Nell Speed

“ What I hate to think about is the way that girl is going to tell all the girls at school about our handsome young Father and how he devoted himself to her. I bet she comes here to-day on some pretext or other."
"Well, I'll sic Brindle on her if she does. He can't stand cats!" hissed Dee, who was becoming worked up by Dum's evident passion.
"Well, I'll tell you one thing: the ruder you are to Mabel the more polite your Father will be; and the more polite you are, the more indifferent Mr. Tucker will be," I admonished. ”

“ The ice cream that Shorty brought to Mabel Binks must have been as bitter as gall, judging from the faces that young lady made while devouring it, nor did it "set easy on her innards," as Mammy Susan would put it. Could it be that she had literally turned green from jealousy and the ice cream was innocent, after all? It must have been a bitter pill to have the despised "Orphan Annie," with her kid friends, carry off the most desirable young man at Hill-Top. ”

“ Did you ever see such a beau grabber in your life as that countrified Page Allison? And there's 'Orphan Annie' [134] actually posing as a belle! They make me sick."
I did not hear what Jo answered, but I felt that Annie and I were safe in her hands. My cheeks were burning as though Mabel had given me a real slap.
"Don't you mind, Miss Page. If girls only knew how fellows detest that kind of thing! It must be awful to be a girl and not fight things out. If a boy had insulted me as that girl did you just now, I'd either beat him or get beaten in short order." ”

“ Oh, Miss Peyton, were you, really?"
"I should say I was. Why, Annie Pore is brazen beside what I was as a child. Captain Leahy sat by me between stations and with his ready Irish tongue cheered me up immensely. He treated me to peanuts and made me laugh and gave me a new outlook on life. The poor fellow lost a leg in a railroad accident about ten years ago, and ever since then has kept the gate where the track crosses the main street of Gresham."
"Does he like cats?" I asked.
"Oh, yes, he adores them. That is the great bond of sympathy between us. He loves cats and he loves flowers. ”

“ Tweedles declared that Zebedee was boy enough for them; although Dum thought if she ever met a Prosper le Gai she might consider him; while Dee had an idea a boy like Laurie, in "Little Women," would be some sport and she might be willing to knock around with him a bit. Jane Eyre's "Mr. Rochester" was my beau ideal.
"I want a dark, masterful lover who could tie the poker up in a bowknot if he had a mind to; a rude man who could bring tears to my eyes by his gruffness, and then, with the gentleness of a woman, soothe my aching head." ”

“ I have never been in a cabin of self-respecting colored people where there was not a chest of drawers or a table filled with similar treasures. I know Aunt Rosana thought as much of her "chany valuebowles" as Father did of his books, and her sensations when Dum almost dropped a little shell-covered box was just what Father's would have been if he had seen a careless reader turn down a page in one of his beloved books, or bend back the covers of one of his first editions. ”

“ It turned out that he did not live in Hoboken as Dee had predicted, but in the heart of New York City. He was employed by an advertising firm, not only as a writer of advertisements, but also as illustrator.
"Of course there is no pleasant way of making a living," he said, "but I long to get out of this commercial art and into regular illustrating."
"But I adore ads," exclaimed Dum. "Dee and Zebedee and I always read every word of them and Zebedee says you can find more pure fiction in them than in the magazine proper—or improper." ”

“ One can't have everything in this world, and a mountain view is more filling in the big end than dessert."
"It is splendid! You have been here a long time?" I asked.
"Yes, many years; and now I am a pupil teacher. This place seems more like home than any other in the world to me," and she took me by the arm. "Come on with me, Page. I am going to call you Page and I do wish you could call me Margaret, but now that I am a near teacher I have to be called Miss Sayre. I am going to introduce you to Miss Peyton, the principal." ”

“ Allison is right, Dee," said Dum very solemnly, "and when we are unruly with Zebedee I know it is not the fault of our early training that we love to lay it on, but just plain lack of sense."
"Well, I'm going to try to be mighty good, then," exclaimed Dee. "If there is anything in the world I hate, it's stupidity." ”

“ Tucker, I remembered what Miss Jane Cox had said about his leading the germans at the University with his little sweetheart Virginia, afterward his wife. A great wave of pity for the poor little dead wife swept over me, and I came very near missing step in a rather intricate dance we were attempting. It must have been so sad to die and leave such a delightful husband and the twins, who were such charming girls that they must have been cunning little babies. What a vigorous presence was Jeffry Tucker's! He must have [252] been a lover that any girl would have been happy with. ”

“ The dining room was one degree more cheerful than the parlor, as instead of the portraits there were Audubon prints and the Marriage of Pocahontas. A heavy walnut sideboard laden with massive silver almost filled one side of the room. The table was precisely set and the food may have been good, but everything was so ponderous, including the hostess, that when we got through with the long tiresome courses I felt like the old wolf that Mammy Susan used to tell about. ”

“ The Country Club was a beautiful building with spacious grounds, golf links, tennis courts, and a view of the James River that appealed to me very much. The dinner was fine, and Father and I had a splendid time.
"I am glad to escape all the meals I can at the apartment house café," confessed Mr. Tucker. "When Tweedles are away, I eat anywhere but at home."
"You are an extravagant piece," said Dee.
"But I have my regular meals served for Brindle," laughed Mr. Tucker.
"Oh, that alters the case, then!" exclaimed Dee. "Brindle should have just as good food as people, with a variety of vegetables." ”

“ THE FOUNDLING.
"Well, Miss Peyton is some mobilizer," sighed Dee as she snuggled down in her bed after our first study hall had been lived through at Gresham. "Just to think, here we are hard at work when we have been here only two days."
"Well, I'm glad, for one," said Dum. "If they work us hard enough, we won't get Zebedee-sick. That's what Dee and I call homesick. Wherever Zebedee is, is home for us." ”

“ I was rather amused at the fact that earlier in the day he could not remember their official names, as he called them. "I named this one Virginia, thinking she was going to have her mother's eyes, but the little monkey changed them on me and in a twinkling turned herself into a hazel-eyed monster," and poor Zebedee forgot to cry any more and began to laugh. "This is the much dreaded roommate, Miss Page Allison, of Milton, Virginia. The wild orgy which you so tactfully joined was in honor of the discovery that this young lady was the roommate." ”

“ Everything must have an end, even skating parties and books—but there will be more skating parties and more books, too.
On the way back to Gresham, Mr. Tucker divulged to us that he had a scheme for pleasure, and if we girls, one and all, studied hard, and if Miss Cox would promise to be as blind to our faults as she honorably could, we were all of us included in the scheme! He had engaged a cottage at Willoughby Beach for the month of July and there we were to camp out and live the simple life. ”

“ I needed my gray eyes to pick a smooth road for Peg. Jo Winn and Dee were just far enough behind us to keep out of our dust, and occasionally we could hear Dee's ringing laugh and an unusual guffaw from the silent Jo.
"You see now why we couldn't come in your automobile, as Mr. Tucker wanted," I said to Dum, as Father wheeled the colt sharply to the left into a forest of pines where scrub oaks and chinquepins almost concealed a very poor excuse for a road.
"Come on, Daughter," Father called back to me; "we'll keep close together through the woods, as there is no dust." ”

“ If a boy, old enough to walk 'loney, breaks through Mabel Binks' guard, he is a hero for fair," laughed Dee.
So, Annie's objections overcome, we hurried her and Mary off to put on their hats and wraps, and quickly donning our own, got downstairs just in time to form in line with the Sophomores, who were starting under the leadership of Miss Cox for the game at Hill-Top.
"I'm glad to see you are going, Page," said Margaret Sayre, as she hooked her arm in mine. "I am to help Miss Cox keep order, although I don't really think I am needed. Sophomores are never boy crazy. ”

“ What's happened?"
"It's just Dee, deedling," called out Dum. "I shot the deer and now Dee's breaking her heart."
"O—h, O—h, but he recognized me just before he died!" sobbed Dee. "I could tell by the way he looked at me."
"It was a good thing he did 'recognize' you," grinned Jo Winn. "If he had not, he might have gored you. An injured buck is a right dangerous thing to fool with."
We comforted Dee as best we could and praised Dum for her shot. Soon we were gathered around our campfire, and then Uncle Peter and I came in for our share of praise for the good dinner we had cooked. ”

“ What do you say to that, Jinny?"
"Splendid! I haven't skated for years, though."
"Have you got your skates?"
"Oh, yes; you see this is all the home I have, so I've got everything I possess here."
"And you girls? All of you have skates that fit and shoes to skate in?"
"Yes! Yes!" And off we went, the gayest crowd imaginable. Of course Miss Peyton let us go. No one had ever refused Mr. Tucker anything in reason, I am sure, nor had he ever asked for anything out of reason.
"Will you have enough food for such a crowd? Had you not better come back to Gresham to supper?" asked Miss Peyton. ”

“ I was afraid you and Dum and Miss Page had gone in for musk. The whole apartment is permeated with it." Dee went out into the little hall connecting the girls' bedroom with the living room and poked around the hatrack, where the odor seemed to be strongest.
"Here it is," she cried, "in your overcoat pocket!"
"Oh, that wretched girl's gloves! She asked me to hold them for her just before we left the club, and I must have put them in my pocket. Hang 'em outside the bathroom window. That smell is enough to make all of us faint. Please turn my pocket inside out, so it can air." ”

“ I have found out that girls can be the most cruel creatures in the world, just from pure thoughtlessness and lack of imagination. They don't know how to "Put yourself in his place." They don't mean to hurt, but they do hurt all the same. I found during the ensuing year that that same busload of Seniors included many a fine character, but not one of them seemed to have imagination enough to know what Annie Pore was suffering. ”

“ All of us have. And I think Dum and Dee are having a splendid effect on her spirits, for she is not nearly so lugubrious."
"Dum and Dee may be having a fine effect, too," laughed Miss Sayre, "but a girl named Page Allison is doing her part. All the faculty notice it. I wish someone like you could be in every class, someone to leaven the whole lump with a certain quality of camaraderie. Annie Pore was as forlorn a specimen of humanity as ever stepped out of a 'bus that first day here, and now look at her!" ”

“ It was a teacher who had evidently heard a suspicious noise and had come out to investigate. She stopped a minute in front of our door and then gently turned the knob. "All quiet along the Potomac!" She stood a minute listening to Dum's "gently taken breath" and Dee's lifelike snore, and then quietly retired on tiptoe; and in a moment we heard her door close at the end of the corridor. If we got dressed like engine horses going to a fire, we got undressed like boys seeing who can get into the swimming hole first. ”

“ Train pulling into Richmond and still not a tear! "What is the matter with you, Page Allison? When girls leave their childhood's home in books they always weep suds. Don't you love your home as much as a stick of a heroine in a book?" I knew I loved my home, but somehow it was so delightful to be going somewhere and maybe getting to know a million people, as Cousin Sue said I must. ”

“ The pupils were supposed to decorate their own rooms if they wanted them decorated. Annie Pore had been put into a two-girl room a bit smaller than the one assigned to the Tuckers and me, but otherwise exactly like it.
"I am dreading a roommate," sighed the girl. "I have never slept in the room with any one in my life."
"Neither have I, but I am crazy about it. Just think what fun it will be to have some one to talk to and giggle with." ”

“ The result was that Mathematics was no longer dry-as-dust to me. I found it had been a closed book because I had never been interested enough to open it. I soon outstripped the kids in my class and was put in a higher one. I had to read frequent chapters of "Alice in Wonderland" to cheer me on, and Miss Cox used to quote Lewis Carroll to me when she and I were alone. I found the other girls in the classes looked upon her as nothing but a teacher and she regarded them as mere pupils, to be taught conscientiously and then dismissed. ”

“ My roommates, the Tucker twins, are awfully popular, but they don't care nearly so much about it as I do. You see, they have been knowing lots of people all their lives and I haven't. Sometimes I am afraid I'll get kind of mealy-mouthed [138] in my anxiety to have people like me, and the only thing that saves me from it is my hatred of fools and snobs. I know I shouldn't hate fools because they can't help it, but I think snobs ought to be hated.
We have become acquainted with some boys from Hill-Top, the academy on the other side of the town. ”

“ Fathers do not always understand what girls need, but Mothers know. I earned this money myself, giving singing lessons to the blacksmith's daughter and you helped me by keeping store while I taught, so you can take added pleasure in spending it.
Mother.
Something happened right here that was to say the least unexpected: I, Page Allison, gave up and cried like a baby. I know I hadn't cried so since old Buster, my pointer, died. And Annie Pore, instead of bawling, which she would have been perfectly justified in doing, never shed a tear ”

“ Tucker had kindly had our breakfast sent up from the café.
"That's to make up for treating us the way he did last night," said Dum, buttering her cakes as she sat up in bed.
"Treating us what way?" inquired Dee.
"Dancing with that Binks abomination. He knew he had no business to do it."
"Why, Dum," I said, determined to cool her down if possible, "I don't really see how Mr. Tucker could have done otherwise. A schoolmate who from all appearances is devoted to his daughters, joins our group and lets it be known [260] that she is dying to dance, indeed is thinking of dancing alone. ”

“ I suggested. "To tell the truth, it makes me fall down if anyone helps me."
"Do you know," whispered Dee to me, "I verily believe that Reginald Kent person is getting stuck on Dum? I hope he won't shoot her. I don't believe he ever carried a gun before in his life. He handles it like a walking stick."
"He's real nice, don't you think?" I asked.
"Oh, yes, nice enough, but I can't see why Dum lets him boost her over every stick and stone. She's perfectly able-bodied. She looks to me as though she rather liked to be treated like a boneless vertebrate," and Dee looked very disgusted. ”

“ She knew them all by name and chatted with them very freely, much more freely than she did with any of the girls, except Dum and Dee and me.
"Evidently, Miss Cox understands boys better than she does girls and they understand her," thought I. Her manner with them was frank and natural, exactly as it had been with Mr. Tucker. [124]
A tall, good-looking boy was holding a laughing conversation with her about the game. He it was who had saved the day for the Seniors when it had looked as though the younger class would certainly win, owing to the strategic movements of the popular Shorty. ”