Carroll Watson Rankin

“ Dark as a gipsy, with glowing crimson cheeks, bright black eyes with curling lashes, soft black hair that grew naturally in pleasing curls neatly tied back with a broad black ribbon; a shapely, graceful figure possessing to an unusual degree an atmosphere of style. The girls were all well dressed, mostly in blue serge, but this fifth young person, Henrietta Bedford, wore her clothes with a different air. One realized that the serge in her smartly cut frock was a degree finer than that in Mabel’s rumpled middy or in Marjory’s very brief skirt. ”

“ When there are visitors he seems so oily and so smooth; and it seems to me that he is extra polite to those Miller girls—all the world uses their father’s soap, you know—but when he asks Sallie to do errands he doesn’t even say please. And Mrs. Rhodes is always gliding about like the ghost of Hamlet’s Father. She looks as if she were listening with all her features. But she never says a thing to us, even when she catches us slipping around through the corridors after lights are out.”
“I’m glad she doesn’t,” said Marjory. “She looks all the things she doesn’t say.” ”

“ Notwithstanding many unusual kindnesses from her Lakeville friends—even always-hungry Mabel begged her to eat part of her favorite dessert—puzzled Marjory felt that the sky was dark above her and the world a terrible place for little girls just her size. And then, quite suddenly, Laura was whisked away by her mother, and Doctor Rhodes, chalk in hand and frowning prodigiously, was approaching the fateful bulletin board. ”

“ Just about everybody liked Jane.
“Are you related to those grand Chicago Pools?” asked Gladys Evelyn one day, as she peeled a fresh stick of gum.
“Mercy, no,” returned Jane, who had listened for a weary half hour to Laura’s tales about her own wonderful people. “There’s nothing grand about us—we’re just plain Pools—little common Pools like mud puddles. No limousines, no diamonds, no ancestors. Just three meals a day and a bed at night. We’re just folks—the commonest kind.” ”

“ Of course I’ll be able to dig more out of him when there’s more time; but he won’t tell me the worst things; he never does.”
“I think,” said Jean, “you managed to get considerable.”
“Yes,” agreed Maude, “you certainly own an exciting father.”
“I’m so glad I still own him,” breathed Henrietta.
And then the girls slipped away to their own beds to dream of Chinese temples, junks, dark dungeons, yellow pirates, sunny reefs and sunburned fathers. And of course they were all glad to have their Henrietta again happy and free from care; for they had all suffered with her. ”

“ While the girls couldn’t help being amused, they were always sorry for the tortured youths.
“You wouldn’t think,” said Cora, after one of these painful ordeals, “that they’d be afraid to face thirty or forty girls but they always are. Just as soon as their eyes light on those ten pews full of Highland Hall girls, their carefully prepared words take flight, and I guess they’d like to, too.”
“They seem to find it almost as hard to pass the plate,” laughed Henrietta. “When they get to us their knees begin to wobble.”
“It’s because we stare at those poor creatures so unmercifully,” said Jean. ”

“ Miss Woodruff stood at her desk on the platform, listening intently; while all the pupils sat demurely at their desks, also listening.
Maude had one phrase—and only one. She made it do the work of a great many. With a twinkle in her eye, day after day, Maude folded her hands demurely and responded blandly: “Nous avons des raisins blancs et noirs mais pas de cerises.” (We have white and black grapes but no cherries.)
“But, Maude,” Miss Woodruff would say, “that is very good but I shall expect a different phrase tomorrow. You’ve used that one long enough.” ”

“ And then, of course, I began to think of all the things that might happen to a man that looks at a map and then plunges right into it, whether it’s wet or dry, the way Daddy does. And goodness! It’s a wonder there’s a man left on this earth. I can imagine such awful things. I wake up in the night and worry for hours.”
“What does your father do for a living?” asked Hazel.
“He doesn’t do anything for a living,” explained Henrietta, who for some time had been wearing a worried expression that was new to her. ”

