THE FRIENDLY FIVE
A STORY

“—AND TURNING SUDDENLY, THEY BEHELD, WITH A POOR LITTLE COTTON HANDKERCHIEF PRESSED TO HER EYES, THE FORLORN FIGURE WHICH HAD JUST BEEN SO APTLY DESCRIBED.”

THE FRIENDLY FIVE
A STORY

BY MARY C. HUNGERFORD

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS
CINCINNATI: CURTS & JENNINGS

Copyright, 1891, by
HUNT & EATON,
New York.

DEDICATION.

AS AN EVIDENCE OF MY WARM REGARD FOR HER,
I Dedicate
THIS LITTLE STORY OF SCHOOL LIFE
TO MY YOUNG FRIEND,
MISS SALLY T. CLARK,
OF NEW HAVEN.

CONTENTS.

THE FRIENDLY FIVE.

CHAPTER I.
MR. BELLAMY’S OFFER.

There were neither examinations nor graduation exercises at the Coventry Institute. The only ceremony peculiar to the last day of school, except the farewells, was a little sermon from Mrs. Abbott, the principal, preceded by reading the average of reports for the year.

The day had come. All the smaller recitation-rooms were empty and the girls were gathered into the large school-room occupying their own seats, but each whispering softly to her neighbor, for rules were not strictly enforced on either the opening or closing days of school.

Upon the platform at one end of the room stood a green-covered library-desk with the large arm-chair by it which was always reserved for Mrs. Abbott. As they waited a servant came in and removed the chair, bringing into view a small old-fashioned hair-cloth sofa large enough to hold two persons comfortably.

“That means company,” was the universal whisper that went around among the girls, and almost before there could be any speculation upon who the guest might be the visitor himself followed the principal into the room. He was a tall, stout, middle-aged man with a splendid head that reminded the girls at once of the pictures of Agassiz.

As Mrs. Abbott took her seat on one end of the little sofa, with her usual pleasant bow to the scholars, she simply said, “My friend, Mr. Bellamy, will say a few words to you;” and the gentleman, with the ease of a long-practiced speaker, stepped to the little table and looked down with kindly inquiring eyes upon the young faces upturned to his.

The girls were well accustomed to speeches from visitors, and could almost have told how he would begin. In fact, Lily Dart, who was quite the wit of the school, had once written out several sentences which she called “openings,” and professed to be holding in reserve for any embarrassed orator who might be disconcerted by the stare of thirty pairs of critical eyes. Now, quoting from number one of her openings, she rapidly scrawled on a bit of paper for her desk-mate’s benefit, “Young ladies, my heart beats with mingled emotions—”

Lily was quite astray in her supposition. Mr. Bellamy said nothing about hearts, emotions, or young ladies; instead, with a look that seemed to include them all, he remarked in an easy conversational manner:

“My visit to my old friend, Mrs. Abbott, is made with the hope of persuading her to take a little girl so much younger than the custom of her school allows that I regard her consent as the greatest favor that can be granted to me. My little motherless granddaughter”—there was a little sudden straightening of his shoulders and lifting of his head here that looked to the bright, observant eyes watching him like a determined effort to keep dry eyes and a steady voice—“will seem to you,” he continued, with almost an appeal in his voice, “so babyish, and perhaps spoiled by a grandfather’s fond affection, that I must ask your kindest indulgence for her. Business calls me to Europe, and it will be a year before I can hope to see my little girl again. I should like to feel, in that long year of absence, that Ethel, my Elfie, I call her, was loved by the young people who will be her companions. I do not ask you to be kind to her; that I am sure you will be, but I wish I could feel sure that you will all love her.”

Mrs. Abbott beckoned to Miss Blake, the third-room teacher, and said a few words which made the latter go quietly out of the room, to return shortly with a colored nurse leading a most attractive-looking little creature who seemed almost like a baby, but in reality was nearly five years old.

This was Elfie, as the girls knew even before she sprang into her grandfather’s arms, and if any thing more than the words they had just heard had been needed to enlist their interest, the child’s appearance would have completed their conquest, and a very audible murmur of interest and admiration brought a suspicious glistening to Mr. Bellamy’s eyes, as he stood Elfie on the table with her arms still clinging to his neck. At a whisper from him the child lifted her lovely face from his breast and looked shyly for one moment at the girls, giving them a glimpse of pink cheeks, sweet, frank eyes, and a shy, smiling mouth, before the lovely face was buried again on her grandfather’s shoulder, and only a light, tossy handful of curls was visible for their admiration.

Candace, who stood in statuesque black dignity as befitted her vast person and royal name, was studying anxiously the faces before her with the keen observation common among untutored people, and now let her solemn countenance break into a broad smile of satisfaction as she saw the impression her little charge had made. She came forward then at a sign from her master, and carried Elfie from the room, the girls’ eyes following them till the white dress and broad black sash disappeared through the door.

But Mr. Bellamy’s speech was not over, although only one more sentence related to the child he had just introduced to them.

“Let my Elfie be your little sister,” he said, with again that look of almost imploring appeal in his eyes which seemed so much like a question that nearly every girl involuntarily raised her right hand as if she felt that some expression of assent was needed.

An audience of boys would have given three cheers for the little sister and six more for the senator, for boys would have known in a moment that the speaker was the distinguished orator whose eloquence and uprightness had made him celebrated all over the country. But girls don’t hurrah, and, unfortunately, do not read the papers and keep informed in political matters. But the speaker was satisfied; his wonderfully expressive eyes told that as he gravely bowed and passed on to speech number two, as Kate Ashley called it in her diary.

Nothing so interesting as consigning a lovely baby girl to their care could be expected from speech number two; but the girls put on an expression of polite attention which gradually changed to enthusiastic interest as its very novel and delightful subject was unfolded to them.

Even very able speeches by noted speakers are rather tiresome to read, so it will be better to simply give the most important part of this one without going fully into detail.

Mrs. Bellamy Gray, Ethel’s mother, had been a pupil of Mrs. Abbott, and it was one of the wishes expressed during her last sickness that her little daughter should be educated at the same school. Of course, it had not been her wish to send her there till she was of a suitable age, but now that circumstances had arisen which obliged Mr. Bellamy to go to Europe he felt anxious to leave her with the friend who had been so dear to her mother.

If there had been time, he told his audience, he should have liked to tell them of the various plans for helping and comforting others that his daughter had left for him to carry out. There was a bed in St. John’s Hospital, a small fund for giving six poor children a yearly outing, a memorial window in the little mission chapel where she had a Sunday-school class; and all these things were named for his dear and only daughter, and he loved to think that in these pleasant ways her works would seem to live after her. There were still some other schemes to carry out, and among them a Bellamy prize for Coventry Institute.

