Nell Speed

“ So we quickly got into some wraps, as we remembered what a breeze could blow on the Battery, and Dee concealed under her coat her electric flashlight and I put my scissors in my pocket.
"We can shake the crowd and get our business attended to without anyone's being the wiser," I whispered.
A place that is ugly by day can be beautiful by moonlight, and a place that is beautiful by day can be so wonderful by moonlight that it positively hurts like certain strains of the violin in the "Humoresque" or tones of a great contralto's voice. Charleston on that night was like a dream city. ”

“ I sighed. "I had visions of our making out with bird dishes, and had begun to regret that I had not taken several more baths at the hotel, where the arrangements were certainly perfect."
"It's an awful pity a body can't save up cleanliness [219] like she can save up dirt," said Dee. "Wouldn't it be nice if we could take seven baths in one day at a nice hotel and then come stay a week in a delightful old house like this, delightful in every way but tubs, and not have to wash all that time?" ”

“ I laughed. "Dee wanted us to tell her all about Louis so she could talk it over with you, thinking there might be something you could suggest about helping him, and she said: 'Edwin will think of something to do for him. He understands boys thoroughly, if he does teach girls.'"
And so ended our first day in Charleston. What a day it had been! Rain and sunshine, wind and moonlight, poetry and prose, fiction and fact! A young life saved, and friendship born! Dee going off in hysterics, and Dum and I so tired at last that we could hardly crawl back into the elevator to be borne to our room! ”

“ No answer! My eye fastened on the door with No. 13 over it. All of us have [104] some superstitions, and anyone brought up by a colored mammy is certain to have many.
"No. 13 is sure to be right," I thought, and pushed open the door.
A strange sight met my gaze: Dee, with her arms thrown around a youth who crouched on the floor, his face buried in his hands while his whole frame was shaken with sobs! From the chandelier hung a rope with a noose tied in the dangling end, and under it a pile of bricks carefully placed as though some child had been building a house of blocks. ”

“ THROUGH THE GRILLE
None of us had ever been so far south before and the palmetto trees were a great astonishment to us.
"They don't look natural to me, somehow," declared Dum, "but kind of manufactured. The trunks with that strange criss-cross effect might have been made by kindergarten children and as for the leaves—I don't believe they are real."
"It does seem ridiculous for people to have these great things twenty feet high, growing in their back yards when we nurse them with such care at home and are so proud if we can get one to grow three feet. ”

“ There have never been but three ways for a gentleman to earn a living: the Church, Law, the Army. Now, of course, the last avenue is closed to a Southern gentleman as he could hardly ally himself with the enemies of his land. The Church and the Law are all that are left for one of our blood. Since, as you are so quick to inform me, there is no money for Louis to go to college and a degree is quite necessary for one expecting to advance himself by practice of law, I see nothing for him to do but go into the ministry. ”

“ Not a word did they utter however on that bumpy bus ride, and although the two pale old ladies in crêpe veils had stiffly inclined their shrouded heads as father and daughter entered the vehicle and they in turn had acknowledged the bow, not one word passed their lips. Evidently a public conveyance was not the proper place for Charlestonians to converse. The girl, who was very pretty in spite of being so tired and dishevelled, smiled a sympathetic smile when Dum enthused over Meeting Street. I had a feeling if we could get her by herself she would chatter away like any other girl. ”

“ It is splendid that you keep up your painting. I have no patience with these persons who insist that a career and matrimony cannot go hand in hand. Of course my little Mildred is very engrossing, but I do not intend to let her take every moment of the day and night. I find if I am going to write, however, that I cannot sew, but you know sewing was never one of my strong points. Giving it up is like Huck Finn's giving up stealing green persimmons. ”

“ We had a wonderful time at the City Hall that afternoon with Louis. It was quite near our hotel, so Dee's agony over Louis' feelings about carfare was assuaged.
My idea of a City Hall had always been that it was a very ugly and stiff place where City Fathers wrangled about sewerage and garbage collections, and whether they should or should not open up such and such a street or close such and such an alley,—a place where taxes were paid or evaded, and where one kicked about the size of the gas bill. ”

“ Just as Dee said that the palmetto trees made her feel like somebody was coming, somebody did come. We heard a voice, a very irate voice indeed, behind the wall declaiming in masculine tones:
"There is no use in discussing the matter further, Claire! I tell you I shall never give my consent to Louis' going into such a profession. Planting gardens, forsooth! That is work for negroes, negroes directed by women." ”

“ I declared. "Why don't you tell them how you got Miss Plympton out of the window in her pink pajamas?"
The Greens laughed so heartily at our adventures that we were spurred on to recounting other happenings, telling of the many scrapes we had got ourselves in. Claire listened in open-eyed astonishment.
"It must be lovely to go to boarding-school," she said wistfully.
"It sounds lovelier than it is. We tell about the scrapes and the fun, but there are lots of times when it is nothing but one stupid thing after another. ”

“ She treated all dogs with a great deal more consideration than she did most people.
Every flower Dee admired, Louis immediately wanted to give her, but she persuaded him to let them go on blooming where they belonged. He had a greenhouse in the back of the garden, where some wonderful roses bloomed all the year round. A great Jaqueminot filled one side of the house, its crimson blooms beautiful to behold. Louis cut one and brought it out to Dee. I was glad I was the only one who heard him as he gave it to her, as I am sure Dum would have "acted up," as Mammy Susan calls it. ”

“ We could hardly tear ourselves away, but it was twelve o'clock and we had promised to meet Zebedee for a one o'clock luncheon. We told him good-by, and promised to come to see him some more and then made our way along the eastern walk of the Battery.
The breezes always seem to be high down on the Charleston Battery, as it is exposed to the four winds of heaven. The sky had clouded [97] over again and quite a sharp little east wind was blowing, whistling rather dismally through the palmetto trees that grow all along the beautiful street that runs beside the waterfront. ”

