BOBBIE, GENERAL MANAGER

BOBBIE
GENERAL MANAGER

A NOVEL

OLIVE HIGGINS PROUTY

GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS :: NEW YORK

Copyright, 1913, by
Frederick A. Stokes Company

TENTH PRINTING

TO
THE MEMORY OF
MY FATHER

CHAPTER I

I AM a junior in the H.C.H.S., which stands for Hilton Classical High School, and am sixteen years old. I live in a big brown house at number 240 Main Street, and my father is a state senator in Boston. I am a member of the First Congregational Church, which I joined when I was thirteen, and am captain of the basket-ball team at the high school. I have travelled as far east as Revere Beach, as far west as the Hoosac Tunnel, on my way to Aunt Ella's funeral in Adams, and as far south as New London, Connecticut, where I watched my oldest brother Tom row in a perfectly stunning eight-oared boat-race on the Thames. I haven't been north at all. I have had six diseases, including scarlet fever and typhoid, with which I almost died last year, and as a result of which am now wearing my hair as short as a child with a Dutch-cut.

I am not pretty, nor a bit popular with the boys. I can't play the piano, and I never went to dancing-school in my life. Most of my clothes are as ugly as mud, for I haven't any mother; and my hair has always been as straight as a stick. They say that the kink that has appeared in it since the typhoid won't last but a little while, so it isn't much comfort. In fact, the only real consolation that I have is a secret conviction which I keep well concealed in the innermost compartment of my heart. No one knows of its existence except myself, and I wouldn't be the one to tell of it for anything in the world. It is on account of it, however, that I am writing the experiences of my early life. I often think how valuable it would have been if William Shakespeare had told us about his school-days or Julius Caesar had described his family and what they used to do when he was a boy of fifteen. Of course I may not be a genius; but facts point that way. I hate mathematics, my imagination is vivid, my life is difficult and full of obstacles, and my handwriting illegible. My Themes are generally read out loud in English, and my quarterly deportment mark is frightfully low. Moreover, if I am not a genius I shall be awfully disappointed. Why, I think I should rather be a genius than to go to a College Prom. It makes everything so bearable, from a flunk in geometry, to not being invited to Bessie Jaynes' birthday-party last week.

My life has not been an easy one. Ever since I can remember I have been the mother of five children—two of them older and three younger than myself. They all call me Bobbie for short, but my real name is Lucy Chenery Vars.

Our house is a big ugly brown affair which Father built when we were all babies and the business was prosperous. The house has twenty rooms in it, and on the top an octagon cupola, which I have fixed up with a fish-net and some old tennis rackets, and call my study. I have a plaster cast of a skull up here, and a "No Trespassing" sign which Juliet Adams and I stole out of old Silas Morton's blueberry-pasture. It looks exactly like a college man's room now and I intend to do all my writing up here. It is a perfectly lovely place for inspirations! From my eight little windows I can see all over New England, and at night every star that shines. It is simply glorious up here in a thunder-storm, and when I have the trap-door once closed behind me, with all my cares and troubles shut safely away down below, I feel as if I could fly with the birds. I ought to write something wonderful.

In the first place I had better state that I haven't anything distinguishing about me except my experience. I am middling tall—five feet five inches, to be precise; middling heavy—112 pounds; and am one of six children—four boys and two girls—without the honour of being either the oldest or youngest. With Father there are seven of us; with Nellie and the cook (when we have one) and poor little Dixie, the horse, there are ten.

Father is a big, quiet, solemn man and is sixty-eight years old. He is president of the Vars & Company Woollen Mills, has perfectly white hair, and wears grey and white seersucker coats in the summer. Tom is the oldest and is in business out West. We're all awfully proud of Tom. He was a perfect star in college, and is making money hand over fist with his lumber camps in Michigan. Alec, the next to oldest, is struggling along in business with Father. Then I come, and next to me the twins—Oliver and Malcolm, aged fifteen and perfect terrors. Last is Ruthie; and after her, mother died and so there weren't any more. I was the mother then, and I was only a little over five. Father says he used to put me on the dictionary in mother's chair at the table when I was so little that Nellie had to help lift the big silver pot while I poured the coffee. Well, I've sat there ever since, pushed the bell, scowled at the twins and performed a mother's duty generally, as well as I knew how.

It hasn't been easy. Ruthie isn't the kind of little sister who likes to be petted or cuddled. The twins scorn everything I do or say. The house is a perfect elephant to run (there are thirty-three steps between the refrigerator and the kitchen sink) and our washings are something frightful. Alec says we simply cannot afford a laundress, and the result is that I spend most of my Saturday mornings in intelligence-offices hunting cooks. Intelligence-offices are dreadful on inspirations.

Ever since I can remember, the house has been out of repair—certain doors that won't close, certain windows that have no shades, certain ceilings that are stained and smoked. It's hard to give the rooms the proper look when there are paths worn all over the Brussels carpet, exactly like cow-paths in a pasture, and the stuffed arms of the furniture in the parlour are worn as bare as the back of a little baby's head I once saw.

When Tom wrote that he was going to bring Elise, his young bride, whom we had never laid eyes on, to Hilton on their wedding trip, I nearly had a Conniption Fit. I thought Tom must have lost his mind. Any one ought to know what a shock our house would be to the kind of girl Tom would choose to marry. The concrete walk that leads up to the front door was dreadfully cracked, and the crevices were filled with a healthy growth of green grass. The iron fountain in the centre of the walk was as dry as a desert, and the four iron urns on the square porch as empty as shells. The ninety feet of elaborate iron fence that runs in front of the house needed a new coat of paint, and the little filigree iron edging, standing up like stiffly starched Hamburg embroidery around the top of the cupola, had a piece knocked out in front. But Tom would come, so I buckled down and made preparations.

I must explain a little about Tom. It isn't simply because he is the oldest son that we all look up to him so much. Every one in Hilton admires Tom. The Weekly Messenger refers to his "brilliant career," and the minister at our church calls him "an exceptional young man." He isn't a genius—he's too successful and everybody likes him too much for a genius—but he's different from the other young men in Hilton. When Father picked out some little technical school or other for Tom to go to, Tom announced that he was awfully sorry but that he had made up his mind to graduate from the biggest university in the country. And once there, Tom had a perfectly elegant time! Every one adored him. I saw him carried off once on the shoulders of a lot of shouting young men, who were singing his name. Why, I was proud to be Tom Vars' sister! He was captain of the crew, president of his class, a member of a whole lot of societies, and when he graduated his name was printed under the magna cum laude list on the programme (I can show it to you in my Souvenir Book) which meant that he was a perfect wizard in his lessons.

Tom graduated the year that Father's business began to look a little wobbly. Just when Father was looking forward, with a good deal of hope, to his oldest son's help and coöperation, Tom ran up home for over Sunday one day in May, and broke the news that after Commencement he had decided to accept a position from his room-mate's rich uncle in some wild and woolly lumber camps in Michigan. It just about broke poor Father's heart. He couldn't enjoy the honours of Tom's Commencement. But Tom went out West just the same—for Tom always carries out his plans—he went, smiling and confident, with never a single reference to Father's silence, ignoring absolutely the sad look in Father's eyes. He went just as if he were carrying out Father's dearest hope; and the funny part is, that inside of three years Tom had made Father so proud of his hard work and steady success that the poor dear man's disappointment faded away like mist before the sun, as they say in Shakespeare or the Bible—I forget which. The whole scheme worked like a charm, as Tom's schemes always do. There was faithful Alec to help Father; and the rich uncle, who had no son of his own, was simply aching to get hold of a fine, smart, clean young man like Tom Chenery Vars to boost up to success.

Whenever Tom had a holiday, except Christmas when he came home, he spent it in Chicago with his room-mate or the uncle. That is how he happened to fall in with such a lot of fashionable people—not that Tom ever boasted that his friends were fashionable, for Tom never blows his own horn—but I knew they were, just the same. He used to send stunning monograms to Ruthie and me for our collections, torn off from the notes which his wealthy young-lady friends wrote to him; besides, when he came home for Christmas he always had a pocketful of kodak pictures to show us of his life in the West. They weren't all taken in the lumber camps. Some were snapshots of house-parties, which he'd been on, and I assure you, I always took in the expensive background of these pictures—carved stone doorways, perfectly elegant houses, lawns kept like a park, and automobiles with chauffeurs sitting up as stiff as ramrods. I hadn't much doubt, when Tom wrote that he was engaged to be married to Miss Elise Hildegarde Parmenter, but that she was an inmate of one of these millionaire mansions, and I was absolutely convinced of it when I laid eyes on her photograph—one of those brown carbons a foot square—and counted the six magnificent plumes on her big drooping picture-hat. I knew that 240 Main Street, Hilton, Mass., would look pretty worn and dingy alongside Sunny-lawn-by-the-Lake, which was engraved in gold letters and hyphens at the top of Miss Parmenter's heavy grey note-paper.

The minute Tom wrote that he was going to bring his elegant bride to Hilton I button-holed Father and Alec one day after dinner, and told those two men that the house had simply got to be done over. It was disgraceful as it was; it hadn't been painted since I could remember; it was unworthy of our name. Father reminded me that the reason none of us went to the wedding (Tom was married in California, on Elise's father's orange ranch) was to save expense, as I already knew, and merely to paint the house would cost the price of a ticket or two.

"Let us be ourselves, Lucy," said Father to me, "ourselves, child. If Tom's wife is the right kind of woman, she will look within, within, Lucy."