“I do not intimate,” said the speaker, having arrived at this very interesting part of his discourse, “that any one of Mrs. Abbott’s scholars has need of tangible help; neither do I propose to offer a prize because I think a spur to correct action is necessary; but because my daughter loved the school I wish to associate her memory with it in a pleasant way. The best way of doing this will have to be a matter of experiment and as a sort of trial trip. I will make it this year a prize of three hundred dollars in gold. Your teacher, warned by some sad experience in the past, is opposed to any thing which subjects her young people to a prolonged mental strain, so it will not do to make it a scholastic prize, and through some prejudices of my own, not liking to make it a reward for elegant deportment, I shall be obliged to say the prize is for the most deserving. It shall be given upon the anniversary of this day, and the recipient shall be selected by the vote of the school.”

Truly this was an extraordinary prize, and the girls discussed it with animation all the afternoon and during the evening, which on the last day of school was more like a social gathering, for the day-scholars were always invited in and the sadness of farewell was cheered by games, music, and dancing.

They would all have been delighted to have little Elfie with them in these last hours, but the fond grandfather could not spare her, and one of the girls, who had a message to deliver to Mrs. Abbott in the parlor, reported that the child lay fast asleep in Mr. Bellamy’s arms, while he was trying, at great inconvenience to himself, to write letters at a table, and black Candace sat patiently in the hall waiting for the long-delayed summons to put her little missy to bed.

It was late when the day scholars went home, and the others went up-stairs to their rooms very quietly. They all had to pass the large corner room which was always given to visitors, and, although the light was turned very low, they could see through the half-closed door that Candace was trying to undress the little girl without waking her, and the senator, whose broad back was toward the door, was bending down to unbutton the little shoes, one of which he lifted and pressed to his lips just as the last pair of girls went by.

“Did you see that?” whispered Katie, with the tears starting to her eyes.

“Yes, isn’t he lovely, and doesn’t he love the little one?” answered Lily, with a nod.

“And isn’t she a dainty darling, and wont we love her and pet her when we come back next term!”

CHAPTER II.
NEXT TERM.

The number of boarding scholars at Coventry school was limited to twenty, and it was necessary to make an application a year or two in advance, and girls had been known to wait three years for a vacancy, for the school was so popular among those who knew of it that people were willing to wait.

The list of applicants was kept in a book in the library, and, being allowed to look in it, the girls became familiar with the names of expected pupils long before they saw them, and when a girl arrived she hardly seemed like a stranger.

Five new scholars were entered at the end of the long summer vacation, and, strange to say, only four of the names were registered in the applicants’ book.

“It seems like putting a fifth wheel to a coach,” said Lily Dart, as she and half a dozen other boarders held a “pow-wow” before unpacking their trunks.

“Yes,” said Delia Howland, “there were only four vacancies, and where is this fifth wheel to sit in the dining-room, and where is she to sleep at night, and who’s to do the ‘mothering?’”

“Mothering” was a localism which needs some explanation. It was the custom when a new girl entered school to hand her over to a boarding scholar in her last year, who was expected to introduce the novice into the ways of the establishment and befriend her in every possible way. It was a plan that had always worked admirably, and Mrs. Abbott had seen many strong and lasting friendships begin in this way. To be strictly impartial the girls selected the new scholars they would “protect” when their names were announced at the close of school, so when it opened again and the new scholars came each girl knew which one she was to “mother” without ever having seen her.

“There’s a great deal in a name,” said Delia Howland, contentedly. “I feel sure my girl will be nice; no one called Sylvia Montgomery could be any thing but charming. It has such a high-born sound.”

“I don’t take much stock in names,” said Lily. “The most aristocratic-looking person I ever saw was named Boggs, and we had a colored butler once called Montgomery de Vere.”

“I wonder what the fifth wheel’s name is?” said Kate.

“I know,” said Louie Fields—“Mary Ann Stubbs!”

“Not really?” This was said by three girls at once with great emphasis.

“Yes, truly. Mrs. Abbott said so.”

“Then I know she is common as dirt,” said Delia, solemnly.

Lily groaned.

“Ah, girls, I am a-weary, a-weary, I would that I were wed; for I saw my fate in Mrs. Abbott’s eyes. As sure as you’re alive I shall be made to ‘mother’ Miss Stubbs!

“O, sweet Mary Ann,

I’m under the ban;

Fate links us together

And we shall part never

Till life at school ends!”

The girls always laughed at Lily’s ready versification whether it was funny or not, so the approval she had learned to expect came now.

“Don’t cross a bridge till you come to it,” said Delia.

“O, you dear, original creature, I have come to it, I know it by the pricking of my thumbs. and I feel it in my bones, and existence isn’t going to be worth having!”

“Here’s my bottle of toothache-drops, with a caution on the label not to swallow any, because it’s poison. I guess I can spare one fatal dose for you and have enough left to last till term ends.”

“Thanks, Katie, but I prefer to end my days by opening a vein; besides, your toothache-drops smell of cloves, and I hate cloves. I’m very fastidious, and prefer to ‘die of a rose in aromatic pain.’ I don’t quite know what that means, but it sounds better than cloves.”

“Well, go on living till you see Miss Stubbs; she may be such a queen of love and beauty that even that name can’t spoil her.”

The door opened then, admitting Mrs. Abbott and little Ethel, who shrank away as the girls made a dash at her.

“Her shyness will not last when she has had time to make acquaintance with you all,” said Mrs. Abbott, sitting down in the rocking-chair Lily placed for her and taking Ethel upon her lap.

“Will she be in school?” asked Kate.

“Only a little while each day. She is too young for lessons, but I want her to be among you as much as possible, for she has always lived with grown people, and the contact with young life will be very healthful and delightful for her.”

“I wish we might have her all the time!” exclaimed Lily. “O, do, Mrs. Abbott, let us take turns taking care of the darling! Say, baby, wont you be Lily’s little sister for a week, and be with her all the time and sleep in her bed?”

“I am every body’s little sister, grandpa says,” said Ethel, holding up her chin with a sort of baby dignity that made her very bewitching; “but I’d rather sleep with Mammy Candace.”

“And I am afraid that playing nurse would interfere seriously with lessons and rules,” said Mrs. Abbott. “But I am glad to have you fond of Ethel. She has grown very dear to me through this long vacation, while we have been off in the Catskills and at the sea-side seeking for health and strength for us both.”

“Ethel looks better for the change,” said Delia.

“She is much better,” said Mrs. Abbott; “I saw the color come to her cheeks before we had been in the hills a week. I wish Mr. Bellamy could see how plump and rosy she has grown.”

Candace, who was never far from her charge, put her head in at the door with Ethel’s broad hat in her hand, and the child sprang to her and started for a walk. Lily would have proposed going too, but Mrs. Abbott detained her.

“I came in to speak particularly to you,” she said. “Since I mentioned at school closing that four new scholars were expected this term I have arranged to take a fifth. She has just arrived and is in my room now. According to the usual custom I have selected one of the oldest scholars to be her friend and initiate her kindly into the ways of the school and help her over some of the difficulties, which you will all remember, from your own experiences, seem rather formidable to a stranger. I expect you, Lily, to be the friend in need in this instance, and if you are ready I will take you directly to my room and introduce you to Miss Stubbs.”

