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Ruth dropped a little back as she walked with him, at the moment, behind the others, along the path between the chestnut-trees.
"I don't think they quite expected me. I told Adelaide I did not think I could come. I am the youngest, you see," she said with a smile, "and I don't go out very much, except with my—cousins."
"Your cousins? I fancied you were all sisters."
"It is all the same," said Ruth. "And that is why I always catch my breath a little before I say 'cousins.'"
"Couldn't they come? What a pity!" pursued this young man, who seemed bent upon driving his questions home.
"O, it wasn't an invitation, you know. It wasn't company."
"Wasn't it?"
The inflection was almost imperceptible, and quite unintentional; Dakie Thayne was very polite; but his eyebrows went up a little—just a line or two—as he said it, the light beginning to come in upon him.
Dakie had been about in the world somewhat; his two years at West Point were not all his experience; and he knew what queer little wheels were turned sometimes.
He had just come to Z—— (I must have a letter for my nameless town, and I have gone through the whole alphabet for it, and picked up a crooked stick at last), and the new group of people he had got among interested him. He liked problems and experiments. They were what he excelled in at the Military School. This was his first furlough; and it was since his entrance at the Academy that his brother, Dr. Ingleside, had come to Z——, to take the vacant practice of an old physician, disabled from continuing it.
Dakie and Leslie Goldthwaite and Mrs. Ingleside were old friends; almost as old as Mrs. Ingleside and the doctor.
Ruth Holabird had a very young girl's romance of admiration for one older, in her feeling toward Leslie. She had never known any one just like her; and, in truth, Leslie was different, in some things, from the little world of girls about her. In the "each and all" of their pretty groupings and pleasant relations she was like a bit of fresh, springing, delicate vine in a bouquet of bright, similarly beautiful flowers; taking little free curves and reaches of her own, just as she had grown; not tied, nor placed, nor constrained; never the central or most brilliant thing; but somehow a kind of life and grace that helped and touched and perfected all.
There was something very real and individual about her; she was no "girl of the period," made up by the fashion of the day. She would have grown just as a rose or a violet would, the same in the first quarter of the century or the third. They called her "grandmotherly" sometimes, when a certain quaint primitiveness that was in her showed itself. And yet she was the youngest girl in all that set, as to simpleness and freshness and unpretendingness, though she was in her twentieth year now, which sounds—didn't somebody say so over my shoulder?—so very old! Adelaide Marchbanks used to say of her that she had "stayed fifteen."
Shelookedreal. Her bright hair was gathered up loosely, with some graceful turn that showed its fine shining strands had all been freshly dressed and handled, under a wide-meshed net that lay lightly around her head; it was not packed and stuffed and matted and put on like a pad or bolster, from the bump of benevolence, all over that and everything else gentle and beautiful, down to the bend of her neck; and her dress suggested always some one simple idea which you could trace through it, in its harmony, at a glance; not complex and bewildering and fatiguing with its many parts and folds and festoonings and the garnishings of every one of these. She looked more as young women used to look before it took a lady with her dressmaker seven toilsome days to achieve a "short street suit," and the public promenades became the problems that they now are to the inquiring minds that are forced to wonder who stops at home and does up all the sewing, and where the hair all comes from.
Some of the girls said, sometimes, that "Leslie Goldthwaite liked to be odd; she took pains to be." This was not true; she began with the prevailing fashion—the fundamental idea of it—always, when she had a new thing; but she modified and curtailed,—something was sure to stop her somewhere; and the trouble with the new fashions is that they never stop. To use a phrase she had picked up a few years ago, "something always got crowded out." She had other work to do, and she must choose the finishing that would take the shortest time; or satin folds would cost six dollars more, and she wanted the money to use differently; the dress was never the first and themust be; so it came by natural development to express herself, not the rampant mode; and her little ways of "dodging the dressmaker," as she called it, were sure to be graceful, as well as adroit and decided.
It was a good thing for a girl like Ruth, just growing up to questions that had first come to this other girl of nineteen four years ago, that this other had so met them one by one, and decided them half unconsciously as she went along, that now, for the great puzzle of the "outside," which is setting more and more between us and our real living, there was this one more visible, unobtrusive answer put ready, and with such a charm of attractiveness, into the world.
Ruth walked behind her this morning, with Dakie Thayne, thinking how "achy" Elinor Hadden's puffs and French-blue bands, and bits of embroidery looked, for the stitches somebody had put into them, and the weary starching and ironing and perking out that must be done for them, beside the simple hem and the one narrow basque ruffling of Leslie's cambric morning-dress, which had its color and its set-off in itself, in the bright little carnations with brown stems that figured it. It was "trimmed in the piece"; and that was precisely what Leslie had said when she chose it. She "dodged" a great deal in the mere buying.
Leslie and Ruth got together in the wood-hollow, where the little vines and ferns began. Leslie was quick to spy the bits of creeping Mitchella, and the wee feathery fronds that hid away their miniature grace under the feet of their taller sisters. They were so pretty to put in shells, and little straight tube-vases. Dakie Thayne helped Rose and Elinor to get the branches of white honeysuckle that grew higher up.
