-cent express and she hailed him and they’ve gone over to Mr. Kittredge’s to get the books he promised.”
“The crazy children! Where will we ever put books to-day, with the room in such a state?”
Catherine fitted the key to the lock, and the band48of cleaners entered, unrolled their big aprons and began, with much energy and good nature, to sweep down the walls and ceiling and gather the milliner’s rubbish into two big baskets found in the shed. Elsmere picked over the pile, making rapturous discoveries.
“Aren’t these very small bushel baskets?” asked Agnes. “They fill up so fast.”
“They’re just about the average size, I think,” remarked Catherine. “They don’t vary much more than yardsticks do in length! But I do wish some of those lazy boys were here to carry them out and empty them for us.”
“What’s that?” asked Max’s voice in the doorway. Immaculate in white flannels, with Bess by his side, bewilderingly beruffled, he viewed the scene before him dispassionately.
Catherine and Agnes, red and warm and somewhat dishevelled, returned the gaze for a moment silently. In that moment an entirely natural resentment was forced into outward pleasantness.
“We were just wishing some one was here to make a bonfire of thisdébrisfor us,” said Catherine cheerfully, “but never mind. There comes Polly with a man from Henderson’s, and he’ll take it out.”
“All right. Wish you luck. We’d stop and help, only we’ve got to meet Arch and Win, and we’re late already. So long!” and Max lifted his cap,49Bess waved her sunshade, and the two went around the corner out of sight.
The man from Henderson’s did some lifting very willingly, rescued what was left of the water Bertha was tugging from the park, lighted the stove and even stayed to poke the bonfire he made for them in the street, and keep it from spreading.
“It’s a good thing,” he said, as he went away amid a chorus of “Thank you.” “Everybody’d ought to help all they can.”
“I’d like to make him a member of the club,” growled Polly, “and turn one or two people I could mention out.”
“Dorcas doesn’t seem so zealous as she did yesterday,” remarked Catherine. “I hope she isn’t angry, because we didn’t fall in with her suggestions.”
Bertha looked conscious, and stole a glance at Agnes, but said nothing. Catherine, catching the look, laughed.
“Father says Dorcas does us all a lot of good, as a counter-irritant. Whenever we begin to feel a little cross with each other, we all turn in and feel very cross with Dorcas. I was simply raging when Max and Bess sailed by in their purple and fine linen, but at least they hadn’t pretended to be interested, and Dorcas–”
“She may be busy,” said Agnes. “There’s a lot of work at their house, and Dorcas usually50does her share. I’ll say that much for her, though she does make me awfully angry sometimes. Where is Elsmere? He might go over to the store and get something to polish this window-glass with.”
“I don’t know. Elsmere! Elsmere! Where are you? Come here, dear.” No response.
“O, never mind,” sighed Catherine wearily. “I’m not responsible for him. It is a relief to have him out of the way for a while. I wanted to send him home before, but he had such a sweet lady-like way with him this morning, I couldn’t bring myself to. Girls! Hark!”
The four laborers had dropped upon a long box to rest a few minutes from their toil. Their low voices had been the only sound. Now distinctly, in a remote corner of the room, could be heard a little scratch, scratch. Then across the floor, serene and fearless, “right where I had been sweeping,” Catherine said later with a shiver, ran a small gray mouse.
With one accord the four tucked their skirts about them and sat closer. No one spoke, but each measured the distance to the door with an accurate eye. And then, silently, but with haste, they beat a swift retreat.
The fair wide street before them, the door shut behind them, they drew deep breaths of relief, though each avoided the others’ eyes.
“Some girls wouldn’t mind going right up and51killing it,” said Polly, “but I simply could not.”
“Nor I,” said Catherine firmly. “I could go to battle or the stake like Joan of Arc, but I draw the line at mice.”
“What’s the matter? What are you all out here for? I thought you came to clean.”
It was Dorcas, of course. The girls hung their heads with shame, and Bertha, who had defied her so boldly when last they met, answered with meekness.
“We did. But there’s a mouse.”
Dorcas looked them all over with an expression of deep scorn.
“Give me the key,” she said, and it was given to her.
Then the fearful ones flattened their faces against the unwashed window-pane to see what would happen. The little gray creature placidly nibbled a tidbit in a corner. Dorcas approached him. He lifted his head and regarded her. She faltered a little and glanced behind her. She even felt hastily of her skirts. The respect in the watching faces lightened a little. Every woman is born knowing how mice delight to hide in skirts.