“ Sometimes both Seniors, in their eagerness to get her, called her name in the same breath and then squabbled just like ordinary girls over which should have her. But now, for some undiscoverable reason, Marjory was being left with Mabel until the very last moment—until every other possible girl had been chosen. ”

“ She seemed to shrink visibly under the scathing looks of her schoolmates. She even began, it was noticed, to wear a guilty look that proved exasperating to Henrietta.
“Hold your head up,” Henrietta would say, vigorously shaking her little friend. “You haven’t a thing to be ashamed of. For mercy’s sake, look folks right in the eye as you used to. You’re not half as bad as you look. You’re a good child. Well, then, look like a good child.”
“I can’t help wondering,” confessed poor Marjory, “if I took those things in my sleep. Those blue beads—I just loved them.” ”

“ My badness always breaks out of its own accord when I least expect it; just when I’m really trying to be good. When it’s really necessary for me to be wicked, as it is right now, I surprise everybody—and especially dear Miss Woodruff—by being too good to be true. A regular angel child!”
“Still,” offered Hazel, “you managed to start something yesterday. I thought I’d die when I looked out the window and saw all you girls turning somersaults on the lawn.”
“What was that?” asked Isabelle. “I must have missed something.”
“You missed a lot,” assured Maude. ”

“ But the lonesome little pig had no intention of being left behind. It trotted along at the girls’ heels and squealed piteously in its efforts to keep up.
“Poor little thing,” said Bettie, “it’s just starving.”
“And tired,” said Mabel. “Every minute or two it loses its footing and rolls right over. It thinks it belongs to us.”
“You’re afraid to pick it up and carry it,” teased Marjory.
“I’m not,” said Mabel. “I’m going to do it. The rest of you can climb all the windmills you want to, but I’m going to be kind to this pig.”
Whereupon kind Mabel picked up the pig and carried it. ”

“ The girls who had allowed doubts of Sallie and Marjory to creep into their hearts now strove earnestly to make up for their former unjust suspicions. Even the Seniors came down from their lofty perches long enough to stuff both girls so full of cream puffs and chocolate creams, dill pickles, ripe olives and angel’s food cake that for three days after this never to be forgotten feast they were unable to eat their regular meals. ”

“ Jean laughed suddenly. Then she explained the cause of her mirth.
“I had a funny thought,” said she. “If Hazel’s aunt and Marjory’s Aunty Jane were shaken up in a bag, it might make two average aunts, mightn’t it, Henrietta? Marjory’s aunt doesn’t believe in luxuries—”
“Then,” interrupted Hazel, with an odd, searching look at Jean, “Marjory doesn’t have very many?”
“None at all,” returned Jean. “She’s really an abused child. But I’m sure her aunt thinks all the world of her.”
“Marjory was crazy about those blue beads of mine,” said Hazel. “I let her wear them once in awhile before Christmas.” ”

“ It’s terrible to be unpopular.”
“I know it,” agreed Mabel. “The only friends we have in this school now are the girls that won’t associate with Laura. Maude just hates her and so does Sallie. Jane Pool does, too. And I don’t think Victoria Webster likes her any too well, even if she does room with her.”
“The Seniors make fun of her,” said Marjory; “I’ve seen them do it. Miss Wilson imitates the way she chews gum and Miss Pratt sticks her little finger out the way Laura does. If Augusta wasn’t just a silly goose herself she’d never waste a minute on Laura. ”

“ Even Mabel, it was noticed, began at once to take pains to braid her own troublesome locks more tidily.
“It isn’t because she’s poor,” said Henrietta. “I’ve seen lots of poor people right in France and most of them are just as neat as wax; and so clever about making the most of what they have. And it isn’t because she doesn’t have time to mend her clothes or to bathe or wash her hair. She has all her afternoons and evenings, except when she has papers to correct—that doesn’t take so very much of her time.” ”