"Oh," I said, "but the inside is worse than the out, Father. The wall-paper in the guest-room—"

Father interrupted me gently.

"Within our hearts," he corrected, touching his heavy gold watch-chain across his chest. "Within our hearts, Lucy."

Father is a perfectly splendid man, but I knew that spotless hearts wouldn't excuse smoked ceilings; and when, the next day being Sunday, I saw Father drop his little white sealed envelope, which I knew contained five perfectly good dollars, into the contribution box, I didn't believe any heathen girl needed that money more than I.

I am going to tell about that first appearance of Elise's in detail. But it's got to be after dinner, for fifteen minutes ago the big whistle on Father's factory spurted out its puff of white steam (I could see it from my north window before I heard the blast) and Father and Alec will soon be driving up the hill in the phaeton, with the top down and the reins slack over faithful Dixie's back. I must be within calling-distance when Father strikes the Chinese gong at the foot of the stairs. It's the first thing he always does when he enters the house at noon. We all recognise his two strokes on each one of the three notes as surely as his voice or step. Why, that ring of Father's simply speaks! It is as full of impatience as a motorman ringing for a truck to get off the track.

Father hates to wait for dinner. By the time he has taken off his overcoat, and scrubbed up in the wash-room off the hall, he likes us all to be seated at the table when he comes into the dining-room. "Hello, chicken," he says to me. "Hello, baby," to Ruth. (He calls Dixie "baby" too.) "Hello, boys," to the twins. Then he sits down at the head of the table, opposite me, clears his throat as a signal, and asks the blessing.

Father's blessing is always the same except when we have company. I can tell how important the company is by the length of Father's prayer. When Juliet Adams, my best friend, drops in for supper, she is served the regular everyday family blessing, but when we have company important enough to put on the best dishes, or at the first meal that Tom is with us, Father keeps at it so long that the twins get to fooling with each other under cover of the tablecloth. I wished Father would omit the blessing entirely when Elise came, and family prayers too. They're so old-fashioned nowadays; but I knew better than to suggest such a preposterous thing. Father is a member of the Standing Committee at our church, and has a lot of principles.

There he is coming now! I wish he could afford a new carriage. I'm simply dying for one of those sporty little red-wheeled runabouts!

CHAPTER II

AMONG the first things I did in preparation for Elise's visit was to set the twins to work on the lawn, and Ruthie to clearing up a rubbishly-looking place back of the barn where there was a pile of old boxes and barrel hoops.

I myself harnessed up Dixie, made a trip to the country, and brought back three bushel-baskets full of rock ferns from the woods. Juliet Adams helped me fill the iron urns the next day. I know very well that red geraniums, hanging vines, and a little palm in the centre are the correct plants for urns (there's a painting of one on the garden scenery at our theatre here in Hilton) but as geraniums are a dollar and a quarter a dozen, and the urns are perfectly enormous, I knew that such luxuries could not be afforded. I also knew that it was out of the question to work the fountain. I cleared out its collection of leaves, soused it well with the hose, and was obliged to leave it in the middle of the walk, out of commission, but at least clean. The tennis-court, which hadn't been used for tennis for ten years, had now passed even the potato-patch era and was a perfect mass of weeds. I paid the twins five cents each for mowing it twice, and then set out the croquet set with a string. I put a fresh coat of white paint on the wickets, and though the ground was far too uneven for any practical use, the general effect at a distance was not bad at all.

I spent two solid afternoons in the stable sweeping and cleaning as if my life depended on it. We don't keep a man now. Dixie is the only horse we own, and Alec does all the feeding and rubbing-down that Dixie gets. Poor little Dixie, rattling around in one of the big box stalls, can't give the place the proper air. It's a stunning stable—stalls for eight horses and a big room filled with all sorts of carriages. They are dreadfully out of style now (I used to play house in them when I was ten and they had begun their dust gathering even then), but Father says they were the best that could be bought in their day. I pinned the white sheets that cover them down around their bodies as closely as I could, so that Miss Parmenter couldn't see how out-of-date the dear old arks were. I cleaned up all the harnesses and hung them up, black and shining, on the wooden pegs. In an old sleigh upstairs I discovered a girl's saddle, which I dusted and hung up in plain view by the whip-rack; there's something so sporty about horseback riding! I was bound to have Miss Parmenter know that at one time we were prosperous.

But most of my efforts of course went into the house. It was terribly discouraging. We own loads of black walnut, and though I begged and begged for a brass bed for the guest-room, Father was adamant. He had allowed me to have the room repapered and that, he said, was all that I must ask for. The new paper really was lovely. I picked it out myself, pink roses on a light blue ground and a plate-rail half-way up.

I spent a lot of pains on the guest-room, carrying out the pink and blue colour-scheme in every possible detail. I took the light blue rose bowl off the mantel in the sitting-room and put it on the bureau, for hatpins. I rehung my "Yard of Pink Roses" over the guest-room mantel. My blue kimono I had freshly laundered and hung it up in the closet. A pair of pink bedroom slippers were carefully placed beneath. I found a book in the library bound in pink, entitled "Baby Thoughts," and put it on the marble-topped guest-room table alongside a magazine and my work-basket on which I had sewed a huge blue bow and inside of which I had placed my solid gold thimble. I also tied a smashing pink and blue rosette on the waste-basket; and the half-dozen coat-hangers which I was able to scare up out of Alec's and Father's closets Ruthie wound with pink and blue ribbons. I didn't neglect the more necessary details either. I paid thirty-five cents for a cake of pink French soap; and the only embroidered towels we own I strung along in a showy row on the back of the commode. In the tooth-brush holder I placed a sealed Prophylactic tooth-brush, which I read in the Perfect Housekeeper should be found in every nicely appointed guest-room; nor did I overlook the Bible, and candle and matches by the bed. The Perfect Housekeeper says that it is the little touches in your home, such as a fresh bunch of flowers on the shelf in your guest-room, or in cold weather a hot-water bag between the sheets, that count with a guest. I was dreadfully sorry that it was too warm for hot-water bottles.

I was in perfect despair about Nellie. Nellie is our second-girl and has been with us for years. Nellie doesn't look a bit like a servant. She has grey hair and wears glasses. People are always mistaking her for an aunt. I wrote out a set of rules for Nellie, tacked them up over the sink in the butler's pantry, and told her to study them during the week before Tom and Elise were due to arrive. Here's a copy of them:

Rule 1 When a meal is ready don't stand at the foot of the stairs and holler "Dinner!" Come to me and say in a low, well modulated voice, "Dinner is served, Miss Lucy."
Rule 2 Be sure and call me Miss Lucy, and Tom, Mister Tom. Never plain Tom or plain Lucy. And so on through the family.
Rule 3 When I ring the bell during a meal, don't just stick your head in through the swinging-door but enter all-over and find out what is wanted.
Rule 4 Don't offer a last biscuit or piece of cake and say, "There's more in the kitchen."
Rule 5 If any member of the family asks for any other member of the family, don't say, "They're in the barn, or down-cellar, or upstairs," but go quietly and find them yourself.
Rule 6 Be sure and put ice-water every night into Mrs. Vars' bedroom when you turn down the bed.
Rule 7 If you get the hiccups when waiting on the table, withdraw to the kitchen immediately and take ten swallows of water.

Nellie is a good-natured old soul. I can manage her beautifully, but it took a head to do anything with Delia. Delia was the cook. I was in the butler's pantry the day before Tom and Elise arrived, putting away the family napkin-rings (for of course I know napkin-rings are tabooed) when it occurred to me that we had got to have clean napkins for every meal as long as Elise stayed. If she was with us a week that would make a hundred and sixty-eight napkins in all, counting three meals a day and eight people at the table. We owned just four dozen napkins and that meant—I figured it all out on a piece of paper—that the whole four dozen would have to be washed every other day. I went out into the kitchen and explained it to Delia just as nicely and sweetly as I could. She went off on a regular tangent. It was enough, she said, all the extra style I was planning on, without piling on a week's washing for every other day. She said she'd never heard of such tommyrot, and if a napkin was clean enough for Tom and Tom's family, she guessed it was clean enough for Tom's wife, whoever she was. I was simply incensed!

"We won't discuss it," I said with much dignity. "Not another word, please, Delia," and I left the kitchen.

I heard her slam a kettle into the iron sink, and mutter something about "another place," so I thought it better policy not to press my point. I hate being imposed upon—there isn't a teacher at the high school who can talk Lucy Vars into a hole—but I wasn't going to cut off my own nose. So I went straight to the telephone, called up a dry goods store and ordered ten dozen medium-priced napkins to be sent up special. All the rest of the afternoon I sat at the sewing-machine hemming like mad, and Nellie folded the things so that the machine stitches wouldn't show. I knew that napkins should be hemmed by hand.

Tom and Elise were due at eight o'clock on a Wednesday night. I had it planned that Father and Alec would meet them at the station and I would remain at the house to greet them as they came in. I wished awfully that we had a coachman and some decent horses, but I begged Father to hire a carriage and he promised that he would. The suspense while I waited for them to drive up over the hill was as awful as when I've been sent for by the principal at the high school—kind of thrilly inside and as nervous as a cat. I walked from room to room like a caged animal, trying to imagine how the old house would look to a person who hadn't lived in it forever. I lit the open fire in the hall, arranged the books on the sitting-room table for the hundredth time, and watched the piano-lamp like a hawk. It smokes the ceilings if you leave it alone.