Rose walked with the young cadet, the arms of both filled with the fragrant-flowering stems, as they came up homeward again. She was full of bright, pleasant chat. It just suited her to spend a morning so, as if there were no rooms to dust and no tables to set, in all the great sunshiny world; but as if dews freshened everything, and furnishings "came," and she herself were clothed of the dawn and the breeze, like a flower. She never cared so much for afternoons, she said; of course one had got through with the prose by that time; but "to go off like a bird or a bee right after breakfast,—that was living; that was the Irishman's blessing,—'the top o' the morn-in' till yez!'"
"Won't you come in and have some lunch?" she asked, with the most magnificent intrepidity, when she hadn't the least idea what there would be to give them all if they did, as they came round under the piazza basement, and up to the front portico.
They thanked her, no; they must get home with their flowers; and Mrs. Ingleside expected Dakie to an early dinner.
Upon which she bade them good by, standing among her great azalea branches, and looking "awfully pretty," as Dakie Thayne said afterward, precisely as if she had nothing else to think of.
The instant they had fairly moved away, she turned and ran in, in a hurry to look after the salt-cellars, and to see that Katty hadn't got the table-cloth diagonal to the square of the room instead of parallel, or committed any of the other general-housework horrors which she detailed herself on daily duty to prevent.
Barbara stood behind the blind.
"The audacity of that!" she cried, as Rosamond came in. "I shook right out of my points when I heard you! Old Mrs. Lovett has been here, and has eaten up exactly the last slice of cake but one. So that's Dakie Thayne?"
"Yes. He's a nice little fellow. Aren't these lovely flowers?"
"O my gracious! that great six-foot cadet!"
"It doesn't matter about the feet. He's barely eighteen. But he's nice,—ever so nice."
"It's a case of Outledge, Leslie," Dakie Thayne said, going down the hill. "They treat those girls—amphibiously!"
"Well," returned Leslie, laughing, "I'mamphibious. I live in the town, and Icancome out—and not die—on the Hill. I like it. I always thought that kind of animal had the nicest time."
They met Alice Marchbanks with her cousin Maud, coming up.
"We've been to see the Holabirds," said Dakie Thayne, right off.
"I wonder why that little Ruth didn't come last night? We really wanted her," said Alice to Leslie Goldthwaite.
"For batrachian reasons, I believe," put in Dakie, full of fun. "She isn't quite amphibious yet. She don't come out from under water. That is, she's young, and doesn't go alone. She told me so."
You needn't keep asking how we know! Things that belong get together. People who tell a story see round corners.
The next morning Maud Marchbanks came over, and asked us all to play croquet and drink tea with them that evening, with the Goldthwaites and the Haddens.
"We're growing very gay and multitudinous," she said, graciously.
"The midshipman's got home,—Harry Goldthwaite, you know."
Ruth was glad, then, that mother knew; she had the girls' pride in her own keeping; there was no responsibility of telling or withholding. But she was glad also that she had not gone last night.
When we went up stairs at bedtime, Rosamond asked Barbara the old, inevitable question,—
"What have you got to wear, Barb, to-morrow night,—that's ready?"
And Barbara gave, in substance, the usual unperturbed answer, "Not a dud!"
But Mrs. Holabird kept a garnet and white striped silk skirt on purpose to lend to Barbara. If she hadgivenit, there would have been the end. And among us there would generally be a muslin waist, and perhaps an overskirt. Barbara said our "overskirts" were skirts that wereover with, before the new fashion came.
Barbara went to bed like a chicken, sure that in the big world to-morrow there would be something that she could pick up.
It was a miserable plan, perhaps; but itwasone of our ways at Westover.
TThree things came of the Marchbanks's party for us Holabirds.
Mrs. Van Alstyne took a great fancy to Rosamond.
Harry Goldthwaite put a new idea into Barbara's head.
And Ruth's little undeveloped plans, which the facile fingers were to carry out, received a fresh and sudden impetus.
You have thus the three heads of the present chapter.
How could any one help taking a fancy to Rosamond Holabird? In the first place, as Mrs. Van Alstyne said, there was the name,—"a making for anybody"; for names do go a great way, notwithstanding Shakespeare.
It made you think of everything springing and singing and blooming and sweet. Its expression was "blossomy, nightingale-y"; atilt with glee and grace. And that was the way she looked and seemed. If you spoke to her suddenly, the head turned as a bird's does, with a small, shy, all-alive movement; and the bright eye glanced up at you, ready to catch electric meanings from your own. When she talked to you in return, she talked all over; with quiet, refined radiations of life and pleasure in each involuntary turn and gesture; the blossom of her face lifted and swayed like that of a flower delicately poised upon its stalk. She waslikea flower chatting with a breeze.
She forgot altogether, as a present fact, that she looked pretty; but she had known it once, when she dressed herself, and been glad of it; and something lasted from the gladness just enough to keep out of her head any painful, conscious question of how shewasseeming. That, and her innate sense of things proper and refined, made her manners what Mrs. Van Alstyne pronounced them,—"exquisite."