Lily turned to give the girls one look of comical despair as she followed Mrs. Abbott to her own sitting-room, where the only occupant was a girl of fourteen, sitting stiffly upon an ottoman. Her hair, which was certainly thick and long, was all drawn away from her round red face and put up in a big braided knot at the back. She had pleasant dark eyes and teeth which showed white as pearls as she parted her lips in a smile as Mrs. Abbott came in. But her hands! they were awful, thought Lily, taking the stranger in with a quick glance—big red, rough things, with neither ruffle nor cuff to soften them as they lay clasped tightly together upon a coarse, stiffly starched white apron which enhanced their redness. Hardly more attractive than the hands were the awkwardly crossed feet, made more clumsy by common, thick, new shoes. Lily had never, except on bargain-counters in the door-way of cheap stores, seen any material like the red, purple, and green plaid of which Miss Stubbs’s dress was made.

“Girls, I shall write to my father to take me out of school!” exclaimed Lily, impetuously, as she rushed back to the room where the girls she had left were still sitting. “I will not stay to be so insulted!”

“Your insult did not last long,” said Katie, who was well accustomed to Lily’s extravagant manner of speech. “It’s only five minutes since you went off. We didn’t expect you back for an hour.”

“I couldn’t stay,” said Lily, gloomily; “but I suppose I must go right back. I asked Mrs. Abbott to excuse me while I ran for a handkerchief. I knew I had one in my pocket all the time, but I just had to come out and give vent to my indignation! Girls, Mary Ann Stubbs is just a little servant-girl! I know it by her looks and her words too. Why, what do you think she said when I mumbled out something about hoping she’d be very happy here? I wouldn’t have said one word to her after looking at her hands, but Mrs. Abbott’s eye was on me, and I had to make some kind of conversation.”

“Well, what did the girl say after you had done the polite?”

“‘Thank you, ma’am.’”

“O, how funny to call you ‘ma’am!’ Then what did you say?”

“I said, ‘Have you ever been at boarding-school before?’

“‘No, ma’am.’

“‘Should you like me to tell you some of the rules?’ I said.

“‘If you please, ma’am,’ she said, sticking out her elbows and twisting her fingers together as if she was wringing out a dishcloth. I say Mrs. Abbott has no business to ask us to associate with such a heathenish girl. Ugh! How she looks! Her dress is made of the coarsest cloth you ever saw, and it looks like a star-spangled banner mixed up with a rainbow, only there isn’t enough of it to make a banner, for it’s scant and short, short enough to give a plentiful view of her white stockings, and she’s got on clod-hoppers; I think they must be her brother’s shoes. She has no collar or cuffs, and her hair is done up like an old woman’s. Just think of my ‘mothering’ that great, horrid, vulgar girl! I wont, though!” She burst into a flood of angry tears as she made this declaration.

Mingling with the rather hysterical weeping in which Lily’s indignation had culminated there was another sound of sobbing, and, turning suddenly, they beheld, with a poor little cotton handkerchief pressed to her eyes, the forlorn figure which had just been so aptly described that there was no difficulty in recognizing—Mary Ann Stubbs!

CHAPTER III.
IN KATIE’S ROOM.

The poor girl had followed Lily at a word from Mrs. Abbott, who felt, perhaps, that the ordeal of meeting some more of her fellow-scholars had better be over at once. Unnoticed, and not knowing exactly how she ought to make her presence known, the poor thing had stood motionless in the door-way hearing the cruel words, like a target into which all the arrows of scorn were being fired, till the sound of Lily’s sobs broke down her stony composure.

Katie, who was always good-natured, was really shocked at the cruel wounds the stranger had received, and, going up to her, attempted to apologize and soothe her. But the case seemed too dreadful to admit of palliation, and every thing Katie could think of to say seemed to make the matter worse. There was a sort of pathetic dignity in the way Mary Ann dried her tears after a few moments and said in a tone which showed the difficulty of commanding her voice:

“I do not want to trouble Mrs. Abbott, so please, ma’am, will you show me some place I can stay where I’ll be out of people’s way?”

“Come in here,” said Lily, thoroughly ashamed of herself. “I know Mrs. Abbott meant you to come here.”

“If I could be useful to you, ma’am,” the girl said, hesitatingly, yet looking as if she longed to get away.

“I wish you’d come into my room and help me unpack,” said Katie, having tact and good-natured enough to think the proposal would be pleasing.

She led the way through the back hall and up-stairs to the dormitories, which were a row of small rooms on each side of a long hall with a large bath-room at each end. There were a double bed and two small bureaus in each room.

It was a great comfort to the unhappy stranger to find something to do, and lazy Katie found herself well paid for her kindness by the energetic way in which the contents of her trunk were all laid with orderly arrangement in the bureau-drawers while she, not to embarrass her visitor by watching her, sat on the bed looking over her photograph album, occasionally calling the attention of Miss Stubbs to a picture with some explanatory remarks.

“This is my married sister, and this gentleman over the leaf is my married brother,” she said, calling attention to two very handsome faces.

“O, aint they splendid, ma’am!” ejaculated Mary Ann, looking enraptured. “And have you really got growed-up brothers and sisters?”

“Yes, plenty of them. I’m the youngest of seven.”

“Dear me, suz! And I’m the oldest of seven!” said Miss Stubbs, in rather a self-congratulatory manner.

“O, how awful!” replied Katie. “Why, I shouldn’t think you’d have any presents and things. Now, all my brothers and sisters, except the two next to me, give me all sorts of treats and make a regular pet of me.”

Mary Ann looked at her with wondering eyes, but made no answer. She was thinking of a poor little home in the mountains, where there was so much hard work, poverty, and sickness that petting and presents were not things to be understood. She felt a sudden desire to say so, but something seemed to tell her that such a home as hers would be despised by her companion. She was glad of all she did not say when, a moment after, Katie exclaimed:

“O, see this one! It’s my own room at home. Mamma had it photographed and sent it to me last term, so I might see how the new furniture looked.”

Mary Ann studied the picture long and closely.

“How beautiful! How beautiful!” she said, at last, in breathless admiration. “The best parlor at the Peconough House is jest nothin’ to it! My lands! how rich your folks must be! and aint it awful work to dust all them ornaments?”

“I suppose so,” said Katie, indifferently. “I never dust the room myself, but mamma says the housemaid complains of all our rooms.”

Mary Ann looked at Katie curiously, then attentively at the picture again; then, rather irrelevantly it would seem to any one not following her thoughts, said with a heavy sigh:

“My, aint you got white hands, though!”

They were white, and Katie enjoyed being told of it; in fact, the admiration she and her belongings, as they were taken from the trunk, excited was very refreshing to this young lady, who had her full share of vanity. Her complacency made her quite tolerant of her companion’s uncouth ways, and she propped herself comfortably against a pillow and proceeded to astonish her auditor by an extended account of her luxuries and privileges in her beautiful home.