“ Even one of the lofty seniors condescended to notice her long enough to ask: “Found any more orphans to adopt yet?”
Even tender hearted Bettie could not refrain sometimes from saying: “Anne, Sister Anne, do you see anybody coming?”
Mabel, who was feeling a bit doleful these days, took all this teasing in good part. Indeed, she was glad to be amused. After days of suspense her punishment for going out of bounds had been meted out to her; and she felt that she was indeed being punished. On Wednesday evening there was to be a concert at the Theological Seminary, with ice cream afterwards. ”

“ Miss Woodruff said, ‘Why, no; how old do you think I am?’ Mabel looked her up and down carefully and said: ‘About seventy-five.’”
“Oh, Mabel!”
“Well,” confessed Mabel, “I honestly didn’t see how anybody could grow to such a size in less than seventy-five years. Why! She’s the very biggest woman I ever saw.”
“She’ll have it in for you,” laughed Henrietta.
“I like Sallie Dickinson,” said Bettie. “But I’m sort of sorry for her, too. She has to give out all the mail because she’s the only person who never gets any and she has to help in the kitchen sometimes, cleaning silver and things like that. ”

“ But there is poor Marjory getting thinner and thinner and our poor sweet Sallie—we do love Sallie, every one of us—with no people of her own to take her part. It does seem as if something ought to be done. ”

“ That’s why I live with my grandmother, you know. Whenever Father hears of anything interesting to dig, no matter where it is, he just rushes off to dig it. And of course he couldn’t do that if he had me tied to his—his suspenders.”
“But you have your grandmother and so much money of your own that you wouldn’t need to be a school orphan like—like Abbie.”
“Mabel, before I’d let you be like Abbie—and you’d have to shrink an awful lot to do it and change color besides—I’d adopt you myself. It’s a promise. If anything should happen to your people, I’ll adopt you, so there! ”

“ Now’s the time for action. Don’t waste a minute. She’ll never be sounder asleep than she is now.”
“Jane,” whispered Henrietta, “you and Marjory must get into those two empty beds in the room directly across the hall from Victoria’s and stay in them long enough to get them warmed up, so we can move those other two girls into them. We’ll wait fifteen minutes longer. But if Lillian and Augusta should wake up, we’ll just have to whisk them into a closet and clap our hands over their mouths.” ”

“ At the same moment Gladys Evelyn de Milligan and Augusta were marching up and down the long porch over Maude’s head and Gladys was saying:
“I used to know Marjory Vale in Michigan and I can tell you one thing. She was a horrid little girl, always telling fibs and taking things that didn’t belong to her—her aunt couldn’t keep a thing in her ice box. And Mabel wasn’t anybody at all in Lakeville. And goodness knows how the Tuckers got money enough to send Bettie to school. They’re as poor as church mice and have ragged little boys running all over the place.” ”

“ And Grace Allen hasn’t any mind of her own at all. She just thinks what Laura wants her to think, and then passes it on.”
“The friends we have are nice girls,” returned Mabel. “Maude, Cora, Sallie and the others. Just the same it makes me just mad to be snubbed and cold shouldered and left out by anybody.”
“Me too,” said Marjory. “I know you can’t waltz, but let’s get up and do it anyway. We don’t need to look like wallflowers even if we are.” ”

“ And still no Lizzie.
“Tommy,” demanded Mabel, sitting up in bed, “when does your mother get home? Who cooks your breakfast every day?”
“My muvver does. Where is my muvver?”
“Well, that’s what I’d like to know. I suppose I could take you all over to the school—no, I couldn’t carry that heavy baby all that way even if the twins could manage to walk so far. If it was just you, Tommy, I know we could do it. And I don’t like that baby’s looks.” ”

“ Although the Miller girls’ father supplied the world with soap, although three continents ate the breakfast food that Hazel Benton’s uncle manufactured, no one at Highland Hall paraded her wealth and her so-called “Social standing” as vulgar little Gladys de Milligan paraded hers. She was always painted and powdered and overdressed; she was reckless with her spending money, snobbish and artificial to the very final degree; yet, fortunately for gum-chewing Laura, there were girls who seemed to like her. ”