The twins, Oliver and Malcolm, stationed themselves in the parlour to keep watch of the road. About half-past eight Oliver hollered out, "They're coming, Bobbie!" and I went out into the hall and opened the door. I saw the big bulky old depot carriage draw up to the curbing out beyond the iron fountain, and I whispered to the twins, "Go down and help with their bags!" They pushed by me; and a minute after, everybody was in a confused bunch in the vestibule—Oliver and Malcolm with the suitcases, Father and Alec, Ruthie hanging on to my skirt, and finally Tom, big and handsome and natural!

"Hello, Bobbie, old girl," he said. "Hello, little Ruthiemus!" And suddenly behind him Elise appeared—tall, pale as a lily, quiet, and very calm. "Well, here they all are, Elise," Tom went on lustily, "Malcolm and Oliver, and Bobbie who is the mother of us, and Ruthiemus the baby."

Elise came forward, shook hands with the boys, and when she came to me she kissed me. I'd never been so near such a perfectly gorgeous Irish-lace jabot in my life. After she had leaned down and kissed Ruth she said in the quietest, lowest voice I ever heard, while we all stared, "I know you all, already, for Chenery has told me all about you."

Chenery! How perfectly absurd! No one ever calls Tom anything but just plain Tom. We all have Chenery for a middle name—it was mother's before she was married—but it is only to sign. After that remark about Chenery the silence was simply deathly, but Alec, who always comes to the rescue, exclaimed, "Don't you people intend to stop with us to-night? Usher us in, Bobbie."

There was none of the Vars hail-fellow-well-met, slap-you-on-the-back spirit about that evening. We all distributed ourselves in a circle about the sitting-room, exactly like a Bible-class at church, and talked in the stiffest, most formal way imaginable. I don't know why we couldn't be natural; but Elise, sitting there so perfectly at ease, smiling and talking so gracefully made us feel like country bumpkins before a princess. I was furious at her for making us appear in such a light. Why couldn't Tom have married somebody like ourselves, some jolly good sport who wouldn't be afraid to hurt her clothes? I knew Elise Hildegarde Parmenter's style. She wore some of those high-heeled shoes, like undressed kid gloves, and her feet were regular pocket editions. If we had acted as we usually do when Tom comes home, all talking and laughing at once, we'd have shocked this delicate little piece of china into a thousand bits.

I was dreadfully surprised at Tom when he said, as if Elise was not there, "Come on, Bobbie, bring in the apples."

You see it is one of our customs, the first night that Tom comes home, to sit up awfully late and eat apples, Father paring them with an old kitchen knife. But of course I wasn't going to have apples to-night, of all times, passed around in quarters on the end of a knife. So I said to Tom as quietly as possible, for really I was catching Elise's manner, "Not apples to-night, Tom. I ordered a little chocolate. I'll speak to Nellie." I had gotten out our best hand-painted violet chocolate cups, told Delia to make some cocoa and whip some cream, and had opened a fresh package of champagne wafers. Everything was all ready on a tray in the dining-room, so I went out and told Nellie to bring it in. When she appeared holding the big tray out before her I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing. Nellie had never worn a cap before and it didn't seem to go with her style. It was sticking straight up on the top of her grey pug of hair like a bird on the tip end of a flag pole. I saw Malcolm and Oliver begin to giggle. I squelched them with a look and began stirring my chocolate hard.

"Hello, Nellie," said Tom, when the tray reached him, and though I'd cautioned Nellie a hundred times to address Tom as Mister Tom, she got it mixed up in some stupid fashion, and replied, "How do you do, Mister Vars," and Father who heard her come out with his name asked, "Did you speak to me, Nellie?" Nellie replied, "No, I didn't. I was speaking to Tom."

Late that first night, as I was turning out my light, and after I had set my alarm-clock for quarter of six (for I thought I'd better get up early and see how things were running) Malcolm and Oliver pushed open my door and came in. Behind them was Alec on his way to bed.

"Hello, Bobbie," they said, grinning.

"Close the door," I whispered, and then I wrapped myself up in a down comforter and crawled up on the bed. My brothers came over and all sat down around me.

"Well," I said, "what do you think of her?"

"Did you see the diamond pendant?" Malcolm began. "It was a ripper!"

"Tom gave her that for a wedding-present," Oliver explained.

"He did!" I was amazed. "Plain Tom slinging around diamond pendants like that!"

"He'll have to, to live up to being called Chenery. Did you get on to that?"

"Did I? Isn't it too silly? I hate such airs! We stand for good plain things and why couldn't Tom get something plain?"

"Oh, she's a blue-blood," said Oliver. "We're regular Indians beside her."

"No, we're not, Oliver Vars," I flared back. "Don't you say that. I shan't eat humble-pie for any one. We're just as good as she is. It's brains that count."

"I bet a dollar she couldn't throw a ball straight; and she looks as if she'd be afraid of the dark," said Malcolm.

"Oh, come ahead, you young knockers," interrupted Alec, who hadn't said a word till now—Alec never says much and when he does it's always nice—"Come along to bed, and let the General-manager here get a little rest. Good-night, Bobbie," he said, coming up to me and giving me a little good-natured shove, so that I toppled over on the bed. Oliver and Malcolm each grabbed a pillow.

"Good-night, angel," they sang out as they lammed them at me hard. I heard them dash out of the room and slam the door with a bang. Nice old brothers! We Vars never waste much time in kissing, but we understand all right.

The next morning I was down in the kitchen before Delia had her fire made. About eight o'clock when we were all flaxing around as fast as we could there suddenly broke out upon us a very queer noise. It sounded like a cat trying to meow when it had a dreadful cold. It startled me awfully and Delia gave a terrible jump.

"For the love of Mike, what's that?" said she.

I investigated, and after a little, I discovered the cause. Years ago we had some sort of a bell system that connected with all the rooms, with an indicator in the kitchen. We hadn't used it for a long time and I supposed the whole system was as dilapidated as the stable. Whenever we wanted Nellie for anything we found it easier to go to the back stairs and holler. It occurred to me that the electrician who had put in some new batteries the week before, for the front door bell, which before Elise came was dreadfully unreliable, must have monkeyed with the other bells too.

"Elise has rung for you," I said to Nellie, thankful with all my heart that the old thing had worked. I knew that Tom was already downstairs, so of course wasn't there to tell her that the old push-button didn't mean a thing, and I was glad of that. Heaven knew there was enough else to apologise for.

When Nellie came back I asked, "What did she want?"

"She wanted me to button up her waist and also to give me her laundry."

"Laundry!" gasped Delia. I never could understand why cooks hate washing so.

"Yes," I said, turning to her, "laundry! I told Mrs. Vars," I went on with much authority, "to put any soiled clothing she might have in a pink and blue bag which I made to match the guest-room, for this express purpose—for her to put her laundry in. That's only hospitality." I crossed the room. "And now you may put breakfast on, Delia," I finished, and went out.

After breakfast Nellie came to me and said, "Delia wishes to speak to you in the kitchen."

My heart sank. I left Elise in the sitting-room talking in her lovely soft way to Father and Alec. Delia was in the laundry standing by a regular haystack of lacy lingerie. She was holding up the most superb lace skirt I ever saw, rows upon rows of insertion and if you'll believe me made every inch by hand.

"I just wanted to say," she began, "that I don't stay if I have to wash these. They aren't dirty, in the first place, and what's more I'm not hired to wash company's clothes, and what's more I won't. And what's more still, I think you better hunt for another girl."

I couldn't have received more depressing news. I hated being ruled by a cook, and I hated to let her go. I didn't have a soul to ask about it. I didn't know what to do. I flared right up.

"The washing must be done," I said sternly. "That's settled."

Delia dropped the skirt.

"All right. I'll do the washing to-day," she announced, "and I'll leave to-morrow."

I just wanted to sit down and cry and cry and say, "O please be nice about it and help us out. Please stay! O please, please, please!" But I did no such thing. I bit my lip hard and replied, "Very well," and when I joined the others in the sitting-room, I was apparently as undisturbed as a summer's breeze.

Things got no better as time went on. Elise didn't fit into our family a bit. None of us was natural. Father didn't ring the gong when he came in at noon and call up to me, "Slippers, chicken"; the twins didn't fool under the tablecloth and call me "Snodgrass," "Angel" or "Trolley" (because of my shape); Alec didn't tilt back on the hind legs of his chair after dessert, with his hands shoved down in his pockets; Ruthie didn't practice a note on the piano; even Tom was different. At first he tried to whoop things up in the old Vars fashion, but he gave it up after an attempt or two. We wouldn't respond. We balked like stubborn horses, while all the time Elise kept right on being very sweet and charming, but, oh my, cold and far away.

Her tact got on my nerves. I realised that she was trying to be nice, but her appreciation of everything made me tired. Of course she had seen grander houses than ours and yet she pretended to enthuse over our old-fashioned mantels. "What fine woodwork in them," she'd say to Father, "and what beautiful mahogany in those sliding-doors!" or, as she gazed at our ornate black walnut bookcase, she would remark, "Black walnut is becoming so popular!" Once she exclaimed, "How many books you have!" and her eyes were resting on a row of black-bound town records Father insists on keeping. When she and I attempted a miserable game of croquet she remarked, "I think it is more fun having the ground a little uneven." Heavens, I would have loved her if she had blurted out, "Say, this is rotten! Let's not play." I despise insincerity.