Her descriptions were assisted and confirmed by two photographs that were too large to go in the album. The views showed the house to be very elegant, but the girls were rather tired of Katie’s “bragging,” and it was seldom she could get an opportunity of expending so much eloquence upon her favorite theme.

While Mary Ann listened with entranced interest to the description of home-life which seemed to her like a piece out of a fairy-tale her rough, red hands were not idle. Having emptied the trunk of all excepting its heaviest contents she dragged it into the hall for Duffy to carry into the store-room, and, pulling a spool and tatting-shuttle out of her pocket, made the latter fly as if its motor were steam.

By and by Lily put her head in the half-closed door, flushing at the sight of Miss Stubbs, but otherwise taking no notice of her.

“Please come to Mrs. Abbott’s room, Katie; she wants us for a few minutes,” she said, disappearing as suddenly as she came.

Katie smoothed her hair at the glass and turned to obey the request. At the same instant small flying feet were heard and a little voice counting the doors, “One, two, three, four, five, same’s my little finger; this is the one, I know;” and with a little knock that she didn’t wait to hear answered Ethel danced into the room.

“I’ve come back for you,” she exclaimed, running up to Mary Ann, “and Mrs. Abbott says you may come with us to see the peacocks, and we are going to feed them, too. Candace is getting your hat, and she’ll wait on the piazza for us. Come, hurry! hurry! The big one’s got his tail lifted all up like a big, big feather fan.”

CHAPTER IV.
MRS. ABBOTT’S EXPLANATION.

Perhaps it was a little bit of diplomacy on Mrs. Abbott’s part that provided an occupation out of the house for Miss Stubbs, while she talked of her very seriously to some of the scholars. Lily, who was as quick to act upon her good impulses as upon any others, had told her teacher frankly what had occurred. Mrs. Abbott received her confession sorrowfully, but made no comment at the time, simply asking the girl to call to her room those who had been present at the conversation.

Delia, Katie, Fannie Holmes, Bell Burgoyne, and Lily Dart, the Friendly Five, as they called themselves, took their seats rather shamefacedly, and waited to hear what Mrs. Abbott had to say.

If it had been any one but Mrs. Abbott the girls would have thought her afraid to begin. She certainly seemed much less composed than usual. She looked out of the window thoughtfully, rose and walked half a dozen times across the room, then took her seat again, looked keenly at the girls for a moment, and said:

“I hardly know whether or not to tell you something that will explain the presence in our school of a girl who is very different—I do not pretend to say she is not—from all who have ever been here. I hope I may help her by telling you, but sometimes I am afraid I shall do more harm than good by being frank.”

Here she hesitated, and the girls, who were wildly curious, were afraid she had arrived at the conclusion not to tell them any thing. She noticed their inquiring looks and smiled.

“I have made your lively imaginations expect more of a story than I really have to tell,” she said. “Last July, as you already know, I took Ethel and Candace for a six weeks’ stay in the Catskills. The hotel was on one mountain and faced another. In the deep valley between were several little houses, not clustered together for neighborly companionship, as you might suppose they would be in such a place, but each standing quite alone in what they call a ‘burnt-off’ clearing. The mountain air, while it strengthened me, made me wakeful, and, delightfully still as the place was, I could never sleep after the first ray of daylight broke through the sky. There were such glorious cloud effects that I thought I might as well turn my early wakefulness to good account; so the dawn of day always found me in shawls and wrapper sitting at the window of my bedroom.

“The clouds hang very near the earth among those heights; so in watching them I did not have to lift my eyes too high to see what was going on about me, although there was not much to see, except an occasional ox-team or a man on his way somewhere. But I began to notice after a while that one of the earliest living things astir after the birds was a little girl who brought a big pail up the hill, went around to the back door of the hotel, and presently came back with the pail filled with water, carrying it down the precipitous path quickly but with great care not to spill all its contents, as certainly any one not used to perpendicular paths would have done.

“To have made the journey thus loaded would have been a task for most people, but this little water-bearer came again and again. I have known her to carry down her load eleven times before the first bell rang to warn the hotel guests that it was time to leave their beds and prepare for breakfast.

“I am not fond of exercise before breakfast, but I grew so interested in the little water-carrier that one morning I dressed myself very early and went out, meeting her, as I expected, swinging her empty pail and repeating something to herself as if she were learning a lesson. She was larger when I stood on her level than when I saw her from the window, and sufficiently strong not to have minded carrying two or three pails of water—but eleven!

“‘It is hard work for you,’ I said, sympathetically, after wishing her good-morning. ‘O, my, no,’ she said, brightly; ‘jest suppose I had the empty pails to carry down and the full ones to fetch up!’

“I admired her happy philosophy and asked which of the houses she carried her pails of water to, and was surprised enough when she told me it was to all of them. I learned later that the well at the hotel was the only one in the vicinity, and, the supply of rain-water being inadequate, the people in the four little homes I could catch glimpses of through the trees were willing to give a cent for each pail of water brought to them!

“At mountain hotels fruit on the breakfast-table is not usual; so the boarders were very glad to engage wild raspberries from the same girl, who gathered them, with the help of three little brothers, after she had finished her water-carrying.

“I used to walk on the piazza with Ethel every morning while Candace was eating her breakfast, and sometimes still longer, when the grass seemed too damp for more distant rambling, and as we turned the corner and walked down the end of the dining-room we could see through the windows of the kitchen beyond it great baskets of dirty dishes carried in and emptied upon a table and piled up ready for washing. At a sink close by a fat woman was perpetually washing dishes, which she handed as fast as rinsed to two girls who wiped and piled them upon another table. The dish-washing and wiping always seemed very attractive to Ethel, and she made every excuse to stay longest on that part of the piazza. At last from frequent observation of the process and the workers I began to discover that my little water-carrier was one of the dish-wipers.

“I made arrangements when we first went to the hotel for hiring a strong wagon and a very steady old horse, and Ethel and I went every fair day for a long, lovely drive among the beautiful mountains. One day our trustworthy horse was attacked with a kind of rheumatic lameness which his owner admitted he was liable to have occasionally, but which would not last long. We waited patiently through several rainy and cloudy days, but when one came that seemed more perfect than any other day could be I felt as if I could wait no longer, and consulted the landlord about hiring another horse. I think, to exonerate that very cautious and conservative man, I must confess that I was a little self-willed, and engaged a coltish creature that he absolutely condemned. But I have driven nearly every day for so many years that I had perhaps too great an estimate of my own powers.

“We started on our drive, picking out the least precipitous roads, where all nearly approached the perpendicular for at least some portion of their way, and so far from seeming coltish our slow-moving horse might have been a grandfather.”

There was a prevailing opinion at Coventry school that Mrs. Abbott was rather fond of telling a story, and knew how to tell it well. Perhaps it was the strong interest she herself felt in every thing she said to her girls, or perhaps it was the great love they felt for her that made them now listen so intently that if the celebrated pin that is always mentioned in connection with attentive audiences had dropped it might have made quite a clatter, and yet certainly there was nothing very exciting about what she had said so far, as Kate Ashley found when she tried to put it into her inevitable diary.