That was all Mrs. Van Alstyne waited to find out. She did not go deep; hence she took quick fancies or dislikes, and a great many of them.
She got Rosamond over into a corner with herself, and they had everybody round them. All the people in the room were saying how lovely Miss Holabird looked to-night. For a little while that seemed a great and beautiful thing. I don't know whether it was or not. It was pleasant to have them find it out; but she would have been just as lovely if they had not. Is a party so very particular a thing to be lovely in? I wonder what makes the difference. She might have stood on that same square of the Turkey carpet the next day and been just as pretty. But, somehow, it seemed grand in the eyes of us girls, and it meant a great deal that it would not mean the next day, to have her stand right there, and look just so, to-night.
In the midst of it all, though, Ruth saw something that seemed to her grander,—another girl, in another corner, looking on,—a girl with a very homely face; somebody's cousin, brought with them there. She looked pleased and self-forgetful, differently from Rose in her prettiness;shelooked as if she had put herself away, comfortably satisfied; this one looked as if there were no self put away anywhere. Ruth turned round to Leslie Goldthwaite, who stood by.
"I do think," she said,—"don't you?—it's just the bravest and strongest thing in the world to be awfully homely, and to know it, and to go right on and have a good time just the same;—every day, you see, right through everything! I think such people must be splendid inside!"
"The most splendid person I almost ever knew was like that," said Leslie. "And she was fifty years old too."
"Well," said Ruth, drawing a girl's long breath at the fifty years, "it was pretty much over then, wasn't it? But I think I should like—just once—to look beautiful at a party!"
The best of it for Barbara had been on the lawn, before tea.
Barbara was a magnificent croquet-player. She and Harry Goldthwaite were on one side, and they led off their whole party, going nonchalantly through wicket after wicket, as if they could not help it; and after they had well distanced the rest, just toling each other along over the ground, till they were rovers together, and came down into the general field again with havoc to the enemy, and the whole game in their hands on their own part.
"It was a handsome thing to see, for once," Dakie Thayne said; "but they might make much of it, for it wouldn't do to let them play on the same side again."
It was while they were off, apart down the slope, just croqueted away for the time, to come up again with tremendous charge presently, that Harry asked her if she knew the game of "ship-coil."
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Barbara shook her head. What was it?
"It is a pretty thing. The officers of a Russian frigate showed it to us. They play it with rings made of spliced rope; we had them plain enough, but you might make them as gay as you liked. There are ten rings, and each player throws them all at each turn. The object is to string them up over a stake, from which you stand at a certain distance. Whatever number you make counts up for your side, and you play as many rounds as you may agree upon."
Barbara thought a minute, and then looked up quickly.
"Have you told anybody else of that?"
"Not here. I haven't thought of it for a good while."
"Would you just please, then," said Barbara in a hurry, as somebody came down toward them in pursuit of a ball, "to hush up, and let me have it all to myself for a while? And then," she added, as the stray ball was driven up the lawn again, and the player went away after it, "come some day and help us get it up at Westover? it's such a thing, you see, to get anything that's new."
"I see. To be sure. You shall have the State Right,—isn't that what they make over for patent concerns? And we'll have something famous out of it. They're getting tired of croquet, or thinking they ought to be, which is the same thing." It was Barbara's turn now; she hit Harry Goldthwaite's ball with one of her precise little taps, and, putting the two beside each other with her mallet, sent them up rollicking into the thick of the fight, where the final hand-to-hand struggle was taking place between the last two wickets and the stake. Everybody was there in a bunch when she came; in a minute everybody of the opposing party was everywhere else, and she and Harry had it between them again. She played out two balls, and then, accidentally, her own. After one "distant, random gun," from the discomfited foe, Harry rolled quietly up against the wand, and the game was over.
It was then and there that a frank, hearty liking and alliance was re-established between Harry Goldthwaite and Barbara, upon an old remembered basis of ten years ago, when he had gone away to school and given her half his marbles for a parting keepsake,—"as he might have done," we told her, "to any other boy."
"Ruth hasn't had a good time," said mother, softly, standing in her door, looking through at the girls laying away ribbons and pulling down hair, and chattering as only girls in their teens do chatter at bedtime.
Ruth was in her white window-chair, one foot up on a cricket; and, as if she could not get into that place without her considering-fit coming over her, she sat with her one unlaced boot in her hand, and her eyes away out over the moonlighted fields.
"She played all the evening, nearly. She always does," said Barbara.
"Why, I had a splendid time!" cried Ruth, coming down upon them out of her cloud with flat contradiction. "And I'm sure I didn't play all the evening. Mrs. Van Alstyne sang Tennyson's 'Brook,' aunt; and the musicsplashesso in it! It did really seem as if she were spattering it all over the room, and it wasn't a bit of matter!"
"The time was so good, then, that it has made you sober," said Mrs. Holabird, coming and putting her hand on the back of the white chair. "I've known good times do that."
"It has given me ever so much thinking to do; besides that brook in my head, 'going on forever—ever!go-ing-on-forever!'" And Ruth broke into the joyous refrain of the song as she ended.