CHAPTER III

ONE day at dinner (I've forgotten whether it was the first or second day of Elise's visit, but anyhow it was before the ice was broken) Father suggested that Tom take the new member of our family for a drive in the afternoon with Dixie (he and Alec, could go out to the factory by electrics), so as soon as Elise went upstairs to rest, as she always did after dinner, I escaped to the barn, to hitch up. Alec doesn't have much time to devote to Dixie and I gave that poor little animal such a currying as he had never had before in his life. Then I drew up the check two holes higher, dusted out the phaeton, and put in the best yellow plush robe and lash whip.

Elise and Tom got back about half-past six. I was in the sitting-room when Elise came into the house.

"Chenery has been showing me all the sights," she said. "I think Hilton is lovely. I told Chenery we were staying too long. I'm afraid we're late for dinner. But I'll hurry. It won't take me ten minutes to dress."

Dinner indeed! I wondered if she called the layout we had at noon just lunch. We've always had supper at night and I hadn't intended changing for Elise. But if she'd gone upstairs to dress for it, I'd got to prepare something besides tea, sliced meat and toast, for all the trouble she was taking. I flew to the kitchen. We had a can of beef-extract, and I told Delia to make soup out of that. Then I sent Ruth for some beefsteak, hauled down a can of peas for a vegetable, and the sliced oranges which were already prepared would have to do for dessert. I rushed to my room, put on my best light blue cashmere and laid out Ruth's white muslin.

It was, after all, on the first day of Elise's visit that she took that drive with Dixie, for this, I remember now, was the first evening meal that she had had with us. An awful catastrophe took place during the ordeal too. In the first place, having dinner at night added to the strain the family were all under, and it may have been due to the general atmosphere of uneasiness that made Nellie so stupid and careless. I don't know how it happened, but when she was passing the crackers to Elise, during the soup course, her cap got loose somehow and fell cafluke on Elise's bread-and-butter plate. There was an instant of dead quiet, and then Oliver, who just at that moment happened to have his mouth full of soup, exploded like a rubber ball with water in it. He shoved back his chair with a jerk, and coughing and choking into his napkin, got up and left the room. Of course that sent Malcolm off into a regular spasm, and little Ruth began to giggle too. I could feel myself growing as red as a beet, but I didn't laugh. No one laughed outright.

Elise was the first one to break the pause, and this is what she said:

"I've had the loveliest drive this afternoon," and then as no one replied she went on, "Chenery took me around the reservoir. How old are the ruins of that old mill at the upper end?"

Perhaps you think that that was a very graceful way of treating the situation, but I didn't. We were all simply dying to laugh. We couldn't think of old mills with that cap sticking on Elise's butter. However, I heard Father at the other end of the table making some sort of an answer to Elise, and all of us managed to control themselves somehow or other. Nellie, red in the face, carried the bread-and-butter plate away; Oliver sneaked back into his place; and I slowly began to cool off. But of course it spoiled the meal for me.

As soon after the horrible occurrence as possible, I escaped up here to my cupola, and Tom found me here before he went to bed. I knew he must be disappointed at the way I was running things. I hadn't been alone with him before, and when his head pushed up through the trap door and he asked, "You here?" I didn't answer. I was sitting in the pitch dark on the window-seat, but Tom must have seen my shadow for he came up and stood beside me. He remained perfectly silent for a minute then he said, "Aren't there a lot of stars out to-night!"

"Oh, Tom," I burst out, "I'm so sorry! Wasn't it awful? Everything's going all wrong."

He sat down.

"It's all right, Bobbie," he said quietly. "Only I wish Elise might see us as we really are. Then," he added, "you would see Elise as she really is."

Tom didn't ask me how I liked her (he knew better than to do that), and suddenly I felt sorry for my brother. I could have almost cried, not because of the accident at dinner, not because of my failure, but because Elise hadn't made us like her. I did so want Tom's wife to be the same bully sort of person Tom was.

The crisis came the next day. At eleven o'clock in the morning, I found Delia putting on her coat and hat, actually preparing to go.

"What does this mean?" I exclaimed.

"Can't you see?" she asked very saucily.

"But the washing. Have you—"

"No, I haven't, and what's more I'm not going to." She was spitting mad.

I stood there, just helpless before her.

"I have telephoned to all the intelligence offices," I said, "and I can't get anyone to come until Saturday night. I thought, to accommodate us, you might be willing—"

She cut me right off:

"Well, I'm not! No one accommodates me here, and I'm not used to being treated like this. Two dinners a day and up until all hours!"

It didn't seem to me as if she had half so much to stand as I did. I wished I could up and clear out too. I thought she was very disagreeable to leave me in the lurch that way. But I didn't have any words with her. I told her she might go as soon as she pleased. I hated the sight of her standing there in the kitchen, which she had left all spick and span, not as a kitchen should look at eleven in the morning with half a dozen full-grown mouths to be fed at one o'clock.

I was on my way upstairs to break the news to Nellie when Elise called to me from the sitting-room.

"Oh, Lucy," she said in her musical voice, "will there be time for me to run over to the postoffice with some letters before lunch?"

I stalked into the sitting-room. She was sitting at the desk in her graceful easy way, with a beautiful French hand-embroidered lingerie waist on, that I'd be glad to own for very best. There were gold beads about her neck, and her hair, even in the morning, was soft and fluffy and wavy. She had her feet crossed and I took in the silk stockings and the low dull-leather pumps.

I had a sudden desire to tear down all her beautiful appearance of ease and grace.

"We don't have lunch at noon," I said bluntly. "We have dinner, just dinner. We've always had dinner."

"Yes, I know," she began in her persistently pleasant way; "people do very often, in New England."

I couldn't bear her unruffled composure.

"Oh," I said, bound to shock her, "it isn't because we're New England. It's because we're plain, plain people. The rich families in New England as well as anywhere, have dinner at night. But we," I said, glorying in every word, "are not one of the rich families. We have doughnuts for breakfast, baked beans and brown bread Saturday nights, and Saturday noons a boiled dinner. We love pie. We all just love it. Father came from a farm in Vermont. He didn't have any money at all when he started in. You see we're common people. And so's Tom. Tom comes from just a common, common, common family," I said, loving to repeat the word.

She was sitting with her arm thrown carelessly over the back of the chair, and her gaze way out of the west window. When I stopped to see what effect my words had had she just laughed—a quiet pleased laugh—and mixed up with it I heard her say, "Why, Chenery is the most uncommon man I ever met." And she blushed like eighteen.

I went right on.

"We don't call him Chenery, either," I said. "We cut off all such fringes. He's plain Tom to us. I know how the plain way we live must impress you. I know you've been used to French maids, and push-a-button for everything you want. I'm sorry for the shock you must have got coming here. But you might as well wake up to the truth. You see what a mess the house is in, and how Nellie won't call us Mister and Miss, and how if she is on the third floor and she wants me she just yells. And," I said, pointing out of the window, "there goes Delia now. And there isn't a sign of a cook left in the house."

Elise sat up straight.

"Is she leaving without notice?" she exclaimed.

"Naturally," I laughed.

"How dreadfully unkind of her!"

"That's what I think, but Delia doesn't care if I do."

"Haven't you some one to help you out? What will you do?" Elise was really excited.

"Do?" I replied grimly. "Oh, I'll duff in and cook myself, I suppose."

Elise put down her pen.

"I can make delicious desserts," she said. "Can't you telephone to the family not to come home this noon? We can be ready for them by to-night. I know how to make the best cake you ever tasted in your life."

That's the way it came about. I took her out into the kitchen and didn't try to cover up a thing. She could see everything exactly as it was—smoked kitchen ceiling, uneven kitchen floor, paintless pantry shelves. She could go to the bottom of the flour barrel if she wanted to; and she did. Covered with an old apron and her sleeves rolled up, she was first in the kitchen pantry looking into every cupboard, drawer or bucket for powdered sugar; next in the fruit-closet feeling all the paper bags, in search of a lemon; then calling to me in her musical voice to come here and taste some dough to see if it needed anything else; in the butler's pantry choosing just the plate she wanted for her cookies; and actually underneath the sink, pulling out a greasy spider for panouchie, which she was going to make out of some lumpy brown sugar she discovered in a wooden bucket. I took grim pleasure in having her see the worst there was. I wondered if she could stand the fact that we didn't own an ice-cream freezer, when she suggested ice-cream for dessert, nor possess a drop of olive oil for her mayonnaise. I didn't care. I liked telling her the things we didn't have. When I heard her burst into laughter in the butler's pantry, and pushing open the swinging-door, saw her gazing at my set of rules tacked up over the sink for Nellie, I made no explanation whatsoever. I was delighted to have her read them. At sight of me she went off into regular peals.

Finally she gasped, with her finger on Rule 6, "She put—the ice—in a hunk, in the big pitcher in the wash-bowl!" and the tears ran down her cheeks.

I laughed a little then in spite of myself.

"Nellie's an old fool," I said and went back to my work.

It happened that Father and Alec had gone to Boston for the day on business, and the last minute Tom had joined them, so the men wouldn't be home until night anyhow. I called up the twins, just before their fifth-hour period (I had cut school myself) and told them to get a bite to eat at the high school lunch-counter. "I'll pay for it," I assured them, for I knew the twins would jump at the chance of a free spread, and as they had manual-training that afternoon, Elise and I were safe from any interruption from the male section.

We had supper at half-past six as usual. It was very queer about that meal. The awful strain we had all felt the same day at breakfast had suddenly disappeared. Elise had suggested that we shouldn't tell any one of Delia's departure, and on the outside everything was just as it was in the morning, even to Nellie's ridiculous cap.