“Elfie was in high spirits,” pursued Mrs. Abbott, “and laughed and sang as we drove along the shady roads, that were almost cold, the shade was so dense.

“We were within a mile or two of home when we came to a little log hut we had often seen before, but could rarely pass without stopping, because we knew it was the place to buy the most delicious maple-sugar that could be found in that region. The lame old woman sitting in the door rose up and came to the carriage, helping out Elfie, who had twelve cents, the price of a pound cake of sugar, clutched in her hand.

“I shall always be devoutly thankful that the child did get out, for before she had even stepped into the house behind the old woman a man whom I had not seen fired his gun at a squirrel close behind us, and in an instant the startled horse dashed away with me, paying no heed to all my efforts to hold him in. The road was up-hill for a little way, but I well remembered that there was a long, steep pitch after that, and I drew the reins with all the strength I had and settled myself into the middle of the seat so I should not be quite so easily thrown out. When we reached the top of the hill the downward pace was terrible. He seemed not to run, but to take great plunging leaps. His very first jump pulled the reins out of my hands, and I crouched down on the floor, grasping the seat and expecting every instant to be thrown out. I suppose I did not spend much time in this way, but it seemed like an hour that I clung there with a dreadful death apparently quite certain, for the road was narrow, with a steep, stony descent on one side. At the bottom of the terrible hill there was a short bit of road as nearly level as any road ever is among those mountains, then a fork, one road taking straight up another hill, the other making a sharp, sudden turn toward a plank bridge that had been injured by late storms and was considered impassable.

“If the horse, whose bounds seemed to be getting a little less impetuous, went straight up the other hill, possibly, hope whispered to me, I might be saved; but if he took that awful turn—I turned sick when I thought of what would come then!

“In those few terrible seconds before we reached the foot of the hill I saw—although I was not conscious till afterward that I saw any thing—the hotel standing boldly out upon its clearing, with people walking and sitting upon its broad piazza, and, just before the bit of level road I was approaching, a little black house, with a group of children playing beneath a tree and a girl hanging a heavy quilt upon a clothes-line. The noise of the wheels made her turn her head. I cannot remember what she did then, but I have been told that she made a dash for the road, and, when my horse came to the spot where to turn was death, she stood at the point of danger, right in the middle of the road, with the dark, wet calico quilt held up in her extended arms. If she had moved it it would have added to the horse’s terror and driven him into a mad bolt at the precipice on the other side of the road, but held as the girl held it it simply made, as she hoped it would, a barrier to keep him from taking the turn.

“My horse’s pace grew less fearful then, even on the level space, and before we reached the top of the steep ascent it had moderated so greatly that two men at the top in a loaded wagon sprang from their seat at sight of my danger and stopped him without much difficulty.”

Mrs. Abbott stopped for a moment, overcome by the recollection of her exciting adventure, while the girls, who had almost forgotten to breathe while they listened, crowded about her with caresses and murmurs of thankfulness that she had been saved.

CHAPTER V.
MARY ANN STUBBS.

“It is very lovely,” said Mrs. Abbott, as the girls were petting and fondling her, “very lovely in you to care so much for my deliverance from peril. I have not been able to tell you half how dreadful my danger was. I seemed to be looking right at death, and a terrible death, too. My heart is full of thankful love whenever I think of God’s goodness to me then. Perhaps my lips did not utter a word; I know I did not scream, but something within me cried out just as the supreme moment of danger was at hand, ‘Lord, save me, save me, save me!’

“Girls,” continued Mrs. Abbott, solemnly, making an effort to recover herself from the strong excitement with which she had spoken the last words, “God heard me out of the depths of my agony; he sent the angel of his deliverance to my help. Do you wonder that gratitude to the girl who risked her life to save mine makes me wish to make her life happier?”

“It was Mary Ann Stubbs,” exclaimed Lily, throwing her arms around Mrs. Abbott’s neck and sobbing, “and I—I—I have been so mean to her when she saved your life!”

“O, Lily, keep still and let Mrs. Abbott tell us the rest,” said Delia. “Did you faint when they took you out? And when did you find out that it was Mary Ann who held the quilt? I don’t see how she came to think of doing it, anyway.”

“Nor I,” said Bell. “I am afraid I should just shut my eyes and shudder if I were to see a lady being run away with in such a fearful way.”

“I suppose almost any girl would feel as you do,” said Mrs. Abbott. “I am sure I should feel helpless myself in the same circumstances, but Mary Ann is really a very uncommon character.

“Naturally enough, I was sick for some days from the nervous shock of my accident, and in that time I learned much about her from the hotel-keeper’s wife, who used to come in and sit with me. It was not till she told me that I knew who kept the horse from taking that dreadful turn.

“I found that the one great desire of Mary Ann’s life was to have an education. The few books she could get hold of she knew almost by heart, and in the little country school she attended in winter she studied with a vigor that soon carried her beyond the rather slightly educated teacher. During all the work of her busy days she was always committing something to memory, and the results of her application will surprise you when you see her in class.

“It seemed impossible to take away a girl who was the main-stay of her family, for Mary Ann’s earnings in assisting at the hotel a part of every day through the season and water-carrying and berry-picking, moss-basket-making, and several other small employments, counted largely toward her mother’s support. Her father lost his leg by an accident, so his capacity as a bread-winner is greatly reduced; but by the co-operation of the landlord of the Peconough House it has all been arranged, and now I ask your kindness for poor Mary Ann. She is rough, uncouth, and ignorant of every thing that goes to make polish and elegance, but she has a bright mind and a noble heart.

“I have told you of her origin and her almost menial position in order to account for her peculiarities of manner and speech, and I have told you of the bravery that saved my life to enlist your interest in her; and now I ask you if you are willing to overlook the obnoxious points and be friendly to Mary Ann?”

“Indeed we will!” said they all as with one voice; and, loving their teacher as they did, the girls felt a grateful desire to heap benefits on her preserver.

“I can see now,” said Mrs. Abbott, tears starting to her eyes at the evidences of her scholars’ love for her, “that I had better have told you this story before letting you see Mary Ann; but we are all apt to make mistakes. I think I have made another in asking one of you to take her in especial charge, so I withdraw the office from you, Lily.”

“No, no, let me ‘mother’ Mary Ann. Don’t punish me for my contemptible conduct!” cried Lily, red with shame.

“No, dear, it is not for punishment, but because I see ample reason for leaving any one girl free from individual responsibility. I will give her into the care of you all.”

“Make her a kind of child of the regiment,” said Delia.

“Yes, exactly that. You five may consider yourselves in honor bound to look after the interests of poor Mary Ann.”

“I am going to begin by teaching her grammar,” said Bell, at which the others quite laughed, for Bell was very weak on that branch of learning. “Well, you needn’t laugh. I don’t say ‘you be’ and ‘I haint,’ and I don’t think there’s any harm in my telling her not to do it.”