"I shall come to you for a great long talk to-morrow morning, mother!" Ruth said again, turning her head and touching her lips to the mother-hand on her chair. She did not always say "mother," you see; it was only when she wanted a very dear word.
"We'll wind the rings with all the pretty-colored stuffs we can find in the bottomless piece-bag," Barbara was saying, at the same moment, in the room beyond. "And you can bring out your old ribbon-box for the bowing-up, Rosamond. It's a charity to clear out your glory-holes once in a while. It's going to be just—splend-umphant!"
"If you don't go and talk about it," said Rosamond. "Wemustkeep the new of it to ourselves."
"As if I needed!" cried Barbara, indignantly. "When I hushed up Harry Goldthwaite, and went round all the rest of the evening without doing anything but just give you that awful little pinch!"
"That was bad enough," said Rosamond, quietly; she never got cross or inelegantly excited about anything. "But Idothink the girls will like it. And we might have tea out on the broad piazza."
"That is bare floor too," said Barbara, mischievously.
Now, our dining-room had not yet even the English drugget. The dark new boards would do for summer weather, mother said. "If it had been real oak, polished!" Rosamond thought. "But hard-pine was kitcheny."
Ruth went to bed with the rest of her thinking and the brook-music flittering in her brain.
Mrs. Lewis Marchbanks had talked behind her with Jeannie Hadden about her playing. It was not the compliment that excited her so, although they said her touch and expression were wonderful, and that her fingers were like little flying magnets, that couldn't miss the right points. Jeannie Hadden said she liked toseeRuth Holabird play, as well as she did to hear her.
But it was Mrs. Marchbanks's saying that she would give almost anything to have Lily taught such a style; she hardly knew what she should do with her; there was no good teacher in the town who gave lessons at the houses, and Lily was not strong enough to go regularly to Mr. Viertelnote. Besides, she had picked up a story of his being cross, and rapping somebody's fingers, and Lily was very shy and sensitive. She never did herself any justice if she began to be afraid.
Jeannie Hadden said it was just her mother's trouble about Reba, except that Reba was strong enough; only that Mrs. Hadden preferred a teacher to come to the house.
"A good young-lady teacher, to give beginners a desirable style from the very first, is exceedingly needed since Miss Robbyns went away," said Mrs. Marchbanks, to whom just then her sister came and said something, and drew her off.
Ruth's fingers flew over the keys; and it must have been magnetism that guided them, for in her brain quite other quick notes were struck, and ringing out a busy chime of their own.
"If I only could!" she was saying to herself. "If they really would have me, and they would let me at home. Then I could go to Mr. Viertelnote. I think I could do it! I'm almost sure! I could show anybody what I know,—and if they like that!"
It went over and over now, as she lay wakeful in bed, mixed up with the "forever—ever," and the dropping tinkle of that lovely trembling ripple of accompaniment, until the late moon got round to the south and slanted in between the white dimity curtains, and set a glimmering little ghost in the arm-chair.
Ruth came down late to breakfast.
Barbara was pushing back her chair.
"Mother,—or anybody! Do you want any errand down in town? I'm going out for a stramble. A party always has to be walked off next morning."
"And talked off, doesn't it? I'm afraid my errand would need to be with Mrs. Goldthwaite or Mrs. Hadden, wouldn't it?"
"Well, I dare say I shall go in and see Leslie. Rosamond, why can't you come too? It's a sort of nuisance that boy having come home!"
"That 'great six-foot lieutenant'!" parodied Rose.
"I don't care! You said feet didn't signify. And he used to be a boy, when we played with him so."
"I suppose they all used to be," said Rose, demurely.
"Well, I won't go! Because the truth is I did want to see him, about those—patent rights. I dare say they'll come up."
"I've no doubt," said Rosamond.
"I wish youwouldboth go away somewhere," said Ruth, as Mrs. Holabird gave her her coffee. "Because I and mother have got a secret, and I know she wants her last little hot corner of toast."
"I think you are likely to get the last little cold corner," said Mrs. Holabird, as Ruth sat, forgetting her plate, after the other girls had gone away.
"I'm thinking, mother, of a real warm little corner! Something that would just fit in and make everything so nice. It was put into my head last night, and I think it was sent on purpose; it came right up behind me so. Mrs. Lewis Marchbanks and Jeannie Hadden praised my playing; more than I could tell you, really; and Mrs. Marchbanks wants a—" Ruth stopped, and laughed at the word that was coming—"lady-teacher for Lily, and so does Mrs. Hadden for Reba. There, mother. It's inyourhead now! Please turn it over with a nice little think, and tell me you would just as lief, and that you believe perhaps I could!"
By this time Ruth was round behind Mrs. Holabird's chair, with her two hands laid against her cheeks. Mrs. Holabird leaned her face down upon one of the hands, holding it so, caressingly.
"I am sure you could, Ruthie. But I am sure Iwouldn'tjust as lief! I would liefer you should have all you need without."
"I know that, mother. But it wouldn't be half so good for me!"