“ I don’t like Laura—I mean Gladys—but I don’t believe we’d better say anything against her to the other girls.”
“She says things against us,” said Mabel. “She told Sallie that my father was just a corn doctor and that all Bettie’s clothes came out of missionary boxes and that Marjory’s Aunty Jane took in washing—and I shan’t tell you what she said about your folks but it was just awful.”
“Well, let’s not worry about it. The girls that we like best aren’t going back on us for anything Gladys can tell them and we don’t have to be mean just because she is.” ”

“ We don’t have to study evenings unless we like but except on dancing nights we have to stay in our own rooms and keep quiet in case anybody does want to study.”
“Or rest,” groaned Mabel.
“There’s kind of a woodsy grove over that way—south, I guess,” said Jean. “We can go as far as the road, Cora says. She’s that thin girl with freckles—an old girl. Sometimes you can find nuts; and, in the spring, there are lots of wild flowers.”
“Spring will never get here,” groaned Marjory. ”

“ A very fine old gentleman, my dears, with high ideals and beautiful manners. Highland Hall is perhaps rather an old fashioned school; but the catalogue states that there is a new gymnasium and new, up-to-date dormitories. The most charming young woman of my acquaintance attended that school—Ruth Belding, her name was. Dr. Rhodes, I assure you, is a wonderful man, splendidly educated, highly cultured and charming in every way. His teachers are chosen with the greatest care and only really nice girls are admitted to his school. ”

“ There couldn’t be a gentleman in the library to see me.”
“But there is,” declared Sallie. “You’ll just hate yourself if you don’t hurry. Do start. I want to see you moving before I deliver this Special Delivery letter to Isabelle—two cent stamps aren’t swift enough for Clarence.”
Henrietta laid her hairbrush down deliberately and started leisurely toward the door.
“Come on, Marjory,” said she, “I ought to have a chaperon if there really is a gentleman, but I’m pretty sure it’s Maude—she loves to dress up and play jokes on us. She might as well have two victims.” ”

“ Marjory was still more or less in disgrace the day that Doctor Rhodes announced that at last he had secured a new French teacher to take Madame Bolande’s place.
“Her name is—Ah! I’ve forgotten it. No, Miss—er—Miss Flower. That’s it. Miss Flower. She is not a French woman but comes very well recommended. It has been difficult at this particular time to find exactly the right person; but I think you will all be pleased.”
Doctor Rhodes was to prove a better prophet than he suspected. When the time came, some of the girls were more than pleased. ”

“ I don’t think she’d steal anything; but she goes around in sort of a daze and her hands keep plucking at things, as if her mind were in one room and her body in another, like the time she set the dining room clock back and then accused everybody else of doing it. She’s always doing things like that. And you know she’s always had to do such a lot of picking up after years and years of careless girls—well, perhaps she’s gotten the habit of picking up things unconsciously and putting them in places where they don’t belong.”
“Well, anyway,” pleaded Marjory, “do watch me. ”

“ I don’t think that boys take as kindly to braggarts as girls do.”
But even the girls, with the exception of timid Lillian and terrified Augusta, began to grow tired of Victoria’s boasting; for, braced by the admiring devotion of her roommates, Victoria could talk of nothing but her own bravery.
“If a burglar came,” Victoria would brag, “I’d look him straight in the eye and say: ‘See here, Mr. Burglar, I want to talk to you as man to man. I take it you’re a man of sense. Your time is valuable. You’re wasting it here. We’ve only thirty cents a week pocket money. ”

“ We’ve had violets.”
“I don’t see any of those, either,” said Mabel, crossly. “It’s just plain water. I can’t even go to look at my pig.”
“You ought to sit beside him with an umbrella,” teased Debbie. “He may be getting drowned.”
“He’s all right,” assured always-comforting Sallie. “Charles moved him into the barn—he knew it was going to rain. Hello, Maude, why so pensive? What mischief are you cooking up now?”
“That’s just the trouble,” complained Maude. “Nothing will cook. I’ve been trying hard to think of something awfully wicked to do to cheer poor Henrietta up. ”