“You will be astonished when I tell you,” said Mrs. Abbott, “that Mary Ann is well grounded in grammar and rhetoric, but she has spent her life where no practical use of them is made in conversation; so the poor girl does not know how to talk; but as soon as she catches the idea that her speech is different from others she will bend every nerve to changing it. Her great ambition is to become a teacher and earn enough to educate her brothers and sisters.”

“Six of them!” groaned Katie.

“How is she to get clothes?” asked Bell, thinking of the thick shoes and the vivid plaid. “She wouldn’t be so bad if she dressed like other folks.”

“I should have attended to that before she came,” said Mrs. Abbott, “but when I recovered I felt unwilling to stay among the mountains, and driving was no longer a pleasure to me, so we went to Narragansett for the rest of the vacation, leaving the care of getting Mary Ann down here in time for school opening with Mrs. Perkins, the hotel-keeper’s wife. I have already set the girl who has been engaged to make Elfie’s dresses to work upon a navy-blue cashmere for Mary Ann, and shoes of a more girlish appearance she shall have this afternoon.”

“And may I bring you some cuffs and collars for her?” asked Bell. “Mamma always packs up such an insane quantity of them for me. I never use half of them.”

“And I can give her lots of hair-ribbons,” said Katie.

“O, please let us fill her top drawer with our superfluities,” said Lily; “she will never know where they came from, and it will be great fun!”

Mrs. Abbott hesitated.

“I do not like to destroy her independence. Her position as occasional helper in the hotel kitchen did not bring her into contact with the guests, so she was never offered presents or fees.”

“I know,” said Lily; “you want her to feel as good as any one.”

“Yes, I do; and if she is to begin by accepting gifts she may get a feeling of inferiority that I don’t wish her to have.”

“Well, wont you put the things in the drawer, and not tell her we gave them? Surely she can take a favor from you,” said Delia.

And so it was arranged. Mary Ann had her raptures over gloves, ribbons, ruffles, and other girlish properties which she had never dreamed of possessing, and the girls who had supplied her out of their profusion were well paid by seeing the improvement in her appearance and hearing her expressions of delight when she told them of the furniture of the top drawer she expected to find empty.

Mrs. Abbott kept her rather out of sight for a day or two, and when school work began in earnest Mary Ann, in her new blue dress, with clean collar and cuffs, nice shoes and dark stockings, was not a conspicuous figure till she opened her mouth to speak.

CHAPTER VI.
MARY ANN’S CHARGE.

It always takes nearly a week to get a boarding-school into good working order, so, although Mrs. Abbott appointed Wednesday for arriving, she never really expected much would be done till the next Monday. By that time the rapture of greeting between old friends, the acquaintances to be formed with new-comers, and the natural touch of homesickness were supposed to be over, and the business of life must begin.

One of the five new scholars has been described. The others seemed nice, quiet, lady-like girls, a little inclined to be teary, as was quite natural, for they knew the pleasures of the homes they had left, and they could not yet know how much there was to enjoy at Coventry school.

They all found Elfie a quiet comforter, for the child, now that she had become entirely at home, seemed to take the duties of a hostess upon herself and made very pretty little efforts to please the strangers. Any other child would have been in danger of being spoiled by the petting lavished upon her; she was every one’s darling; and to have Elfie for an hour was the greatest treat a girl could have.

Edna Tryon, one of the new girls, was quite as far advanced as any of the old scholars, and was put into the class with them. She had been for years at a fashionable city school, but having, as her mother thought, shown some symptoms of delicate health, she was brought to Mrs. Abbott’s in hopes the pure country air might be of advantage.

There was something very attractive about Edna Tryon’s appearance; teachers and girls were pleased with her from the first, but as time went on she developed some unlovely traits, and brought from the fashionable school she had attended ideas which were quite at variance with Mrs. Abbott’s system. She was rather a shrewd girl, and by appealing to certain weaknesses she was quick to discover in a girl’s character was able to acquire an influence over her. She succeeded in getting very much of an influence over Katie Ashley, and through her became on excellent terms with all the Friendly Five.

After Mrs. Abbott’s conversation with the Friendly Five about Mary Ann they had treated her with kindness, and their example had made her much better received by the other scholars than she would have been, for school-girls are very critical, and there was much in Mary Ann’s speech and manner to which to object.

Edna treated her with great haughtiness from the first, and Lily, seeing how often Mary Ann was wounded by her arrogance, asked for liberty to tell her the story of how she came to be there; but Mrs. Abbott, thinking it better no one else should know what a humble position she had held, withheld her permission, at the same time thanking Lily for wishing to befriend Mary Ann.

“It gives me great joy, my dear, to see that you persist in your kindness to poor Mary Ann. She tells me that all of you to whom I told her story are brave champions.”

“I am sorry she needs a champion,” said Lily; “but you know it is a temptation to make fun of her green ways and looks; but she is improving, and I think it’s perfectly grand the way she asks us to tell her of her faults. I should be furious if any one told me of mine. To tell the truth, I don’t like to think people know I have any.”

“We cannot too much admire Mary Ann’s determination to improve herself, and I hope, Lily, you will continue to be her friend.”

Lily promised and fully meant to keep her word, but, as Mrs. Abbott had learned by past experience, Lily had two failings which sometimes made her a little trying to those who loved her most: her disposition to seek amusement, even if she had to do it at a friend’s expense, and her easy nature, made her too easily led away from her good intentions. But she had of late struggled with these besetting sins, as she called them herself, and her teacher hoped they would at last disappear.

No one’s general average in the week’s report was ever higher than Mary Ann’s. She was not only a remarkably quick student, but she appreciated, more than any one else in the school, the great blessing of an education. Gratitude to Mrs. Abbott was another spur to industry, and her studiousness and desire to learn made her a favorite with the teachers.

She still had much to bear from the scholars, who were thoughtlessly cruel, and laughed at her many blunders; but their causes of merriment were gradually disappearing, for Mary Ann was so well aware of her defects and so watchful to correct them that Mrs. Abbott told her one day, finding her plunged in despair, that before long, with her great desire for improvement and the rough process of polishing she was enduring, she would acquire the agreeable manner of speech and action she admired in the other girls.

“O, you are so kind to me, ma’am,” said grateful Mary Ann, “and I wisht you’d gimme—give me, I mean—something to do for you. You said to my mother there was work I could do here.”

“I have changed my mind about that. If I were to let you do the light service I had expected to I fear the others would be less likely to treat you as an equal, and, dear, I think you have enough to struggle against without that drawback. I have decided to ask of you something much more serious and important than I had intended. To explain myself, I must tell you something in strict confidence; I am quite sure I may trust you.”

Mary Ann began to pledge her solemn word in the strong language in which she had been accustomed to hear such assertions made; but Mrs. Abbott stopped her, saying:

“One look at your face is all I need to show me you can keep a secret.”

The honest eyes she looked into were shining with pleasure, and Mrs. Abbott smiled lovingly at the girl as, taking her little hard hand in her own, she told the pitiful story of Ethel’s mother’s short, sad life.