“ It was like Dee to think of that matter of carfare. She had so much sympathy for the poor and miserable of creation that she seemed to be able to put herself in their places as it were. I fancy there is no more miserable person on earth than a youth who aspires to be squire of dames and has no money to pay the fare.
Professor Green was writing in the palmetto-shaded court of the hotel, and had seen us from there as we came up the street. He begged us to join him and tell him what success we had met with the Misses Laurens. ”

“ He had no opportunity to ask us where we got him or what we meant by picking up forlorn-looking aristocrats and bringing them home to lunch. He just trusted us. To be trusted is one of the greatest incentives in the world to be trustworthy.
Anyone with half an eye could see that Louis Gaillard needed a friend, and could also see that all of us had been under some excitement. Zebedee [113] not only had more than half an eye, but was Argus-eyed. Louis must have been very much astonished at the irate old parent he had been led to expect. Mr. Tucker never looked younger or more genial. ”

“ Claire has been away on a trip and while she was gone your father has nagged you. He thinks working in flowers is not the work for a Gaillard and wants you to be a lawyer or preacher. You have no money to go to college, and he seems to think you can be a preacher without the education necessary to be a lawyer—which is news to me. You have offers to plant gardens right here in Charleston, but your father will not permit you to do it. You have become despondent and have lost appetite and are now suffering from a nervousness that makes you not quite yourself. ”

“ Dum was out of the house before we could say Jack Robinson, the clipping from the want column grasped tightly in her hand and her chin set in its determined, square, do-or-die lines.
"When Dum looks like that she always gets what she goes after," said Dee, looking admiringly after her twin as she jumped in Henry Ford, who spent a large part of his waking life [20] parked in front of the apartment house or newspaper office. "Maybe going in a car, even a bum one like Henry, will queer her game. If she will only have sense enough to stop a little to one side of the place!" ”

“ Green. "There he is on that oleander, and there's his mate still busy with her household duties, carrying straw for her nest. It must be hard to be a female bird and not to be able to pour forth your soul in song, no matter how bursting you are with the joy of living. I always thought that it was unfair. No doubt that little newlywed mocking-bird feels as deeply as the male, but all she can do to show it is just drag straw and hairs and build and build, and then sit patiently on her eggs, and then teach the little ones to fly after she has worn herself to skin and bone grubbing worms for them. ”

“ I took down all the combings for the birds and they are crazy about them. Can't you hear their hymn of thanksgiving?"
"Pig! Why didn't you call me?" and Dee rolled out of bed to beat Dum to the copper-kettle-like bathtub.
"I hate to wake you up when I have to, and goodness knows I am not going to do any gratuitous waking," I laughed. "Girls! I have had the time of my life, and have got to know Miss Arabella real well. She is simply a darling!" and I rummaged for my notebook. ”

“ Tucker and I, as no doubt I have remarked before, often came out with exactly the same thought almost as though we were able to read each other's minds.
"Of course she should not have led him on if she did not want to be kissed. She certainly came very near chucking him under the chin. A girl can't expect a man to withstand temptation forever. Just because a man is looked upon as a gray-bearded loon is no sign he feels like one."
The others had gone on ahead and were standing under the monument of Sergeant Jasper, who was still patiently pointing to Fort Moultrie. ”

“ Already, of course, we have plunged into adventures, as is always the case if you train with the Tucker twins. I am not going to tell you of these adventures until I come back to Bracken; they are too thrilling for mere pen and ink.
As you see by the above address, we have left the hotel and are now installed in a boarding-house on Meeting Street. It seems absurd to call such a place a boarding-house—indeed, a sacrilege. It has just become a boarding-house in the last twelve hours, as I am sure we are the first "paying guests" the poor Misses Laurens have ever had. ”

“ I just knew how much you felt for the poor men and approved of their venture, and so I just decided I'd run a jitney myself for a day or so and get myself out of debt. I owe five dollars and seventy-three cents to schoolmates and did not have but thirty-seven cents and a street car ticket. I wanted to let Dum in on my scheme but she said she would get out and earn her own money. I did not dream I could make so much, and indeed I couldn't have, if I had not speeded like fun. ”

“ Of course my meals had to be brought up to me from the café because of my old ankle, and the girls often had theirs brought up, too, although they preferred going down as a rule. They insisted they missed too many tricks by having them sent up. "No second and third helps to pie, and the one help you get too dainty for us."
"Look out the window for me every ten minutes or so and pray that Henry won't get cranky and have to be cranked and have me expose my skirts to the rude gaze of the public," begged Dee as she hugged me good-by. ”

“ Then there was a lull in her traffic until about eleven, when the shoppers began to pour downtown. Women and babies! women and babies! Sometimes women and dogs! Brindle, who never left the window, and seemed to be watching for Dee and Henry Ford as eagerly as I was, resented the dogs very much. He felt that his rightful place was in that car, and any dog who dared get in it was to be disciplined through the window glass if he could not reach him in any other way. ”

“ Through this long speech Louis stood wide-eyed and flushed. Claire caught him by one hand and impulsive Dee by the other.
"Oh, sir!" was all he could falter.
"You must, you must!" exclaimed Dee.
"Louis, Louis, if you only can!" and Claire raised his hand to her cheek.
"But what will my father say?" [270]
"We are going to leave him to Mr. Tucker, at least he is going to prepare the way. I have had a long talk with Tucker this afternoon, and we have mapped out a plan of campaign."
"But your father surely could have no objection," said Dum. "A scholarship is something that everybody accepts." ”