"That's something horrid, I know!" exclaimed Barbara, coming in upon the last word. "It always is, when people talk about its being good for them. It's sure to be salts or senna, and most likely both."
"O dear me!" said Ruth, suddenly seized with a new perception of difficulty. Until now, she had only been considering whether she could, and if Mrs. Holabird would approve. "Don'tyou—or Rose—call it names, Barbara, please, will you?"
"Which of us are you most afraid of? For Rosamond's salts and senna are different from mine, pretty often. I guess it's hers this time, by your putting her in that anxious parenthesis."
"I'm afraid of your fun, Barbara, and I'm afraid of Rosamond's—"
"Earnest? Well, that is much the more frightful. It is so awfully quiet and pretty-behaved and positive. But if you're going to retain me on your side, you'll have to lay the case before me, you know, and give me a fee. You needn't stand there, bribing the judge beforehand."
Ruth turned right round and kissed Barbara.
"I want you to go with me and see if Mrs. Hadden and Mrs. Lewis Marchbanks would let me teach the children."
"Teach the children! What?"
"O, music, of course. That's all I know, pretty much. And—make Rose understand."
"Ruth, you're a duck! I like you for it! But I'm not sure I likeit."
"Will you do just those two things?"
"It's a beautiful programme. But suppose we leave out the first part? I think you could do that alone. It would spoil it if I went. It's such a nice little spontaneous idea of your own, you see. But if we made it a regular family delegation—besides, it will take as much as all me to manage the second. Rosamond is very elegant to-day. Last night's twilight isn't over. And it's funnywe've plans too;we're going to give lessons,—differently; we're going to lead off, for once,—we Holabirds; and I don't know exactly how the music will chime in. Itmaymake things—Holabirdy."
Rosamond had true perceptions, and she was conscientious. What she said, therefore, when she was told, was,—
"O dear! I suppose it is right! But—just now! Right things do come in so terribly askew, like good old Mr. Isosceles, sidling up the broad aisle of a Sunday! Couldn't you wait awhile, Ruth?"
"And then somebody else would get the chance."
"There's nobody else to be had."
"Nobody knows till somebody starts up. They don't know there'smeto be had yet."
"O Ruth! Don't offer to teach grammar, anyhow!"
"I don't know. I might. I shouldn'tteachit 'anyhow.'"
Ruth went off, laughing, happy. She knew she had gamed the home-half of her point.
Her heart beat a good deal, though, when she went into Mrs. Marchbanks's library alone, and sat waiting for the lady to come down.
She would rather have gone to Mrs. Hadden first, who was very kind and old-fashioned, and not so overpoweringly grand. But she had her justification for her attempt from Mrs. Marchbanks's own lips, and she must take up her opportunity as it came to her, following her clew right end first. She meant simply to tell Mrs. Marchbanks how she had happened to think of it.
"Good morning," said the great lady, graciously, wondering not a little what had brought the child, in this unceremonious early fashion, to ask for her.
"I came," said Ruth, after she had answered the good morning, "because I heard what you were so kind as to say last night about liking my playing; and that you had nobody just now to teach Lily. I thought, perhaps, you might be willing to try me; for I should like to do it, and I think I could show her all I know; and then I could take lessons myself of Mr. Viertelnote. I've been thinking about it all night."
Ruth Holabird had a direct little fashion of going straight through whatever crust of outside appearance to that which must respond to what she had at the moment in herself. She had realself-possession; because she did not let herself be magnetized into a false consciousness of somebody else's self, and think and speak according to their notions of things, or her reflected notion of what they would think of her. She was different from Rosamond in this; Rosamond could not helpfeeling her double,—Mrs. Grundy's "idea" of her. That was what Rosamond said herself about it, when Ruth told it all at home.
The response is almost always there to those who go for it; if it is not, there is no use any way.
Mrs. Marchbanks smiled.
"Does Mrs. Holabird know?"
"O yes; she always knows."
There was a little distance and a touch of business in Mrs. Marchbanks's manner after this. The child's own impulse had been very frank and amusing; an authorized seeking of employment was somewhat different. Still, she was kind enough; the impression had been made; perhaps Rosamond, with her "just now" feeling, would have been sensitive to what did not touch Ruth, at the moment, at all.
"But you see, my dear, thatyourhaving a pupil could not be quite equal to Mr. Viertelnote's doing the same thing. I mean the one would not quite provide for the other."
"O no, indeed! I'm in hopes to have two. I mean to go and see Mrs. Hadden about Reba; and then I might begin first, you know. If I could teach two quarters, I could take one."
"You have thought it all over. You are quite a little business woman. Now let us see. I do like your playing, Ruth. I think you have really a charming style. But whether you couldimpartit,—that is a different capacity."
"I am pretty good at showing how," said Ruth. "I think I could make her understand all I do."
"Well; I should be willing to pay twenty dollars a quarter to any lady who would bring Lily forward to where you are; if you can do it, I will pay it to you. If Mrs. Hadden will do the same, you will have two thirds of Viertelnote's price."
"O, that is so nice!" said Ruth, gratefully. "Then in half a quarter I could begin. And perhaps in that time I might get another."
"I shall be exceedingly interested in your getting on," said Mrs. Marchbanks, as Ruth arose to go. She said it very much as she might have said it to anybody who was going to try to earn money, and whom she meant to patronize. But Ruth took it singly; she was not two persons,—one who asked for work and pay, and another who expected to be treated as if she were privileged above either. She was quite intent upon her purpose.
If Mrs. Marchbanks had been patron kind, Mrs. Hadden was motherly so.
"You're a dear little thing! When will you begin?" said she.
Ruth's morning was a grand success. She came home with a rapid step, springing to a soundless rhythm.
She found Rosamond and Barbara and Harry Goldthwaite on the piazza, winding the rope rings with blue and scarlet and white and purple, and tying them with knots of ribbon.
Harry had been prompt enough. He had got the rope, and spliced it up himself, that morning, and had brought the ten rings over, hanging upon his arms like bangles.
They were still busy when dinner was ready; and Harry stayed at the first asking.
It was a scrub-day in the kitchen; and Katty came in to take the plates with her sleeves rolled up, a smooch of stove-polish across her arm, and a very indiscriminate-colored apron. She put one plate upon another in a hurry, over knives and forks and remnants, clattered a good deal, and dropped the salt-spoons.
Rosamond colored and frowned; but talked with a most resolutely beautiful repose.
Afterward, when it was all over, and Harry had gone, promising to come next day and bring a stake, painted vermilion and white, with a little gilt ball on the top of it, she sat by the ivied window in the brown room with tears in her eyes.
"It is dreadful to live so!" she said, with real feeling. "To have just one wretched girl to do everything!"
"Especially," said Barbara, without much mercy, "when she alwayswilldo it at dinner-time."
"It's the betwixt and between that I can't bear," said Rose. "To have to do with people like the Penningtons and the Marchbankses, and to see their ways; to sit at tables where there is noiseless and perfect serving, and to know that they think it is the 'mainspring of life' (that's just what Mrs. Van Alstyne said about it the other day); and then to have to hitch on so ourselves, knowing just as well what ought to be as she does,—it's too bad. It's double dealing. I'd rather not know, or pretend any better. I do wish webelongedsomewhere!"
Ruth felt sorry. She always did when Rosamond was hurt with these things. She knew it came from a very pure, nice sense of what was beautiful, and a thoroughness of desire for it. She knew she wanted itevery day, and that nobody hated shams, or company contrivances, more heartily. She took great trouble for it; so that when they were quite alone, and Rosamond could manage, things often went better than when guests came and divided her attention.
Ruth went over to where she sat.
"Rose, perhaps wedobelong just here. Somebody has got to be in the shading-off, you know. That helps both ways."
"It's a miserable indefiniteness, though."
"No, it isn't," said Barbara, quickly. "It's a good plan, and I like it. Ruth just hits it. I see now what they mean by 'drawing lines.' You can't draw them anywhere but in the middle of the stripes. And people that arerightin the middle have to 'toe the mark.' It's the edge, after all. You can reach a great deal farther by being betwixt and between. And one girl needn'talwaysbe black-leaded, nor drop all the spoons."
RRosamond's ship-coil party was a great success. It resolved itself into Rosamond's party, although Barbara had had the first thought of it; for Rosamond quietly took the management of all that was to be delicately and gracefully arranged, and to have the true tone of high propriety.
Barbara made the little white rolls; Rosamond and Ruth beat up the cake; mother attended to the boiling of the tongues, and, when it was time, to the making of the delicious coffee; all together we gave all sorts of pleasant touches to the brown room, and set the round table (the old cover could be "shied" out of sight now, as Stephen said, and replaced with the white glistening damask for the tea) in the corner between the southwest windows that opened upon the broad piazza.
The table was bright with pretty silver—not too much—and best glass and delicate porcelain with a tiny thread of gold; and the rolls and the thin strips of tongue cut lengthwise, so rich and tender that a fork could manage them, and the large raspberries, black and red and white, were upon plates and dishes of real Indian, white and golden brown.
The wide sashes were thrown up, and there were light chairs outside; Mrs. Holabird would give the guests tea and coffee, and Ruth and Barbara would sit in the window-seats and do the waiting, back and forth, and Dakie Thayne and Harry Goldthwaite would help.
Katty held her office as a sinecure that day; looked on admiringly, forgot half her regular work, felt as if she had somehow done wonders without realizing the process, and pronounced that it was "no throuble at ahl to have company."
But before the tea was the new game.
It was a bold stroke for us Holabirds. Originating was usually done higher up; as the Papal Council gives forth new spiritual inventions for the joyful acceptance of believers, who may by no means invent in their turn and offer to the Council. One could hardly tell how it would fall out,—whether the Haddens and the Marchbankses would take to it, or whether it would drop right there.
"Theymay'take it off your hands, my dear,'" suggested the remorseless Barbara. Somebody had offered to do that once for Mrs. Holabird, when her husband had had an interest in a ship in the Baltic trade, and some furs had come home, richer than we had quite expected.
Rose was loftily silent; she would not havesaidthat to her very self; but she had her little quiet instincts of holding on,—through Harry Goldthwaite, chiefly; it was his novelty.
Does this seemverybare worldly scheming among young girls who should simply have been having a good time? We should not tell you if we did not know; itbeginsright there among them, in just such things as these; and our day and our life are full of it.
The Marchbanks set had a way of taking things off people's hands, as soon as they were proved worth while. People like the Holabirds could not be taking this pains every day; making their cakes and their coffee, and setting their tea-table in their parlor; putting aside all that was shabby or inadequate, for a few special hours, and turning all the family resources upon a point, to serve an occasion. But if anything new or bright were so produced that could be transplanted, it was so easy to receive it among the established and every-day elegances of a freer living, give it a wider introduction, and so adopt and repeat and centralize it that the originators should fairly forget they had ever begun it. And why would not this be honor enough? Invention must always pass over to the capital that can handle it.
The new game charmed them all. The girls had the best of it, for the young men always gathered up the rings and brought them to each in turn. It was very pretty to receive both hands full of the gayly wreathed and knotted hoops, to hold them slidden along one arm like garlands, to pass them lightly from hand to hand again, and to toss them one by one through the air with a motion of more or less inevitable grace; and the excitement of hope or of success grew with each succeeding trial.
They could not help liking it, even the most fastidious; they might venture upon liking it, for it was a game with an origin and references. It was an officers' game, on board great naval ships; it had proper and sufficient antecedents. It would do.
By the time they stopped playing in the twilight, and went up the wide end steps upon the deep, open platform, where coffee and biscuits began to be fragrant, Rosamond knew that her party was as nice as if it had been anybody's else whoever; that they were all having as genuinely good a time as if they had not come "westover" to get it.
And everybody does like a delicious tea, such as is far more sure and very different from hands like Mrs. Holabird's and her daughters, than from those of a city confectioner and the most professed of private cooks.
It all went off and ended in a glory,—the glory of the sun pouring great backward floods of light and color all up to the summer zenith, and of the softly falling and changing shade, and the slow forth-coming of the stars: and Ruth gave them music, and by and by they had a little German, out there on the long, wide esplanade. It was the one magnificence of their house,—this high, spacious terrace; Rosamond was thankful every day that Grandfather Holabirdhadto build the wood-house under it.
After this, Westover began to grow to be more of a centre than our home, cheery and full of girl-life as it was, had ever been able to become before.
They might have transplanted the game,—they did take slips from it,—and we might not always have had tickets to our own play; but they could not transplant Harry Goldthwaite and Dakie Thayne. Theywouldcome over, nearly every day, at morning or evening, and practise "coil," or make some other plan or errand; and so there came to be always something going on at the Holabirds', and if the other girls wanted it, they had to come where it was.
Mrs. Van Alstyne came often; Rosamond grew very intimate with her.
Mrs. Lewis Marchbanks did say, one day, that she thought "the Holabirds were slightly mistaking their position"; but the remark did not come round, westover, till long afterward, and meanwhile the position remained the same.
It was right in the midst of all this that Ruth astonished the family again, one evening.
"I wish," she said, suddenly, just as if she were not suggesting something utterly incongruous and disastrous, "that we could ask Lucilla Waters up here for a little visit."
The girls had a way, in Z——, of spending two or three days together at each other's houses, neighbors though they were, within easy reach, and seeing each other almost constantly. Leslie Goldthwaite came up to the Haddens', or they went down to the Goldthwaites'. The Haddens would stay over night at the Marchbanks', and on through the next day, and over night again. There were, indeed, three recognized degrees of intimacy: that which took tea,—that which came in of a morning and stayed to lunch,—and that which was kept over night without plan or ceremony. It had never been very easy for us Holabirds to do such things without plan; of all things, nearly, in the world, it seemed to us sometimes beautiful and desirable to be able to live just so as that we might.
"I wish," said Ruth, "that we could have Lucilla Waters here."
"My gracious!" cried Rosamond, startled into a soft explosion. "What for?"
"Why, I think she'd like it," answered Ruth.
"Well, I suppose Arctura Fish might 'like it' too," responded Rose, in a deadly quiet way now, that was the extreme of sarcasm.
Ruth looked puzzled; as if she really considered what Rosamond suggested, not having thought of it before, and not quite knowing how to dispose of the thought since she had got it.
Dakie Thayne was there; he sat holding some gold-colored wool for Mrs. Holabird to wind; she was giving herself the luxury of some pretty knitting,—making a bright little sofa affghan. Ruth had forgotten him at the instant, speaking out of a quiet pause and her own intent thought.
She made up her mind presently,—partly at least,—and spoke again. "I don't believe," she said, "that it would be the next thing for Arctura Fish."
Dakie Thayne's eyebrows went up, just that half perceptible line or two. "Do you think people ought always to have the next thing?" he asked.
"It seems to me it must be somebody's fault if they don't," replied Ruth.
"It is a long waiting sometimes to get the next thing," said Dakie Thayne. "Army men find that out. They grow gray getting it."
"That's where only onecanhave it at a time," said Ruth. "These things are different."
"'Next things' interfere occasionally," said Barbara. "Next things up, and next things down."
"I don't know," said Rose, serenely unconscious and impersonal. "I suppose people wouldn't naturally—it can't be meant they should—walk right away from their own opportunities."
Ruth laughed,—not aloud, only a little single breath, over her work.
Dakie Thayne leaned back.
"What,—if you please,—Miss Ruth?"
"I was thinking of the opportunitiesdown," Ruth answered.
It was several days after this that the young party drifted together again, on the Westover lawn. A plan was discussed. Mrs. Van Alstyne had walked over with Olivia and Adelaide Marchbanks, and it was she who suggested it.
"Why don't you have regular practisings," said she, "and then a meeting, for this and the archery you wanted to get up, and games for a prize? They would do nicely together."
Olivia Marchbanks drew up a little. She had not meant to launch the project here. Everything need not begin at Westover all at once.
But Dakie Thayne broke in.
"Did you think of that?" said he. "It's a capital idea."
"Ideas are rather apt to be that," said Adelaide Marchbanks. "It is the carrying out, you see."
"Isn't it pretty nearly carried out already? It is only to organize what we are doing as it is."
"But the minute youdoorganize! You don't know how difficult it is in a place like this. A dozen of us are not enough, and as soon as you go beyond, there gets to be too much of it. One doesn't know where to stop."
"Or to skip?" asked Harry Goldthwaite, in such a purely bright, good-natured way that no one could take it amiss.
"Well, yes, to skip," said Adelaide. "Of course that's it. You don't go straight on, you know, house by house, when you ask people,—down the hill and into the town."
"We talked it over," said Olivia. "And we got as far as the Hobarts." There Olivia stopped. That was where they had stopped before.
"O yes, the Hobarts; they would be sure to like it," said Leslie Goldthwaite, quick and pleased.
"Her ups and downs are just like yours," said Dakie Thayne to Ruth Holabird.
It made Ruth very glad to be told she was at all like Leslie; it gave her an especially quick pulse of pleasure to have Dakie Thayne say so. She knew he thought there was hardly any one like Leslie Goldthwaite.
"O, theywon'texactly do, you know!" said Adelaide Marchbanks, with an air of high free-masonry.
"Won't do what?" asked Cadet Thayne, obtusely.
"Suit," replied Olivia, concisely, looking straight forward without any air at all.
"Really, we have tried it since they came," said Adelaide, "though what peoplecomefor is the question, I think, when there isn't anything particular to bring them except the neighborhood, and then it has to be Christian charity in the neighborhood that didn't ask them to pick them up. Mamma called, after a while; and Mrs. Hobart said she hoped she would come often, and letthe girlsrun in and be sociable! And Grace Hobart says 'shehasn't got tired of croquet,—she likes it real well!' They're that sort of people, Mr. Thayne."
"Oh! that's very bad," said Dakie Thayne, with grave conclusiveness.
"The Haddens had them one night, when we were going to play commerce. When we asked them up to the table, they held right back, awfully stiff, and couldn't find anything else to say than,—out quite loud, across everything,—'O no! they couldn't play commerce; they never did; father thought it was just like any gambling game!'"
"Plucky, anyhow," said Harry Goldthwaite.
"I don't think they meant to be rude," said Elinor Hadden. "I think they really felt badly; and that was why it blurted right out so. They didn't knowwhatto say."
"Evidently," said Olivia. "And one doesn't want to be astonished in that way very often."
"I shouldn't mind having them," said Elinor, good-naturedly. "They are kind-hearted people, and they would feel hurt to be left out."
"That is just what stopped us," said Adelaide. "That is just what the neighborhood is getting to be,—full of people that you don't know what to do with."
"I don't see why weneedto go out of our own set," said Olivia.
"O dear! O dear!"
It broke from Ruth involuntarily. Then she colored up, as they all turned round upon her; but she was excited, and Ruth's excitements made her forget that she was Ruth, sometimes, for a moment. It had been growing in her, from the beginning of the conversation; and now she caught her breath, and felt her eyes light up. She turned her face to Leslie Goldthwaite; but although she spoke low she spoke somehow clearly, even more than she meant, so that they all heard.
"What if the angels had said that before they came down to Bethlehem!"
Then she knew by the hush thatshehad astonished them, and she grew frightened; but she stood just so, and would not let her look shrink; for she still felt just as she did when the words came.
Mrs. Van Alstyne broke the pause with a good-natured laugh.
"We can't go quite back to that, every time," she said. "And we don't quite set up to be angels. Come,—try one more round."
And with some of the hoops still hanging upon her arm, she turned to pick up the others. Harry Goldthwaite of course sprang forward to do it for her; and presently she was tossing them with her peculiar grace, till the stake was all wreathed with them from bottom to top, the last hoop hanging itself upon the golden ball; a touch more dexterous and consummate, it seemed, than if it had fairly slidden over upon the rest.