She had become engaged while her father was abroad, having left her in the care of a friend who proved very reckless of the trust, to a man in every way unworthy of her. Mr. Bellamy, on his return, at first refused his consent, but Ethel, always delicate, seemed unable to bear disappointment, and, having no actual proof of Mr. Gray’s unworthiness, his fears for her health made him consent to their marriage. There were two years of sad experience, and then Mr. Bellamy, learning of wrongs which had been carefully concealed from him and which fully justified the severest measures, insisted upon a legal separation, and brought Mrs. Gray and her little daughter back to his own home in San Francisco. Soon the older Ethel died, leaving her baby Elfie to her grandfather’s care.

“To guard against interference he legally adopted Elfie, giving her his own name, and he never means to have her know, if it can be helped, that she has a father living.”

“Within the past year,” continued Mrs. Abbott, “Mr. Bellamy has found the worthless father very troublesome, and has grave fears that he will try to get possession of Elfie, probably with the hope of getting hold of the money which she inherits from her mother, independently of her grandfather’s large fortune. He made one attempt in San Francisco, but happily his plot was discovered. Mr. Bellamy believes the man will think he has of course taken Elfie to England with him, and has little fear for her here under my care.

“Candace can be trusted to watch and defend her if necessary, for she would be a tigress if danger threatened her darling; but poor Candace keeps having attacks of rheumatism. Change of climate must have developed it, for she was never afflicted that way before. When her nurse has a sick day some one else must guard Elfie, and you, my dear, will do it more faithfully, I firmly believe, than any one else in the house.”

Mrs. Abbott rose as she finished, and kissed the earnest, honest face of her listener.

Mary Ann’s dark eyes were beaming with joy at being so trusted; but though she longed to say that she would be faithful—yes, faithful unto death, if necessary—there was such a choking in her throat that she could only answer by pressing the dear hand that held hers.

CHAPTER VII.
ELFIE TELLS A STORY.

Six of the girls were spending the Saturday mending-hour in Lily’s room. All the girls in the school were required to spend that one hour in sewing, and as rents and holes were subject to fines and bad marks it became an unwritten law that the hour was to be spent in mending. The little girls were expected to do their mending in the smaller recitation-room, with one of the teachers to direct and assist them, but the larger ones were allowed to work in their rooms.

“It is not a hilarious pursuit,” said Lily, looking solemnly at a three-sided tear above the hem of a clean white skirt, “and I am very sorry that there seems to be such a deep-seated prejudice against the Chinese.”

“And what earthly connection is there between mending and Chinese?”

“The connection, my inquisitive Bertha, is not with mending, but abolishing the necessity for the practice, which I regard as a most disagreeable one. I have understood that the gentle creatures with the peanut-colored complexions and the blinking, bias eyes are acquainted with a process for making paper undergarments, which are taken off when soiled and used for lighting fires. I suppose if my lovely figure were draped in paper I should make a cheerful rattling as I walked about, and toward the close of a paper garment’s career I might even have to tie it about me with twine, like any other paper-wrapped package. Still, I should prefer it to mending cotton materials, and so I wish they would offer the Chinese inducements to stay here and begin manufacturing.”

The girls were convulsed with laughter, for Lily had an overwhelmingly droll way of making her highly original remarks.

“I have no mending to do,” said Katie; “so if you want me to read aloud I am quite at your service.”

Lily laid down her work and looked reproachfully at the speaker. “Have you stolen a march on me, uncandid Katherine, with a K, and supplied yourself with a full line of paper garments while I am still groveling in cotton cloth?”

“No; I wear as much muslin as you do, and wear and tear it into twice as many holes. I laid a frightful pile of clothes that wanted mending on my table yesterday, but when I went to bed I found them all mended.”

“That sounds supernatural,” said Lily, using her chest tones and speaking sepulchrally; “I am afraid it was the work of no mortal fingers. Perhaps you have a ghostly double who sits and sews while you otherwise amuse yourself.”

“O, stop talking that way,” said Katie; “you make me feel creepy; I know well enough who did it. It was Mary Ann.”

“How very nice!” said Edna, airily; “I believe I will hire her services too. I have plenty of pocket-money to spare, for there’s no way of spending it here.”

“But she didn’t do it for pay,” protested Katie; “it’s because she likes me.”

“And because you are always so nice to her,” said Lily, with an approving nod which greatly pleased Katie.

Edna drew up her lip scornfully. “I should not accept unpaid services,” she said, loftily.

“Do excuse my forgetfulness,” exclaimed Lily, hurriedly fumbling in her little purse. “O, can any one change a half-dollar; never mind, here’s some pennies, one, two, three, four, five. Here, Edna, is this about right for gluing my photo-case so nicely the other day?”

“Why, Lily Dart! How dare you offer me money!” exclaimed Edna, springing up and scattering the pennies Lily had tossed into her lap in every direction.

The other girls looked shocked too; but Lily serenely said, “I must be stupid, but I thought you said you wouldn’t accept unpaid services, and I felt reproached at once for not having as good a rule of conduct as yours.”

Edna looked violently angry, but before she could express her indignant sentiments there was a little tap on the door, and Mrs. Abbott and Elfie came in.

Perhaps Mrs. Abbott could tell by Edna’s flushed cheeks and the angry tears which filled her eyes that something disagreeable was in progress, but she gave no sign of noticing any thing, and after a few minutes of pleasant chat asked if she might leave Elfie with them till the sewing-hour was up.

Bertha, with a fear that Edna and Lily might recommence the interrupted conversation, invited Elfie to tell them a story while they sewed.

“I can’t tell a book story,” said the child, “but I’ll tell you one that Mammy Candace tells, or I’ll tell you one of Marion’s history stories.”

“Which would you rather tell, Elfie?”

“I sink I’d rather tell one of mammy’s stories, ’cause I forget the history names.”

“Very well, do as you like.”

“Well, once dere was a little girl, ’bout so big as me, and her mother telled her to go over the field and take some nice custard in a bowl to a poor sick woman in a little bit o’ cabin. So she put on her little hat an’ comed an’ comed an’ comed till she ’most come to de little cabin. Den she sat down under a bush an’ she look in de bowl, an’ de custard look yellow like gole, an’ smooth like silk, an’ den she took a holly-leaf an’ she ate de nice custard all up. An’ den she lie down an’ go sleep. Pretty soon dere comes big bumble-bee, buzz-buzz-buzz, an’ she wakes up an’ says, ‘Go ’way, bad bee.’ But de bee say, ‘No, no; I goin’ ter sting a bad chile doan’ mine ’er mudder.’”

The girls were noticing with much amusement that Elfie was unconsciously imitating the Southern accent Candace used.