"These biscuits are good, Lucy," Father said suddenly, as he reached for the plate. Father usually speaks of the food, but he hadn't done so once since Elise had come.

"There's more in the kitchen," announced Nellie blandly.

"There's a whole panful," added Elise. "I'm awfully glad you like them!" she exclaimed and then stopped short.

"There," I said, "I knew you'd let the cat out. Elise made them!" I announced.

"Delia's left—" Elise hurried to say.

"And we—" I put in.

"We got supper!" she finished proudly.

"You and Bobbie?" exclaimed Alec.

"Bobbie and you?" gasped Tom.

"Of course!" she said. "Bobbie scallopped the oysters."

"Give me some more," said Malcolm.

"Fling over the last biscuit," sang out Oliver. And in a flash Elise picked up the little brown ball and tossed it across the fern-dish straight as an arrow.

"Good shot!" said Oliver, catching it in both hands.

"Oh," piped up Ruthie, "make Malcolm stop. He took a cookie and it isn't time for them."

Father just chuckled, and said, "Pretty good! pretty good!" And I tell you it was simply glorious to be natural again!

"Don't eat too much," said Elise, "for dessert's coming and it's awfully good."

"And chocolate layer-cake with it!" said I.

"Oh, bully!" shouted Malcolm and Oliver together.

"Say," asked Alec, "isn't this a good deal better than last night when Nellie's cap fell into your butter?"

We all burst into sudden laughter and Nellie, who was filling the glasses, had to set down the pitcher. She was shaking with mirth. We laughed until it hurt; we simply roared; and suddenly Elise gasped, when she was able to get her breath:

"Wasn't it funny? I was so frightened by you all then, I didn't know what to say about that old cap. But now—O dear!" and suddenly she turned to Ruth who sat next to her, put her arms around her and kissed her. "Oh, Ruthie," she exclaimed, "isn't it nice to know them all!" And I couldn't tell whether the tears in her eyes were from laughing or crying.

We stayed up late that night.

"Run and get my slippers," said Father to Ruth after supper; and all the evening he lay back in his chair and watched us children while we sang college songs to Elise's ripping accompaniment; and poked fun at the twins because they'd just bought their first derbies. It was eleven-thirty when we went up to bed.

"Come here a minute, Bobbie," whispered Elise to me, and I went into the guest-room. "Do unhook the back of this dress." When I had finished she said, "I'll be down at six-thirty" (we were going to get breakfast too), "and don't you dare to be late! I'm going to make the omelet. You can make the johnny-cake. Bobbie, isn't it nice Delia left?" And she kissed me as well as Ruth.

That night the boys all gathered in my room again. I wrapped up in the down comforter, and we were just beginning to talk when Tom appeared.

"Hello," he said, smiling all over. He came in and closed the door. "Well," he asked, "what do you think of her?" And I knew he asked us because he so well knew what we did think. But just the same I wanted to tell him.

I shot out my bare skinny arm at him.

"Tom," I said, "I think she's a corker!"

He first took my hand and then suddenly, very unlike the Vars, he put both arms around me tight.

"Bobbie," he said in a kind of choked voice, "you're a little brick!"

And, my goodness, I just had to kiss Tom then!

CHAPTER IV

IT has been nearly a whole year since I have written in this book of mine. I've been too discouraged and heart-sick even to drag myself up here into my cupola. I've aged dreadfully. I've been disillusioned of all the hopes and dreams I ever had in my life. I've skipped that happy period called girlhood, skipped it entirely, and I had hoped awfully to go to at least one college football game before I was grey. I am sitting in my study. It is a lovely day in spring. There are white clouds in the sky, young robins in the wild cherry, but my youth, my schooldays, my aspirations are all over and gone.

Miss Wood said to me one day last winter—Miss Wood is my Sunday-school teacher and was trying to be kind—"You know, Lucy, it is a law of the universe for us all to have a certain amount of trouble before we die. Some have it early, some late. Now you, dear, are having your misfortunes when you are young. Just think, later they will all be out of your way." Miss Wood hasn't had a bit of her share of trouble yet. Why, she has a mother, a father, a fiancé, and a bunch of violets every Sunday. She has perfectly lovely clothes, a coachman to drive her around, and was president of her class her senior year in college. Such blessings won't be half as nice, and Miss Wood knows it, when I'm old and grey. I just simply hate having all my troubles dealt out to me before my skirts touch the ground.

Our minister said to me that misfortune is the greatest builder of character in the world. Well, it hasn't worked that way with me. I'm hot-tempered and have an unruly tongue; I don't love a soul except my brother Alec; and the only friend I have in the world is Juliet Adams. I'm not even a genius—I've discovered that—and my religious beliefs are dreadfully unsettled. Years ago I used to lie awake at night and imagine myself in deep sorrow. I was always calm and sweet and dignified then, beautiful and stately in my clinging black, and near me always was a young man, a strong, handsome, clean-shaven young man in riding clothes (I adore men in riding clothes) and I used to play that this man was the son of the governor of the state. Strange as it might seem, he was in love with me and when my entire family had suddenly been killed in a railroad accident—I always had them all die—this man came to me in my lonely house and told me of his devotion. It really made sorrow beautiful. But let me state right here that that was one of the many empty dreams of my youth. When misfortune did swoop down upon me, I was not sweet and lovely, there was no man within a hundred miles to understand and sympathise, there was nothing beautiful about it. It was just plain hard and bitter. It's only in books that trouble is romantic.

Elise visited us in the spring a year ago about this time (it seems like a century to me) and my misfortunes began to pour in the following fall, when I was a senior, and seventeen years old. That last year of high school had started in to be a very happy one for me. Father had finally allowed me to go to dancing-school; mathematics was a bugbear of the past; and our basket-ball team was a perfect winner.

I loved dancing-school. It came every Saturday night from eight to ten, and Juliet Adams used to call for me in her closed carriage and drop me afterwards at my door. I remember that on that last Saturday night I was particularly full of good-feeling, for I kissed Juliet good-bye—a thing I seldom do—and called back to her as I ran up the steps, "Good-night. See you at Church." I was never so unsuspecting in my life as I opened the front door. But the instant I got inside the house and looked into the sitting-room, I knew something was wrong. The entire family was all sitting about the room doing absolutely nothing. Father was not at his roll-top desk; the twins were not drawn up to the centre table studying by the student-lamp; Alec was not out making his Saturday night call; and, strangest of all, Ruthie was not in bed.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"Take your things off and come in, Lucy," said Father.

I didn't stir. My heart stood dead still for an instant. I grabbed hold of the portière.

"Something has happened to Tom," I gasped, so sure I didn't even have to ask.

I suppose I must have looked horribly frightened, for one of the twins blurted out, in the twins' frank brutal way, "Oh, say, don't get so everlastingly excited. Tom's all right, for all we know. So's every one else. Do cool off."

Ruthie giggled. She always giggles at the twins, and I knew then that my sudden fear had been for nothing. The angry colour rushed into my face.

"Smarties!" I flung back at the twins with all my might.

"Oh, Lucy!" I heard Father murmur, and I saw Alec drop his eyes as if he were ashamed of such an outburst from his seventeen-year-old sister.

"I don't care," I went on. "Why do you want to frighten me to death? What's the matter with you all, anyway? What are you all doing? Why isn't Ruthie in bed? Why are the twins—"

"It's all about you!" Malcolm interrupted in a sort of triumphant manner.

"Me!" I gasped. "What in thunder—"

"Oh, Lucy!" Father again murmured.

"Well, what," I continued, "have you all been saying about me?" And I sat down on the piano-stool.

Father cleared his throat the way he does before he asks the blessing, and every one else was quiet. I knew something important was coming.

"Lucy," Father said, "we think the time has come for you to go to boarding-school."

It hit me like a hard baseball and I couldn't have spoken if I were to have died.

Father went on in his sure, unfaltering way.

"I have been considering it for some little while, and now as I talk it over with the others—we always do that, you know—I am more convinced of the wisdom of such a step than ever. Alec has been doing some investigating, and Elise suggested in her last letter that Miss Brown's-on-the-Hudson is an excellent school. I have, therefore, communicated with Miss Brown and a telegram announces to me to-day that a vacancy allows her to accept you, late as it is. Before worrying you unnecessarily, I have made all arrangements. I have written to Aunt Sarah, and she is willing to come and take your place here. So, my dear child, I am only waiting now for your careful and womanly consideration." I think he must have seen the horror on my face, for he added gently, "You needn't decide to-night, Lucy. Think it over and in the morning your duty will seem clear to you."

I have heard of people whose hair grows grey in a single night. It's a wonder mine didn't turn snow-white during that single speech. Boarding-school had never been intimated to me before. I had been away from home for over night only twice in my life, and then stayed only a week. Both times I had almost died of homesickness. I would as soon be sentenced to prison or to death. Oh, I didn't want to go away! I didn't want to! The silence after Father finished was awful. One of the twins broke it.

"When Father told us about this to-night," Malcolm began importantly, "we thought he was dead right. You see," he went on, "we want our sister to be as nice as any other fellow's sister."

"Don't you 'sister' me," I managed to murmur, for I wasn't going to be patronised by the twins who are a year younger than I am.

"Well, anyhow," said Oliver, the crueller one of the twins, "you haven't got the right hang of fixing yourself up yet. You go round with tomboys like Juliet Adams, and some others I might mention, that fellows haven't any use for. High school is all right for us, but, no siree, not for you. Some girls get the knack all right at home; but look at yourself now! You wouldn't think a girl of seventeen would twist her feet around a piano-stool like that!" I twisted them tighter. "Even Toots" (that's Ruthie), he went on, "seems to carry herself more like a young lady."

Ruth giggled at Oliver's last remark and I came back to life.

"I may be plain and awkward and gawky," I began, "and as homely as a hedge fence, but let me tell you two children, if I spent my time primping before the glass, and mincing up and down the street Saturday afternoons before Brimmer's drug-store like your precious Elsie Barnard," I fired, looking straight at Malcolm and bringing the colour to his face, for he was awfully gone on Elsie, "or Doris Abbott, Mister Oliver," I added, and Oliver flushed brilliant red, "you two wouldn't have any stockings mended or any buttons on your coats or any lessons either, for you know without me to explain every little thing you are awful dunces!"

Father said, "Oh, come, Lucy, let us not quarrel;" Ruth went over and sat on the arm of Oliver's chair (she always sides with the twins); and my older brother Alec just looked hard at his magazine.

There was a long silence and then I got up and walked over to Alec. I took the magazine out of his hand. I was calm now.

"Alec, what do you think about my going away?" I said.

He looked up and smiled his kind, tired smile at me. Then he took my hand but I drew it away quickly, turned and sat down on the arm of the Morris-chair in which he was sitting, with my back square to him. His gentle voice came to me from over my shoulder.

"Well, Lucy," he said, "you see, you've been working so hard for us all here, for so many years, that I think, too, you've earned a little vacation. You've been such a splendid mother to us—such a perfect little housekeeper, that now I'd like to see you less hard-worked. We don't want to cheat you of your girlhood. We want you to have all the good times, and gaieties, and clothes, and things like that, that other girls have."

Ah, yes! I saw finally. They were ashamed of me. Even Alec was ashamed of me. I was not like other girls. I was plain and awkward and wore ugly clothes. I wasn't pretty. They wanted to send me away as if I were an old dented spoon to be straightened and polished at the jeweller's. When Alec paused he put his arm over in front of me so that it lay in my lap. At the touch of it the sobs seemed suddenly to rise up in my throat, pressing after each other as if they were anxious to get out into the air, and I rose quickly, pushed Alec's arm away and left the room. They mustn't see—oh, no, they mustn't see me cry! I meant to go to my bedroom and have it out by myself, but instead I rushed to the kitchen and buried my face for a minute in the roller-towel. Then before I let myself give way, I drew the dipper full of cold water and swallowed those sobs back, forcing them with the strength of Samson. You see I knew my sudden exit would leave an uncomfortable sensation in the room back there, and I wouldn't have had one of them think I was emotional for anything. So after a minute I went back. They could see for themselves that there wasn't a tear in sight. Standing in the doorway, facing them all, this is what I said, my voice as hard as metal.

"Father, I shall be packed, and ready to go on Monday morning."

When I closed the door to my room that night I did not cry, although my throat ached with wanting to. As I drew my curtain and looked out into the dark night I thought of Juliet Adams, sleeping peacefully like a child, and I realised how little she knew of sorrow. When the big clock in the hall struck twelve I was kneeling before my bureau, stacking my underclothes in neat little piles ready for my trunk. How little I knew that what I then thought my pretty ninety-eight-cent nightgowns, long-sleeved and high-necked, would about die of shame for their plainness, before the beautiful lace and French hand-embroidered lingerie represented at midnight spreads at school. I'm glad I didn't know then that I would come to despise my poor faithful clothes.

I was piling my gloves into a box when there came a soft knock at the door. Alec came in, in his red and grey bath-towel bath-robe.

"Not in bed yet?" he said gently, and came over and sat down near me on the floor with his back against the wall, his knees drawn up almost to his chin and his arms clasped about them. We sat there for a moment silently, and I grimly folded gloves. Then, "Good stuff, Bobbie," he said finally—and oh, so kindly—"Good nerve."

I turned and looked straight at him.

"No, Alec," I said, "there isn't anything good about it. It's horrid feelings and hate that make me go."

He looked away from me as he always does when he disapproves, but he put his hand on my shoulder and I was grateful for that touch.

I turned on him frantically and burst out, "Alec Vars, you are the only one in this whole house I love—you and Father," I amended, for we all adore Father. "You're the only one who is kind or thoughtful. I've tried to do my duty in this place by you and the others, but I guess I haven't succeeded. Now I'm going away and we'll see how the twins enjoy a dose of Aunt Sarah." I paused, then added, "Look here, Alec, don't let Ruth go out to the Country Club. She is pretty and the older men—why, your friends talk to her and make her vain and hold her on the arms of their chairs. Don't let her go. And the twins—I haven't told on them yet—but they're smoking! They're dead scared for fear I'll tell Father, and I said that I should if I caught them at it again."

"Good Bobbie, you'd keep us straight if you could, wouldn't you?"

"No, I wouldn't," I flared back. "It's hate I feel and—"

Alec put his hand over my mouth.

"What shall I do to you?" he laughed.

I rose abruptly, crossed the room and closed the window at my back. There was a big lump in my throat and I stopped at the marble wash-stand built into one corner of my room, and took a drink of water. Then I went back to my glove-sorting. Finally I was able to ask, "Alec, were you at the bottom of this?"

"Oh, I don't know," he smiled. "Possibly—I—or Will Maynard."

"Will Maynard!" I exclaimed. Dr. Maynard is a physician in our town, and was a classmate of Alec's years ago in college. He has nothing to do with me.

Alec picked up one of my gloves and began turning it right-side-out, as he explained.

"We dropped into Grand Army Hall one afternoon a week or so ago when you were playing a basket-ball game. I'd never seen you play before. We stayed for a half an hour or more. Going home Will said to me, 'Why don't you send that little wild-cat sister of yours away to school?' I began to mull it over. Of course, Bobbie, old girl," Alec went on, "I admire your pluck and spirit in basket-ball. I like to see you win whatever you set out to. You played a fine game—a bully fine game; but there are other things in life to acquire—other kinds of things, Bobbikins." He stopped. "Oh, you'll like boarding-school," he said.

"I'll like Dr. Maynard not to butt into my affairs," I replied under my breath; then I remarked, "I'm ready for that glove, please."

Alec passed it over and got up.

"Good-night," he said. "Oh, by the way," he added, "here is something you may find a use for. Your tuition and board, of course, will be paid for by Father, but I know there are a lot of extras—girl's things—that you'll need. Possibly this will help." He dropped a piece of paper into my lap and was gone before I could look up.

I unfolded the paper and saw a check dancing before my eyes for one hundred dollars! I knew very well that we were as poor as paupers in spite of our big house, and stable, as empty now as a shell. I knew Father's business was about as lifeless as the stable, and that Alec alone stood by him trying to give a little encouragement. Splendid Alec! I fled after him. He was just groping his way up the stairs to his third-floor room. I caught him and very unlike my even temperament put my arms around him tight.

"O Alec," I blubbered, "it isn't because of the money; it's because of you." Then I added, like a great idiot, "Oh, I will try not to be such a tomboy! I will try to be worth something when I'm away, and all the things you want me to be." And then because I hated to pose as any kind of an angel, I turned, fled back to my room and locked the door.

I made a great impression with my announcement the next day in Sunday-school. Juliet could hardly believe me. She stared at me as open-eyed and awestruck as if I had told her I was going to China. She wouldn't sing the hymns, and during the long prayer she whispered to me: "You'll be going to Spreads!" And later: "You'll have a Room-mate!" And again: "Perhaps you'll be invited to House-parties!"

If I were about to be hanged it would be little comfort to me to be told that in a few hours I would be playing on harps, walking streets of gold and wearing wings. I didn't want to go away—that was the plain truth. I preferred Intelligence-Offices to boarding-schools; I preferred our big brown ugly old house, empty stable, out-of-date carriages, cruel twins, and uncuddleble Ruth to spreads, room-mates and house-parties. I wanted to stay at home! But I was bound that no one should know that my heart was breaking; I was determined that no one should guess that I was being sent away, boosted out of my position, like the poor old minister in the South Baptist church. I would go with my head up, and tearless! Only once did I give way, and that was in poor little Dixie's furry neck when I threw my arms about him in his stall. Poor little dumb Dixie! Poor pitiful dumb carriages gazing silently at me. "You'll miss me. You'll be sorry," I said.

On that last grey Sunday afternoon I took my good-bye walk, through Buxton's woods back of our house. I gazed for the last time on the precious landmarks that I had grown to love—the two freak chestnut trees, soldered into one like the Siamese twins; the hollow oak where we used to dig the rich dark brown peet and find the big, slimy white worms; the huge fallen pine, struck once by lightning, along whose trunk and in among whose dead branches we used to play "ship" and "pirate-boat." I walked alone—all alone. There was no romantic lover in riding clothes, as in my dreams, to share my sad reflections. Only a scurrying chipmunk or red squirrel, now and then, gazed at me with frightened eyes, then scampered away; only the dead leaves under my feet kept rhythm with my dragging steps. I was awfully lonely and unhappy. It seemed to me that even the sombre sky and the dead quietness of Sunday connived to add to my dreariness.

When I reached our iron gate on my return, it was nearly dark. Dr. Maynard was just coming away from one of his frequent Sunday afternoons with Alec and I met him by the fountain.

"Hello, little Wild-cat," he sang out cheerily. He always has called me Wild-cat, though I never knew why. "Back from one of your walks 'all by your lone'?" I think he copied that from Kipling. "Ears been burning? Al and I have just been talking about you."

I had never as much as peeped in Dr. Maynard's presence before—he's fifteen years older than I—but I couldn't bear his interference in my affairs and I retorted, "I should advise you not to meddle with wild-cats, Dr. Maynard!"

"Whew!" he whistled in mock alarm; and though it was not a pretty thing for a girl of seventeen to say to a man whose hair was beginning to turn grey, I finished hotly, "Or you'll get scratched!" and turned and dashed into the house.

CHAPTER V

IN thinking over my career at boarding-school I always recall three remarks which were made to me in the smoky Hilton Station as I waited for my train. Father and Alec and Juliet who, the dear old trump, had actually cut school to see me off, were at the station.

Alec had said, "Go slowly, Bobbie, and know only the best girls," and I had replied, pop-full of confidence, "Of course, Alec."

"And whatever else you do," exclaimed Juliet, "don't you dare to get a swelled head, Lucy Vars." "I won't," I had assured her.

Father, dear kind Father, his hand on my shoulder, had commanded: "Dear child, discover some one less fortunate than yourself and be kind to her." And I had promised, tussling with the painful lump in my throat, "I will, dear Father."

Father had slipped a paper bag into my hand then—a bag of lemon-drops (Father always buys lemon-drops) and two sticks of colt's-foot. The poor dear man had forgotten that I didn't like colt's-foot, but when I opened the bag in the train and saw those two little brown sticks, somehow I loved dear Father harder than ever. I put them into my travelling bag very tenderly, and have kept them ever since.

I don't know how to explain my impressions of boarding-school. I realise now that in spite of the pain at leaving home I did have buried in the bottom of my heart dreams of the vague, unknown joys of room-mates and spreads. Every young girl has such dreams, I guess. Even as I sped along in the train, trying desperately to dissolve that lump in my throat with Father's lemon-drops, I was wondering about the new bosom friends I should make. Edith Campbell, an awfully popular older girl in our town and a friend of Alec's, had been to a fashionable boarding-school in New York ever since she was a child, and she was forever bringing home girls to visit her, or whisking off herself to ball-games and Proms with "a Room-mate's brother" or "a Best-friend's cousin." I could hardly realise that I, Lucy Vars, was about to step within the same fascinating circle. Fifty girls to eat and sleep and walk with; fifty girls to choose my friends from; fifty girls to bring home with me for over a holiday; fifty girls for me to visit; and fifty girls with brothers or cousins at Harvard and Yale and Princeton. Perhaps that very winter some college man would invite me to a Prom; I would dance till morning, and become such a dazzling belle that by Easter-time I would look upon the twins as mere boys. Probably by summer I would be dashing about to house-parties, and talking to real grown-up men over a cup of tea like Dolly in the "Dolly Dialogues." Perhaps I would be president of my class at school, like Tom at college. Perhaps—perhaps—oh, I am forced to smile at myself now as I look back and see the funny little short-skirted, pig-tailed creature that I was, sitting there in the train, gazing out of the window, building my absurd little air-castles by the score, on the very way to the destruction of every dream I ever had. I didn't make a single friend at boarding-school. I didn't meet a man. Here it is almost summer, and house-parties seem as remote from me as they did ten years ago. I must try to explain why I made such a flat failure of things. It isn't a pleasant story, but here goes:

The first instant that I stepped into that school I knew that I was a curiosity to everybody there. Never shall I forget that first evening when Miss Brown ushered me into the big school dining-room and seated me beside her. It looked like fairy-land to me—red candles on a dozen little round tables and all the girls in soft, light dresses with Dutch necks. When I finally dared look up from my plate and glance round, I thought I had never seen such beautiful creatures. I couldn't find a homely girl among them; and such lovely hair as they had, done soft and full and fluffy with large ribbon-bows tied at the back of their necks. The girls at our table had the whitest hands and the prettiest soft arms, with bracelets jingling on them.

After supper Miss Brown seated herself in a big armchair by a low lamp in the drawing-room and read aloud from "Pride and Prejudice." The girls all gathered about her and did fancy work on big hoops. I didn't have any work and tried to make myself comfortable on a little high silk-brocaded chair. I felt horribly embarrassed. Every time a girl looked up from her work and scrutinised me from top to toe, I felt like saying, "I know I'm a perfect mess. I see it. I know my hands are like sandpaper, and my shoes thick-soled, and my dress a sight. I know my hair is ridiculous braided and bobbed up with a black ribbon like a horse's tail. I know it." I couldn't listen to a word that Miss Brown was reading. I was awfully disturbed thinking about my trunk on its way to me, filled with its queer collection, and wondering what in the name of heaven I could put on the next night. My blue cashmere haunted me like a bad dream. I think that first evening at boarding-school was the first time I really missed having a mother. She would have known the blue cashmere was ugly; she would have known that little bronze slippers with stockings to match were the proper thing; she would have known that girls at boarding-school wore Dutch necks and wide ribbons tied low, at the back of their necks. I simply dreaded unpacking that pitiful little trunk of mine. I wished it could be lost.

My room-mate's name was Gabriella Atherton, but when I entered the room which I was supposed to share with her I wished she had been plain Mary Jane. The bureau was simply loaded with silver things—silver brushes and mirrors and powder-boxes, and at least three silver frames with the stunningest men's pictures in them you ever saw. The walls were covered with college flags, and the window-seat was banked with college sofa-cushions. Why, I didn't know a single man, except high school boys, great awkward creatures like the twins. I hoped Gabriella wouldn't find out that I had never been to a college football game in my life, nor been invited to one either. My one last hope for consolation lay in the possibility that Gabriella was older than I. I thought she must be at least twenty to know so many men. When we were finally alone, getting ready to go to bed I asked her. My heart sank when she announced that she was only sixteen. I know exactly how a mother feels now when another person's baby born a month before hers talks first and shows signs of greater intelligence. I remember I was standing before my chiffonier braiding my hair for the night, pulling it flat back as I always did and fixing it in one tight short little braid, when Gabriella announced she was sixteen. Why, she looked old enough to be married, and I—I gazed at my reflection—I looked like poor Sarah Carew in the garret. No wonder the family wanted to send the old spoon away to be polished. No wonder!

"One of the girls," Gabriella went on to say, "has had a Box from home. She's asked the whole school to a Kimono Spread in her room. Do you want to go?"

A Spread! My heart leaped! And then I got a glimpse of Gabriella in the glass before me. She was a vision in a flowing pink silk kimono with white birds on it. She had her hair fluffed up on top and tied with a wide pink taffeta ribbon—she actually slept in it—and little pink shoes on her feet.

"I guess I won't to-night, thanks," I said, not turning around, for I didn't want her to see what a peeled onion I looked like; "the train made me car-sick." And I snapped the elastic band around the end of my braid.

After Gabriella had gone I turned out the light and crawled into the little brass bed, which Miss Brown had said was mine; but I didn't go to sleep. I just lay there listening to the muffled laughter and chatter at the end of the hall. It was only nine o'clock and lights were not due to be out until ten. I hated lying there wide awake and I kept wondering how I could get dressed in the morning without letting my room-mate see all my plain ugly things. Then I remembered that I had left my common cheap little wooden brush, the shellac all washed off with weekly scrubbings, on top of my chiffonier. I jumped up quickly and hid it in the top drawer; then suddenly I turned on the light, sat down in my horrid red wool wrapper, and wrote something like this to Alec, blubbering and dabbing tears all through it:

"Dear Alec,

I'm here safely, I've met all the girls and they are perfectly lovely. I'm going to love it. My room-mate's name is Gabriella Atherton—isn't that a beautiful name?—and she is a perfect dear! I can't write long for I am due at a spread; so, so-long until I have more time. This place is full of corking girls. They would, however, consider the twins mere babes-in-arms. Tell Aunt Sarah that Father will want his flannel night-shirts as soon as there is a frost. They are in the all-over leather trunk in the storeroom. The girls will be wondering where I am, so good-night.

"Your enthusiastic
"Bobbie."

Then I went back to bed and bawled like a baby, until I heard Gabriella at the door. Another girl was with her and I heard her say, "Good-night, dear," and Gabriella call back exactly as they do in books and as they did once in my dreams. "Good-night, sweetheart." Thereupon I ducked my head down underneath the covers and pretended to be asleep. A half-hour later, when I felt sure that Gabriella was dead to the world, I opened my eyes and lay awake until almost morning.

But no one needs to think that I was homesick. Wild horses couldn't have dragged me home. I was bound to stick it out or die and I tried not to be a little goose and cry my eyes out. That wouldn't help me to make the best girls my friends and I didn't mean to disappoint Alec if I could help it. I was there for business and I meant to accomplish it. Alec had said he admired that quality.

But Miss Brown's-on-the-Hudson was awfully different from the Hilton Classical High School. They played basket-ball as if it were drop-the-handkerchief: there was no regular team. We exercised by walking two by two for an hour every afternoon. There wasn't the slightest chance for me to shine in athletics.

I was robbed also of my hope of being a genius. There was a girl who could write ten times better than I. It was after one of her poems was read out loud in class, that I discovered I wasn't gifted in the least. She was the marvel of the school, and whenever there were guests she was asked to read her poems herself. They were the deepest things I ever listened to—about the soul, and sorrow, and "swift sweet death." She looked like a genius too. She had jet black hair and wore it in long curls tied loosely behind, big dreamy eyes, and pale transparent skin. She wasn't very healthy and always wore black. Her mother was an artist in Florence, and Lucia (think of it, my name, but pronounced so differently) Lucia had always lived in Italy until she came to school. I tell you, as soon as I saw her and listened to her poetry, I was terribly thankful that I had never let any one know that I had ever thought I could write. I got A on my compositions, and A in everything else, but no one imagined that I was a genius. They considered me just a plain everyday shark. But I tried not to be offensively smart. I flunked on purpose once in a while; I passed notes in class whenever I could find any one to pass them to; I got so I could turn off a "darn" as neatly as any of them, and pout and say "The devil!" when I pricked my finger pinning down my belt. For I was determined they shouldn't think me a "goody-goody" or a "teacher's pet." I even crocheted a man's tie and pretended it was for a friend of mine at a fashionable preparatory school in Massachusetts. I went so far in my frantic endeavours, as to cut out from old magazines all the pictures I could find of an actor, whom, by the way, I had never even seen, and stuck them in the corners of the glass over my chiffonier.

Oh, I tried to be like the other girls. I knew they hadn't liked their first impressions of me, but I tried to show them that I wasn't as queer as I looked. I tried to be pleasant and accommodating; I tried to be patient and bide my time; I tried—heaven knows I tried, Alec—but it was no use. From the start it was absolutely no go. I couldn't make even the worst of those girls my friends. I tell you I did my level best, but I hadn't the clothes, nor the silver bureau-sets, nor the frames, nor the men's pictures to put into them, nor the college banners, nor the mother to send me boxes of food from home. Those girls treated me as if I were the mud under their feet. If I was in the room, I might as well have been the bed-post for all the attention they paid to me. If I was told to walk with one of them during "Exercise," that one was pitied by the rest. They looked upon my clothes as if I were a Syrian or Turk in strange costume. I used to get hot all over whenever I had to appear in a dress they had never seen. And, O Juliet—good old loyal Juliet—you were afraid I would be spoiled by admiration! I simply have to chortle with glee when I think of your warning to your old chum. A swelled head! My eyes got swollen instead, old Jule, with tears! And Father—dear Father—there wasn't a single soul for me to be kind to. I was the most miserable one in the whole school, the most unpopular, the most forlorn. And there's the truth in black and white.

After about five weeks of an average of ten insults a day, I got tired. Too long a stretch on the diet of humble-pie doesn't agree with me. There's an end to every one's patience. One day in late November little Japan up and fought; and once started, there was no stopping her. You see the girls had gotten into the habit of asking me to help them with their lessons. At first I was pleased, for I naturally thought that if they would let me see their stupid minds, they would admit me into a few of their intimacies and secret affairs—and oh, I did long to be friends with them! But I discovered they had no such intention.

One night I went into Beatrix Fox's room, by appointment, at quarter of ten. She was waiting and ready for me, but I could see the remains of a spread on the table and desk—crumbs, nutshells, olive-stones, and a half-eaten bunch of Tokays.

"Oh, here you are!" said Beatrix, and with no attempt at concealment, she went on. "I've been having half a dozen girls to a spread," she said. "But I told them to leave one piece of cake for you, Lucy. Here it is. Now let's get at the Latin."

I was awfully insulted. Beatrix Fox nor any one else had ever seen the least fire or spunk in Lucy Vars before that night, but I couldn't hold in a minute longer. I took the delicious piece of chocolate layer-cake and went over to the waste-basket. I threw it in. "There's your cake!" Beatrix stared as if I had gone crazy. "There's your old cake, Beatrix Fox!" I repeated, and went out of the room.

After that night I was a changed person. I couldn't be touched with a ten-yard pole. I became a regular bunch of fire-crackers—spurting and going off in everybody's face and eyes at the least spark. And oh, to speak out my mind, and to spit out my feelings at last, was simply glorious! It was like getting the rubber-dam off your tooth after a three hours' sitting at the dentist's. After that experience with Beatrix, there was no more Cicero translated nor French sentences corrected by Lucy Vars for a single one of those stupid-minded, rattle-brained young ladies. I made a notice on pasteboard in black ink and hung it on my door. It read: "A public tutor can be obtained from Miss Brown. Don't apply here! Lucy Chenery Vars." The girls thought the sign was perfectly horrid and I was glad of it. I wanted to be horrid. I revelled in it. I wanted to be horrid to everybody who had been horrid to me.

Once during "Written Exercise," I wrote a whole page of Latin Composition wrong, so that little cheating snobbish Barbara Porter next to me might copy it off on her paper and pass it in. At the bottom of my sheet I wrote, "I've made these mistakes on purpose. You may give me zero." Miss Brown, in a long talk in her private office, told me it was not a kind thing for me to do. But I didn't care. I had let Barbara Porter copy my Latin Comp for five weeks without a murmur, and she had never put herself out to be kind to me. I wasn't going to be anybody's door-mat!

At Thanksgiving all the girls "double up," which means that the ones who live far away spend the holiday with the ones who live near. Of course no one wanted me. Gabriella, who at times tried to be nice to me, felt conscience-stricken, I suppose, for she said to me one day when we were dressing, "It's too bad you're going to be here alone, Lucy. Don't you suppose Miss Brown would let you to come down to East Orange" (Gabriella lived in East Orange, New Jersey) "and eat Thanksgiving dinner with us?"

I replied maliciously, "Why, I'm sure Miss Brown would let me spend the entire three days with you, Gabriella."

Gabriella hedged then, as I knew she would. "Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm taking Grace and Barbara home with me, and there's a dance I do want to go to—and—if you—"

"O Gabriella," I broke in, "don't be alarmed. I shan't burden you for one little tiny minute. I just wanted to frighten you. I wouldn't give your friends at home such a shock as the sight of me would be, for anything in the world. I shall enjoy, on the other hand, the quiet of this room after my charming room-mate has departed."

That's the way I talked but I wrote home: "Gabriella wants me awfully to spend Thanksgiving with her. There is a dance and all sorts of plans, but in spite of all her urging I've refused. There's quite a bunch of us staying here" (the bunch were teachers), "and jolly spreads and sprees in store."

I didn't want my family to know—kind Alec, the arrogant twins, pretty Ruth, and Father who used to be so proud of me—I didn't want them to know what a poor little Cinderella I was. When I went home I wanted every one to think I had had a glorious time at school, as all girls do. I wanted my family to open their eyes and say, "My, how you're changed!" and every one at church to whisper when I came in a little late, "There's Lucy Vars home! Hasn't she grown up?" I wanted Dr. Maynard to raise his hat to me when he met me on the street, and call me Miss Vars. I wanted Juliet to gaze at me with envy. If there was any real silver underneath the tarnish on me I was bound it should shine when I went home at Christmas. And so it happened that I made up my mind that if I couldn't make friends with my new schoolmates I could at least learn something from them. I used to observe them very carefully and jot down important points in my memory. Even the things that I derided to their faces, I meant to copy when I went home. My brain became a regular copybook of rules.

"My skirts," I recorded, "should be below my shoe-tops, not above.

"The way to keep a waist down, is to fasten it with a safety-pin behind and a long black steel pin in front.

"My nails should be as shining as a dinner-plate.

"A shining face is not supposed to be pretty.

"Powder is used to remove shine, and isn't wicked like rouge.

"Girls of seventeen use hairpins and rats, and keep their hats on with hatpins instead of elastics.

"Mohair and gingham underskirts and Ferris waists are not worn by girls of seventeen.

"Huge taffeta bows underneath the chin, on the hair, or anywhere in fact, is the rubber-stamp for a girl of my age.

"Automobiles, actors, college football, and allowances are popular subjects for conversation.

"Don't break crackers into your soup.

"Don't butter a whole slice of bread.

"Don't cut up all your meat before beginning to eat."

I used to watch Gabriella dress like a hawk. She had lots of clever little tricks, like pinning up her pompadour to the brim of her hat, or rubbing her cheeks with a hair-brush to make them rosy. She used to put a little cologne just back of her ears, which I thought very queer, and she was forever asking me if I could see light through her hair. Every week she gave her face what she called a cold-cream bath. She said her mother always did, after riding in the automobile.

I planned to spend every cent of Alec's one hundred dollars on clothes. I did all my shopping in New York. I adored New York! Saturday afternoons when the other girls went to the matinée, the chaperone allowed me to spend the time in the big department stores. I didn't buy anything—just looked and looked, priced and priced, and when I had a nice clerk, tried things on. Once I had my nails manicured, so I would know how; once I went to a Fifth Avenue hair dresser, who charged me a dollar and a half to make me look like a sight; and one day I bought Father a necktie for fifty cents and Alec a scarf-pin for seventy-five. That is all I spent until just before Christmas when I blew in the whole hundred. For, you understand, it was not to impress the girls at school, but the people at home, that I bought my new outfit. It was not until after I had made a great many estimates and carefully planned it all out on a piece of paper that I asked one of the younger teachers, who I thought had good taste, if she would help me buy a few trifling clothes on the following Saturday.

We started on the early train and reached New York at nine o'clock. I think that Saturday was the happiest day of my life! I bought a suit for thirty-five dollars at Kirby's; a hat marked down to ten dollars at Earl & Kittredge's; a silk dress for twenty-five dollars; a spotted veil for fifty cents; a barette for twenty cents; pumps for four dollars; one pair of silk stockings for one dollar, and so on. I had just seven dollars and sixty-seven cents left after I had bought my last purchase—a lovely red silk waist for travelling. My suit was dark blue, my boots tan with Cuban heels, and my blue velvet hat had two reddish quills in it. I was awfully pleased with my selections, and I confided to Miss Davis, the teacher, that I wasn't going to wear any of the things until the very day I started for home.