After a moment Dorcas opened the door and came out, passed the group of watchers without a word and crossed the street to Henderson’s. Coming back a minute later with a trap, she re-entered the room, set the trap and waited. So did the52others, breathless, clinging to each other. Bert and Dot, driving up on their ten-cent express, saw that something unusual was going on, and drove quietly around into the alley. Peeping in at the back window, they took in the situation quickly: Dorcas on one side of the room, the little gray mouse on the other, the trap between. The silence lasted for several seconds. Then came a sharp crack! And Dorcas, throwing her arm across her eyes, ran out of the room with a shriek and fell upon Agnes, who was nearest.
“He’s killed,” she sobbed. “I–I saw him!”
“So he is,” soothed Agnes. “None of the rest of us would have dared set the trap, if we had been bright enough to think of it. There! It was harrowing, but it’s all over now.”
“No, no,” shuddered Dorcas. “He’s in there yet, and he’sdead!”
Catherine spied Bert’s two mischievous eyes looking around the corner of the building. In an instant she had despatched him to clear the room of its horror, and was bringing Dot, a protesting prisoner, to join the group.
“Where did you come from?” asked every one, while Dorcas collected herself.
“O, our chariot’s just outside,” answered Dot. “We saw you all peeping in, so we drove around behind to have a look ourselves. Got there in time to see the final fatality. Dorcas was heroic53until she won. Are you girls honestly afraid of mice?”
“I am of live ones,” confessed Catherine.
“I am of dead ones,” said Dorcas.
“Dead or alive, they, ‘turn my blood to ice within me, and make the breath of my heart wax pale,’ as the lecturer said last night,” said Polly. “But now that you dare-devil people have cleared the field for action, we may as well go in and scrub. We’d only just finished sweeping. Dot, you may take the death-bed boards. And, O, there comes Bert, back from the funeral. As President of the Winsted Boat Club and Library Association, I hereby appoint you and Geraldine Winthrop a Standing Mouse Committee with full power to act.”
“Dorcas to be official executioner, I trust,” and Bert held the door open for Dorcas, bowing low as she passed.
That afternoon the B. C. & L. A. gathered in force. Even Tom Davis, brother of Bertha and Agnes, asked for a half-day’s vacation and helped Algernon whitewash. Bert had impressed Max into carpentering, and the work of bookcase-building went on noisily inside the shed. The girls sat on the weedy patch of ground outside, sewing sash curtains.
“It would be quicker to make them on the machine at home, but not nearly so much fun,”54said Agnes. “How many books did you and Bert gather up this morning, Dot?”
“Fifty-three volumes besides Miss Ainsworth’s. Those were already over here in the shed. Where is Archie?”
“He and Winifred are coming. They were going to bring a rug Win’s mother said we could have, and two lamps.”
“They will enjoy carrying them over this hot afternoon!” said Bess, deftly hemming a curtain. “But it can’t be so bad as this morning. Girls, we had a perfectly dreadful time. It was all on account of that terrible little Swinburne boy. You see, we thought we’d take the big Penfield boat, instead of the canoes, and just as we were pushing off, that child stepped into the boat from the dock and announced serenely that he was going boating-ride. He did look dear, and quite clean, and we all knew that it was hard to make him change his mind, so we let him come. He sat very still and was as good as gold till we had got a long way from home, and then he began.”
Catherine sighed appreciatively. “I can imagine, Bess dear. But do tell us.”
“You can’t imagine. Nobody could. He talked a blue streak. And the things he said! He asked what he was made of, and how God got the eyes in. He told about somebody’s having a tooth out and went into dreadful details. And then he got55off on a worse tack, and asked Archie where his wife was, and when Archie said he wasn’t married, he sighed and looked so sorry, and said: ‘Wasn’t youevermarwied, Archie? Not even once?’ He simply spoiled our morning. It wasn’t so much what he did say, as what we thought he might be going to. We had to turn around and come home long before we wanted to, just on account of that child.”
“If you had only thought to have Win sing to him,” said Catherine. “He will drop off to sleep with the least assistance, even when he seems widest awake, and Win’s lullabies are irresistible. There! that’s the last curtain. And there come Archie and Win with a donkey-cart, and–why, what do you think they have? It can’t be just a rug and two lamps.”
Every one broke off work to go to meet the donkey-cart, a low, long, box affair, with Winifred and Archie on the seat, and a quantity of furniture and boxes in the back.
Algernon, still holding a brush, took the donkey by the bridle and backed him up.
“There, unload everything. It’s all right. I sent these folks after them. Didn’t have time to go myself. Yes, yes, they belong here. The Three R’s sent the table.”
With eager exclamations, the boys and girls unloaded six chairs, an oak table, a rocker, a box56spilling over with stationery and colored cards, a miscellaneous lot of books, two neat rugs and half a dozen lamps of a variety of styles and shapes.
“The Three R’s gave the table and chairs,” explained Algernon, “and Mrs. Kittredge said to call at her house for the rocker and some of those lamps. And these other things I bought. Miss Crockett over at Hampton told me what to order and they came to-day, and I opened them up at the house.”
Catherine came up beside Algernon and watched him unpack the boxes of cards, pens, paper clips, mending tissue, paste, shears and other new and shining articles. She was distinctly surprised. A large share of their little capital must have gone into these purchases. And Algernon had told no one, not even herself, that he was buying them.
Dorcas caught up a sheet of the paper.
“It seems to me it’s rather fresh of you to spend the association’s money for paper with your name on it, without knowing whether the permanent organization will want you or not.”
The glow faded from Algernon’s eyes. The consideration with which he had been treated these last few days had taught him to estimate properly the tolerance which had been all he had received before. Catherine, even, looked puzzled and not quite pleased.
“O, I say,” he protested sadly. “You don’t57think I’d go and spend the public money, do you? I thought it would be fun to have these things all ready. I didn’t know you’d rather have had me give the money and let the rest of you send in the order. I just did it for my share,–I’m awfully sorry.”
Catherine lifted her head brightly.
“Indeed, you did exactly right. None of us would have known half so wisely how to use it. What did I tell you people? How many towns have librarians who work without pay, and furnish all their materials besides?”
Bert suddenly mounted the seat of the donkey-cart.
“What’s the matter with the Boat Club?” he inquired hoarsely.
“We’re all right,” modestly replied the Boat Club, boys and girls together.
“What’s the matter with the Three R’s?”
“They’re all right.”
“What’s the matter with the library?”
“It’s all right.”
“And now three cheers and a tiger for A. Swinburne, librarian. Hip, hip, hooray!”
“Not going over to the library to work to-day?”
“Not this morning. Mother Nature says I’d better not.”
Dr. Helen put her hand on her daughter’s forehead. “Too tired?” she queried, with a note of anxiety in her voice. It had been only in the last year or so that Catherine had been well enough to do the things other girls did, and she was always on the lookout for indications of over-exertion.
“No,” answered Catherine, pulling her mother’s firm strong hand down to her lips and kissing it. “And I don’t intend to become so. Things can wait for a day, or the others can go on without me. I’m going to be a private citizen and stay at home and mend. Can’t you sit and sew too, Mother?”
“Perhaps I can for half an hour,” said Dr. Helen, “and you certainly need to give your clothes some attention. When you go up stairs to get your things, bring down that brown silk waist, and I’ll make the collar over for you.”
59In a few minutes the two were cozily settled in the little alcove off the big book-lined living-room, a pleasant breeze bringing morning freshness in by way of an open window.
“Mother,” said Catherine suddenly, “you and Father have brought me up very differently from most girls.”
“How?”
“Why, about taking care of myself. Some of the really nice girls seem to think it’s perfectly all right to be sick, even when it could have been avoided. And some of them think it’s rather fine to be ailing.”
“Do you mean they want to be petted? That’s natural enough.”
“Not just that. I don’t mind that. But Dy-the Allen–”
“Stop a minute, Catherine. Once for all, what is her ridiculous name? I have wanted to know for nearly a year and never think to ask.”
Catherine laughed. “She was christened Edith, but when she was in High School she had a silly streak and wrote it with a ‘y’ for the ‘i’ and an ‘e’ on the end, so her brother called her E-dy-the, the way it looks, you know, just to tease her, and it turned into Dy-the and stayed that, though she signs herself Edith. She is one of the very dearest girls I ever knew, and how we shall get along without her next year at Dexter is more than60I can guess. All the little preps adore her. But that was the very thing that made me crossest about her carelessness. She would go out in the snow with little thin dancing slippers on and lace stockings, and then take a horrible cold and be ill for days, and shut herself up in her room and have everybody bringing her flowers and meals and writing her notes. And then all her little satellites did similar things and it made a lot of bother for everybody. Little Hilda went to see a measles child because she thought it was fine to be reckless the way Dy-the is, and then she gave it to her roommate and two other girls. I got quite angry once and let Dy-the know just how it looked to me. I told her she ought to be ashamed to disobey Nature and be sent to bed for it, and she only laughed and quoted things from Stevenson about people who live on tepid milk and wear tin shoes. I told her Stevenson certainly tried to look out for his own health, for all that, but I couldn’t make her think it a serious matter at all. She just laughed. She’s such a dear, she doesn’t know how to be angry, Dy-the doesn’t,” and Catherine smiled, in spite of her own earnestness, at the visions the name brought to her mind.
“Here comes somebody else of the dear variety,” said Dr. Helen. “Go and let Polly in.”
“She doesn’t need to be let in,” said that young person, appearing with the words. “She let her61own self in. I’m on an errand, Catriona darling. I want your mother’s advice and yours. What do you think of a regular library opening, with refreshments and all that? And have people bring books for admission fees?”
“Do sit down, Polly, and rest for a minute. You look as though you expected to be called to the telephone.”
Polly dropped, sighing, into a comfortable chair.
“It does feel good to let down for a minute,” she admitted. “I get so into the habit of tearing through space at college that I can’t stop rushing for a month after I get home, and this library business has kept me jumping. I suppose the public could get on a day or two longer without it, seeing they have so many years. I worked all day yesterday with Algernon, and then in the evening it was too hot to stay in the house, and the mosquitoes were so thick outside that it was harder work trying to keep comfortable than anything I had done all day.”
“They are worse than ever this year,” sighed Dr. Helen, “and, really, I think they are harder to bear when we all know that a little public-spirited co-operation would rid us of them. Can’t you get the people who draw books at the new library to agree to sprinkle the breeding-places with oil?”
Polly suddenly chuckled. “I beg your pardon,62Dr. Helen, for being rude, but I just remembered a woman who addressed an open air meeting on the campus this spring. She was a missionary returned from somewhere and she appeared at one of the houses and wanted to talk, so we got a few girls together on the lawn to hear her. The mosquitoes were simply unbearable. We all sat there slapping ourselves and making grabs at the air, and trying to look interested, and then she opened her Bible and read about being encompassed about with a cloud of witnesses: That was bad enough, when you could see them settling all about us like a great dotted veil, but nobody cracked a smile until she gave out the hymn. And that, if you please, was ‘My soul be on thy guard, ten thousand foes arise!’ You know how it goes.” And Polly sang:
“‘Ne’er think the vict’ry won,Nor once at ease sit down,Thy arduous work will not be doneTill thou obtain thy crown.’”
“‘Ne’er think the vict’ry won,Nor once at ease sit down,Thy arduous work will not be doneTill thou obtain thy crown.’”
“She might have asked for ‘Christian, up and smite them,’” said Dr. Helen. “Now, children, I should like nothing better than to sit and hear college yarns all the morning, but I have an office hour to keep. Catherine, did you tell Inga to order peas for dinner?”
“That reminds me,” said Polly, springing up. “Mamma wanted me to do some marketing before63I came home, and I was forgetting it entirely. And I haven’t found out yet what you think of the opening!”
“I should think it would be a good way to advertise it and get people interested. We ought to get a lot of books, too, though they wouldn’t all be worth much. Are you going to work to-day? I decided I’d have to take a day off.”
“I don’t believe any one will go down. Win won’t, because Max has gone up to Madison to take a re in Trig and she won’t bother about anything when he’s not around. Dorcas said she’d see to the card-pockets at home–her Sunday-school class will do it, poor infants! And Bertha and Agnes have to help their mother because she’s going to have the Ladies’ Aid this afternoon. They are the best pair of workers I ever saw.”
“Aren’t they? Bess was fine about the curtains, too. She is so changeable, though, that I don’t know what to think of her.”
“Only a question of whether there’s a man body about, my dear,” said Polly oracularly. “Many a girl is all right and sensible when there are just girls around, but let a lad heave in sight, and the whole situation is altered. I’ve known Bess since she came to Winsted in a ruffled white apron, and no one can teach me anything about her. Now, having dissected all my friends, I think I really must do my marketing.”
64“We haven’t said anything about Dot, the dear,” said Catherine, following Polly to the door.
“Dot, the dear,” echoed Polly. “That’s all there is to say about her. Good-by, honey. To-morrow we’ll go at it for a grand finale. That was the name of the last piece in my first music book, and I always like to say it. It sounds so complete, someway. You don’t know, Catherine,” and Polly stopped on the last step to look up at her tall friend, “how pleasant it makes things to have you in them. I’m just loving this library work, and so are the rest of us. Playing with you is like having one’s Sunday doll all the week, or as if the princess in the fairy stories had turned into a real mortal. Good-by this time for truly true!”
Humming a Wellesley song, Polly was off down the walk at a brisk pace, and Catherine, who had answered her last words with a look more expressive than speech, stood watching her a minute, and then went happily back to her mending.
The grocer’s boy, who arrived with the peas a little later, also brought the mail. He was devoted to Inga and enjoyed doing gratuitous favors for the doctor’s family for her sake. Inga brought in two letters to Catherine, who joyfully dropped her darning and tore them open.
“Belovedest Goldilocks;” the first began, in Hannah Eldred’s writing, not much improved in the two years she and Catherine had been corresponding.
65“We are here at the shore for the summer, or that part of it which must pass before I come flying out to you with Frieda. Mamma and I are here all the time and Dad and Herr Karl come out for Sundays.
“People are so puzzled about Karl. I say over and over: ‘No, not my tutor. No, not a cousin. Not even a ward of my father’s. Just a German boy we learned to know in Berlin, and now a student at Harvard. Yes, we met him quite simply. He lived in the apartment under us, and he had hurt his leg and couldn’t walk, and we used to entertain him. Frieda Lange and I did. It was at her house we were staying. His father is Herr Director Von Arndtheim, and they are very respectable!’ People at a summer resort, even a little one, are the curiousest in the world,Ithink!
“Who do you think is coming to spend a few days with us next week? Nice old Inez! I’m awfully glad she is coming, but honestly I do hope she has learned to put her clothes on straight and to keep her room tidy. She’s so good, and so faithful that I love her anyhow, but Mother does like neat guests dreadfully well! She would love you for a guest, Catherine. But there! You always are just ex-actly right, without the tiniest drawback,–unless Dexter has changed you. Has it?
“I feel as though I were having my second childhood. It was so nice to be at college that66term with the grown-up girls, and now I have to go with infants like little Hilda and Gertrude, only not so nice. I had first year Math in High School, you know, last year, and my German Prof regarded me as a babe and wouldn’t let me read things because I wasn’t old enough–things that weren’t suitable for children. Frieda’s mother has never let her read a love story, you know, and this man has the same idea! He talked to me, the stiffest conversation lessons you ever heard. It was like the dialogues in Ruskin. I wonder what he would think if he should hear Karl and me sometimes. We jabber it all the time, he and Mamma and I. Dad won’t let us when he’s around, so we talk English then, and that instructs Karl. He’s good except for his pronunciation. You should hear him do the Harvard yell! He rolls the ‘r’s’ so far he almost loses them. They are even worse than you-ers, my western de-ar.
“We are going to have a hop to-night, a really hop, and I am going. They can’t put me off with the children because I haven’t any nurse or governess, and there aren’t any other girls between infants and real young ladies. The hop won’t be very big, because there are only a few families (it’s not a fashionable place, you know), but we’ll have a perfectly good time all the same. I am so pleased to be going as aHerrschaft, and I have a darling new frock for this and everything. It’s67a soft rosy silk with tiny tight rosebuds all over it. And I have a little wreath of buds to wear in my hair. There are two or three awfully nice people coming over. One of Karl’s classmates at Harvard, and two boys from the Tech and a nice curly-haired freshman from Dartmouth. And there is a Smith girl, perfectly charming, and a rather frumpy one from Wellesley who knows your Polly Osgood, or rather knows who she is. This girl’s name is Violet, and I saw a letter addressed to her and her middle initial was E, and I asked if her name was Ethelyn, but she said it was Emma!
“Iwishyou could see my little hop-gown. And the dear wreath. It makes me think of Ivy-Planting Day at Dexter and the way the seniors sang ‘Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.’ Wasn’t Lilian the sweetest thing? She is studying in Boston this year, you know, and I saw her once. And weren’t the little pig-tailed preps dear with their pink doves, I mean pink-ribboned doves? That was your pretty idea, my beautiful Catherine. I never could have thought of anything so lovely.
“I’m almost at the bottom of the inkstand, and I haven’t told you yet what I started to write about. But Mamma has written your mother, so it’s all right. Frieda is to land the last of July, and I’m going to take her out to you as soon after that as your mother and mine think best. I think she will need a long time to get acquainted, don’t you?68I know you will love each other, but she must know you thoroughly before college opens. It is tantalizing to think of you and her and Alice all being together. I do think I ought to be there, too, since I was the one who introduced you to each other. I’d like to keep Frieda with me next year, but every one seems to think the best place for her is right in the dormitory with the other girls,–and of course, it will be easier for her out there than in any of the big colleges nearer us. She is so obstinate she wouldn’t learn English if she were near any one who could talk anything she would recognize for German. What most of the girls at college talk for that, she wouldn’t know from Choctaw.
“Lots of love to the dear doctors, and for yourself bushels and quarts and pecks. I had a card from Miss Lyndesay from the Isle of Wight yesterday.
“Now I must shut, as Frieda said in her last letter!
“Your lovingHannah.”
Catherine gathered up the scattered pages of this voluminous letter and then opened the slender one which had accompanied it. This bore a far western postmark, and its neat little pages resembled copperplate.