“Den a lil’ chipmunk come an’ say, ‘Cha-cha-cha-cha, I goin’ bite her lil’ toes, ’cause she doan’ mine ’er mudder.’ Den a lil’ owl comes an’ says, ‘Who-a-who-a-who, I goin’ pull ’er har, ’cause she doan’ mine ’er mudder.’ Den dere comes a lil’ chink-bug, tick-a-tick-a-tick-a, an’ says, ‘I goin’ pinch ’er, ’cause she doan’ mine ’er mudder.’ Den dey all say, ‘Sting ’er, bite ’er, pull ’er, pinch ’er, ’cause she doan’ mine ’er mudder.’ So she cry an’ holler, an’ de poor sick woman crawls outer bed an’ sends ’em all off. Den she says, ‘You got somefin’ nice for me in dat blue bowl?—somefin’ you mudder send me, yellow as gole an’ smooth as silk? Gib it to me, ’cause I got nuffin’ to eat.’

“Dat was the worse of all, an’ de lil’ girl runs out de door an’ runs home an’ says, ‘Mudder, mudder, gib me all de supper I can have;’ an’ de mudder gibs her bread an’ milk an’ jam-tart, an’ she takes ’em an’ runs ’way, ’way off to de cabin, to gib ’em to de sick woman, an’ de bee, an’ de chipmunk, and de lil’ owl, and de chink-bug, dey all comed too, an’ dey didn’t sting ’er, nor bite ’er, nor pull ’er, nor pinch ’er, ’cause she was sorry she was bad an’ didn’t mine ’er mudder.

“I can tell you better stories when I know how to read,” said Elfie, modestly, as she received their thanks for the one she had just told in a highly dramatic manner. “I have a beautiful big book of stories called The Raving Nights, but Auntie Abbott wont let me have the stories read to me, because I heard her tell Miss Blake I was too—too magical now.”

“Imaginative, wasn’t it?”

“O, yes; dat was it.”

“Well,” said Lily, who had seen the big storybook, “‘magical’ isn’t a bad word for the Arabian Nights.”

“And ‘Raving’ is as forcible as the real title,” added Edna, who seemed to have recovered her temper.

CHAPTER VIII.
A RAINY DAY.

After a week of such glorious weather that it was a pleasure merely to be alive there came a day when the rain fell in hopeless torrents.

“I wouldn’t quarrel with the weather,” said Lily, gloomily, “if it had the propriety to do the right thing Saturday; but when our only holiday is spoiled it seems a little exasperating. I’ve flattened my classic features against the window-pane as long as I can stand it, but I can’t find a symptom of clearing up.”

“Let’s do something amusing,” said Louie Field. “There is no fun in just wishing it would stop raining, and that’s what we’ve been doing, with intervals for yawning, for the last hour.”

“Amusing! Well, I like that! What’s going to amuse us?” asked Bell Burgoyne, scornfully.

“Capping verses is pretty good fun,” said Mary Ann, modestly. It was seldom she made a suggestion; but Edna, who generally snapped her up with a sarcasm, or silenced her proposals with blighting sneers, was out of the way now.

“That’s so,” said Katie, looking up from a struggle with the accounts that her father required her to keep of her very liberal supply of pocket-money. “It is fun, but I don’t remember exactly how it’s played. You write a line of poetry and then fold the paper over it and pass it along for your next neighbor to write a line that rhymes with it, don’t you?”

“Yes; that’s one way, but we used to play it another way for a change. Let’s try your way first, and then I’ll show you how we used to play it at Chemunk.”

There was much stirring about for a few minutes to find pencils and paper, and then a half sheet of foolscap was handed to Lily, who wrote a heading and then a first line.

“Arrayed,” she said, passing the paper on to Katie, after carefully turning down her line so that no one could read it.

“No one can make a rhyme to that,” said Katie, who was not blessed with a powerful rhyming talent; “that’s one of the words there’s no rhyme to, like silver and twelfth.”

“Maid, shade, glade, played,” suggested Mary Ann.

“O, yes,” said Katie; “but I don’t know a line of poetry that ends in any of those words.”

“Give Mary Ann your turn, then,” said Lily, “and may be you’ll get an easier word.”

So Mary Ann wrote a line rapidly and then passed the paper to Lottie Bush, who wrote another rhyme to it, for the versification was to be in triplets. Then Katie, thinking it would be easier to inaugurate a rhyme than to find one, began a new verse and gave “tale” as the final word of her line.

Some of the party were very quick, but others had to expend much thought on their lines; so quite a little while passed before the poem was finished and handed to Lily to read.

“Ahem!” she began, clearing her throat. “This remarkable poem is the joint production of a number of first-class poets. It was original sometime, and it is called—

“MANY LINES FROM MANY PENS, BY LOTS OF FOLKS.

“An Austrian army awfully arrayed,

Sure, I’m but a simple village maid,

Blossomed and ripened in woodland shade.

“Hope told a flattering tale,

She began to weep, and she began to wail,

Come in thy beauty, thou marvel of duty, sweet Annie of the vale.

“Roll on, thou dark and deep blue ocean, roll,

Nor lay that flattering unction to your soul;

And the distant bells softly toll, toll, toll.

“Hark, from the tombs a doleful sound;

The spot whereon thou stand’st is holy ground;

He cleared the barrier with a single bound.

“Have you not heard the poet tell,

Ding, dong, dell, pussy’s in the well,

Down in the meadow, sweet blue bell.”

“That wasn’t bad fun,” said Louie. “Now suppose we try the other way. Tell us how you do it, Mary Ann.”

“You compose four lines of poetry, or stuff—of course you can’t really call it poetry—and leave off the rhymes, and pass it to the next one to guess out the rhymes and put them in.”

“But, my goodness, child, we can’t all compose poetry! What do you take us for?” asked Louie. “Wont it do to quote four lines from a book?”

“Not quite so well, for it might be familiar, and then there’d be no skill in getting the rhymes.”

“O, let’s try it,” said Lily. “It needn’t be real poetry, as Mary Ann says, and we’ll get some fun out of it, I guess.”

Some narrow strips of paper were supplied to each of the party, who, with the exception of two or three who declared it was impossible for them to think of any thing to write, were soon busy trying to wrench poetical ideas from their puzzled brains.

Parodies were the easiest to write, Mary Ann had said; so most of the verses when done bore strong suggestions of very familiar songs or poems, and after they were written it was not hard for most of the girls to supply the rhymes.

Edna, who came in too late to join in composing, was chosen to read the verses to them after they were done. There were no names signed and it was some sport to guess the authors. The first one selected from the pile had an easy jingle about it that made the girls certain it was from Lily’s ready pen. It was headed:

“ODE TO MY FRIEND.

“I never told the truth, but—

And then I told it—

I said you were an awful—

But you needn’t have felt so—

“Now, guess the rhyme,” said the reader, who knew what they were because, according to rule, they were written on the back. “It’s an every-other-line rhyme, and the second one is ‘gladly.’ It isn’t quite fair to tell you that, but you’ll never guess it if I don’t give you some clew.”

There was much puzzling about fitting the rhymes, but Mary Ann and Bell succeeded in finding them and comfortably fitted “once,” “dunce,” “gladly,” “badly,” into their places at the end of the lines.

The next verse was easier, and even Katie found no great difficulty in supplying the missing words: